Elon Musk bought Twitter, and here’s everything that happened next
Elon Musk bought Twitter, and here’s everything that happened next
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Jan 11, 2023, 12:38 AM UTCMitchell Clark
Twitter defaults to a For You page now, just like TikTok
Twitter is making the algorithmic feed the default, though you can still switch to your reverse chronological feed with a swipe. The star icon that used to let you swap feeds is now gone.
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SElon Musk still annoyed about dad’s old emerald mine.
It’s inconvenient for his origin story! So he tried to suggest the emerald mine was “fake” — only to see his tweet revealed as a blatant lie on Twitter.
FWIW, Snopes was unable to find proof that emeralds paid for Musk’s rise to fame, but it also notes some stories about the mine have been…disappearing. Here’s one dad money quote that’s still on the web: “We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe.”
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Twitter The trouble with Twitter’s layoffs continues.Despite Elon Musk’s previous assertion that Twitter is done with layoffs, Bloomberg reports the company just let go of more people from the moderation team.
And as for the thousands of people affected — whether involuntarily or by their own choice — Fortune reports severance agreements are arriving with less compensation than many expected, and in a format that landed the messages in spam folders.
“I mean I expected him to f**k us (he did),” an impacted employee wrote to Fortune. “This is about 1/3 of what he contractually owes us based on his purchase agreement.”
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Jan 7, 2023, 7:19 PM UTCJay Peters
TweetDeck.com is down, but TweetDeck still works
Typing ‘tweetdeck.com’ into your URL bar is erroring out, but tweetdeck.twitter.com works just fine.
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External Link Twitter laid off more employees despite Elon Musk saying the company was done with layoffs.The Information is reporting that the company laid off “about 40 data scientists and engineers working on advertising.” In November, Elon Musk told staff that the company wouldn’t be doing more layoffs, but that apparently wasn’t true.
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External Link Twitter Blue’s verification blues.Washington Post columnist Geoffrey Fowler has again created a fake account for Sen. Ed Markey that was again verified as real by Twitter’s revamped authentication process:
I expected Twitter would ask me to prove my identity… But no. After 7 days, a blue check mark appeared on the faux Markey account, no questions asked.
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TTwitter users in Australia are having a bad day.
Elon Musk’s $44 billion hobby has been up and down for over 12 hours in Australia and New Zealand, according to Downdetector. Users are reporting slow load times when the site does actually load, causing some to fire up a VPN to access Twitter through the US.
A sampling of Twitter users complaining about issues. -
Jan 3, 2023, 11:41 PM UTCJay Peters
Twitter says it will allow more political ads as it tries to claw back revenue
Exactly what will change under the new policies outside of what’s mentioned in a tweet is unclear. The company is also ‘relaxing’ its policies for ‘cause-based’ ads in the US.
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External Link Twitter’s landlord in San Francisco is suing the company for not paying rent.The landlord, which owns the Hartford Building that houses Twitter’s headquarters, claims the company owes $136,250 in unpaid rent. It allegedly notified Twitter on December 16th that it would default on its lease if it doesn’t receive payment, but Twitter never complied.
This comes after last month’s report from The New York Times, which indicates Twitter has stopped paying rent on all of its global offices “for weeks” as a cost-cutting measure. Twitter’s also facing a lawsuit for allegedly failing to pay a $197,725 bill for two private jet flights.
Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office[Bloomberg.com]
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Dec 30, 2022, 9:59 PM UTCEmma Roth
Twitter will soon let you swipe between tweets, topics, and trends
You’ll be able to start switching between different views in January.
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Dec 29, 2022, 1:00 PM UTCPatrick George
The vibes are off at Tesla
Layoffs, lawsuits, delays, Twitter chaos, stock in free fall, factory shutdowns — What happened to America’s favorite electric car company?
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Dec 29, 2022, 3:30 AM UTCMitchell Clark and Richard Lawler
Twitter’s recovering from a few hours of glitchiness
What are the odds someone walked around randomly unplugging server racks?
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Dec 23, 2022, 4:26 PM UTCJess Weatherbed
ElonJet is back on Twitter, but with a 24-hour delay
Jack Sweeney’s new ElonJetNextDay account has a 24-hour delay to abide by Twitter rules
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Dec 23, 2022, 12:25 AM UTCMitchell Clark
Twitter is now showing everyone how many views your tweets get
Elon promised the feature earlier this month, and now they’ve started rolling out.
