Euronews (English)

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has been fined a record €1.2 billion by the Irish data regulator for breaching EU data protection rules. Meta, which plans to appeal, is being fined for “continuing to transfer personal data” of users from the European Economic Area (EEA) to the US in breach of the EU’s strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which acts on behalf of the EU, said in its decision. It is the biggest EU fine ever handed to a tech company, surpassing the €746 million fine handed to Amazon for processing personal data i…

Whatever you might think about him, we can all agree that Elon Musk hasn’t become one of the richest people in the world by chance. When he took over Twitter in the autumn of 2022, one of the reasons he cited was to help the platform – which until that point had been completely free for users – make more money. Since then, his “Twitter Blue” subscription service has seen many users pay to acquire the once coveted blue tick – and the legacy accounts that had previously held them by merit and reputation being unceremoniously dethroned. Those who are now paying for Twitter Blue subscription are g…

Elon Musk is welcoming a veteran ad executive to the helm of Twitter, which he has been running since he bought it last fall. Musk announced on Friday he was hiring Linda Yaccarino to be the new CEO of the social media platform, which is now called X Corp. He said Yaccarino’s role would be centred on running the company’s business operations, leaving him to focus on product design and new technology. Yaccarino is a longtime advertising executive credited with integrating and digitising ad sales at NBCUniversal. Her challenge now will be to woo back advertisers that have fled Twitter since Musk…

Turkish Internet users were surprised to discover that Kemal Kilicdaroglu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main challenger in Sunday’s election, spoke perfect English in a video posted online two weeks ago. “The apple of my eye speaks English too. I promise you grandpa, we’re going to make you president,” a Twitter user commented, sharing the video of the 74-year-old candidate. But two days later, the independent Turkish fact-checking website Teyit revealed the video had been fabricated. According to Teyit, which means confirmation in Turkish, the AI-generated video didn’t intend to fool anyo…

Billionaire Elon Musk said Thursday that the new CEO of Twitter – an unnamed woman – will take over in about six weeks. Musk, who bought Twitter last autumn has long insisted he is not the company’s permanent CEO. The Tesla boss tweeted he will transition to become the social media platform’s executive chairman and chief technology officer. In mid-November, just a few weeks after buying Twitter for €40.24 billion, he told a Delaware court that he did not want to be the CEO of any company. “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” Musk said while t…

Elon Musk said on Thursday he has found a new CEO for Twitter – but did not name the person, only saying “she” would be starting in about six weeks. Musk, who bought the social media platform last October and has since been running it, has long insisted he is not its permanent CEO. The billionaire entrepreneur wrote on Twitter that his role would transition to being the company’s executive chairman and chief technology officer. In a tweet, he said: “Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” TruthGPT: Elon Musk says he is working on an AI to…

Twitter has announced it will “purge” inactive accounts from the platform, leading to an outpouring of requests for a memorialisation feature to save the accounts and tweets of users who have died. “We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop,” Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, tweeted on Monday. His tweet sparked a flurry of responses from people who don’t want to lose access to the tweets of users who have passed away. “Please don’t delete accounts of people who have passed on… it’s an important memory for many of us …

What does a scientist based in Germany and an office worker in Canada have in common? They both share a passion for hunting down climate change deniers on Twitter. Peter and Tom are part of a group of online activists dubbed the Team Ninja Trollhunters (TNT). Created in 2019, their mission is to fight climate change trolls on Twitter. Who are the Team Ninja Trollhunters?There are approximately 25 active members of TNT around the world and they all operate anonymously, according to members of the group. The average age is around 40 and half of the members have a scientific background. Tom, for …

Twitter has added blue check marks to a number of celebrities’ Twitter accounts, claiming they have paid for Twitter Blue subscription and verified their phone numbers – despite the celebrities being dead. Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Boseman and Anthony Bourdain were among the accounts to have the Twitter Blue subscription added, on a weekend that saw further confusion at the social media giant under the ownership of Elon Musk. Musk has been trying to drum up interest in the paid Twitter Blue subscription model, stripping legacy verified accounts of their blue ticks if they refuse to pay. The costs …

