X is rolling out audio and video call capability to Android users, after it was introduced for iOS users in October 2023.

The news was let slip by an X engineer working on the project who relayed that the release would be available on Android after an app update.

Any user of Elon Musk’s social media platform can receive a call but only paid users can make a call. The new function on the app is one of a growing list only subscribers can utilize, although earlier this month X removed support for NFT profile images.

audio and video calls on X slowly rolling out for android users today! update your app and call your mother

— Enrique (@enriquebrgn) January 18, 2024

How to access the call function on X

Users should head to the settings selection to take control of the new call features.

Settings > Privacy and safety > Direct Messages > Enable audio and video calling.

The same menu options give you the option to manage who can call you, from different categories of people in your address book, people you follow, and verified users.

You can choose multiple options, or none, from these selections.

This development appears to signal another move toward X becoming a universal app, a one-stop shop similar to China’s WeChat. It has already set out its intentions for the coming year with AI, unsurprisingly, set to play a prominent role. It will be used to aid search and advertising capabilities whilst there are plans to launch peer-to-peer payments.

Musk also has Twitch in his sights, aiming to take on the Amazon-owned platform with monetized live streams on X.

It remains to be seen how successful this update will be for the social media entity formerly known as Twitter. It is playing catch-up with the likes of Whatsapp, Facebook, and Facetime in offering video and audio call functionality, but the new function will give users one more reason to stay on the X with more new features to follow.

Image: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels.

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Until now, users needed 1,000 followers on TikTok to access its live-streaming features. Now, however, any user who is a “LIVE creator on another platform with a stable live-streaming history” can apply to live stream on TikTok.

The criteria TikTok is basing this on seem nebulous and non-specific. The page states that each application will be evaluated based on the “influence you have” and the “quality of your LIVE content on other platforms”. Any user who is approved will be able to live stream on TikTok from both LIVE Studio and PC or console.

Essentially this means that anyone who has a history of streaming on a platform like Twitch or YouTube can apply to stream on TikTok without meeting the previous 1,000 follower minimum requirement.

TikTok appears to be letting any gamers, regardless of follower count, apply to access streaming on TikTok Live, as long as they have a stable history of streaming on another platform.https://t.co/s8axqdu33R#StreamerNews #TOSgg pic.twitter.com/XFlzHLeQqB

— Zach Bussey (@zachbussey) January 18, 2024

What are the requirements to renew access?

If you get approved for TikTok live streaming, it will only last 14 days initially. However, access will be automatically renewed for 180 days if:

• You haven’t had your access revoked through breaching TikTok’s community guidelines
• You have gone live on TikTok for more than 25 minutes at least twice during the first 14 days

Then after the 180 days elapse, you’ll be automatically renewed for another 180 days if:

• You have gone live on TikTok for more than 25 minutes at least three times during the past 30 days

How to stream on TikTok from PC

1. Download TikTok LIVE Studio and install it on your PC
2. Login with your TikTok login information
3. If you’ve never streamed from your PC before, you can use the “set up now” option, which walks you through setting up microphone and camera
4. If you’ve streamed using another tool such as OBS, you can import settings to TikTok studio
5. Set up the settings you want when the Settings dialogue pops up. Setting video quality to 1080p will allow viewers to have a better experience than a lower quality if your PC can handle it.
6. Finally, the Scene Setting window will pop up. Choose ‘Fullscreen desktop’ to stream just your game, or ‘Fullscreen desktop and camera’ if you want to show your face. Showing your face helps viewers connect with you so is generally worth doing.
7. You’re ready to go live! Hit the ‘Broadcast LIVE’ button and give your stream a name then press ‘Go LIVE’.

After TikTok’s parent company ByteDance closed down the Nuverse gaming brand in late 2023 it seemed that they were moving away from gaming as a primary part of their strategy. Opening up live streaming to a wider audience will certainly regain some of that lost ground.

Featured image credit: Alexander Shatov/ UnSplash

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Reddit is set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) in March, following up on plans more than three years in the making according to an exclusive report from Reuters.

It would represent the first IPO of a significant social media platform since Pinterest was floated on the market in 2019, and at a time when there is significant competition for advertising revenue with the likes of Facebook and TikTok.

Reddit is a San Francisco-based mega-website combining elements of social media, messageboards and news aggregation. It was founded in June 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian who sold the platform to Condé Nast the following year. Huffman left the company in 2009 before returning as CEO, in 2015.

Last month, he spoke on speculation of an IPO to follow as well as the admission that Reddit was not profitable despite enjoying a user base of approximately 400 million accounts.

An IPO offering has previously been suggested but plans have been delayed until the company is closer to returning a profit and it looks like the time is now to test the water.

