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Twitter whistleblower may have just bailed out Elon Musk

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Sourced from CNBCTV18.com

The explosive allegations made by former Twitter head of security-turned-whistleblower Peiter Zatko against the microblogging giant could not have come at a better time for Elon Musk, who is currently mired in a legal battle with the company after he agreed to buy out the social media platform and then backed out of the deal.
According to an 83-page confidential disclosure sent to the US Congress and federal agencies last month — accessed by CNN, Time, and The Washington Post — Zatko said he began asking about the prevalence of bot accounts on the platform in early 2021 and was told by Twitter’s head of site integrity that the company was not sure of the number of total bots on its platform.
He alleges that he came away from conversations with the integrity team with the understanding that the company “had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bots,” partly because if the actual number became public, it could harm the company’s value and reputation.
Musk, while backing out of the deal, had cited the “inaccurate number of bots” being disclosed to him as the deal breaker.
While the initial agreement did not mention any bot-related exemptions, Musk claims that the number of bots on any given platform could affect the user experience, and hence could bring down Twitter’s value in the longer run. After Musk stepped back from the deal, Twitter was quick to take the legal route by suing the billionaire, alleging that Musk is using bots as a pretext to get out of the deal, which he now regrets making following the recent market downturn, asking a court to force the deal on him. The case is set to go to trial in October.
Figures like the number of users on a platform are crucial to businesses that have most of their revenue come from advertising, and ad revenue depends on how many people can potentially see an ad. These figures are heavily unreliable throughout the industry due to manipulation and error.
According to the report by CNN, Twitter uses a measurement it calls monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) to report its user numbers to investors and advertisers. Other platforms simply count and report all their active users, a practice Twitter followed until 2019, Zatko alleged, after which it switched to mDAUs as its numbers took major hits following takedowns of major bot networks. With mDAUs, Twitter counts all users that could be shown an advertisement on Twitter — leaving all accounts that for some reason can’t (for instance because they’re known to be bots) in a separate bracket, as per Zatko.
Twitter has stood by the fact that less than five percent of its mDAUs are either fake or spam accounts. But Zatko’s disclosure argues that by reporting bots only as a percentage of mDAUs, instead of taking it as a percentage of the total number of accounts on the platform, Twitter makes the true scale of fake and spam accounts on the service very unclear, which Zatko alleges is deliberately misleading, as per the CNN report.
Zatko’s allegations could back up Musk’s central claim that the number of bots is much higher than Twitter claims.
As per CNN, by going public, Zatko says he believes he is doing the job he was hired to do. “Jack Dorsey reached out and asked me to come and perform a critical task at Twitter. I signed on to do it and believe I’m still performing that mission,” he was quoted in the CNN report.

Sourced from CNBCTV18.com

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The Least-Awful Social Media Sites for Anyone Who Wants to Be Less Unhappy

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By  Stephen Johnson

There is no law that says you have to use Twitter.

Almost everyone agrees that large swaths of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit are terrible, each in their own way. But these monolithic social media platforms are so ubiquitous, it’s easy to forget that you don’t have to use them. Which isn’t to say that you have to swear off of social media forever: There are less odious alternatives that will still let you participate in online life.

These smaller, scrappier social media platforms aim to either correct the most egregious mistakes their big brothers and sisters make, or to provide niche experiences that the larger social media companies can’t/won’t. Below are alternatives to five of the most popular social media platforms. None of them are perfect, but they’re at least different, and probably less terrible. Plus, if any of them really catch on, you can be first to complain about how they used to be so much better.

Ditch Facebook for MeWe: Freedom from advertising and tracking

There are tons of reasons to join the crowds fleeing Facebook—its terrifying targeted advertising policies, rampant misinformation, people use it to plan genocides, your cousin Gary—and only one reason to stay: The sheer number of users. Everyone is on Facebook, and maybe that’s the problem.

My suggested Facebook alternative, MeWe, offers a lot of features that will be familiar to Facebook-users—groups, private chats, tagging, content permissions—and boasts a Facebook-like look and feel, but WeMe is less evil. It’s completely advertising free and doesn’t track or sell its users’ data, staying afloat by offering for-pay premium services. On the downside: There are reportedly 16 million users of WeMe, which might sound like a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users.

