Tag: twitter

Twitter Partners With eToro, Will Let Users Engage With Crypto, Trade Stocks Within Platform

Elon Musk, after briefly changing Twitter’s blue bird logo with the Dogecoin logo, has taken a step towards making the platform more ‘crypto friendly’. Twitter has finalised a partnership with eToro to enable over 450 million of its active users to access crypto trading from within the app. The announcement of this development was disclosed first by eToro on Thursday, April 13. With this, Musk is shifting Twitter’s purpose from being just a social networking platform to a more useability-driven multipurpose app.

Headquartered in Israel’s Tel Aviv-Yafo, eToro is an online brokerage service. Since its inception in 2007, the platform has been providing trading services for traditional assets like stocks. In 2019, it included crypto trading services as part of its offerings. As per Statista, eToro had reached a userbase of 28.5 million around March 2022.

Under its partnership with Twitter, eToro will be part of a new Twitter service called $Cashtags.

“Very excited to be launching a new $Cashtags partnership with Twitter which will enable Twitter users to see real-time prices for a much wider range of stocks, crypto, and other assets as well as having the option to invest through eToro,” the company said in a tweet, announcing the development.

Last year, eToro acquired US-based options trading platform Gatsby for $50 million (roughly Rs. 400 crore) in cash and common stock in order to expand its presence in the US market. Its deal with Twitter is expected to swell up its userbase in the coming time.

Since acquiring Twitter last year for around $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,60,133 crore), Musk has been introducing a profusion of changes to the platform. Given his personal pro-crypto approach, the billionaire has been very vocal about making Twitter crypto friendly with newer features.

In November 2022, Twitter reportedly filed papers with the US Treasury to bag approvals to function as a payment processor for not just online, but also for crypto transactions. If Musk’s plans do materialise, Twitter could soon begin facilitating money transfers as well as crypto-to-fiat currency exchange services.

Twitter first hinted at the launch of $Cashtags in December 2022. At the time, the platform had started showing the prices and market movement trajectory for cryptocurrencies via a simple search of their names.

Musk’s personal support for Dogecoin also often reflects in his tweets and randomly discussed future plans for Twitter.

Last week, Musk replaced the Twitter logo with the Dogecoin logo fulfilling a promise made some years ago to a random Twitter user. The act stirred frenzy in the crypto sector, shooting DOGE prices up by over 22 percent in just a few hours.

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Elon Musk Says Unaware Why Twitter India Pulled Posts on BBC Documentary Critical of Modi

Elon Musk said on Wednesday that he did not know “what exactly happened” when Twitter took down content related to a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year, adding that some rules related to social media content were “quite strict” in India.

In January, India ordered the blocking of a BBC documentary that questioned Modi’s leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots, saying that even sharing of any clips via social media was barred.

The government had issued orders to Twitter to block over 50 tweets linking to the video of the documentary, Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, had said.

While the BBC had not aired the documentary in India, the video was uploaded on some YouTube channels, Gupta had said.

“I am not aware of this particular situation… don’t know what exactly happened with some content situation in India,” Musk said in an interview with the BBC broadcast live on Twitter Spaces when asked if the site took down some content at the behest of the Indian government.

“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict and we can’t go beyond the laws of the country,” he said.

The documentary focused on Modi’s leadership as chief minister of the western state of Gujarat during riots in 2002 in which at least 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims.

Activists put the toll at more than twice that number.

“If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws…” Musk said.

India’s regulatory scrutiny of various US tech firms such as Twitter, Facebook’s WhatsApp and Amazon.com, have hurt the business environment in a key growth market, prompting some companies to rethink expansion plans, Reuters has reported.

Indian authorities have in the past asked Twitter to act on content such as accounts supportive of an independent Sikh state, posts alleged to have spread misinformation about protests by farmers, and tweets critical of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Others to Sue Twitter Over Legal Bills

Three top Twitter executives who were sacked by Elon Musk last year when he took over the social media company filed suit on Monday, seeking to be reimbursed for costs of litigation, investigations and congressional inquiries related to their former jobs.

Ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, along with the company’s former chief legal and financial officers, claim in the suit that they are owed a total of more than $1 million (roughly Rs. 8 crore), and that Twitter is legally bound to pay them.

Twitter responded to an AFP request for comment with a poop emoji, as has become its practice.

