Melbourne-based link-in-bio startup Linktree has been caught up in the latest changes to Twitter under its quixotic new owner, Elon Musk. Linktree boss Alex Zaccaria, ironically, took to Twitter to argue Musk’s latest diktat was “anti-creator and antithetical” to the foundations of the Internet and Twitter, pointing out that Linktree drives double the traffic to… Read more »
What do a cybersecurity researcher building a system to generate alerts for detecting security threats and vulnerabilities, a wildfire watcher who tracks the spread of forest fires, and public health professionals trying to predict enrolment in health insurance exchanges have in common? They all rely on analysing data from Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging service,… Read more »
In the wake of Elon Musk closing the deal to buy Twitter on October 27 and soon after firing the management, users have been reconsidering the platform. Hashtags #TwitterMigration and #TwitterExodus are gaining popularity, and the most common name found in conjunction with it is Mastodon – the new home for fleeing tweeters. In fact,… Read more »
Following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27, the world’s richest man proposed a range of controversial changes to the platform. With mounting evidence that he is making it up as he goes along, these proposals are tweeted out in a stream-of-consciousness manner from Musk’s Twitter account. Primarily to raise revenue, one of the… Read more »
Twitter Australia’s entire news curation team is among the thousands of staff who lost their jobs after billionaire Elon Musk sacked half the workforce a week after his US$44 billion private takeover. The local Twitter team is less than 50 people, but around 20% of them worked in the news curation team. The job losses… Read more »
Twitter feels like I could wake up any morning now and find the whole site burned to ground, with Elon Mush standing in the smoking rubble, in a pair of yellowed Y-fronts, dribbling bathtub gin through broken teeth, laughing at me. — John Birmingham (@JohnBirmingham) October 31, 2022 It doesn’t seem that many people are… Read more »
Elon Musk has finally completed his US$44 billion deal to acquire Twitter and take it private. The world’s richest man has already begun putting his imprint on the social network by firing four of its top executives. While most people are likely familiar with the idea of taking a private company public – the process… Read more »
Last week, Todd Sampson’s documentary Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate screened on Channel Ten. The documentary focuses on harms that occur through social media and online platforms. It raises important points about the need for awareness and regulation, but these are often crowded out by alarmist tropes that don’t reflect what we know from decades… Read more »
Social media are increasingly blurring the lines between our personal and professional lives, leaving us at risk of posting sensitive information that could have ramifications far beyond our “friends” list. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin recently found this out the hard way after a video of her dancing and drinking with friends, first posted to… Read more »
Social media platforms have had some bad press in recent times, largely prompted by the vast extent of their data collection. Now Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has upped the ante. Not content with following every move you make on its apps, Meta has reportedly devised a way to also know everything… Read more »
The ACCC’s Digital Platforms Services Inquiry will dive into competition for social media services in Australia as part of the sixth interim report of the regulator’s five-year Digital Platform Services Inquiry. The competition watchdog will also look at consumer issues, such as the way that businesses use social media advertising services, including paid influencers. An… Read more »
By now, most of us are aware social media companies collect vast amounts of our information. By doing this, they can target us with ads and monetise our attention. The latest chapter in the data-privacy debate concerns one of the world’s most popular apps among young people – TikTok. Yet anecdotally it seems the potential… Read more »
When English statesman Sir Francis Bacon famously said “knowledge is power”, he could hardly have foreseen the rise of ubiquitous social media some 500 years later. Yet social media platforms are some of the world’s most powerful businesses – not least because they can collect massive amounts of user data, and use algorithms to turn… Read more »
Recent outrage surrounding a young children’s toy “vlogger” set echoes moral panics of the past, particularly when words such as children, play and digital come together. Aldi recently released a new range of wooden toys, including the Vlogger set for children aged 3 and older. This set has sparked discussion on Twitter, including criticism. Spotted… Read more »
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the tech giant will shift from being a social media company to becoming “a metaverse company”, functioning in an “embodied internet” that blends real and virtual worlds more than ever before. So what is “the metaverse”? It sounds like the kind of thing billionaires talk about to earn… Read more »
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