For decades, the fields of rocket science and brain surgery have been cited as endeavors that present almost unimaginable levels of complexity. Now we might want to add another tricky job to the list: managing Twitter – or X as it’s now known.

Since Elon Musk dropped $44bn and took control of Twitter at the end of last year, it hasn’t gone well. The CEO – who let’s not forget, is heavily invested in both rocket and neural science – has seen the value of the social network plummet. One study found that more than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers have given up on the platform since his takeover.

When Microsoft announced it would be pulling advertising from the platform, reportedly because it refused to pay hiked API-access fees, Musk responded with a threat: “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.”

He’s arguing that generative AI models such as the ones created by Microsoft and its partner OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, were getting a free ride on Twitter’s data. Large language models (LLMs) that power AI tools have been ‘trained’ on text taken from across the internet. This could conceivably have included data from Twitter. Now Musk wants his pound of flesh – but who owns the data once it’s out on the internet?

The good, bad, and ugly of web scraping

“There’s so many variables that help to answer whether a specific scraping act is legal or illegal,” says Denas Grybauskas, head of legal at web scraping firm Oxylabs.

His company specializes in writing scrapers – software and tools that automate the work of downloading the contents of a website or individual webpage then extracting and organizing the data. It’s like saving a webpage on your computer but automated and on a mass scale.

Scrapers can be used for both good and bad. For example, it’s easy to imagine a retailer may wish to scrape real-time prices from a competitor, to keep tabs on them. Or perhaps an academic may wish to download thousands of social media posts to analyze what people are talking about. But scrapers can also be used for pirating content or infringing intellectual property (IP). Either way, it’s the same sort of technical process that companies such as OpenAI have performed to acquire the data on which to train their AI models.

At the heart of the dispute between Musk and Microsoft is both a legal question and a moral one: what content scraping counts as fair game? Grybuskas draws the line at what he calls “public data”.

“There are some exceptions, but legitimate scrapers try to take public data because it’s open to everyone,” he says. “And web scraping is just a smart way of gathering data. When it comes to Twitter, Twitter is a public website.”

The distinction between public and private is, in his view, relatively straightforward as it is both legally and functionally demarcated by the nemesis of scrapers everywhere: the login box and the captcha form.

“If I have to log in to see data, that also means that I have to accept terms of service of the website, which usually precludes scraping activities,” says Grybauskas.

Legally speaking, there can be further complications. Even if scrapers just stick to public data, not all data is created equal. “Maybe it was personal data, [which adds] another layer of legal implications,” he says. “Maybe Musk is not right in saying the scraping was illegal, but maybe Microsoft breached privacy laws or GDPR, if the data involved names and [other personal data].”

Amusingly, even if Musk does have a point about the legality of scraping, he may not own the Twitter data he alleges Microsoft used. According to the Twitter terms of service: “You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours — you own your Content”.

So, it could be the users of Twitter, not its billionaire owner, who have a case to press. “Of course, they [Twitter] license the data from the users, but you can raise the question of whether Twitter and Musk would be the right plaintiffs to sue Microsoft,” says Grybuskas.

Is public data fair game for AI training?

More broadly, scrapers have been around since the dawn of the internet, as fundamentally they are just software tools that shuffle data from one place to another. But there is a real tension between content creators and the scrapers. The rise of generative AI that requires vast amounts of data merely increases that tension. An added complication is that, with generative AI tools, you can generate new creative works trained on scraped data that someone else created.

However, some experts believe there’s little legal distinction between the AI tools and what’s gone before. “Google search results, for the most part, are full of copyright infringements,” says Dan Purcell, founder and CEO of Ceartas, a company that tracks stolen images for social media influencers and creators.

“When you just look at them for what they are, Google and ChatGPT are pretty much the same thing,” he adds. “Google is still pulling a whole load of stuff in that it probably shouldn’t be, because it doesn’t understand context. That’s the problem. They do the same thing.”

In his view, to protect against AI training, he argues models such as GPT need a system analogous to Google, where rights holders can request certain content be removed. “The same thing needs to happen with ChatGPT,” he says. “It needs to be told, ‘hey, you shouldn’t be saying this, and you shouldn’t be providing this information. This is not your information to provide. This is copyright. This is plagiarism’.”

