Tag Archives: social media

Team Biden Passes Team Trump In Truth Social Follows

Axios reports: President Biden’s campaign has surpassed former President Trump’s in followers on Truth Social. The Biden campaign pithily announced it was joining his likely 2024 presidential race competitor on Trump’s Twitter-like platform, as they both vie to appear extremely online. “The U.S. presidential campaign is playing out in real time on Truth Social,” Truth Social said in an email …

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Twitter/X To Test $1 Annual Subscription For New Users

Reuters reports: Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, said on Tuesday it will test a new subscription model under which it will charge $1 annual fee for basic features. The new subscription termed as “Not A Bot” will charge users for likes, reposts or quoting other accounts’ posts, and bookmarking posts on the web version of the platform. …

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Biden Campaign Joins Truth Social: “Converts Welcome”

The Hill reports: The Biden campaign Monday joined Truth Social, the platform founded by former President Trump, pushing its message on a platform largely dominated by the former president and his followers. “Well. Let’s see how this goes. Converts welcome!” the campaign wrote in its first post on the platform under the handle @BidenHQ. The campaign followed up with another …

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Truth Social Merger Deal Appears To Have Fallen Apart

Reuters reports: Digital World Acquisition Corp, the SPAC that plans to merge with former U.S. President Donald Trump’s media and technology company, said this week it would return to investors $533 million raised for the deal, after some have already backtracked on $467 million of commitments. The development means the end of the so-called private investment in public equity (PIPE) …

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Twitter Rolls Out Unmarked Ads That Can’t Be Blocked

Mashable reports: X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter, has begun serving its users with a weird new ad format and it’s one of the company’s least transparent products yet. The rollout of these ads also provides the public with a hint regarding just how much the company is struggling to attract advertisers. These new X ads don’t …

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SEC Sues Musk To Compel Testimony On Buying Twitter

Reuters reports: Billionaire Elon Musk is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over his 2022 purchase of social media giant Twitter, according to a Thursday court filing in which the agency sought to compel Musk to provide testimony. The investigation concerns whether Musk broke federal securities laws in connection with his 2022 purchases of stock in Twitter, …

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Twitter Removes Headlines From Linked News Articles

The Guardian reports: X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has stopped showing headlines for links posted on the site, after site owner Elon Musk said it would make posts look better. Links posted on Twitter now appear as the image included in the article, as well as text in the left-hand corner of the image noting the domain of …

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Reuters: Banks Might “Take Back The Keys” To Twitter

Reuters reports: X is still worth something, but not for the people running it. Boss Linda Yaccarino is set to present her plans for the social network formerly known as Twitter to bankers holding nearly $13 billion of its debt, the Financial Times reported. Looming over talks is the likelihood that X’s value is substantially less than even that figure. …

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Musk Sued For Falsely Naming Man As Neo-Nazi

Vice News reports: A young man falsely accused of being a federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi by Elon Musk and a bunch of other right-wing trolls has launched a lawsuit against the one-time richest man in the world. Earlier this year, college student Ben Brody, 22, had his life turned upside down when he was accused of being a …

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SCOTUS To Hear Challenge To Social Media Moderation

NBC News reports: The Supreme Court on Friday waded into the divisive issue of online censorship by agreeing to decide the constitutionality of laws in Florida and Texas that seek to prevent social media companies from banning users for contentious rhetoric. The laws, backed by Republicans, have been characterized by their supporters as hitting back at alleged censorship of conservative …

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Ramaswamy: Ban Minors From Social Media Platforms (Which I’m Using To Reach Out To “Young Americans”)

USA Today reports: GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy defended his decision at Wednesday’s debate to join TikTok earlier this month, saying he was making a bid for youth voters. Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney asked the entrepreneur why he decided to join the Chinese-owned platform that has been banned on federal government devices. “I have a radical idea for …

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Twitter Scraps “Report Election Disinformation” Feature

The Guardian reports: Since 2021, users on X in countries including the US, Australia and South Korea had been able to flag tweets that they believed contained misleading information for review by staff at the company – separate to other processes the company has in place to report abuse or hate speech. The feature had been available in the US, …

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Biden Launches Anti-MAGA Digital Response Team

Politico reports: The Biden campaign is entering the chat. And then reentering it again and again. The president’s reelection team is formally launching its campaign war room on social media Wednesday. With the handle Biden HQ, it will serve as a rapid response operation aimed at reaching voters by pumping out content — lots of content. Aides involved in it …

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Musk Floats “Small Monthly Payment To Use X System”

Mediaite reports: Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter/X, is floating an idea that he’s had before, but never mentioned publicly, to remedy the problem of social media bots: charging people to use social media. It’s not the first time Musk has proposed making people pay to use X, which has, according to multiple reports, descended into a chaotic haven for …

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EU Fines TikTok $368M Over Children’s Privacy Rights

The Guardian reports: TikTok has been fined €345m (£296m) for breaking EU data law in its handling of children’s accounts, including failing to shield underage users’ content from public view. The Irish data watchdog, which regulates TikTok across the EU, said the Chinese-owned video app had committed multiple breaches of GDPR rules. It found TikTok had contravened GDPR by placing …

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Anti-Hate Group: Twitter/X Allows 86% Of Hateful Posts

The Center On Countering Digital Hate reports: New research by CCDH shows that X (formerly Twitter) continues to host nearly 86% of a set of 300 hateful posts after a week since we reported them. As of September 7th 2023, tweets promoting and glorifying antisemitism, anti-Black racism, neo-Nazism, white supremacy and/or other racism were still up. CCDH also found dozens …

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NYT: China Planted Disinformation On Maui Wildfires

The New York Times reports: When wildfires swept across Maui last month with destructive fury, China’s increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced. The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread across the internet, but was the result of a secret “weather weapon” being tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts …

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Analysis: Twitter/X Is Throttling Traffic To The NY Times

Semafor reports: X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times. Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected …

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BOOK: Musk Has Child Named “Techno Mechanicus”

The New York Times reports: At various moments in “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the world’s richest person, the author tries to make sense of the billionaire entrepreneur he has shadowed for two years — sitting in on meetings, getting a peek at emails and texts, engaging in “scores of interviews and late-night conversations.” Musk is a mercurial …

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Dozens Of Vendors Sue Twitter/X For Nonpayment

Ars Technica reports: When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, a fairly ordinary tech company was transformed into a most unusual private corporation. Many strange things have happened at the Musk-owned social network, but this article will focus on just one puzzling aspect of Musk’s leadership: His apparent refusal to pay bills. Over two dozen lawsuits alleged that Twitter—which …

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