Elon Musk's X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, is selling user accounts that are no longer in use for the price of $50,000 and higher. According to Forbes, a team within the company, known as the @Handle Team, has started to work on a handle marketplace to sell the account names left unused by people who originally registered them. Notably, this comes months after Mr Musk unveiled a plan to implement such a program in the near future.
Now, Forbes has uncovered emails indicating that the @Handle Team is actively working to sell disused user handles. The outlet reported that X has already sent solicitations to potential buyers, requesting a fixed fee of $50,000 to initiate the account purchase. These emails were sent by active X employees, who mentioned that the company had made recent updates to its @Handle guidelines, procedures and fees. Notably, after his purchase of the micro-blogging site, Mr Musk had hinted towards his plans to sell the old usernames. "Vast number" of handles had been taken by "bots and trolls", he tweeted days after his Twitter acquisition. In January this year, several reports then suggested that the billionaire was planning to free up as many as 1.5 billion usernames. In May, X had already begun the process of removing inactive accounts from its platform. Forbes reported that on Friday evening, X's username registration policy still stated that "unfortunately, we cannot release inactive usernames at this time". Its "inactive account policy," on the other hand, warned users to log in every 30 days to avoid being considered inactive. But it also said X was not currently releasing inactive usernames. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has indicated his desire to transform X into an "everything app". In a post, the billionaire said that the rebranded platform would be expanded to offer "comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world". In a recent internal meeting, Mr Musk also dropped a hint at an unlikely new feature for the micro-blogging site - dating. Musk said a person's X posts can be "the biggest indicator" of whether they are someone you'd want to hire. "I think the same is true also on the romantic front. Finding someone on the platform. Obviously, I found someone and friends of mine have found people on the platform. And you can tell if you're a good match based on what they write," he added.
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One of the defining features of Musk, aside from his penchant for X is his self-branding as a genius trying to push humanity forward. In reality, many of his projects, like the Vegas Loop, which is a passenger car tunnel in Las Vegas meant to reduce congestion instead of utilizing public transportation, are abjectly stupid. There are also many misconceptions that he circulates to reinforce the common narrative of his sycophants, like that he founded Tesla, the electric carmaker. But he didn’t create the company, he bought it and later called himself the “founder,” which led to a legal battle that allowed him to keep the title despite not actually being what the English language would define as a founder. A local news report from the San Francisco Bay area on this issue also describes how he pulled the same thing with PayPal, which was the main product of Confinity, a startup that had emerged with Musk’s X.com in the 1990s. If simply being an early investor in a company would define one as a founder, then every person who pays US taxes could be considered a Tesla founder because of the large amounts of federal contracts that prop the EV maker up.
Musk shouldered his way into the prestige of being a founder of some of these companies in order to boost his own image. It gives a serious amount of clout in the tech bro environment to call oneself a founder. Therefore, if history is any guide, the plan appears to be this: Elon Musk’s Twitter rebranding and the introduction of new features is designed so that he can label himself the company’s founder. It’s not about any grand corporate strategy or serious attempt at becoming the app of power; he just wants to take credit for Jack Dorsey’s product while blatantly ripping IP from China. Elon Musk’s lawyers say Mark Zuckerberg's rival platform uses stolen Trade secrets
According to EU code, tech platforms like Twitter are connected with “fact-checkers, civil society, and third-party organizations with specific expertise on disinformation.” In other words, avid gatekeepers of the establishment narrative. And on August 25th, adherence will no longer be voluntary.
The EU should consider getting out of the control freak business if it truly wants to help the European free press. Maybe then, journalists here in Europe trying our best to fully inform our audiences against information barriers created by Brussels won’t have to redirect our internet connections to places like Vietnam, Mexico, Turkey, or Brazil in order to access information and sources that the EU doesn’t like. Elon Musk has announced that starting April 15, only verified Twitter accounts will be eligible to be featured on the platform’s recommendation timeline. The tech mogul explained the move in a Twitter post on Monday, stating it’s “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over.”