Floodgates to open

Reuters has indicated the company is “seeking to sell about 10% of its shares in the IPO”, whilst it “will decide on what IPO valuation it will pursue closer to the time of the listing,” according to their sources.

The information came with the caveat detailing the plans could be pushed back again but after Reddit quietly filed for its IPO back in December 2021, it will eventually need to strike out if the aspired returns are to be delivered.

It will be interesting to gauge to what extent Reddit users back the proposed listing, whilst Nasdaq reported “Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the two investment banks working with Reddit” with a sense of optimism and aiming for a breakthrough IPO launch that could open the floodgates for others to go public in 2024.

The IPO market has been muted since the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to stave off the pressures of inflation but that could be about to change with candidates like Reddit, as well as Shein, inching toward a public launch.

Image: Brett Jordan/Pexels

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Donaldson will likely join X — he is an Elon Musk fan

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Elon Musk has promised that X creators will soon earn more for their posts, in response to a public blasting from MrBeast.

On December 30, YouTube creator MrBeast took to X to promote a new video. When a fan asked him in the comments to upload on X as well, Musk added his voice with a simple “yeah”.

Creator rewards will increase significantly this year https://t.co/TlQKxFci9y

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2024

In response, MrBeast wrote: “My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it :/ I’m down though to test stuff once monetization is really cranking!”

A few weeks later, on January 9, Musk announced that creator monetization would “increase significantly this year”. While he didn’t mention MrBeast directly, it could well be a response to his and others’ feedback.

With MrBeast uploading for an audience of 229 million subscribers on YouTube, he’s certainly a force to be reckoned with in the creator market. It wouldn’t be surprising for Musk to be led by his preferences.

Elon Musk and X creator talent

It’s long since been a part of Musk’s plans to attract top influencer talent to the platform since he took hold of the reins. As far back as October 2022, Musk promised “higher compensation for creators” than on YouTube – something many, including MrBeast were skeptical of.

“I’d be shocked if you crack that code,” the YouTuber wrote on X at the time. Another major YouTuber, Olajide Olatunji, better known as KSI, told fellow YouTuber Logan Paul on his podcast in August of 2023 “Impaulsive” that he didn’t think X “paid that much.”

“There are going to be people who are like, you got $1,500 from Twitter? Which is cool,” Paul said. “But comparatively is what we’re saying, to other platforms, for hundreds of millions on YouTube, that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

At the moment, creators are eligible to get paid up to 97% of the revenue X has earned from the content they create, after in-app purchase fees. This is capped at $50,000 in lifetime earnings from X across all X monetization products, after which it drops to 90% of revenue.

In real terms, however, it’s unclear what this breaks down as. With ad revenue down across most social media and for X in particular, it’d be wise for any creator not to put all their eggs in one basket.

Featured image: Pixabay

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Australia’s eSafety commissioner has blasted the social media platform X after it found that over 6000 banned accounts have been reinstated following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media giant.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner launched a scathing attack on the social media giant, formerly known as Twitter, stating it had created a “perfect storm for safety to be diminished” in Australia. She cited thousands of banned accounts which were subsequently reinstated, cuts to staff tasked with ensuring online safety, and procrastination on hate reports which were discussed in the organisation’s new report.

As reported by the country’s ABC News, Commissioner Julie Inman Grant went on to compare the situation to putting dangerous drivers back on the road without any further safety measures.

A legal notice was sent to the parent company of X in June last year to request urgent answers on how it was measuring up to the safety expectations set out by the Australian government. Ms Inman Grant has now revealed the “jaw-dropping” response to the communication with a prediction that X will only become more unsafe.

X accused of posing risks to Australia’s users

Since October 2022, when Musk acquired what was then known as Twitter, 6,103 accounts have been reactivated after they were banned. 194 of this figure had been suspended for hateful conduct.

“There needs to be some sort of oversight or scrutiny to ensure that they’re not continuing to present greater risks to Australian users,” implored Inman Grant.

She also revealed X had cut its “global trust and safety staff” by 33% since the takeover, which will have obvious consequences. It was further claimed median response times to hateful direct messages had slowed by 75% and could now take up to 28 hours, with responses to hateful general posts slowed by 20%.

This was met with further dissatisfaction by the Commissioner, “the current response time is absolutely too long and it’s not in line with previous practice, or what we would consider best practice,” she stated.

In response, X said it had introduced a new system of “restricting” hateful posts instead of deleting them. It claimed such restricted posts would not be visible next to advertising with the company outlining they received 81% percent fewer “impressions” (views) than posts which were unrestricted.

Image credit, Catarina Sousa, pexels.com

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Elon Musk wants to implement features on X to turn it into a live streaming platform to rival Amazon’s Twitch, reports Fortune.