Many of Twitter’s high-profile users are losing the blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform. After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise late Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee to keep them. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks — which used to mean the account was verified by Twitter to be who it says it is — began disappearing fro…

There was once a time, circa 2015, when Instagram was a platform of square pictures only. People posted flat lays of foods, posed for scenic travel shots and took mirror selfies in toilets that looked like spaceships. Every image was bathed in the softly-lit amaro filter; a soothing (and chronological) scroll into the subconscious of aspirational millennials. But that was then, and this is now: Non-stop adverts and recommended Reels (often secondhand from the video-sharing app TikTok, the format they imitate) bombard the timeline and Instagram is noisier than ever, as big brands and influencer…

Russia is considering lifting its ban on Twitter after the social media network reinstated access to accounts of Russian state agencies. The ban was imposed before Elon Musk took over running Twitter last October. But since Friday, users can once again search the accounts of the Kremlin and Russia’s Foreign Affairs and Defence ministries, among others. And when Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council, tweeted that Ukraine was a “Nazi regime”, Musk himself defended the former president’s right to tweet. Rejecting a call for Medvedev to be barred, Musk replied: “All new…

The Russian embassy’s official account in Slovakia is a conspiracy theorist’s paradise. Their Facebook page has amassed around 5,000 posts in just one year, featuring a range of content from the bizarre and widely debunked theory that the US is controlling the spread of COVID-19 through international biolabs; to posts promoting tourist destinations in Russia, and even calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offensive names. The Beacon Project, an initiative by the International Republican Institute that tracks disinformation activities of Chinese and Russian embassies in Europe, has du…

Parts of the computer code used to run Twitter have been leaked online, according to legal filings, in the latest mishap for the social media platform since it was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk. According to the court document, the code was posted on GitHub, an Internet hosting service for software development, which complied with a request by Twitter to take it down. GitHub said the content had been removed, according to the filing. It was unclear how long the leaked code had been online, but it appeared to have been public for at least several months, according to The New York Times. T…

Pop star Selena Gomez has become the first woman to reach 400 million followers on Instagram, less than a month after overtaking Kylie Jenner’s spot as the most followed woman on Instagram. The achievement comes as Gomez took to Instagram to post a story defending ‘courageous’ Iranian teenagers who were detained and forced to publicly repent after they danced to her song ‘Calm Down’ in a TikTok video. Gomez is the third most followed person on Instagram behind football players Cristiano Ronaldo, with 563 million followers, and Lionel Messi, with 442 million. Jenner remains close behind Gomez w…

Antisemitism remains “higher than ever” on Twitter, according to a new report. The study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and CASM Technology found that hostile and discriminatory content towards Jewish people not only spiked after Elon Musk’s takeover, but has remained at heightened levels ever since. Billionaire Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October, promising to loosen restrictions on the freedom of speech, particularly by reducing content moderation and allowing banned accounts back. The changes have been controversial, with some worried about the platform descending into…

Twitter recently shocked many of its users by announcing it will begin charging for text-message two-factor authentication (2FA). From today (March 20), users who wish to continue using text-message 2FA will need to have subscribed to Twitter Blue’s $8 (€8) monthly subscription. The paywall might discourage many from taking this extra security step, and could put accounts at risk. When it announced its decision last month, Twitter encouraged non-subscribers to opt for other 2FA methods. The company said that while it had been historically popular, 2FA based on phone numbers had been “used – an…

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has backtracked after publicly mocking a fired Twitter employee who asked for clarification about the status of his employment at the company. Amid the chaos of the tech billionaire’s takeover of the social media platform, thousands of staff members have been fired without warning in multiple rounds of layoffs. One such employee, Haraldur Thorleifsson, took to Twitter to try and get answers after he found he was locked out of his computer. He says after nine days of getting no response from Twitter about whether he still had a job or not, he tweeted Musk to see if he coul…