Apart from no longer being featured in other users’ ‘For You’ feeds, unverified accounts – those that have not paid the $7 monthly fee to have their account verified with a blue checkmark – will also lose the ability to vote in polls. Musk again explained the decision by pointing to the prevalence of bots on the platform. It is unclear, however, if Musk was only referring to polls created by Twitter and himself – as he often gauges public opinion on key decisions through this tool – or all polls on the platform. Twitter announced last week that it would remove the verified status of some ‘legacy’ accounts by April 1, meaning only those paying a monthly subscription will now have the blue checkmark in their profiles. According to analysts from Sensor Tower, Twitter currently has an estimated paying user base of just over 385,000 mobile subscribers worldwide on both iOS and Android. Critics of Musk’s algorithm change say it will significantly hinder the recommendation timeline’s relevance, as it will essentially prevent regular people from reaching a wider audience and only feature paying users, brands, and accounts of officials. Meanwhile, Twitter has been dealing with a source code leak, after an unknown hacker or group of people posted the code on GitHub – a software collaboration platform. Twitter has filed a court petition seeking to identify those responsible for the leak, arguing that the code, which underpins the website’s entire operation, could expose security vulnerabilities. Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October 2022. After appointing himself CEO and vowing to transform the site into a free speech platform, the billionaire fired nearly three-quarters of Twitter’s workforce, removed some of its more contentious censorship policies, and restored a number of banned accounts, including that of former US President Donald Trump. However, he has yet to make the company profitable, as its value has decline by one half since the takeover, according to the Wall Street Journal, despite cutting the workforce and implementing a subscription model. Twitter owner Elon Musk has confirmed he will stand by his promise to resign as the company’s chief executive, after the platform’s users voted for him to step down, but suggested that finding a successor may take some time.
“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 announced in a tweet on Tuesday. CNBC previously reported that Musk was “actively looking, asking, trying to figure out who the candidate pool might actually be.” On Sunday, the billionaire posted an informal poll asking Twitter users if he should step down as head of the company. Some 57.5% of the 17 million respondents voted for Musk to leave his post. On Monday, Musk stated that henceforth only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to voice their opinions in polls about policy changes on the platform. After completing his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, Musk became its majority owner, which means that no one can force him out. However, in recent weeks, the CEO has introduced a number of controversial changes that have caused a massive public backlash. At the same time, the self-styled “free speech absolutist” authorized the release of internal documents in an effort to provide transparency about Twitter’s past decision-making. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has issued a response to the recently leaked ‘Twitter Files’, admitting to a host of major mistakes during his time as chief executive, while warning against “centralized control” of the internet by governments and corporations. The tech entrepreneur addressed the leaked internal documents in a Tuesday blog post, acknowledging that Twitter failed to uphold its guiding principles near the end of his tenure, and that he “completely gave up” on his own vision for the site after “activist” investors bought into the company sometime in 2020. Though he did not elaborate on the new investors or how they might have swayed the platform, Dorsey said Twitter’s focus on controlling public dialogue was ultimately one of its greatest errors. He cited the decision to permanently suspend President Donald Trump in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, saying it was “the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society.”“The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves,” he said. “This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account.”
Dorsey was reportedly on vacation at the time of the Trump ban and had delegated decision-making to executives Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde – as revealed in the Twitter Files – but nonetheless said he bears sole blame for the errors in judgment. “The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and [don’t] solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof,” he continued, also insisting “there was no ill intent or hidden agendas” behind Twitter’s more contentious decisions and that the company “acted according to the best information we had at the time.” Tuesday’s blog post also included a lengthy section warning of “centralized” power over the internet, stating that social media platforms should remain “resilient to corporate and government control” while suggesting Twitter had failed to do so under his watch. The former CEO, who stepped down from the role in November 2021, went on to say that he welcomes the “fresh reset” brought by Twitter’s new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, expressing hopes that the site will become “uncomfortably transparent.” However, he argued that the Twitter Files should have been released “Wikileaks-style,” or in full, rather than being leaked to select journalists by the site’s new management. Spearheaded by reporters Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, the documents have been published on a rolling basis with Musk’s blessing, shedding light on a number of controversial decisions made by the company. Five installments have gone public so far, including material surrounding Trump’s suspension, Twitter’s close cooperation with US intelligence agencies, the practice of shadow banning, as well as a site-wide ban on a New York Post report about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden. Twitter boss Elon Musk has vowed to extend a “general amnesty” to an unspecified number of suspended users, a week after reversing former US President Donald Trump’s lifetime ban from the platform.