Whether or not Musk ever provides any evidence to support his claims about Microsoft, the battle between the scrapers and the content owners will continue to rage. And the calls for tighter controls on which data AI models can use will no doubt become louder. But this could be a double-edged sword.

“If AI models and AI companies were prohibited from using scraped data, the innovation would be way, way slower,” says Grybauskas. “It’s not always possible to get licenses and you need vast amounts of data to properly train AI models.”

Twitter is expected to be rebranded under the new name ‘X’, a move that has prompted many to consider the business acumen behind dropping its globally-known branding.

CEO Elon Musk has cited examples of other ‘super apps’ like Tencent’s WeChat as the kind of app that X will aim to become. WeChat supports instant messaging, video conferencing, subscription content, digital payment, and video games among other features.

“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” tweeted Linda Yaccarino, CEO at X Corp.

“Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”

In the wake of the announcement, ITPro looked at other major tech companies that have revamped their brand, and this turned out for each.

Facebook - Meta

Facebook Inc. officially rebranded as Meta Platforms Inc. in 2021, in a move to align the company with its goal of more closely aligning itself with the development of a ‘metaverse’, or virtual reality in which business operations can be conducted alongside recreation.

“Over time I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company,” Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and CEO at Meta, said in a video announcing the change.

“And I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we are building towards. We just announced that we are making a fundamental change to our company,” 

In the years since, the idea of ‘the metaverse’ has failed to materialize to a meaningful degree. Although the Meta Quest Pro is finally out, users have not flocked to explore the virtual tours achievable through the tech.

In recent months, news around generative AI has overshadowed metaverse tech, with tools like ChatGPT and Bard eclipsing the still-unrealized promises of seamless virtual experiences.

To date, Meta’s move has not been met with any obvious financial upside. The company’s 2022 finances painted a worrying picture for the future of the firm, with billions of dollars locked into further metaverse tech investment.

While Q1 2023 results showed a 3% year-on-year bump in revenue, net income fell by 24% over the same period. 

In July, the firm launched Threads, a direct competitor with Twitter, putting it on more of a direct heading with the social media firm now known as X.

BackRub - Google - Alphabet

Before Google settled on its well-known company name, it was known as BackRub. It began as a Stanford web crawler project, led by Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Scott Hassan, and Alan Steremberg before becoming the search engine giant known today.

In 2015, the company underwent its second major overhaul with the announcement that it would restructure under a new parent company named Alphabet. 

This allowed the company to diversify its operations, maintaining Google search and product activity while also focusing on what it calls ‘moonshots’, extremely ambitious research projects. 

Today, Alphabet Inc. manages a number of subsidiaries, including Google, Google DeepMind, and autonomous car firm Waymo.

Another subsidiary is X, previously known as Google X, which is a research and development group aimed at launching ‘moonshot’ technologies. 

ITPro has approached X for information on its name in light of Twitter’s decision to rebrand under the letter.

Alphabet continues to report [PDF] revenue growth, with Q1 2023 seeing a year-on-year revenue rise of 3%. Like other big tech firms, however, Alphabet has also reported a negative impact on its business amid a tough economic climate. 

Net income fell 8% over the same period, with the company having shelled out $2.6 billion linked to workforce reductions across the quarter in line with the pattern of big tech layoffs.

Research in Motion - Blackberry

The well-known tech firm was founded in 1984 as Research in Motion Limited (RIM) and continued to operate under this name until 2013.

It became widespread due to its line of pagers and later cell phones. The devices, which carried a trademark QWERTY keyboard rather than the more common telephone keypad, became business staples due to their ease of use and access to emails alongside texts.

The big rebrand took place after a series of four stinging quarters of successive losses and coincided with the launch of the company’s first fully-touchscreen smartphone.

While it was hoped the rebrand would help to reassure investors, businesses, and consumers alike that the company was dedicated to its devices and to improve name recognition, it failed to have a significant impact on company finances.

Once the business phone of choice, BlackBerry struggled to compete with the rise of the smartphone. According to Statista, the firm’s market dominance fell from around a third of all devices in the UK in 2011 to just 0.1% by the end of 2021. 

In 2022, the company announced that it had officially discontinued its QWERTY phones, and would be killing all future support for its phones.

BlackBerry now specializes in cyber security, and in its latest financial statement reported [PDF] steady revenue growth.

