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Archives for February 2024

Adi Robertson
Adi Robertson
X’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate sounds like it’s on the rocks.

The parties held a conference call to argue about whether the nonprofit’s anti-hate speech researchers illegally scraped data from Elon Musk’s social network, and a judge seems dubious.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer was skeptical that when the nonprofit entered the standard user contract governing all Twitter and X users, it could have foreseen that Musk would buy Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and welcome back users it had banned for posting hateful content. [...] “I am trying to figure out, in my mind, how that’s possibly true, because I don’t think it is.”

Judge Breyer didn’t indicate when we might get a ruling, Reuters says.

US judge signals Elon Musk's X may lose case against hate speech watchdog

[Reuters]

X adds live video to Spaces instead of bringing back PeriscopeX adds live video to Spaces instead of bringing back Periscope
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Passkeys on X are now available to all US users on iOS.

The platform started rolling out passkey support on its iOS app last month, but now it’s available to all iPhone users in the US. That means you can use Face ID, Touch ID, or your device’s passcode to log in to your account instead of entering a password. You can learn how to enable passkeys on X from this support page.

The X iPhone app added passwordless logins with passkeys

Amrita Khalid
The latest ‘Woj bomb’ was just a scam NFT tweet from a hacked accountThe latest ‘Woj bomb’ was just a scam NFT tweet from a hacked account
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
X is starting to roll out search filters.

Premium users on iOS will see the feature first, according to X designer Andrea Conway. The feature will let you sort through posts based on the date, language, location, and more.

Image: Andrea Conway via X
Mia Sato
Mia Sato
Threads and X are looking slightly more alike.

Two changes spotted by app researchers show how the platforms are testing tweaks — X with carousel-style image galleries instead of grids, and Threads with buttons spaced apart.

Nima Owji shared the change on X and Alessandro Paluzzi pointed out the Threads update. Meta insisted that Threads isn’t an X clone — but at least in terms of look and feel, the two are getting closer and closer.

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What’s the point of Elon Musk’s AI company?What’s the point of Elon Musk’s AI company?
Adi Robertson
Adi Robertson
X has another AI porn problem.

This time it involves not Taylor Swift, but comedian Bobbi Althoff, who’s become a target for users chasing clout with nonconsensual faked nudes under X’s anemic moderation:

One of the most popular posts directing viewers to the video remained online after more than 30 hours. Another post, which promised to “send full Bobbi Althoff leaks to everyone who like and comment,” was online for 20 hours — X removed it after The Washington Post sought comment on the fakes. By the time it was removed, the video post had been viewed more than 5 million times.

Bobbi Althoff deepfake spotlights X’s role as a top source of AI porn

[The Washington Post]

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
X restores Yulia Navalnaya’s account after briefly suspending it.

Yulia accused Vladimir Putin of killing her husband, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and vowed to continue her husband’s fight against Putin’s “crazy regime.” Then, on Tuesday morning, her X account was abruptly suspended for a short time.

A message from the @Support account followed up saying, “Our platform’s defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged @yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules. We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defense.”

@Support

[X]

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Is “Adrian Dittmann” actually Elon Musk?

Dittmann has found media attention before due to sounding almost identical to the Tesla CEO, but after appearing on Alex Jones’s Infowars podcast, people now suspect that he may actually be Musk masquerading under a false name.

It’s an uncanny vocal likeness, and it’s not like Musk doesn’t have a history of allegedly using burner accounts.

Joanna Nelius
Joanna Nelius
One of the last ways to access Twitter without an account is dead.

Nitter, the open-source, tracker-free Twitter front end, joins the other great third-party apps in the API afterlife.

Activist IT collective NoLog, which ran one of the largest Nitter instances, has shut it down, three weeks after Nitter’s developer said the project was dead.

Twitter front-end Nitter dies as Musk wins war against third-party services

[Ars Technica]

Terrorists are allegedly buying blue checks on XTerrorists are allegedly buying blue checks on X
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
X will allow advertisers to only run ads on selected profiles.

Elon Musk’s revamped X ad business has included a “revenue sharing” program that requires payment to have the potential of getting paid and shown ads alongside white nationalist profiles.

X, as it attempts to become a YouTube alternative, says it has over 80,000 creators monetizing their posts and is trying to address brand safety issues with Creator Targeting:

This means giving advertisers more control to be able to use the self-serve X Ads Manager to run pre-roll video ads against the video content of their chosen creator(s) in both the home timeline and profile.

Soon we’ll add the ability to serve ads only on an individual creator’s profile – completely eliminating the unlikely event of unwanted adjacencies while aligning your brand to creators you love most.

It didn’t say how big of a cut creators will get if their profile is targeted or if they can choose which advertisers are shown.

Creator Targeting: Select and connect with creators on X

[X Business]

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
As the Super Bowl rolls into Las Vegas, X cuts a deal to advertise gambling odds.

Besides its arrangement for weekly 5-minute WWE matches, X is partnering with BetMGM to slap gambling odds at the top of event pages for sporting events, starting with the Super Bowl.

The platform formerly known as Twitter is far from the only one suddenly flooded with odds and gambling promos (see ESPN Bet). A recent 60 Minutes report dug into how the services use data to target when someone’s most likely to place a bet.

A screenshot of the X event page for the Super Bowl that prominently displays gambling infor linked to BetMGM.
The Super Bowl event page inside the X app with betting odds above tweets.
Image: Screenshot by Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
WWE Speed will stream 5-minute wrestling matches on X this spring.

In addition to the WWE’s 2025 switch to Netflix, it will also broadcast timed matches via the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Like Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, these will be produced live to tape exclusively for the platform, but they’ll only be five minutes long and will feature “your favorite WWE Superstars.” THR notes their agreement is for two years of weekly episodes.

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