Switch from Twitter to WT.Social: News with less misinformation and hysteria

I’ve had a Twitter account since 2010, but I can’t anymore. I just want links to interesting news stories and the occasional cute cat pic, but Twitter seems intent on serving up maddening, toxic nonsense. The site is awash in hysteria, misinformation, manipulation, and bitterness. If you’re just sick of it like I am, check out WT.Social.

Launched in 2019 by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, WT.social is completely ad-free and dedicated to combating misinformation by allowing users to flag and edit any post, like a certain famous online encyclopedia. There are no advertisers to appease, since the service is paid for through voluntary donations, and WT.social says its mission is to “foster an environment where bad actors are removed because it is right, not because it suddenly affects our bottom-line.”

Switch from Instagram to 500px: Better photos, less psychological trauma

Instagram has long been known to be devastating to the mental health of young people. The photo-sharing platform has been associated with depression, self-esteem issues, social anxiety, and other issues. It’s run by the same people who run Facebook, who seem bent on making social media experiences as addictive as possible. If you’re a photographer and you don’t want to support any of that just to show off your pics, you should switch to 500px.

The platform’s philosophy is built around quality pictures, so you can view and post pics in high resolution. The algorithm that determines which photographs are widely shared is based less on your number of followers and more on “likes” from people who don’t follow you. There are even opportunities to monetize your work.

While 500px is geared toward photographers, if you just like looking at pretty pictures, it might be the service for you too. Unlike Instagram’s mix of pictures, ads, and videos, 500px’s feeds feature only photographs, and it feeds aren’t based on Zuckerberg-style algorithms, so you’ll see only what you want to see.

Switch from TikTok to, well, something

TikTok is the nearly universal choice of young people eager to watch and share shorter videos. TikTok is so huge at the moment, it has no realistic challengers (other than old-school YouTube), and none on the horizon—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any alternatives. Here are a few video sharing apps that offer things TikTok does not.

  • Triller. This app makes the already easy process of posting videos online even easier. Triller uses AI to edit videos in time to pre-selected music.
  • Clapper. If you’re worried that your important political views are being censored by TikTok, this moderation-light platform will let you spout off whatever dumb nonsense you’d like.
  • Clash. Created by one of the co-founders of Vine, Clash focuses on short form videos, and isn’t designed as a challenger to TikTok as much as a sidecar: It allows creators with existing followings to interact with and monetize their audience in exciting new ways. But that also means users can interact with their faves more easily, too.

Switch from Reddit to Discourse: Less dumbness, more smartness

It’s hard to believe now, but for a couple years after Reddit launched in 2005, it was a discussion forum for smart people. Unfortunately, popularity and an aversion to curation and moderation lead to a dumbing down of content and a proliferation of hateful and boring users. For a smaller, more focused discussion-based community, try Discourse. This open-source forum platform’s stated goal is to “raise the standard of civilized discourse on the internet through seeding it with better discussion software.” In practice, that means trusted, frequent users have a say in how communities are managed; it’s easy to flag bad content; and there exists robust and user-customizable curation. Plus, fewer people use it, so it hasn’t been ruined…yet.

Feature Image Credit: Chernousov family (Shutterstock)

By  Stephen Johnson

Sourced from lifehacker

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Study Finds 10% of Twitter Active Accounts Post Spam, Bolstering Elon Musk Skepticism About Platform’s Claims

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By Todd Spangler

A new study estimates that upwards of 10% of Twitter active accounts post spam content — double the company’s own claims.

The report from U.K.-based data analytics and consulting firm GlobalData comes as Elon Musk, the billionaire Twitter power-user, has threatened to nix his $44 billion deal for the social network over the question of the prevalence of spam and fake accounts on Twitter. On Monday, Musk’s lawyers sent a letter to Twitter alleging the company was in “clear material breach” of the acquisition agreement because Twitter has refused to furnish information backing up its claim that fake/spam accounts represent less than 5% of daily active users.

A Twitter rep declined to comment.

According to GlobalData, its 10% spam estimate is conservative but the firm acknowledged that “there is no conclusive way of knowing if a certain account is a bot or spam.” According to Sidharth Kumar, GlobalData senior data scientist, the discrepancy between Twitter’s internal sub-5% estimate and the GlobalData model’s 10% estimate is likely due to a difference in criteria as to what counts as “spam.”