The billionaire owner of X is a keen gamer and announced the move while streaming Diablo 4 on an anonymous alternative account.

Streaming Test https://t.co/iOZTWGTcKQ

— Gamer (@cyb3rgam3r420) January 4, 2024

Throughout the three-hour stream, Musk made several claims about what X is developing in the live streaming department.

How will streamers make money streaming on Twitter/X?

The tech entrepreneur said X is developing video ads: “We’re just starting to add in video ads with a similar thing to YouTube where you can skip ahead after five seconds, and we also want to reduce the amount of latency with the streaming.”

The social media platform has faced some backlash from prominent advertisers such as Disney, and Musk sees gaming and live streaming as a way to recoup some advertiser interest and attract new advertisers to the site.

“Any advertising that’s in your replies, so if you were to post a stream, any advertising that’s in the replies, you get all the previous… all the advertising revenue. So sometimes that can be quite a lot,” he said during the live stream. It is unclear at this time what this would look like precisely.

Additionally, Musk said that there are plans to add tipping and subscriptions to the platform, bringing monetization for streamers on X in line with those on other platforms. He stated that X streamers can “choose to have subscribers where it’s a paid subscriber, where you know somebody pays I know, a euro a month or something.”

The Tesla owner said that X will also be implementing controls such as subscriber-only chat, a feature shared by Twitch and YouTube streaming platforms. “You can choose how much, but it’s like, I think one of the perks is like, you can even restrict the chat, or some of the chats, to be just subscribers. So then, you know, the advantage is that somebody subscribing then, they get to chat,” said Musk.

Photo by Julian Christ on Unsplash

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Rumble, the online video-hosting platform that claims to be a free speech YouTube alternative, is reportedly under investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to WIRED, the SEC confirmed the investigation after a public records request by the news organization in November. It had denied the request on the grounds that an “active and ongoing” inquiry was taking place in relation to the company. The response follows claims made against the company including that it allegedly inflated certain metrics, which Rumble denies.

Following the announcement, founder Chris Pavlovski posted on X that the “report is bogus.” He said the company had proof in the form of Google Analytics to track monthly active users and criticized the move as a tactic “to get investors to sell the stock so that the short seller profits.”

The playbook to try and destroy $RUM (Rumble)

A short seller creates a bogus report and sends it to the SEC. The SEC investigates the bogus report. Then the short seller talks to the media to get a story about how the SEC is investigating the report that started with him. The…

— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) January 8, 2024

“This is just the start, they’re coming for us in 2024. They can’t stand Rumble’s mission, but they are going to learn quickly how hard we punch back,” he added while stating he was exploring legal options to “hold short sellers accountable.”

The SEC, however, noted that the probe did not necessarily mean “any violations of law have occurred with respect to any person, entity, or security.” As a result, the exact nature of the investigation is unclear.

Melinda Hardy, the SEC’s assistant general counsel for litigation and administrative practice, confirmed the investigation in a letter sent on January 8th. Hardy further explained that releasing the documents could potentially harm the ongoing and active proceedings. She noted that this could happen because individuals and entities involved in the investigation might fabricate evidence, tamper with witness testimony, or destroy or modify relevant documents.

What has Rumble said?

Rumble spokesperson Rory Rumore responded to the allegations saying the company provided information to the SEC voluntarily and cautioned against anyone from jumping to false conclusions.

Rumble’s legal challenges

It is not the first time Rumble has become involved with legal matters. In November, the platform filed a lawsuit against two people connected to Media Matters. Rumble’s court filings state that two individuals who ran ‘Check My Ads’ created fake profiles, sought out objectionable user-uploaded videos, and refreshed the pages multiple times until they could capture screenshots showing ads from high-profile brands next to the offending content. This data was subsequently utilized by Media Matters in a campaign urging major brands to steer clear of Rumble.

Who are Rumble’s investors?

The video network is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, which became a publicly traded company in 2022. “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance is also an investor, along with Colt Ventures, the family office of Dallas investor and former Trump adviser Darren Blanton. Its valuation currently exceeds $1.2 billion.

The platform was founded in 2013 by the Canadian entrepreneur, and posits itself as an alternative to “cancel culture.” In a statement on the website, Pavlovski wrote: “We are a movement that does not stifle, censor, or punish creativity and freedom of expression. We believe everyone benefits when they have access to more ideas and diverse opinions.”

Featured Image: Canva / Rumble / U.S. Government

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Almost 2,000 employees are due to be laid off by gaming software developer, Unity, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

A securities filing on Monday (Jan 8.) outlined plans to let go around 1,800 workers, which equates to roughly 25% of the company’s entire workforce.