Meta has announced it is testing a new subscription service allowing Facebook and Instagram users to pay for a verified account. Meta Verified will be available for $11.99 (€11.23) a month on the web or $14.99 (€14) a month on Apple and Android operating systems. The company is taking a page from Twitter’s playbook in launching a subscription service. Late last year, Twitter began charging users $8 per month for Twitter Blue, which verifies their account with a blue check. Announcing Meta Verified on his social media accounts on Sunday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said testing would begin in New Zeala…

Hundreds of thousands of messages for help flooded social media platforms in the aftermath of the early morning earthquake that shook Turkey and Syria on Monday. “Please send help, we’re alive, here’s our address,” some survivors wrote, while other messages were posted on behalf of those still trapped under the rubble. According to online data platfom Statista, 16.1 million people used Twitter in Turkey as of January 2022, making it the seventh largest country in terms of the most active users on the social media platform. By the time a second powerful earthquake hit the same area in the early…

Iran will continue to restrict access to Instagram and WhatsApp, the country’s President Ebrahim Raisi announced on Wednesday. The messaging and social media platforms have been blocked for several months, amid unprecedented anti-government protests. Instagram and WhatsApp, which are both owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, were the “origin of the insecurity… during the recent riots” in Iran, claimed Raisi. The block comes on the same day hundreds of international figures issued a joint appeal, expressing their “unwavering” support of Iranians resisting the regime. Sparked by the death of 22-ye…

Twitter is facing a lawsuit in Germany for failing to remove anti-Semitic content on its platform. The lawsuit, filed by HateAid, a digital rights organisation, and the European Union of Jewish Students, argues the social media company has failed to its own rules when it comes antisemitic content. The organisation claims the tweets in question were reported to Twitter but not taken down. The platform even allegedly refused to remove one comment related to Holocaust denial, which is criminalised in Germany. Avital Grinberg, the President of European Union of Jewish Students described these post…

Twitter’s tale of woe is far from over, even as the company has somewhat retreated from the headlines in recent weeks. A lot has changed for the social media platform since Elon Musk entered its San Francisco headquarters carrying a sink (and tweeting: “let that sink in!”). More than half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees have been fired. The remaining workers no longer enjoy perks like free meals. Virtually anyone willing to pay for it can now be granted the once-coveted blue tick, a sign of authority and legitimacy. The once-banned accounts of Donald Trump and Andrew Tate, among others, have been…

“The time of the Wild West is over,” the European Commission’s Vice-President for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová warned Elon Musk amid the continuing fallout of the billionaire’s $44 billion (€40.6 billion) takeover of Twitter. Speaking with Euronews Next at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Wednesday, Jourová said the platform would face sanctions if it didn’t comply with new EU online regulations. Asked if the bloc had enough clout to make big platforms like Twitter comply with the new laws which aimed to create safer digital spaces, she said that there was “nothing stronger t…

Some readers may find the following events and references to suicide disturbing. Did an author fake her suicide to sell books? It looks like that’s exactly what Susan Meachen did. Two years ago, Meachen’s account posted an update in Facebook group ‘The Ward’ explaining that her daughter had taken over her account after her death by suicide. Over multiple posts, Meachen’s daughter continued to update the community of her mother’s death. Supposedly, Susan Meachen had been bullied by the online book world to the point of suicide. She also added that she had helped finish her mother’s final book ‘…

Since multi-billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter, he has sought to thoroughly shake things up at the social media platform, bringing large amounts of both praise and criticism. One key plank of this was releasing a trove of the company’s internal communications to a hand-picked group of journalists. His aim was to back up claims that Twitter has actively sought to censor certain facts, and had a political agenda with regard to its content moderation policy. In the most recent release from the so-called ‘Twitter Files’, employees at the company were portrayed as becoming increasingly worried…

