Browsing Twitter without an account doesn’t work right now, but for a while, we had no idea if it was another bug or an intentional change.
Now Elon Musk has confirmed the change was on purpose, claiming Twitter was “getting data pillaged,” which sounds like an issue that could’ve been addressed by some of the people Musk laid off since taking over Twitter.
Despite unending chaos and a swelling cast of competitors, Twitter’s users are still forcing events into existence. On April 11th, Juvenile tweeted, “Wtf is a tiny desk 😂and no 😂😂” to a request that he appear in the series.
Eventually, he agreed to consider going on if people retweeted a post promoting his beer. They hit the number, and here we are.
Twitter made headlines earlier this year when it changed up its API pricing, with new tiers costing as much as $42,000 a month. But even once they pay, developers are telling Mashable that they’re suffering with poor customer support and features being abruptly discontinued or changed, seemingly without warning.
Joseph James O’Connor, aka PlugWalkJoe, is a UK citizen connected to a massive 2020 breach on Twitter that pushed crypto scam ads through accounts for Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Apple, and others, as well as other social media account breaches.
Today a New York federal court judge sentenced him to five years in prison for his crimes minus 28 months for time already served. TechCrunch reports he will also forfeit at least $794,000 to his victims.
Earlier this month, Platformer reported that Twitter was refusing to pay Google Cloud for its services. But now, Musk-appointed CEO Linda Yaccarino is reportedly attempting to mend the relationship.
Bloomberg says Twitter has resumed paying its bills, and The Wall Street Journal adds that the companies are discussing partnerships that could include Google using Twitter’s API and buying ads on the platform.
It’s really annoying! I emailed Twitter to see if this was just a bug or something they’re deprecating entirely, and I got a poop emoji in reply. Hopefully it’s the former.
A fun update on how badly the Twitter deal is going:
Last time I checked, if a company has more than 12 creditors — as Twitter does — then any three of them can join together to put a company into an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding. And Elon is in danger here. At some point, the creditors he is mindlessly stiffing on a regular basis are going to get sufficiently pissed to throw Twitter into bankruptcy.
PlainSite is a database for court documents and other public records, while Greenspan has made a point of tracking lawsuits against Musk and his companies, along with many others.
Musk has claimed, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter,” and the new CEO called it “a global town square.” Neither has commented on the ban or a wave of bans that shut down many accounts a few weeks ago, and Greenspan told CNBC he hadn’t heard anything from the company since the suspension started Tuesday.
Twitter owner Elon Musk says the company is “hopefully releasing the update this week.” I closed Twitter DMs months ago, just email me instead!