“The precise proportion of spam accounts is difficult to compute, as it is almost impossible to confirm the identity of the entity behind a tweet handle,” Kumar said, adding that “the definition of a spam account may differ for everyone. Incessant tweeting of non-original content can be considered spam, but some may choose to see it as a very active user sharing articles/opinions.”

For the study, GlobalData analysed about 4 million recent tweets from a sample of 20,976 Twitter accounts to discern patterns — and concluded that 10.9% of those represented spam accounts. The firm’s model used multiple factors to determine whether a specific account was “spam,” including whether its tweets originated from third-party applications; whether it is Twitter Verified; number of tweets per day; proportion of retweets; the median time between any two tweets; the length of an account’s bio description; and proportion of links shared.

Wall Street has viewed Musk’s sudden interest in conducting due diligence about the spam/bot metric as an attempt to either back out of the acquisition or to drive the deal price down. Twitter has disclosed its estimate that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5% of its active users for years, dating back to its IPO filing in 2013.

Last month, Musk tweeted that Twitter’s active user base could represent “20% fake/spam accounts” and asserted, without citing any evidence, that it “could be *much* higher.” To be sure, the question of how many of Twitter’s 229 million daily active users (as of Q1) are actual monetizable users is an important factor in valuing the company, but analysts have wondered why Musk only zeroed in on the issue weeks after clinching the original buyout agreement.

In a series of tweets, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal responded to Musk’s questions about fake/spambot accounts, tweeting in part that “Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share).”

By Todd Spangler

Sourced from Variety

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Twitter has very ‘bot-friendly’ rules, says Elon Musk amid hold on takeover

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Sourced from Business Standard

While Twitter said in its SEC filing that less than 5 per cent of its monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) are fake, Musk believes the number of bots is four times higher

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday once again raised the presence of fake/spam accounts or ‘bots’ on Twitter, saying the micro-blogging platform has ‘very bot-friendly’ rules.

Musk has put the $44 billion Twitter buyout on hold till its CEO Parag Agrawal tells him the exact percentage of bots on the platform. Twitter currently says less that 5 per cent of accounts on its platforms can be fake.

A follower tagged Musk, posting “current technical Twitter Limits”: “None of these @Twitter limits are aligned with the goal of human-to-human interactions @elonmusk.”

“Like 1 tweet every 36 seconds during 24 hours is not human behaviour. Neither is changing your account’s email address 4 times per hour,” the follower asked Musk.

The Tesla CEO replied: “Totally, these are very bot-friendly rules!”

The Twitter technical limits say that for Direct Messages (DMs), the limit is 1,000 messages sent per day, while for tweets, it is 2,400 per day.

The “change to account email” is 4 per hour and the technical “follow limit” is 400 per day.

Musk has asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to probe whether Twitter’s claim on the number of its user base is true.

While Twitter said in its SEC filing that less than 5 per cent of its monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) are fake, Musk believes the number of bots is four times higher.

Musk mentioned that the Twitter CEO publicly refused to show proof of less than 5 per cent bots.

“20 per cent fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be much higher. My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” Musk wrote.

“Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of less than 5 per cent. This deal cannot move forward until he does,” he had added.

Musk, at a conference in Miami this month, said that Twitter could have at least four times more fake accounts than what has been revealed in its filing.

–IANS

na/ksk/

Sourced from Business Standard

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Twitter Courts Advertisers Amid Uncertain Future Under Musk

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By Sheila Dang
(Reuters) -Twitter Inc faced a sceptical audience as it showcased its advertising opportunities on Wednesday at an event in New York City, three ad agency executives told Reuters, as the social media company’s plans under billionaire Elon Musk remain unclear.

The Tesla chief executive, who is buying Twitter for $44 billion, has tweeted that the platform should not have ads so it can have more control over its content moderation policies.

Twitter has told its employees in internal staff meetings and in public filings that its advertising business and other operations would continue normally until the deal closes, but the company could not speculate on changes Musk might make.

“He’s like the ghost of Christmas future hanging over this whole thing,” said Mark DiMassimo, founder of ad agency DiMassimo Goldstein, referring to Twitter’s presentation to advertisers on Wednesday. “Whatever (Twitter) says, all anyone really wants to know is how this will be in the future.”