Facebook owner Meta is preparing to announce whether it will allow former US President Donald Trump back on to Facebook and Instagram, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The social media giant had previously said it will decide by Jan 7 whether to allow the former president to return. However, that decision is now expected to be announced later in the month, the newspaper said, citing a person familiar with the matter. Meta has set up a working group to focus on the matter, according to people with knowledge of its operations, the report said, adding that the group includes staffers from …

Twitter suffered a major outage on Wednesday evening, leaving tens of thousands of users globally unable to access the popular social media platform or use its key features for several hours before services appeared to come back online. The incident is the social media site’s first apparent widespread service disruption since billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter as CEO in late October. Downdetector, a website that tracks outages through a range of sources including user reports, showed more than 10,000 affected users from the United States, about 2,500 from Japan and about 2,500 from the UK…

Elon Musk has announced he will step down as chief executive of Twitter just a couple of months into the role, after putting the question to his followers in a poll on Sunday 18 December. Good news? The sceptics fear not necessarily, with one Twitter user simply stating, “Depends who you get to run it!” Over 57 per cent of voters went for ‘yes’, meaning Musk is forecast to step down as head of the platform. “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk wrote on Twitter, Wednesday December 21. Musk…

Lionel Messi’s Instagram post celebrating his World Cup win has become the most liked post on Instagram. Messi, who captained the Argentina team to victory in Sunday’s final in Qatar, has become the leading character of Argentina’s World Cup narrative. “WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!” Messi wrote in Spanish on his Instagram. “I dreamed it so many times, I wanted it so much that I still haven’t fallen, I can’t believe it…” “Thank you very much to my family, to all who support me and also to all who believed in us. We demonstrate once again that Argentines when we fight together and united we are capa…

Billionaire Elon Musk has taken his unconventional leadership style to new levels since his purchase of Twitter, using polls on the social media platform to let the users decide on key policy decisions. He may now have been voted out of his job as CEO of the company that he bought for $44 billion (€41.4 billion) in October. On December 18, he tweeted a poll asking if he should stand down as Twitter’s CEO, claiming that he “will abide by the results of this poll”. Twitter reinstates banned journalists after Elon Musk online voteThe poll closed on Monday morning, and 57.5 per cent of the votes c…

“The people have spoken” posted Twitter CEO Elon Musk, announcing he would reinstate the accounts of several journalists who were suspended on the social media platform. The tech billionaire carried out a poll asking whether he should restore the accounts. Nearly 59 per cent of the 3.6 million who took part said he should restore the accounts now. The Twitter ban was condemned by both the EU and the UN. “Media voices should not be silenced on a platform that professes to give space for freedom of speech. (…) Twitter by its very dominance in the market remains an extremely important platform …

Twitter owner Elon Musk said he’ll reinstate the accounts of several journalists suspended from the social media platform, after Musk accused them of endangering his family. “The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” the billionaire tweeted. The move came after Musk put up a poll, asking whether the journalists should be reinstated straight away or after a seven day suspension. Almost 59% of the 3.69 million people who took part in the poll said he should restore them immediately. The United Nations and the European Union had condemned Twit…

Twitter has suspended the accounts of several journalists covering the social media platform and its new owner Elon Musk, including reporters for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and Voice of America. The company hasn’t explained to the journalists why it took down the accounts and made their profiles and past tweets disappear. But Musk took to Twitter on Thursday night to accuse journalists of sharing private information about his whereabouts that he described as “basically assassination coordinates”. He provided no evidence for that claim. The sudden suspension of news reporters foll…

Elon Musk once again tried to launch a paid subscription for Twitter on Monday, after a first attempt marred confusion and the influx of fake accounts. The social media platform unveiled details online as the day progressed, explaining on its site that the subscription would initially only be available in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. But at around 19:00 CET it still did not seem possible to subscribe. The paid subscription, known as Twitter Blue, has been one of Musk’s flagship ideas since taking over the platform in October. Costing approximately 8 euros per month (11 fo…