The San Francisco-based business cites the reasons behind the decision as a way to restructure and refocus on its core business, with the overall aim to return to profitability. This follows a troubling time for Unity after it upset developers by introducing and then partially u-turning on a questionable runtime fee for its game engine.

In a message to shareholders, Unity says it aims to emerge from the restructuring as a “leaner, more agile and faster-growing company.”

In September last year, the company rolled out significant concessions to its pricing model for developers following backlash over its plans to charge developers for gaming installations. That move led to the resignation of CEO John Riccitello, with former IBM president James Whitehurst stepping in to serve as interim president and CEO ever since.

These most recent cuts are in addition to more than 1,100 jobs being removed since 2021, the most recent being 265 workers being fired last November in what was being described as a “reset.” There have also been 14 office closures globally.

Unity isn’t alone in the gaming industry cuts

Despite reporting record profits for 2022, Unity has missed revenue target forecasts over the last three quarters, leading to its latest move to restructure the business.

However, Unity is not alone in what appears to be a turbulent time for the industry’s biggest companies. In Engadget’s 2023 video game roundup, it was reported that the likes of Embracer Group, Square Enix Montreal and Gearbox Software had laid off more than 900 employees.

In addition, big players such as Sony, Sega and Electronic Arts cut almost 1,500 workers between them, with EA’s layoffs in particular equating to 6% of its overall workforce and Hasbro laid off 1,100 workers from its Wizards Of The Coast subsidiary just before Christmas. Meanwhile, on Jan. 9 language learning app, DuoLingo, announced it was cutting back on contractors in a switch to AI.

Featured Image: Unity

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Hackers are specifically targeting prominent verified accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, to promote crypto scams and drop links to drainers.

They are focusing on profiles belonging to government and business figures and entities with gold and grey verifications, leaning on the pretense of legitimacy as part of the nefarious intent.

A crypto drainer is a form of malware that targets cryptocurrency wallets by tricking the victim into consenting to a malicious transaction.

As reported by Bleeping Computer, Google subsidiary Mandiant, a cyber intelligence company bought for $5.4bn, was hijacked this week when it was used to distribute a fake airdrop which subsequently applied the drain.

The report also detailed how Malware Hunter Team has been monitoring X for this type of activity with the following gold and grey accounts flagged as compromised.

Profiles attributed to Canadian senator Amina Gerba, nonprofit firm The Green Grid, and Brazilian politician Ubiratan Sanderson were used as examples of those to have been penetrated by hackers.

The account of Amina Gerba, a senator in the Canadian Senate got pwned, renamed & being used to spread scam. And as she is a senator, the account has a gray checkmark.

The actors are using it to fake as the "LFG" project that not even have a blue checkmark on their account.
pic.twitter.com/keeyUPyggz

— MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) January 2, 2024

Previously on Twitter, a blue tick or checkmark indicated a verified account. It could have been a mainstream, renowned company, a sports personality or a senior politician but since Elon Musk’s takeover and re-branding of the social media platform as X, all that has changed.

Now, anyone can pay a subscription fee to have a blue checkmark, bringing with it certain user benefits including the ability to edit posts.

A gold tick attached to an X account denotes an official organization or company, while the grey mark represents a government office or an individual official. They are supposed to promote trust, reliability, and authenticity as well as be bound by eligibility criteria.

Despite this, the associated costs for verification and the supposed difficulty of impersonating an official account have not proven to be an effective barrier to hackers seeking to manipulate the social media platform to scam unsuspecting users.

CloudSEK, a digital risk monitoring platform, has outlined the rise of a new black market where hackers trade compromised gold and grey X accounts for prices ranging from $1,200 to $2,000 in what is a stark reminder of the dangers that can be hiding in plain sight online.

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Telegram, the messaging platform, launched its most recent update on New Year’s Eve, boasting a brand-new calls interface and some colorful visual design, along with its biggest-ever bot update.

Latest Telegram update offers improved calls

Whilst best known for messaging, Telegram also features end-to-end encrypted voice and video calling. The recent update has redesigned the call interface, including dynamic backgrounds that change whether the call is ringing, active, or ended. Despite the new design having multiple animations, Telegram has stated the new interface uses fewer resources than the old one, draining less battery and improving performance on older devices.

Vaporize animation on message delete

A fun new addition to the app – whenever a user deletes a message they will experience what Telegram is calling a “Thanos Snap” animation – the message will pop and vaporize out of existence. This was introduced last month as a trial on iOS but has now rolled out across platforms.

Bot platform update

Telegram offers developers powerful tools to create integrated services from chatbots to mini-apps that can replace a website. Bot developers have been treated to the biggest bot tools update to date. It adds “dozens” of new features, including bot message reactions, managing reactions, quotes, and links, and sending replies to other chats.