The social media company earned $5 billion in revenue in 2021, the majority from selling digital advertising on its website and app.

Most advertisers have not pulled back ad dollars from Twitter, but are watching closely to see how Musk could change the platform and its business, the ad executives said.

“I would like (Twitter) to address and talk to it, because there’s a lot of curiosity,” said Alex Stone, senior vice president of advanced video and agency partnerships at Horizon Media.

Ad agencies and brands mingled at a cavernous event space in NYC before Twitter’s presentation began. One ad buyer said attendees were speculating whether Twitter would joke about the take-private deal with Musk or address the matter more directly.

The buyer didn’t have to await long for an answer.

“It has been a quiet month here at Twitter,” joked JP Maheu, VP of global client solutions at Twitter at the start of the presentation.

The company announced a number of content partnerships tied to the presentation.

Twitter said it was expanding its partnerships with media companies Conde Nast and Essence, which will create video and audio programming on Twitter. E! News will launch a new live-streamed show on Twitter to discuss TV shows such as “The Real Housewives,” and “Stranger Things.”

Advertisers will be able to purchase ad spots that run next to videos from the media companies. The social media platform said it would be the first social partner to test an integration with iSpot, the firm NBCUniversal uses to measure video viewing.

Twitter also announced that Fox Sports will host live pre-game shows on the platform for every match of the FIFA men’s World Cup tournament this year in Qatar and the women’s World Cup event in 2023.

Sarah Personette, Twitter’s chief customer officer, closed the presentation expressing gratitude to the company’s advertisers.

“Your partnership makes us better each and every day. We are exceptionally grateful for how you stand with us,” she said.

At least one marketer left the presentation wanting more.

Jasmine Wang, a media director at Altice USA, said her company pulled back its ad spend from Twitter due to concerns about Musk’s potential impact on the platform.

Wang said she had expected Twitter’s presentation to be longer and more substantial and had hoped it would address possible changes that might come under Musk.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Chris Reese and Tom Hogue)

Feature Image Credit: REUTERS/Carlos BarriaReuters

By Sheila Dang

Sourced from U.S. News

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Twitter Pursues Anxious Advertisers Amid Concerns on Musk’s Era

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By Joaquin Victor Tacla

Twitter pursues a sceptical audience in the Digital Content NewFeronts when it pitches its upcoming premium video content slate to anxious advertisers who are concerned about the future of the social network’s “brand-safe” platform under Elon Musk’s era.

Anxious Advertisers

The company had already pitched some of its projects in NewFront in the previous years, however, this time was a more challenging one after the emergence of reports that Twitter advertisers were already planning to stop their spending on Twitter once Musk took over.

In fact, several activist organizations have released a letter containing “non-negotiable” standards  that Twitter advertisers must commit to since they are worried that  Musk’s acquisition might turn the platform into a “megaphone of extremists.”

Musk has openly declared that he is a free speech absolutist, and it may not sit well with some of the advertisers, given the current political climate. If Musk’s takeover deters the existing content moderation controls of Twitter to address misinformation and abusive speech, it may not align with the interests of these advertisers.

For example, in 2020, big-name brands like Verizon, Unilever, Boeing, Microsoft, Levi Strauss, Adidas, HP, Pfizer, and many more joined in an advertising boycott to Facebook due to their content moderation policies and called the platform to increase its combat against hate speech.

However, Twitter has assured advertisers that the social network would remain a safe place for them in the future and making sure that their ads will not be aligned with any harmful content but the social network has also noted in an SEC filing that the loss of ad revenue is one of the risk factors brought by the takeover.

Pitching Time

Twitter did more than just pitching their content but they also had to face the challenge of convincing advertisers that they have a promising project to guarantee their partnerships.

The company had to emphasize in their presentation that their content would operate in a brand-safe zone on Twitter because of its upcoming premium video partnerships.

“I hope that you see that we are going to continue to invest in the parts of our business that bring scroll-stopping content to the timeline,” Twitter’s Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette said during the presentation, reported by TechCrunch.

“We’re committed to growing our audience. We are committed to investing in our product innovation, and we are committing to increasing the velocity with which we ship products. We’re committed to deepening the relationships with the top rights holders and premium content publishers in the world and also across this country.,” Personette added.