Since Elon Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s potential for survival has felt tumultuous to say the least. Mass firings, monetised blue ticks and arming any and the return of banned accounts with the rights to unrestricted “free speech” have meant that a whole host of users are simply packing up and leaving for pastures new. The problem is, with over a decade and a half’s development under its belt, the Twitter alternatives for those of us still keen to overshare every thought from our subconscious mind in 280 characters or less are somewhat lacking. What is Mastodon, how is it different to Twitter an…

US rapper Ye, formally known as Kanye West, has been suspended from Twitter — just weeks after his account was reinstated –after posting a string of offensive tweets. One such tweet appeared to show an image of a swastika combined with the Jewish Star of David. In response, Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk posted that Ye had “violated our rule against incitement to violence”, and confirmed that his account would be banned. The Chicago-born artist has made headlines for a wave of antisemitic comments in recent weeks, including praising Hitler during an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jone…

The European Commission has warned Elon Musk that Twitter must do much more to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content, or risk a fine and even a ban under strict new EU content moderation rules. Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for digital policy, told the billionaire Tesla CEO that the social media platform will have to significantly increase efforts to comply with the new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, set to take effect next year. The two held a video call on Wednesday to discuss Twitter’s preparedness for the law, which will require tech co…

Twitter says it has stopped enforcing its policy against COVID-19 misinformation, raising concerns that the change could have serious consequences if it discourages vaccination and other efforts to combat the spread of coronavirus. Users spotted the change on Monday night, noting an update had been made to Twitter’s online rules: “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy”. By Tuesday, some accounts were testing the new boundaries and celebrating the platform’s hands-off approach, which comes after Twitter was purchased by billionair…

Twitter’s boss Elon Musk has unveiled a tentative new plan for user verification which will be released next Friday (December 2), the billionaire confirmed on Twitter. The move comes after he paused monetising the “blue check”, which verifies user identity, following a wave of parody accounts impersonating former presidents and celebrities. Musk said on the social media platform that there would be three types of verification ticks. “Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check…

“There is no way to control when success comes, only to lay a foundation for it,” Eugen Rochko, the creator of Mastodon, said in a 2018 interview. These words now sound like they were premonitory for the 29-year-old German programmer, who has been gaining notoriety in recent weeks as his social network attracts hordes of disenchanted Twitter users. “People are voting with their feet. The future of social media doesn’t have to belong to a billionaire, it can be in the hands of its users,” Mastodon posted on Twitter this week, saying it now had over 2 million active monthly users, up from 1 mill…

Twitter has reportedly closed its entire Brussels office, sparking fears about whether the platform will abide by Europe’s new rules on policing content online. Citing five people familiar with the matter, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Thursday that Twitter’s European digital policy chiefs Dario La Nasa and Julia Mozer left the social media company last week. The bureau is now closed after four other executives quit as part of mass redundancies earlier this month which removed around 7,500 staff. Mozer and La Nasa led Twitter’s efforts to comply with the European Union’s Digital Se…

As Twitter’s survival hangs in the balance, a new wave of social media apps are stepping forwards to fill the void. While many users are moving across to Instagram and TikTok, others are exploring spaces like Mastodon and Parler. But in the past few days, one newcomer in particular has seen a huge surge in downloads, hitting two million sign-ups this week – Hive Social. What is Mastodon, how is it different to Twitter and how do I sign up?If Twitter dies, what will replace it? From Mastodon to Discord, here are some alternativesWhat is Hive Social?Hive Social is like the lovechild of Twitter a…

What will we do if Twitter dies? While it might sound a little dramatic, the prospect of Twitter’s demise under Elon Musk’s tumultuous ownership felt closer than ever on Friday, with hundreds of employees – including engineers and developers – leaving the company following an ultimatum from its new CEO. Since then, the billionaire has reinstated several banned accounts, including that of former US president Donald Trump who was permanently excluded from the site in 2021 following the January 6 US Capitol attack. Elon Musk begins reinstating banned Twitter accounts but no decision made on Donal…