A full list of new features and updates to Telegram’s bot platform can be found in the change log. The blog post announcing the update states that there are even more features included in this update but these won’t be announced until January.

There are thousands of bots available on the platform and they can do anything from gaming to ChatGPT integration. They are definitely worth looking into for some easy efficiencies, especially if you’re already a Telegram user.

The communication platform is used by over 800 million users monthly. It has raised over $1.2 billion in debt financing, including through bond sales, but is still not profitable.

Featured Image Credit: Graphic by Dima Solomin; Unsplash.

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Social media platform X experienced widespread outages early on Thursday, December 20, affecting thousands of users around the world.

Peaking just before 6am GMT, thousands of users reported experiencing now-resolved issues on X, including problems in the UK, the US, and India. Between 5.30 am and 7am (GMT), there were over 70,000 reports of problems on the platform before a solution was found, according to data from Downdetector.com.

Both premium and free users of the platform faced issues loading their feeds, instead being greeted with a message “Waiting for posts”, rather than the usual flurry of posts. Some users were able to see notifications and share posts but were unable to load either the ‘Following’ page or the ”For You page.

X now reports all systems are operational on its status page and the platform appears to be working as usual in all regions.

Is X still down?

Account holders faced issues between 5.30am and 7am, reaching a peak just before 6am. However, this isn’t the first time the platform experienced problems.

Back in March, X experienced a similarly major outage, just after one of many rounds of layoffs that resulted in a drop of 200 employees. Much like December’s outage, users were faced with a blank welcome page, without the ability to see posts on the For You or Following pages.

People also complained they could not access links, images, or videos on the site, impacting their experience of scrolling through their feeds.

This was followed by another outage in July, where thousands of users reported being unable to see tweets, missing timelines, and the number of followers displayed on their account seemingly decreasing overnight. In many cases, these followers were reinstated once the outage was over.

Most recently in October, some X users were unable to log into their accounts, while others could access the platform but could only see empty feeds. In all cases, X was able to solve the issues within a few hours.

Featured image: Pexels

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Elon Musk’s X has created a new team specifically designed to generate advertising revenue for political advertisers.

The goal of this team is to generate $100m in advertising revenue before the 2024 political elections, as reports the Financial Times.

This move has been viewed by critics as a response to advertisers leaving the platform due to a turbulent 2023 for X.

2023: A turbulent year for X and its ad revenue

Major corporations such as Coca-Cola, Disney and Apple did not appreciate the billionaire seeming to endorse an anti-semitic post on X:

You have said the actual truth

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2023

This resulted in advertisers withdrawing from the social media platform. The New York Times estimated this could be $75m worth of advertising revenue lost.

The relationship with advertisers became even more strained when Elon Musk swore and repeatedly berated advertisers who moved off the platform. including Bob Iger, Disney CEO, earlier this year.

Watch my conversation with @ElonMusk: https://t.co/YedkELVhFn

— Andrew Ross Sorkin (@andrewrsorkin) November 29, 2023

In the DealBook interview Musk said that the “advertising boycott..is going to kill the company”, stating that “the whole world will know that those advertizers killed the company”.

Musk then provided a public apology for the tweet, admitting that this was arguably the worst post in his history on the site, and reflected it was one of many ‘foolish’ tweets.

X advertising team

X has hired Sten McGuire, formerly of Hulu and Disney’s political sales departments. The company is also actively recruiting for the political ad sales team’ on LinkedIn.

Revenue has sharply fallen since Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform. In October it was estimated X had lost 57% in value from the original $44 billion Musk was forced to pay to purchase the company.

This new team has been formed to claw back the lost advertising investment, however, previous political advertising figures are a stark contrast to the $100m the team hopes to generate.

“During the 2018 midterm elections, X, then known as Twitter, brought in only about $3mn in political advertising. As of December 11, the company had made about $4.7mn from the start of 2023 from political ads, according to disclosure data that can be requested from the company” the Financial Times article states.

This would mean a 95% increase would be required for this new political advertising team to be successful before the 2024 political elections in November 2024.

Image Credit: Mohamed_hassan/Pixabay

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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has spoken on plans for profit amid the potential of an IPO in 2024 and the onset of the AI era as the company seeks to consolidate from a position of strength.

In a wide-ranging interview by Fast Company, Huffman elaborated on other issues such as moderator revolt,  the quality of Reddit’s engaged online communities and product priorities.

“People are trying to start businesses on Reddit, but it wasn’t built for that,” said Huffman, “So just trying to flesh out that ecosystem, I think that’ll be very powerful.”