She also highlighted how this project is “extremely important” to the social network because she claimed that it matters to the advertisers in connecting their brands to people “that matter” to them.

Feature Image Credit: (Photo : LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images) This photograph taken on October 26, 2020 shows the logo of US social network Twitter displayed on the screen of a smartphone and a tablet in Toulouse, southern France.

By Joaquin Victor Tacla

Sourced from Tech Times

 

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The rise of TikTok: why Facebook is worried about the booming social app

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Chinese-owned video platform is set to overtake the advertising scale of Twitter and Snapchat combined

TikTok is on track to overtake the global advertising scale of Twitter and Snapchat combined this year, and to match mighty YouTube within two years, as trendsetting teens and young adults make it the hottest social app of the moment – and Facebook is worried.

The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is forecast to catch up with YouTube by 2024 when both are predicted to take $23.6bn (£18.2bn) in ad revenue, despite TikTok being launched globally 12 years after its Google-owned rival.

Helped by unparalleled moments of cool at the height of the pandemic – Idaho labourer Nathan Apodaca skateboarding along to Dreams put Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours back in the top 10 more than four decades after its release – TikTok’s surging growth belies the metronomic pace of its name.

Last year, it overtook the global ad take of Snapchat, previously the digital hangout of choice for teens and twentysomethings, and by the end of this year it will have surpassed that of Twitter. This year it is predicted to triple worldwide ad revenues, to $11.6bn, more than the $10.44bn for Snapchat and Twitter combined.

“TikTok’s user base has exploded in the past couple of years, and the amount of time users spend on the app is extraordinary,” says Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, which compiled the ad spend forecast. “It has moved well beyond its roots as a lip-syncing and dancing app. It creates trends and fosters deep connections with creators that keep users engaged, video after video.”

TikTok landed its billionth user in 2021, four years after global launch, half the time it took Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, and three years faster than WhatsApp. Earlier this week, analysts at data.ai revised a prediction that TikTok would hit 1.5 billion monthly active users this year, after its analysis revealed it had surpassed that milestone by 100 million users within the first three months.

The company is winning the battle for the “sweet spot” of social media users, those in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic where Facebook is seeing its biggest declines, with parent company Meta trying to stem the exodus by attracting them to stablemate Instagram.

TikTok is also becoming increasingly addictive. Despite the platform supposedly being restricted to those aged 13 and over, about 16% of three- and four-year-olds view TikTok content, according to research commissioned by media regulator Ofcom. This rose to 29% of all children in the five- to seven-year-old age group.

Last year the typical TikTok user spent 19.6 hours on average per month on the app, according to data.ai – equalling Facebook, the global leader in time spent by users on social media. For TikTok, this represents an almost fivefold increase in just four years, up from 4.2 hours in 2018.

“Facebook has always been the biggest competitor in this space for dominating users,” says Sam O’Brien, the chief marketing officer at performance marketing company Affise. “But it seems it can’t quite tap into convincing TikTok’s loyal users to revert back to its platform. TikTok has figured out its own way to give the platform an addictive quality.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta still dominates the market – Facebook has 2.9 billion monthly active users, and Instagram another 2 billion, with Insider Intelligence putting their 2024 ad revenues at $85bn and $82bn respectively. Even so, it emerged last month that fear of TikTok had led it to hire a lobbying firm to paint the company as the “real threat, especially as a foreign-owned app”.

“Meta clearly sees itself in a battle against TikTok for the hearts, minds and attention spans of millennials, a significant chunk of the social media market,” says O’Brien. “TikTok has experienced a staggering growth of users since the onset of the global pandemic, taking over a huge chunk of its competitor’s audience.”

Meta’s tactics aim to exploit the suspicion promoted under the Trump administration that Chinese companies, from telecoms giant Huawei to TikTok’s parent ByteDance, pose a national security threat as potential conduits of personal data to Beijing.

Two years ago, India, one of the world’s biggest markets for social media usage, banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok. However, Trump’s plans to force ByteDance to sell its international operations to a US firm, such as Microsoft or Oracle, petered out after he lost the US presidential election.

Nevertheless, suspicions remain among many users including those in the UK, which has banned Huawei equipment from being used in mobile phone networks. Last year, research found that almost a third of all Britons were concerned that TikTok might share their personal data with the Chinese government. Among those aged 18 to 34, a third believed it would hand over their data on request from China.