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has reinstated Donald Trump’s Twitter account, reversing an almost two year ban, but so far the former president hasn’t returned. Trump was excluded from Twitter after a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, just as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory. In a Saturday Twitter poll, Musk asked his followers if Trump should be allowed back to the social media platform and more than 15 million people cast their online ballots, with the final result 52% to 48% in favour of allowing Donald Trump back again. “The people have spok…

Elon Musk, owner and CEO of Twitter, has begun reinstating accounts that were previously subject to lifetime bans for breaking the platform’s rules. Announced Friday, the first reinstated accounts belong to author Jordan Peterson, comedian Kathy Griffin, and conservative parody outlet The Babylon Bee. “The new Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom to reach” the public, explained Elon Musk on his Twitter account. “Negative or hateful tweets will be demoted and demonetized, so there will be no back-to-back ads or other revenue for Twitter. You won’t find these tweets unless you sp…

If you searched ‘climate’ on Twitter this week, the top result that greeted you was #climatescam, ahead of #climatecrisis and #climateaction. What’s being promoted to users during pivotal climate talks isn’t necessarily due to Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company three weeks ago. There has, in fact, been no explicit policy change in Twitter’s approach to tackling the climate denialism and delayism that is rife on its platform. But the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition is still deeply concerned about what has been spreading online during the UN summit. Its role …

The social media platform’s new ‘Blue’ subscription service appears to have been paused for new users, after many fake accounts with blue ticks were launched, impersonating famous people and companies. The service, which costs around €8 a month, was brought in by its new owner, Elon Musk. It replaced the old system whereby users had to undergo a verification process to prove they were who they say they are, in order to obtain a blue tick. In one example, parody accounts of former British and American leaders, Tony Blair and George W. Bush, were created with the blue tick, making crass jokes ab…

Elon Musk, who now heads five companies including Tesla and Twitter, said in a tweet on Friday that his companies will be well positioned in 2023 despite the possibility of a tough economy. Musk’s tweet comes a day after he raised the possibility of Twitter going bankrupt. In his first company-wide email, Musk warned that Twitter would not be able to “survive the upcoming economic downturn” if it fails to boost subscription revenue to offset falling advertising income, three people who have seen the message told Reuters. But Musk posted on Twitter on Friday: “Usage of Twitter continues to rise…

Elon Musk has made no secret of the big role he sees for cryptocurrency in his newly acquired social media company Twitter. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s has decided to invest $500 million (€496 million) into Twitter, while Dogecoin – the “crypto of the people,” according to Musk, who has staunchly supported it – has surged since Musk’s takeover. While other social media companies have tried and failed to use cryptos or implement wallets (most famously Facebook and its Libra coin), Twitter could be successful, according to the founder of the public blockchain platform Cardano, Charles Hosk…

With Twitter in disarray since Elon Musk took control of it last month, Mastodon, a decentralised, open alternative, has seen a flood of new users. Musk himself has commented on – or rather mocked – the rival network’s surge in popularity on Monday, in a now-deleted tweet saying: “If you don’t like Twitter anymore, there is awesome site called Masterbatedone”. So, if you’re considering leaving Twitter now that it has a new owner and CEO, and Mastodon is piquing your curiosity, here’s what you need to know. Twitter: Elon Musk defends mass layoffs saying he had ‘no choice’What is Mastodon?Mastod…

Elon Musk is reportedly looking to cut 3,700 jobs at Twitter, or roughly half of the company’s workforce, in a bid to slash costs at the social media platform he just acquired. He also wants to revoke employees’ right to work remotely and require them to come into the office full-time, according to Bloomberg, Axios and the FT, which cite people close to the matter. Those impacted by the cuts could be informed on Friday, according to the reports. In just a week, Musk has already made some controversial decisions regarding the platform he bought for €44.4 billion after months of legal drama. Aft…