Confinity - X.com - PayPal

Twitter’s rebrand as X links back to Elon Musk’s time at PayPal. The household name in financial tech started life in 1998 as Confinity, a digital wallet firm founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek. 

Two years later, this would be merged with X.com, an online banking firm founded by Elon Musk alongside Harris Fricker, Ed Ho, and Christopher Payne. The resulting company was named X.com, and Musk served as CEO for several months before being ousted by the board and replaced by Peter Thiel.

PayPal is now a widely-used online payment platform. In its most recent earnings report [PDF], PayPal announced 9% revenue growth year-on-year, with a total payment volume of $354.5 billion.

Isis - Softcard

This short-lived joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon sought to be a rival to Apple Pay in providing users with the ability to perform contactless payments.

By 2011, the company had lined up a number of smartphone manufacturers willing to adopt its system, including HTC, LG, and Samsung.

Formerly called ‘Isis’, the company rebranded to ‘Softcard’ in 2014 after its old name had unfortunately become identical to the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Google acquired Softcard in 2015, choosing to kill all of the company’s services and roll its intellectual property into its own digital wallet, Google Wallet.

McAfee Corp. - Intel Security

McAfee has had a colorful history of name changes. Founded by John McAfee under the name McAfee Associates in 1987, it fast became one of the most well-known names in cyber security. 

For a period in the 1990s and early 2000s, the company operated under the name Network Associates, before returning to its original name in 2004.

Intel acquired McAfee for $7.68 billion in 2010, and in 2014 the chip giant announced that it would drop the ‘McAfee’ name altogether, rebranding the company ‘Intel Security’.

This name lasted for two years before Intel sold its Intel Security assets to TPG in 2016. The private equity firm brought back the McAfee name, and the company resumed independent operations.

10gen - MongoDB

The open-source database program MongoDB started in 2007 under the name 10gen, under a closed-source model.

By 2013, the company had changed to an open-source approach and changed its name to MongoDB, with ‘mongo’ standing in for ‘humongous’ and ‘DB’ as short for database’.

Since its small beginnings, the firm has grown to become a competitive entity within the software market. In its Q4 2024 report, it announced a 29% year-on-year growth in revenue, with a total of $270.8 million in gross profit. 

Technology was starting to look easy. Too easy. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter. And Bing and Google flung out their spins on generative AI. And ransomware took down Royal Mail, a software fault grounded BA flights and the same happened across domestic US flights. 

In the era before Musk bought Twitter, I was bewildered that a site with active users in the hundreds of millions – rather than the billions of rivals such as Facebook or TikTok – had 7,500 staff and still managed to be so terrible at battling bots, fascism and spam. I take it back: none of this is easy. It probably needed double the number of employees. 

Musk learned this the hard way. After buying the site for $44 billion, he slashed staff numbers by nearly half and then tried to roll out features such as paid-for accounts. Trying to do more with less is a challenge, but Twitter turns out to be harder to run than anyone thought. Well, anyone other than software engineers, app developers, and Jack Dorsey. 

Cataloging recent tech debacles

There are plenty of other examples of tech stumbles of late. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been praised for its abilities and damned for its failures. Teaching AI to spit out text that’s readable and also accurate is hard – it has to be trained on our output, and (as I noted in this column last month) we’re not always well-written or factual ourselves. Some of those folks fired from Twitter were battling disinformation and misinformation, after all.

Wary of the impact of generative AI on search, Google and Microsoft both unveiled their own search chatbots. Embarrassingly, Google’s Bard launch was overshadowed by a mistake it made about space photography, which sparked a nosedive in shares for parent company Alphabet, wiping $100 billion off its market value. That’s an awfully expensive charge for a misunderstanding about exoplanets. 

Microsoft’s OpenAI-powered Bing had an even harder time of it, with so many hilarious mistakes coming from its search chatbot that a Reddit thread emerged to capture them. The best example is an argument with a user that begins with Bing not knowing a new Avatar film has been released – fair enough, to be honest – before definitely and confidently stating that the year is 2022 and then abusing the human user as difficult for failing to trust the machine. 

Gosh, it must be a tough slog developing such challenging AI projects: years of hard, cutting-edge work from the industry’s best and brightest, and your system still doesn’t know what year it is. Even Bing’s old-school search could answer that. 