ByteDance has also come under pressure at home as Beijing has looked to rein in the power of the country’s tech titans. Billionaire co-founder Zhang Yiming unexpectedly announced in May that he would step down as chief executive, and in November relinquished the role of chairman, as ByteDance underwent a major restructure breaking it into six business units.

Nevertheless, the company remains in rude health and last December was named the world’s largest unicorn with a valuation of $353bn – up from $80bn a year earlier – with the markets hopeful of a blockbuster initial public offering in the future. ByteDance saw its total revenues, including its Chinese operation and substantial in-app and ecommerce business, grow by 70% last year to about $58bn, up from $34.3bn in 2020.

While Meta remains a much larger business and revenues rose 37% last year, to $118bn, Zuckerberg has felt the need to launch a commercial counterattack to shore up and diversify his advertising-based business model.

Always quick to ape the successful innovations of rivals, Meta is exploring launching virtual coins, nicknamed “Zuck bucks” by staff, for users of Facebook and Instagram to buy and use, in a very similar strategy to that already employed highly successfully by TikTok.

Earlier this week it emerged that TikTok is now the most lucrative app in the world for in-app purchases. TikTok users spent $840m on its virtual “coins” currency, which can be used to “tip” creators and promote videos, in the first quarter – up 40% year on year.

“It’s the biggest quarter for any app or game ever,” says Lexi Sydow, head of insights at data.ai, which published the report. “It’s the first app ever to beat a game in consumer spend in a given quarter.”

Zuckerberg’s revenue diversification plans follow an ill-fated launch of direct TikTok copycat Lasso in 2018, which shut after just 18 months. Meta is persevering with rival short-form video product Reels, which launched on Instagram in 2020 and Facebook last year, but despite its efforts TikTok’s momentum shows no signs of slowing down.

“Some young people have switched off Facebook entirely,” says Jamie MacEwan, senior media analyst at Enders. “In the UK, 18-to-24s spend as much on TikTok as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp combined. There is rampant competition for time. TikTok is the one growing fastest right now, and has scale, it’s the one to watch.”

Feature Image Credit: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

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Sourced from The Guardian

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Elon Musk Is Absolutely Furious at the Twitter Algorithm

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By Jon Christian

Space and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had many loves — think electric vehicles, large rockets, Claire “Grimes” Boucher, and internet memes.

But he may have no greater and more longstanding infatuation than the microblogging service Twitter, which he joined in 2009 and has consistently used as a megaphone to grow his personal brand, issue proclamations and predictions about the future, and occasionally nurse feuds with a staggeringly broad selection of other famous people and institutions.

Now it appears that Musk has turned his sights on a new foe: Twitter itself. In a series of messages on the platform — yes, he’s using Twitter to complain about Twitter — the mercurial CEO griped over the past day that the site’s algorithm isn’t fair, and that there should be more transparency around how it works.

“The algorithm needs to be open source,” he wrote.

Poll Position

That wasn’t all. Soon afterward, Musk expressed amusement at a meme making fun of coders’ use of the word “algorithm.” Then, perhaps in a fit of self-doubt, he reframed his initial anti-Twitter tweet as a poll, asking his followers to weigh in on whether the site’s algorithm should be open source (at press time, 82.7 percent had agreed.)

Perhaps most striking is his single-minded focus on Twitter. It’s difficult to argue with the critique that social media companies’ opaque algorithms have a worrisome amount of control over public discourse in this extremely online era, but compared to a heavily algorithm-mediated service like Facebook, Twitter’s algorithm is relatively unobtrusive. And, while Twitter makes the setting fairly difficult to activate, it does still offer a purely reverse chronological feed.

Perhaps most intriguing is why Musk is irate at Twitter’s algorithm at this precise moment. If it’s burying anybody’s posts, Musk isn’t a very prominent victim — not only is he one of the site’s most popular users, but his poll complaining about its algorithm received more than a million votes.

By Jon Christian

Sourced from THE BYTE

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Twitter to label all state-affiliated Russia media

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By Samuel Benson

The latest steps come as Russian disinformation spreads.