Elon Musk is reportedly looking to cut 3,700 jobs at Twitter, or roughly half of the company’s workforce, in a bid to slash costs at the social media platform he just acquired. He also wants to revoke employees’ right to work remotely and require them to come into the office full-time, according to Bloomberg, Axios and the FT, which cite people close to the matter. Those impacted by the cuts could be informed on Friday, according to the reports. In just a week, Musk has already made some controversial decisions regarding the platform he bought for €44.4 billion after months of legal drama. Aft…

Earlier this week, Elon Musk took to his newly acquired platform, Twitter, and asked his followers whether he should “bring back Vine?”. Nearly half a million votes later, the majority of users voted “yes” (nearly 70 per cent at the time of writing). But what is Vine – and what would its return mean for other dead and buried social media platforms? What is Vine?Cast your mind back to the early 2010s. Think TikTok in its early days, with a dash of Boomerang. Somewhere in the middle, you’ll find the format for Vine. Developed independently but bought and launched by Twitter in 2013, before a goo…

When Viktor Orban made his first posts on Twitter this week, one of them gave us a clue as to why Hungary’s PM has chosen now to join the social media platform. “After my first day on Twitter, there’s one question on my mind. Where is my good friend @realDonaldTrump?” read the post, showing a gif of John Travolta. With Hungarians generally preferring Facebook, there is seemingly little domestic motivation for Orban to join the rival platform. Experts have told Euronews Orban’s arrival points to the fact he is keen — amid the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine and a long-running dispute with…

Fraudsters are stealing people’s social media account logins by developing trojan apps which are then put on app stores and downloaded by unwitting victims, according to Facebook’s parent company Meta. The tech giant said its researchers had identified more than 400 “malicious” Android and iOS apps which were available on the official Apple and Google app stores. The fraudulent apps were advertised as a wide array of applications, such as games, photo editors, and utilities such as a mobile flashlight. Once downloaded, they prompted users to enter their Facebook credentials in order to log in …

After what felt like a rather short reprieve from the never-ending Elon Musk-Twitter drama, there’s been yet another twist, as the billionaire appears to have finally agreed to buy the social media platform for the same €44 billion he initially offered and then tried to back out of. But in Musk’s style, there’s more to the story than a simple happy ending (for Twitter, at least, which has been facing panicked investors for months). After Musk revived his initial bid on Tuesday, despite his previous claims that Twitter was overrun with spam and bot accounts that lowered its value, the Tesla CEO…

A small Dutch town has lost its legal battle against Twitter over the spread of a baseless conspiracy theory. The municipality of Bodegraven-Reeuwijk had demanded that all tweets linking the town to child abuse should be automatically removed. Unfounded allegations had claimed that a ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles was active in the western Dutch town in the 1980s. The so-called “Bodegraven story” was spread by three men between January and June 2021. One of the men claimed to have been a witness and victim of satanic ritual abuse in the town. The baseless conspiracy theory had prompted …

Permanently misspelt tweets and typos might soon be a thing of the past. Twitter said on Thursday it is working on allowing users to edit their tweets, which it said is one of the most requested features to date. The social media company said in a blog post that it’s testing the “Edit Tweet” feature internally with plans to roll it out later this month to subscribers of its premium Twitter Blue service. Since Twitter launched in 2006, the social media giant has been against an editing button, arguing in favour of the honesty of an unedited tweet despite users’ requests. An edit button was one …

In the latest stage of Elon Musk’s row with Twitter, the tech billionaire has claimed a whistleblower report as a fresh reason to end his purchase of the social media platform. In the explosive report filed last week, Peter Zatko – a renowned hacker who was hired by Twitter in 2020 – claimed that Twitter is failing to get a grip of fake, so-called “bot” accounts and uses outdated security software. Zatko was hired in the aftermath of a high-profile hack attempt that saw 130 prominent profiles targeted. Musk’s fresh reasoning for backing out of his deal is the latest in what is shaping up to be…