“The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week,” Musk tweeted on Thanksgiving Day. He added “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” a Latin phrase that means “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” The SpaceX and Tesla CEO launched a Twitter poll on Wednesday, asking if Twitter should “offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” Out of more than 3.1 million users who took part, 72.4% voted ‘yes’ and 27.6% voted ‘no’. In a separate message Musk also promised to start freeing and offering up for grabs “vast numbers of handles” that had previously been “consumed” by bots and trolls. Since acquiring Twitter for $44 billion last month, Musk has faced growing criticism for laying off hundreds of employees and reversing the permanent suspensions of multiple notable accounts, including former US President Donald Trump following a similar public vote. While critics claimed that Musk’s actions fuel hate speech, harassment and misinformation, he has rejected accusations he was some kind of “right-wing bogeyman” and insisted that Twitter under his ownership has not banned any leftists, not even for “utter lies.” It remains to be seen how many users would be eligible for amnesty. This week the platform already reinstated Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account had been permanently banned since early January 2022 for posting “misinformation” about the Covid-19 pandemic. Musk, however, drew the line at Alex Jones, saying he had “no mercy” for someone who used children’s deaths for clout. Musk had vowed to transform the platform and turn it into a bastion of free speech, saying it was “important to the future of civilization” to have a digital town square where a wide range of beliefs could be discussed. Researchers from the University of Adelaide have found bots have had a major online presence during the war between Russia and Ukraine. The researchers analysed 5,203,764 tweets, retweets, quote tweets and replies posted to Twitter between 23 February 2022, and 8 March 2022, containing the hashtags #(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)SupportRussia, #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy and #(I)SupportUkraine. “We found that between 60 and 80 per cent of tweets using the hashtags we studied came from bot accounts during the first two weeks of the war,” said co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, an MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences. “This drove more angst in the online discourse and even impacted discussions surrounding people’s decision to flee or stay in Ukraine. “We observed increases in words such as ‘shame’, ‘terrorist’, ‘threat’, and ‘panic’. “Pro-Russian human accounts were having the largest influence on discussions of the war – particularly on accounts which were pro-Ukraine. “To our knowledge, this is the first body of published work which addresses online influence operations in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. “However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale. As a result, these environments can be used to manipulate discussion, as well as cause disruption and overall public distrust.” “In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale." Fellow co-lead researcher, Bridget Smart, a Masters student in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, added: “Our research identifies that this is happening during the Russia-Ukraine war and provides a statistical framework which quantifies the extent to which this is happening. “This work extends and combines existing techniques to quantify how bots are influencing people in the online conversation around the Russia-Ukraine invasion.
“It opens up avenues for researchers to understand quantitatively how these malicious campaigns operate, and what makes them impactful. This research has identified that social media organisations may need to be better equipped for detecting and handling the use of bots on their networks. “It has identified that governments may need to have stricter policies on social media organisations, and that social media can be a vital tool during conflict.” The paper titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war” has been published in arXiv and will be presented at The International Conference on Social Informatics in Glasgow from 19-21 October. Elon Musk has said he is terminating a $44bn deal to buy Twitter, saying the social media company did not provide information about fake or spam accounts on the platform. In a filing to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on those accounts, which is fundamental to the company’s business performance.
“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information,” the filing reads. “Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement,” it also said. Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies. The company’s chairman, Bret Taylor, tweeted on Friday evening that, “the Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement”. The terms of the deal require Musk, the CEO of Tesla, to pay a $1bn break-up fee if he does not complete the transaction. |
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