Reddit is a US-based mega-website combining elements of social media, messageboards and news aggregation. It was founded in June 2005 by Huffman and Alexis Ohanian who sold the platform to Condé Nast the following year. After leaving in 2009, Huffman later returned as CEO in 2015.

Reddit rings the changes

As we approach the new year, noise is increasing that Reddit may be ready to go public and is considering a valuation as high as $15 billion. Such a figure for a company that isn’t profitable reflects Reddit’s massive user base of approximately 400 million accounts. Nevertheless, IPO or no IPO, the co-founder acknowledges the need for returns

Back in April, Reddit announced it would commence charges for heavy users of its API (application programming interface) which is the deluge of data from its 100,000 communities (or ‘subreddits’).

The Reddit community had expressed fears Big Tech giants such as Google and OpenAI were using Reddit’s scale and depth of detailed info on a vast array of subjects to mine the knowledge for the benefit of its chatbots, all at its own expense.

Other users pushed back and later, Reddit moderators revolted over changes, shutting down thousands of Subreddits in protest. Although this disruption was significant, it did not lead to a U-turn in the strategy at the top of the company.

Steve Huffman reflected on the path taken over the changes, stating “I think a lot of how we worked our way through it could have been better.”

AI will play a role in Reddit’s future with the company getting to grips with a prototype “post guidance” feature but its core strength will remain unchanged. As shown in the dispute over internal changes and the moderator rebellion, that lies in its people and communities. This is very much a man-made machine.

Picture: Brett Jordan/Unsplash

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An industry group representing TikTok, Meta, and X has issued a lawsuit against the US state of Utah over strict new limits to access social media.

As reported by the Associated Press, Utah instigated a first-in-the-nation law aimed at protecting children from compulsive behaviors and other harms linked to social media use. As part of the proposals, age verification would be required to maintain a social media account in the state and minors would require parental authority to access the apps between 10.30 PM and 06.30 AM.

Following the two laws signed in March by Republican Governor Spencer Cox, it is no surprise to see the social heavyweights returning the serve with legal action of their own and in doing so, they have claimed the regulations are unconstitutional although well-intended.

NetChoice, the trade body representing platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X, (and their parent companies), is arguing the new laws will restrict access to public content, compromise data security and undermine parental rights.

Chris Marchese, Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center stated, “We are fighting to ensure that all Utahns can embrace digital tools without the forceful clutch of government control,” in a move anticipated by Cox.

“I’m not going to back down from a potential legal challenge when these companies are killing our kids,” he intimated.

Burden of proof to be shouldered by social media giants

Under the new laws due to take effect from 1 March 2024, parents will be able to access children’s accounts with an accessible path to take legal action against social media companies if they believe their kids have been harmed.

In effect, the regulations will shift the burden of proof from the families onto the social media giants, requiring them to show their products were not harmful and any platform with a minimum of five million users will be subject to the new legislation.

This news comes after more than 40 US states sued Meta in October, whilst New Mexico filed a lawsuit against the company alleging it failed to protect children from sexual abuse and online solicitation.

Featured Image: Pexels/Stephen Leonardi

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The European Union (EU) has opened formal proceedings against Elon Musk’s X to investigate if it breached the bloc’s Digital Service Act (DSA) rules.

The probe, launched on Monday (Dec.18), will particularly scrutinize “the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel”.

In a statement released on the European Commission’s website, the EU said it would look at four key areas: dissemination of illegal content, the effectiveness of measures taken to combat information manipulation on X, the measures taken by X to increase the transparency of its platform and a suspected deceptive design of the user interface about its Blue check system.

“The higher the risk large platforms pose to our society, the more specific the requirements of the Digital Services Act are,” said Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of a Europe Fit For The Digital Age commission.

She continued: “We take any breach of our rules very seriously. And the evidence we currently have is enough to formally open a proceeding against X. The Commission will carefully investigate X’s compliance with the DSA, to ensure European citizens are safeguarded online – as the regulation mandates.”

This is not the first time the Commission has targeted the social media platform around the Israel-Hamas war. In October, EU officials accused X of failing to curb the spread of disinformation and violent extremist content related to the conflict. Examples included posts celebrating the Hamas rocket attacks, calls for further violence targeting Israelis, and claims that Israel had staged “false flag” attacks to justify aggression against Palestinians.

We have opened formal proceedings to assess whether X may have breached the #DSA in areas linked to:

risk management
content moderation
dark patterns
advertising transparency
data access for researchers

More information on next steps: https://t.co/VHJjIsVftY pic.twitter.com/oygKah5GIq

— European Commission (@EU_Commission) December 18, 2023

What is the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA)?