All of this is a timely reminder that, although innovation seems fast-paced, it’s often built at a pedestrian pace. The problem isn’t the people developing these technologies – they are geniuses, as far as I’m concerned – but the CEOs and PR departments hyping unready creations so they can be perceived to be ahead of the pack. 

The software conundrum 

Software is hard. I don’t understand how the ones and zeros of binary make typing this article possible, let alone anything more complicated. It’s worth remembering all of this when companies promise big but then fail to deliver – and when you’re frustrated that you can’t send mail internationally because Royal Mail fell over after a cyber attack, or you can’t catch a flight because an app stalled. 

The same follows when governments promise tech solutions; they so often just assume software engineers can code away serious social problems. Can’t run exams because of COVID-19 lockdowns? An algorithm can make up final grades. Don’t know who to let out of overcrowded jails? Ask AI. Want to protect children from adult material online? Just get the techies to magic up a solution. But if MPs and CEOs can’t make or explain the solution themselves, they can hardly expect coders to build an answer that works. Code doesn’t simplify, it complicates. 

It’s easy to forget how hard software is to get right because so much of it works incredibly well. Microsoft is my reminder: I forget that Windows even exists until it breaks, crashes or needs updates. I might want to chuck my laptop out the window on occasion, but the rest of the time it works as well as any other appliance in my flat. I think about it as often as I do my toaster, and I forget how much effort has gone into making it possible to check messages, work from home, and speak to anyone in the world with ease. 

We’re so far into the information revolution that we forget how truly revolutionary it is. After all, decades down the line we’re only now starting to see working from home become the norm. Innovation is a long game. We’re in the early days, especially with AI but even with social media, apps, and the software we use daily. Laugh all you want at Twitter and generative AI slip-ups, and curse Microsoft all you’d like, but don’t let all the hard work of industry front-liners make it look too easy. Tech is still hard work.

Elon Musk has announced he will tender his resignation as Twitter CEO after a poll he posted concluded that the majority of users on the social media platform wanted him to step down.

Musk, who assumed the role of chief executive in October following a $44 billion acquisition, posted the poll on 18 December asking “should I step down as head of Twitter?”.

In the post, Musk added that he “will abide by the results of the poll” should users urge him to step aside from the lead role. The Twitter chief officially confirmed he would step down on Monday evening.

The poll drew more than 17 million votes from users on the platform airing their views on his decision, which resulted in 57% favouring his exit.

Days after the poll ended and following suspicions that Musk may not abide by its results, he confirmed today his intentions to resign and focus on running the software and servers teams at the social media firm.

He added that this is contingent on whether he can “find someone foolish enough to take the job”.

Exactly who will take over as CEO is yet to be revealed. But in a cryptic follow-up tweet on Sunday, he warned users “be careful what you wish, you might get it”.

In a reply to a user who claimed he “already has the new CEO picked out”, Musk added that “no one wants the job who can keep Twitter alive. There is no successor”.

This latest move follows a consistent pattern since Musk assumed control of the company earlier this year. The entrepreneur has conducted a number of controversial polls seeking user feedback on major decisions in a move to bolster democratisation on the platform.

A poll to re-instate former US President Donald Trump saw users vote for his return after a ban was imposed in the wake of the January 6th riot. The move fell flat, however, when Trump refused to return and stay on alternative social media site, Truth Social.

Behind the scenes influence?

Speculation over Musk’s decision to launch this poll has been rife on the platform over the last three days.

Leonidas Raisini, a self-proclaimed Tesla and Twitter angel investor, claimed to have “overheard” discussions between Musk and Qatari emir Tamim Bin Hamad during the World Cup final in Doha on Sunday.

In a series of tweets, Raisini suggested the decision to launch the poll was influenced by investor pressure on Musk to step down.

“Elon tweeted this [the poll] after he was told by his Saudi and Qatari investors to get his sh*t together. They are not happy with the way he is proving to be an amateur CEO and asked him to step down,” Raisini said in a follow-up tweet.

Following Musk’s takeover in October, Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal became Twitter’s second-largest shareholder after investing $1.89 billion to support the deal.

The Qatar Investment Authority, a subsidiary of the country’s sovereign wealth fund also contributed around $375 million in exchange for shares in the social media platform.

According to reports from CNBC Musk has been actively searching for a replacement CEO for some time. Sources told the publication that the chief executive had signalled his intention to find a replacement prior to the launch of the poll.