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The Verge More layoffs hit Twitter.Elon Musk has cut half of Twitter’s remaining public policy team, according to a tweet by a member of the team who said she was among those laid off. My understanding is that about 15 people are affected.
This comes after Musk also laid off an unknown number of engineers in Twitter’s infrastructure org last week. In a Twitter Space two days ago I listened to, Musk said that Twitter now has just over 2,000 employees (it had roughly 7,500 when he took over). Musk said in the Space that Twitter was on track to lose about $3 billion next year but should now be “roughly cash flow break even” after his cuts.
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Twitter Dec 21, 2022, 11:09 PM UTCRichard Lawler, Nilay Patel and 1 more
The verified @recklesspatel Twitter account is gone.The fake Nilay Twitter account created by Verge managing editor Alex Cranz — that was “verified” and recommended to many during Elon’s messy first attempt at a $7.99 Twitter Blue subscription — has met its end.
Despite only existing for a little more than a month, we’ll remember @recklesspatel for continuing on after the real Nilay Patel decided to take a break from posting to his real Twitter account (@reckless).
You can still find Nilay’s posts here, on TheVerge.com.
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Twitter Twitter’s “cashtags” show charts now.If look at the search result for a cashtag (let’s say, for the sake of example, $TSLA), you’ll now see a chart tracking its stock price, according to a thread from @TwitterBusiness. The charts only seem to show the current day’s performance, but you can click a button to see more information on Robinhood.
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Dec 21, 2022, 4:44 PM UTCAdi Robertson
Where to find Verge staff on Mastodon
Is it the next Twitter? Who knows. But come hang out with us anyway.
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Dec 21, 2022, 2:20 PM UTCJess Weatherbed
Twitter won’t let you write your own Community Notes right away
Users will be required to rate a sufficient number of notes in order to unlock the ability to write notes themselves.
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Dec 21, 2022, 1:57 AM UTCMitchell Clark
Elon Musk isn’t serious about giving power to a new CEO
Once he finds a CEO replacement, he’ll “just run the software & servers teams,” he says.
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Dec 21, 2022, 1:36 AM UTCJay Peters
Geohot resigns from Twitter
“Appreciate the opportunity, but didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there.”
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Quote The FTC is still asking questions about Twitter under Elon Musk.Bloomberg reports that an investigation opened this fall into the question of whether or not Elon Musk’s Twitter is capable of complying with its 2011 consent order — the one a company lawyer warned puts it at risk of billions of dollars in fines — is ongoing and has included questioning two execs who left shortly after Musk’s takeover.
FTC lawyers have interrogated two former top Twitter executives in the past month – Damien Kieran, the former chief privacy officer, and Lea Kissner, the most senior cybersecurity officer, the people said. Kieran and Kissner both quit Twitter Nov. 10, alongside the head of compliance.
The probe marks at least the third time the FTC has scrutinized the social media platform over its privacy and data security practices. The review could lead to millions of dollars in fines and a new FTC order imposing obligations on Musk himself that would apply across his companies and remain in effect even if he steps down as chief executive officer or leaves Twitter.
“Why has Bloomberg News been asleep at the switch regarding government censorship of social media?” Musk said in an email seeking comment about the FTC investigation.
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Dec 20, 2022, 4:06 PM UTCAndrew J. Hawkins
Elon Musk started looking for a new Twitter CEO before polling the site’s users
If you voted for Musk to step down as CEO of Twitter or to keep the job, it may not have mattered. It turns out the hunt for a replacement has been ‘ongoing’ for some time now.
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Dec 20, 2022, 6:31 AM UTCJay Peters
More than two million users have flocked to Mastodon since Elon Musk took over Twitter
The Twitter alternative has skyrocketed in popularity, leaping from 300,000 monthly active users to 2.5 million between October and November.
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Dec 19, 2022, 10:45 PM UTCMitchell Clark and Jay Peters
Twitter announces ‘Blue for Business’ to help identify brands and their employees
With Blue for Business, you can show which individual accounts are affiliated with your brand.
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