Twitter has been accused of failing to tackle the spread of anti-LGBTQ hate speech and misinformation about monkeypox. A study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found that online discussions linking the virus to the LGBTQ community skyrocketed following the outbreak of the virus in May. False claims have suggested that monkeypox was pre-planned by the world’s elite as part of the so-called “plandemic”. But other Twitter users have predominantly used the outbreak to spread online hate and disinformation targeting the LGBTQ community. Social media platforms have increasingly been acc…

Twitter misled federal regulators about its defences against hackers and spam accounts, CNN and the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing whistleblower disclosures by the social media company’s former security chief Peiter Zatko. The whistleblower alleged “extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter” related to privacy, security and content moderation, according to the complaints published by the Washington Post. Twitter executives do not have the resources to fully understand the true number of bots on the platform, and were not motivated to, CNN reported, citing Zatko’s complaint. The s…

A Saudi Arabian student has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for following and retweeting activists on Twitter. Salma al-Shehab, 34, was studying at Leeds University in the UK and went home to Saudi Arabia for a vacation in December 2020. A few days before she was set to return in January 2021, the PhD student was detained. Saudi Arabia’s special terrorist court convicted her of “causing public unrest and destabilising civil and national security”. The student had used her Twitter account — of around 2,700 followers — to follow, like, and share posts from Saudi activists or dissidents in…

Twitter Inc needs to give Elon Musk documents from a former Twitter executive who Musk said was a key figure in calculating the amount of fake accounts on the platform, according to a Monday court order. Bot and spam accounts on Twitter have become a central issue in the legal fight over whether Musk, who is Tesla Inc’s chief executive, must complete his $44 billion (€42.9 billion) acquisition of the social media company. Twitter was ordered to collect, review and produce documents from former General Manager of Consumer Product Kayvon Beykpour, according to the order from Chancellor Kathaleen…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold $6.9 billion (€6.6 billion) worth of shares in the electric vehicle maker, saying the funds could be used to finance a potential Twitter deal if he loses a legal battle with the social media platform. “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” he said in a tweet late on Tuesday. Shares of the microblogging site rose 3.5 per cent to $44.35 (€42.85) in early trading, but were still significantly below Musk’s offer price of $54.20 (€52.35…

Elon Musk said on Saturday that his planned $44 billion (€42.9 billion) takeover of Twitter should move forward if the company can confirm some details about how it measures whether user accounts are “spam bots” or real people. The billionaire and Tesla CEO has been trying to back out of his April agreement to buy the social media company, leading Twitter to begin proceedings last month to take him to court to complete the acquisition. Musk countersued, accusing Twitter of misleading his team about the true size of its user base and other problems he said amounted to fraud and breach of contra…

I had a strange experience on Twitter the other day. While casually scrolling, I came across a collection of tweets describing users’ despair at hearing of a friend’s death. Because of the subtweeting way Twitter is used – where people write about another incident without directly linking to it – it took me a bit of digging to find out who these accounts were actively grieving for. It turned out to be another Twitter user I followed. I hadn’t interacted with them directly, but I had seen and enjoyed their humorous political hot takes. I couldn’t work out how to feel. I knew I was upset, but I …

Twitter Inc on Thursday dismissed Elon Musk’s claims in a Delaware court filing that he was hoodwinked into signing the deal to buy the social media company, saying that it was “implausible and contrary to fact”. Musk made the claims in a countersuit filed under seal last Friday, which was made public on Thursday. “According to Musk, he – the billionaire founder of multiple companies, advised by Wall Street bankers and lawyers – was hoodwinked by Twitter into signing a $44 billion [€42.9 billion] merger agreement. That story is as implausible and contrary to fact as it sounds,” the filing rele…

An anti-LGBTQ campaign named Fetrah is making waves on social media after it urged users to promote the idea that there are only two genders, male and female. Taken from the Arabic word for “human instinct”, Fetrah surfaced after International Pride Month in the Middle East. Its creation follows a number of political controversies particularly in Saudi Arabia where authorities announced a recall of all rainbow-colored toys and clothing for children in Riyadh for “promoting homosexuality”. Designed by three Egyptian marketing professionals who have experience creating marketing campaigns for st…