The court filing outlined numerous expenses related to inquiries by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), but does not include details on the nature of the investigations or whether they are still ongoing.

Agrawal and then-chief financial officer Ned Segal provided testimony to the SEC last year and “have continued to engage with federal authorities,” according to court documents.

The SEC is investigating whether Musk complied with securities rules when he amassed Twitter shares.

Former Twitter chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde was called on to take part in a US congressional hearing about big tech and free speech following Musk’s release late last year of so-called “Twitter Files” related to the site’s content moderation.

Gadde was also named as a defendant in a lawsuit by a man who claimed he was “doxed” at Twitter as a white supremacist, the filing said.

Musked terminated Agrawal, Gadde and Segal from their posts in late October after closing his contentious $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,61,000 crore) takeover of Twitter.

The three former executives argue that Twitter is bound by agreements to reimburse them, but has done no more than acknowledge it received their invoices.

After taking over Twitter, Musk quickly slashed the ranks of employees, with the cuts so broad it raised concerns about the platform’s stability and its ability to fight misinformation and other abuse.

Complaints have also been filed accusing Twitter of not paying rent or other bills as Musk follows on a vow to “cut costs like crazy.”

Meanwhile, market trackers say advertising revenue has plunged at Twitter due to concerns over misinformation and hateful content flourishing as Musk dials back moderation efforts.

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Wikipedia Owner Fined for Failing to Delete Alleged Extremist Content

The Wikimedia Foundation, owner of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, was fined by a Russian court on Thursday for failing to delete content considered extremist as Moscow pursues a drive to crack down on independent sources of information.

Wikipedia, which says it offers “the second draft of history”, is one of the few surviving fact-checked sources of information in Russian since the crackdown intensified after Moscow sent its armed forces into Ukraine in February 2022. 

The Tagansky district court said it had fined Wikimedia RUB 800,000 (nearly Rs. 8 lakh). Russian news agencies in the courtroom said Wikimedia had been charged with failing to remove materials related to a song by the alternative rock band Psychea, or Psyshit, which has been officially designated “extremist”.

Russia has now fined Wikimedia around RUB 9 million (nearly Rs. 90 lakh) in the past year, the agencies said. 

Wikimedia did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The foundation’s Russia chapter has previously said it believes other fines may be overturned, but that the number of cases against it may increase, given the number of articles on Wikipedia about the conflict.

Russia has for years sought to launch a home-grown online encyclopedia, without a tangible result so far.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday and a Russian analogue was “absolutely necessary”.

“It would contain truly verified and accurate information, objective information,” he said, “because we know that Wikipedia has many distortions, very many untruths, very many historical, factual and other mistakes.”

Russian domestic tech companies, led by entities controlled or associated with the state-owned gas giant Gazprom, have been sensing opportunities in Russia’s growing digital isolation as foreign internet firms are blocked or quit Russia. 

But while Moscow has restricted access to Twitter and to Meta Platforms’ flagships Facebook and Instagram, Wikipedia remains freely available.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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Bill Gates Says Pausing AI Development Will Not Solve Challenges Ahead

Calls to pause the development of artificial intelligence will not “solve the challenges” ahead, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told Reuters, his first public comments since an open letter sparked a debate about the future of the technology.

The technologist-turned-philanthropist said it would be better to focus on how best to use the developments in AI, as it was hard to understand how a pause could work globally.

His interview with Reuters comes after an open letter — published last week and co-signed by Elon Musk and more than 1,000 AI experts – demanded an urgent pause in the development of systems “more powerful” than Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s new GPT-4, which can hold human-like conversation, compose songs and summarise lengthy documents.

The experts, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, said in the letter the potential risks and benefits to society need to be assessed.

“I don’t think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges,” Gates said on Monday.

“Clearly there’s huge benefits to these things… what we need to do is identify the tricky areas.”

Microsoft has sought to outpace peers through multi-billion-dollar investments in ChatGPT owner OpenAI.

While currently focused full-time on the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has been a bullish supporter of AI and described it as revolutionary as the Internet or mobile phones.

In a blog titled “The Age of AI has begun” which was published and dated March 21, a day before the open letter, he said he believes AI should be used to help reduce some of the world’s worst inequities.

He also said in the interview the details of any pause would be complicated to enforce.

“I don’t really understand who they’re saying could stop, and would every country in the world agree to stop, and why to stop,” he said. “But there are a lot of different opinions in this area.”

