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Post by Admin on Jul 5, 2023 5:25:55 GMT
A U.S. federal judge has blocked some of the agencies and officials of President Biden's administration from communicating with social media companies to moderate content. The ruling is in response to a lawsuit by two Republican attorney generals.
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Post by Admin on Jul 6, 2023 10:37:51 GMT
Facebook owner Meta has launched a new app which has been pitched as a "friendly" rival to Twitter.
Threads is linked to Instagram, with experts saying it could attract Twitter users unhappy with recent changes to the platform.
Threads allows users to post up to 500 characters, and has many features similar to Twitter.
Ten million users signed up for the app in its first seven hours, the company's chief Mark Zuckerberg said.
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Post by Admin on Jul 8, 2023 3:01:57 GMT
Washington CNN — In less than 48 hours, Meta’s Twitter rival Threads has surpassed 70 million sign-ups, upended the social media landscape and appears to have rattled Twitter enough that it is now threatening legal action against Meta.
But even as users signed up for Threads in droves, with some clearly eager to flee the chaos of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the sudden success of Meta’s app could raise a new set of concerns.
Meta has long been criticized for its market dominance, and for allegedly trying to choke off competition by copying and killing rival applications. Now, some competition experts and even some Threads users worry that if the new app’s traction continues, it may simply lead to the accumulation of even more power and dominance for Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
With Twitter in chaos, Mark Zuckerberg looks to pounce “The prospect of total monopoly by Meta, yikes,” wrote one user. “It’s a real problem for society when a few dozen people and companies own every single thing so that no alternative paradigms can exist that they don’t co-opt from the cradle,” replied another.
Twitter had always been much smaller than Meta’s platforms, but it had an outsized influence in tech, media and politics. As Twitter faltered under Musk, though, a cottage industry emerged of smaller apps trying to capture some of its magic. Now more than any of them, Meta seems best positioned to claim the crown.
Threads’ blockbuster launch this week highlights the uncomfortable reality of the modern digital economy: To potentially beat some of the biggest players in the industry, you might have to be a giant yourself.
The power of Instagram The overnight success of Threads is a testament both to the dissatisfaction with Musk’s ownership of Twitter and to the unique power and reach of one of Meta’s most important properties: Instagram.
Instagram has more than two billion users, far more than the 238 million users Twitter reported having in the months before Musk took over. When new users sign up for Threads, which they do using an Instagram account, the app prompts them to follow all of their existing Instagram contacts with a single tap. It’s optional, but is easy to accept, and it takes a conscious decision to decline.
By promoting Threads through Instagram, and by sharing Instagram user data with Threads to let people instantly recreate their social networks, Meta has significantly greased the onboarding process. That frictionless experience has allowed Threads to leapfrog what’s known in the industry as the “cold start” problem, in which a new platform struggles to gain new users because there are no other users there to attract them.
Thanks to the Instagram integration, “that biggest problem, the chicken-egg problem, has been solved from the jump,” Reddit co-founder and venture investor Alexis Ohanian said in a video Thursday (posted, naturally, on Threads).
That Threads appeared to clear that hurdle easily, Ohanian said, makes him “bullish” on the new app.
Competition concerns But that same innovation that made signing up so many users so quickly may raise competition concerns, particularly in Europe where new antitrust rules for digital platforms are set to go into effect in a matter of months.
“From a competition perspective this can be problematic because Meta can use it to leverage its market power and raise barriers to entry, as other rivals would not have the customer base Meta has via Instagram,” said Agustin Reyna, director of legal and economic affairs at the Brussels-based consumer advocacy organization BEUC.
Twitter threatens to sue Meta after rival app Threads gains traction Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), “digital gatekeepers” — a term that’s expected to cover Meta and/or its subsidiaries — will be prohibited from combining a user’s data from multiple platforms without consent, Reyna said. Another restriction forbids requiring users to sign up for one platform as a condition of using another.
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Post by Admin on Jul 15, 2023 19:56:02 GMT
Elon Musk tweeted on his account at 8:12 on the 15th (Japan time) that the usage rate of Twitter increased by 3.5% compared to the previous week (from July 1st). Is Twitter really bigger in Japan than the USA?”, he answered, “Yeah.”
The high number of people accessing Twitter from Japan probably indicates that Twitter is being used as a means of obtaining information.
When trying to update the Twitter app (iOS/Android) to display the latest information, the message "Unable to retrieve tweets at this time. Please try again later." "An error has occurred" may be displayed.
When accessing Twitter from the web browser "Google Chrome" on a PC and reading the latest information, "A problem occurred. Please reload" is displayed and the latest tweets cannot be obtained.
Even though Meta's SNS "Threads", which is regarded as a rival of Twitter, has appeared, there are people who continue to use Twitter, but there are also users who are dissatisfied with Twitter, which has been experiencing frequent problems in the past few days.
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Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2024 2:48:58 GMT
On the 15th, Elon Musk, the owner of the major US SNS company X (formerly Twitter), announced a plan to introduce a charging system for new users' posts. The aim is to reduce automatic posting programs called "bots." The specific amount and timing of introduction have not been disclosed.
Musk posted on X on the 15th that ``Charging new users a small fee is the only way to reduce bot attacks.'' The service will initially be charged for three months, after which the service can be used for free. Existing users with accounts will not be charged.
Last October, X launched a paid membership service for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines with an annual membership fee of $1 (approximately 150 yen). Subscription is required to post, reply, and like posts from other accounts, and it is expected that this service will be expanded.
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