The DSA is a key piece of legislation proposed by the EU aimed at creating a safer and more accountable online environment. What it aims to establish is a common set of responsibilities and transparency requirements for large platforms to create a safe online space for users in the EU’s 27 member countries.

As with any legislation, the devil is always in the details. Critics argue the DSA could be overly burdensome for small businesses, it’s vague and somewhat subjective and it risks over-regulating the tech sector in Europe and stifling innovation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to defending civil liberties in the digital world, has argued full compliance with the DSA, “will mean subjecting everything that every user posts to scrutiny.”

With the action against X, the EU is signaling its willingness to take a hard line against big technology companies.

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market said: “The time of big online platforms behaving like they are “too big to care” has come to an end. We now have clear rules, ex-ante obligations, strong oversight, speedy enforcement, and deterrent sanctions and we will make full use of our toolbox to protect our citizens and democracies.”

Picture: Photo by Dušan Cvetanović/Pexels

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Disney has increased their ad spending on Meta’s Instagram by as much as 40% after halting advertising on X over reports of antisemitism, reports Reuters.

A study by Sensor Tower also highlights other advertisers moving their spending away from X, which is owned by Elon Musk. Comcast has increased Instagram spending by 6%, whereas Paramount has tripled its Snapchat spending as a result.

The backlash began after Musk was accused of antisemitism following his response to a Tweet criticizing Western Jewish communities. He has vehemently denied accusations of antisemitism, going so far as to sue Media Matters, a left-leaning watchdog.

After advertisers started to pull their spending, Musk lost his cool in a New York Times DealBook Summit interview. The CEO of Tesla said, “If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go f*** yourself.”

Linda Yaccarino, the social media platform’s CEO is also feeling the pressure. In a post on X on Wednesday she said: “And here’s my perspective when it comes to advertising: X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and is here to welcome you. To our partners who believe in our meaningful work — Thank You.”

X has made itself unpopular with advertisers

Speaking to Reuters, Felipe Thomaz, associate professor of marketing at the University of Oxford said “Brands are intelligent about these choices, and any brand safety concerns will be met with a re-allocation of budgets away from troubled platforms.”

The entrepreneurial owner of X has since apologised for any perceived antisemitism, however, these new reports suggest that advertisers and not likely to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, said at the same event that an ongoing association between Disney and X “was not a positive one for us.”

Lou Paskalis, founder of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, said that Musk’s outburst marked a “closing chapter” for many brands and their advertising on X. “They’re not going to forget that,” he stated.

Photo by Julian Christ on Unsplash

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Online video platform Rumble is cracking down on Media Matters with a new lawsuit targeting people connected to the left-leaning website.

The suit from the video-sharing platform, popular with free speech advocates, alleges the non-profit media watchdog group engaged in misleading and unethical practices to damage its business.

The lawsuit filed on Nov 29, centers around Media Matters’ alleged strategy of repeatedly refreshing controversial videos on sites it aims to take down to capture major brand advertisements running adjacent to the content.

According to Rumble’s recent court filings, two individuals who run ‘Check my ads’ created fake profiles, sought out objectionable user-uploaded videos, and refreshed the pages multiple times until they could capture screenshots showing ads from high-profile brands next to the offending content. The data they collected was then used by Media Matters to call on big brands to avoid Rumble.

THREAD: Rumble is suing two individual Plaintiffs who run "Check my Ads" in connection with Media Matters. They are seeking punitive damages and an injunction to stop their conduct, among other things.

This will be my ongoing thread analyzing this lawsuit. Please bookmark it,… pic.twitter.com/QrKnx5w6JQ

— Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) December 12, 2023

Rumble said this strategy caused some brands, including Netflix, to pull their advertising spending on its platform after Media Matters showed them the controversially placed ads. The video platform called the tactics “unethical” and said the two defendants Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin deliberately tried to damage sites it deemed controversial by orchestrating the ad placements.

Rumble’s legal action comes on the heels of the group’s parent company, X Corp, filing what owner CEO Elon Musk called a “thermonuclear” lawsuit against Media Matters last month. X Corp alleged Media Matters executed a similar “refresh” tactic on its platform to capture brand ads next to antisemitic content.

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company pic.twitter.com/55vl7PspaQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023

The lawsuit claims Media Matters then showed the screenshots to companies like Apple and IBM to prompt them to suspend their advertising partnerships with X Corp.

X Corp said Media Matters’ actions suppressed its free speech rights. Legal experts project X Corp may seek billions of dollars in damages from the media group.

Between the high-profile lawsuits from internet media giants Rumble and X Corp, Media Matters faces growing scrutiny and liability over its controversial editorial tactics. The non-profit will need to answer for its allegedly unethical practices in court in the months ahead.