© Thomson Reuters 2023
 

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Elon Musk Defends Pay Model for Twitter Amid End to Free Verified Blue Ticks

Elon Musk on Friday defended his controversial pay model for Twitter, claiming that any social media platform that didn’t follow suit would fail because they would be swarmed by bots.

Musk made his prediction on the eve of Twitter’s April 1 ultimatum that verified accounts with the cherished blue tick that had not forked over cash would lose it.

“The fundamental challenge here is that it’s (easy) to create literally 10,000 or 100,000 fake Twitter accounts using just one computer at home and with modern AI (artificial intelligence),” Musk told a question and answer session on Twitter.

“That’s the reason for really pressing hard on verified where the verified requires a number from a reputable phone carrier and a credit card,” Musk said.

“My prediction is that any so-called social media network that doesn’t do this will fail,” Musk added.

The change in system puts pressure on companies, journalists and celebrities who used Twitter as their main channel of communication and relied on the blue tick for credibility.

And it also raises the spectre of imposters and jokesters paying for an officially verified, but totally fake account.

In the US, the subscription plan, known as Twitter Blue, costs $8 (roughly Rs. 700) a month or $84 (roughly Rs. 6,900) a year, or $11 (roughly Rs. 900) a month if bought through Apple‘s app store.

Since its creation in 2009, the blue tick or checkmark became a signature element that helped the platform become a trusted forum for news makers and campaigners.

But Musk and his fans said the blue check was decided by fiat in a secretive procedure and called it a symbol of an unfair class system.

Opening the blue tick to paying subscribers was among the first decisions made by Musk when he took ownership of Twitter last year, but his overhaul backfired.

Within hours, Twitter was flooded by fake yet verified accounts impersonating celebrities, major companies and even Musk himself.

Musk swiftly backtracked, but many advertisers fled the site, denying Twitter a major source of income that the CEO is struggling to replace.

For now, blue checks of celebrities — including Justin Bieber and his 113 million followers or footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and his 108 million — are tagged on the site as “legacy” accounts.

‘Will be awful’

The verified account conundrum also involves officials, charities and news media companies.

Already the White House, which will keep a special designation as a government entity, told employees it would not pay to have its staff’s official Twitter profiles keep the blue tick, Axios reported.

News media companies, firms and charities already lost their blue tick and were tagged as verified business accounts under Musk’s new system.

According to Twitter’s website, these cost a hefty fee of $1,000 (roughly Rs. 82,200) a month in the United States, and $50 (roughly Rs. 4,100) for each additional affiliated account.

“This will be awful for those who can’t afford the new fees,” said Andrew Stroehlein, European Media Director of Human Rights Watch, who said his group would not pay for the privilege.

“It will damage the effectiveness of local activists, including human rights activists, who have long used Twitter for grassroots organizing,” he added in a blog post.

The New York Times said it will not pay for a verified business account and that it would only subscribe for a blue tick for journalists when essential for reporting needs.

The “pay to play” verification model is also being tested by Twitter rival Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, which has also drawn major criticism.

Much is riding on Musk’s ability to find a business model for Twitter.

Last week Musk put the current value of Twitter at $20 billion (roughly Rs. 1,64,600 crore), less than half the $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,62,100 crore) he paid for the social media platform just five months ago.

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AI Experts Express Concerns With Elon Musk-Backed Letter Citing Their Research

Four artificial intelligence experts have expressed concern after their work was cited in an open letter – co-signed by Elon Musk – demanding an urgent pause in research.

The letter, dated March 22 and with more than 1,800 signatures by Friday, called for a six-month circuit-breaker in the development of systems “more powerful” than Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s new GPT-4, which can hold human-like conversation, compose songs and summarise lengthy documents.

Since GPT-4’s predecessor ChatGPT was released last year, rival companies have rushed to launch similar products.

The open letter says AI systems with “human-competitive intelligence” pose profound risks to humanity, citing 12 pieces of research from experts including university academics as well as current and former employees of OpenAI, Google and its subsidiary DeepMind.

Civil society groups in the US and EU have since pressed lawmakers to rein in OpenAI’s research. OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Critics have accused the Future of Life Institute (FLI), the organisation behind the letter which is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, of prioritising imagined apocalyptic scenarios over more immediate concerns about AI, such as racist or sexist biases being programmed into the machines.