Twitter will begin labelling content from Russian state-affiliated media websites, the company announced Monday, amid a flood of Russian-backed disinformation related to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The company began labelling and de-amplifying official Russian media accounts in 2020, Twitter said. The additional action announced on Monday applies to individual Twitter accounts that share links from those state-affiliated sites.

“Since the invasion, we’ve seen more than 45,000 Tweets a day from individuals on Twitter sharing these links — meaning that now the overwhelming majority of content from state-affiliated media is coming from individuals sharing this content, rather than accounts we’ve been labelling for years as state-affiliated media,” Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby told POLITICO in an email.

Twitter maintains a continually updated list of media organizations belonging to the Russian Federation and 20 other countries, and the new label will automatically apply to any tweeted URLs from a designated state-affiliated media website.

The social media company also announced it will continue to de-amplify articles from these websites by barring the URLs from the platform’s top search function. Twitter also will not “recommend” tweets that include articles from the sites.

The move comes after Russia used “false flag” operations to justify its invasion of Ukraine, including false information disseminated through social media to portray Ukraine as the aggressor. Last week, reports from state-affiliated Russian media falsely reported a Ukrainian civilian genocide, a claim that went “unchecked and unchallenged.” Similar Russian-backed falsehoods compiled millions of likes, comments and shares on Twitter and Facebook, a POLITICO review showed.

Twitter blocked advertisements from all accounts owned by Russia Today and Sputnik in 2017. In 2019, the company banned all state-backed media advertising and political advertising.

Feature Image Credit: The company began labelling and de-amplifying official Russian media accounts in 2020, Twitter said. | Matt Rourke/AP photo, file

By Samuel Benson

Sourced from POLITICO

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Russia Is Now Blocking Twitter

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Facebook Messenger is also down as the Kremlin seeks to control the narrative around Ukraine.

The Kremlin has begun blocking access to Twitter, hours after the social media company stopped Russians from advertising on the platform.

The decision to block access to Twitter followed Russia’s move hours earlier to restrict access to Facebook in the country as the government seeks to control the narrative around its invasion of Ukraine.

The Twitter block was first reported Saturday morning by NetBlocks, a digital advocacy group that tracks internet outages across the globe.

“Network data show that access to the Twitter platform and back-end servers are restricted on leading networks including Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline, and MegaFon as of 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning,” the company wrote on its website.

Alp Toker, the director of NetBlocks, told VICE News that the decision to restrict access to the Twitter platform was to be expected, but that the social media company’s decision to stop the ability to advertise on its platform was the trigger that forced the Kremlin to act.

“Although it’s been a long time coming, this tit-for-tat seems to have pushed it over [the edge],” Toker said, adding that while the restrictions can be circumvented with virtual private networks (VPNs), most regular users won’t be able to access these services.

“The restrictions are targeted so circumvention remains possible through the use of VPN services,” Toker said. “However, for casual and non-technical users this will offer little respite.”

There were about 9 million Twitter users in Russia in January 2021, according to Statista.

The company did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment about the government blocking access to its platform, but it posted the following statement on Friday night.

“We’re temporarily pausing advertisements in Ukraine and Russia to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it.”

On Friday, Roskomnadzor, the government body that regulates telecommunications and the internet in Russia accused Facebook of being involved in violations of the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens.

Later, Facebook spokesperson Nick Clegg tweeted that the Russian government ordered the company to stop fact-checking Russian state-owned media organizations on its platform.

“We refused,” he added. “Ordinary Russians are using our apps to express themselves and organize for actions. We want them to continue to make their voices heard, share what’s happening and organize.”

The statement from Roskomnadzor didn’t make clear what exactly the restrictions would look like, but on Saturday morning some social media users began complaining that Facebook’s messaging app Messenger was no longer working.

Toker confirmed to VICE News that Messenger was facing similar restrictions.

The Kremlin is pursuing a two-pronged approach to controlling the narrative around the Ukraine invasion. While at home it’s seeking to stop citizens from accessing information outside state-run platforms on social media, in Ukraine it appears to be trying to cut off internet access entirely.

On Saturday morning, there was a significant disruption to Ukraine’s internet backbone provider GigaTrans, which supplies connectivity to many other networks

Feature Image Credit: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his address to the nation at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 21, 2022. (Photo: ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

By David Gilbert

Follow David Gilbert on Twitter.

Sourced from Vice

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