Media Matters fights back

That’s not the end of the lawsuits. Media Matters is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after he opened an investigation into their reporting of  X.

In the lawsuit, the non-profit alleges that Mr Paxton’s “retaliatory” investigation is unlawful and violates its First Amendment rights.

Lawyers for Media Matters said: “The chill imposed by his retaliatory scheme injures Plaintiffs’ ability to investigate and publish news stories and further chills their ability to participate in a robust public discussion around political extremism on the X platform”.

In an interview with Reuters after Musk filed his lawsuit, Angelo Carusone, the Media Matters president, said the non-profit’s findings flew in the face of X’s statements that it had introduced safety protections to prevent ads from appearing next to harmful content.

“If you search for white nationalist content, there are ads flourishing. The system they say exists is not operating as such,” he said.

Featured Image: Pexels

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A Texas judge has upheld a ban on TikTok on government devices in the U.S. state.

The ban covers all state-owned devices and networks of state employees, including public university employees.

The decision made on Monday by District Judge Robert Pitmans was “motivated by data protection concerns and calling “a reasonable restriction on access to TikTok.” as reports Reuters.

More than 30 states and U.S. federal agencies have issued a ban on TikTok, including the Department of Homeland Security and the White House.

Texas lawmakers bulwark against foreign-owned apps like TikTok

Judge Pitman argued that concerns around device and data security are the key to the ban being upheld against the suit filed by the Knight First Institute of Columbia University.

This decision is one of many made in the state of Texas to reinforce restrictions on the Beijing-based video app.

The Office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement ordering “to ban the use of TikTok on any government-issued devices as the threat of the Chinese Communist Party gaining access to critical U.S. information and infrastructure continues to grow.”

Texas and Governor Gregg Abbott have taken a direct approach to apps owned and controlled outside of the US with policies and acts like the Lone Star Infrastructure Act “prohibiting contracts or other agreements with certain foreign-owned companies in connection with critical infrastructure in this state.”

How many users does TikTok have?

TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, reached one billion accounts in September of this year proving the popularity of the app.

The most popular trends of this year’s TikTok 2023 in the review were released last week.

The video app has 1.6 billion accounts, with an estimated 150 million US-based users.

ByteDance – the parent company behind TikTok

ByteDance announced significant investment and research into another app that hopes to “enable users to create their artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots.” The Chinese tech giant is the latest large technology company to move into generative AI.

This week US investors heavily backed Mistral, the French AI company to the tune of $414 million in the initial round of fundraising. US investors hope to have a large say as the emerging technology becomes more present in consumer life.

Other global regions are reacting to the use of AI software and it’s proposing ethical deployment. The 27 EU member states recently voted to agree to the Artificial Intelligence Act. Making the EU the first group of nations to enforce governance on AI usage and development.

Image credit: cottonbro studio, Pexels.

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TikTok owner ByteDance is set to resume business in Indonesia by taking a majority 75.01% stake in Tokopedia with a promised $1.5bn investment.

Indonesian tech company GoTo will maintain a 24.99% minority stake in Tokopedia, reports Reuters. This comes after the social media giant was banned from operating its e-commerce platform in Indonesia in October due to new regulations.

TikTok will initially pay out $840 million to acquire its stake and has promised further investment in Tokopedia – one of Indonesia’s most visited e-commerce platforms – amounting to $1.5 billion over a longer period. TikTok’s e-commerce arm, TikTok Shop Indonesia, will be absorbed into Tokopedia, allowing it to resume operations in the country. The deal is due to close in early 2024.

TikTok’s ambitions in Indonesia

According to reports, Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce market, valued at over $50 billion, so it stands to reason that TikTok is keen to resume business there, keeping regulators on board. In a joint statement, ByteDance and GoTo said, “The strategic partnership will commence with a pilot period carried out in close consultation with and supervision by the relevant regulators.”

“We are creating an Indonesian e-commerce champion, combining Tokopedia’s strong local presence with TikTok’s mass market reach and technological prowess,” GoTo CEO Patrick Walujo said in a statement to Reuters.

“GoTo now sits on a much stronger foundation and we expect this partnership to bring many benefits not just for e-commerce, but for our on-demand services and fintech businesses as well,” he said.

TikTok Shop is currently only available in a handful of countries, including the UK and USA, so to have regulators stop it as it found a base in Indonesia will have been a blow for TikTok, especially as foreign security concerns rise.

This growth is vital for TikTok after reports earlier this year that its use is on a “steep decline” with young people. It is a tumultuous time for TikTok as it offers a share buy-back scheme despite news that it has closed down its gaming brand Nuverse. It has also confirmed that it works on a large AI platform allowing users to create AI Chatbots.

Photo Credit: Pexels

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