Among the research cited was “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots”, a well-known paper co-authored by Margaret Mitchell, who previously oversaw ethical AI research at Google.

Mitchell, now chief ethical scientist at AI firm Hugging Face, criticised the letter, telling Reuters it was unclear what counted as “more powerful than GPT4”.

“By treating a lot of questionable ideas as a given, the letter asserts a set of priorities and a narrative on AI that benefits the supporters of FLI,” she said. “Ignoring active harms right now is a privilege that some of us don’t have.”

Her co-authors Timnit Gebru and Emily M. Bender criticised the letter on Twitter, with the latter branding some of its claims “unhinged”.

FLI president Max Tegmark told Reuters the campaign was not an attempt to hinder OpenAI’s corporate advantage.

“It’s quite hilarious. I’ve seen people say, ‘Elon Musk is trying to slow down the competition,'” he said, adding that Musk had no role in drafting the letter. “This is not about one company.”

Risks Now

Shiri Dori-Hacohen, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, also took issue with her work being mentioned in the letter. She last year co-authored a research paper arguing the widespread use of AI already posed serious risks.

Her research argued the present-day use of AI systems could influence decision-making in relation to climate change, nuclear war, and other existential threats.

She told Reuters: “AI does not need to reach human-level intelligence to exacerbate those risks.”

“There are non-existential risks that are really, really important, but don’t receive the same kind of Hollywood-level attention.”

Asked to comment on the criticism, FLI’s Tegmark said both short-term and long-term risks of AI should be taken seriously.

“If we cite someone, it just means we claim they’re endorsing that sentence. It doesn’t mean they’re endorsing the letter, or we endorse everything they think,” he told Reuters.

Dan Hendrycks, director of the California-based Center for AI Safety, who was also cited in the letter, stood by its contents, telling Reuters it was sensible to consider black swan events – those which appear unlikely, but would have devastating consequences.

The open letter also warned that generative AI tools could be used to flood the internet with “propaganda and untruth”.

Dori-Hacohen said it was “pretty rich” for Musk to have signed it, citing a reported rise in misinformation on Twitter following his acquisition of the platform, documented by civil society group Common Cause and others.

Twitter will soon launch a new fee structure for access to its research data, potentially hindering research on the subject.

“That has directly impacted my lab’s work, and that done by others studying mis- and disinformation,” Dori-Hacohen said. “We’re operating with one hand tied behind our back.”

Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

© Thomson Reuters 2023
 

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Elon Musk Requests US Judge to End $258 Billion Dogecoin Lawsuit Against Him

Elon Musk asked a US judge on Friday to throw out a $258 billion (roughly Rs. 21,20,200 crore) racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

In an evening filing in Manhattan federal court, lawyers for Musk and his electric car company Tesla called the lawsuit by Dogecoin investors a “fanciful work of fiction” over Musk’s “innocuous and often silly tweets” about Dogecoin.

The lawyers said the investors never explained how Musk intended to defraud anyone or what risks he concealed, and that his statements such as “Dogecoin Rulz” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge” were too vague to support a fraud claim.

“There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion (roughly Rs. 82,200 crore),” Musk’s lawyers said. “This court should put a stop to plaintiffs’ fantasy and dismiss the complaint.”

In a footnote, the lawyers also rejected the investors’ claim that Dogecoin qualified as a security.

The investors’ lawyer, Evan Spencer, said in an email: “We are more confident than ever that our case will be successful.”

Investors accused Musk, the world’s second-richest person according to Forbes, of deliberately driving up Dogecoin’s price more than 36,000 percent over two years and then letting it crash.

They said this generated billions of dollars of profit at other Dogecoin investors’ expense, even as Musk knew the currency lacked intrinsic value.

Investors also pointed to Musk’s appearance on a “Weekend Update” segment of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” where, portraying a fictitious financial expert, he called Dogecoin “a hustle.”

The $258 billion (roughly Rs. 21,20,200 crore) damages figure is triple the estimated decline in Dogecoin’s market value in the 13 months before the lawsuit was filed.

Dogecoin Foundation, a nonprofit, is also a defendant and seeking the lawsuit’s dismissal.

Musk’s posts on Twitter, which he owns, have prompted multiple lawsuits.

He won a court victory on February 3 when a San Francisco jury found him not liable for tweeting in August 2018 that he had arranged financing to take Tesla private.

The case is Johnson et al v. Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037.

© Thomson Reuters 2023
 

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