Musk has been vocal about his position at the social media company since the takeover, suggesting that his role would only be temporary.

Policy Changes

In the wake of the vote, Musk hinted that the social media firm could implement changes to how users interact with polls on the platform.

Musk suggested that the outcome might have been influence by bot-driven traffic, and confirmed in a tweet that moving forward only Twitter Blue subscribers would be able to participate in the polling feature.

Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the platform has been hit by a number of controversies, including a recent snap decision to ban a number of high-profile journalists amid claims of ‘doxxing’.

This disruptive period also saw thousands of staff laid off, an overhaul of the platform’s verification system and the scrapping of its Trust and Safety council.

Twitter is now under investigation by San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspections after it was revealed that offices in the company’s headquarters have been converted into bedrooms.

Employees who work out of the Twitter San Francisco office reportedly found on Monday that conference rooms throughout the office had been converted into rudimentary bedrooms, complete with double beds, wardrobes, and side tables.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Twitter does not have permission to use the headquarters for residential use, which the addition of bedrooms could constitute. The investigation is ongoing, and employees have already shared photos of the sleeping arrangements.

In response to news of the investigation, Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was “providing beds for tired employees”, and linked a news story of a child who died after allegedly coming into contact with fentanyl in a playground, criticising the priorities of the San Francisco local government.

Later, Musk replied with ‘crying laughing’ emojis to a tweet joking that Twitter has accomplished in building new housing where city officials have not.

"Beds in offices are not unusual, with law firms and financial institutions known to provide sleeping facilities for their staff," Kevin Poulter, employment partner at Freeths told IT Pro.

"What's important is the purpose of the beds and whether employees are expected to stay in the workplace to be 'on call' or if they are provided for a nap between meetings, or for those who might be jet-lagged after a long trip. Workers in the UK and across Europe are protected by the Working Time Directive, which places limits not only on the amount of time an employee can work each week, but also strict rules around breaks during the working day and between weekly periods of work.

"This is aside from any health and safety and real estate regulations which might apply. Making beds available to employees could also lead to unwanted sexual conduct, which might not otherwise be facilitated."

Some employees have registered their surprise with the change, even as they had become used to the longer than usual working hours and weekly code reviews that has become part and parcel of Musk's strategy for the company.

“It’s not a good look,” a source within the company told Forbes.

“It’s yet another unspoken sign of disrespect. There is no discussion. Just like, beds showed up.”

The introduction of basic sleeping quarters to the Twitter office appears to be linked to Musk’s former demand that Twitter employees must adjust to an “extremely hardcore” new office culture, with massive cuts to staff benefits like remote work, and accepting long hours in the office. Employees were given a deadline by which they had to agree to the changes, or leave their role.

Hundreds of employees refused the demands, and left the company as a result, leaving the future of the platform uncertain. This was one of a number of controversial changes to Twitter, both internal and on the platform itself, since he acquired it at the end of October. One of the first moves he made in the role of CEO was to fire many of the company’s remaining executives, and he then cut half of the company’s employees.

Following the layoffs, the company has been sued by a number of employees who allege that they were not given adequate notice of the decision.

Akiva Cohen, a lawyer representing a number of former employees, tweeted the full text of the demand letter he sent to Musk, which stated that the “one month of salary, no bonus, no accelerated vest, and no contribution to healthcare” offered to fired employees falls “far, far short” of what they were promised.

Additionally, Musk’s introduction of paid verification, intended to improve ‘free speech’ amongst users, instead gave rise to chaotic impersonations of famous individuals and companies alike.

Firms such as aerospace and arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin lost billions in market cap as a result of the fake accounts, and Twitter is now planning to introduce colour-coded verification badges for businesses, governments, and individual users.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the platform will give businesses a new type of verification to differentiate between types of organisations and individuals.

Verified businesses will receive a gold checkmark next to their profile name as opposed to the traditional blue checkmark that has been standard for all verified accounts since Twitter’s inception.

Blue checkmarks will remain for previously-verified individuals before Musk’s takeover, and also for Twitter Blue users - those who pay the Musk-introduced $8 subscription for paid verification.

He said government accounts will be designated a grey checkmark, similar to the grey ‘Official’ tag that the platform is currently trialling to differentiate accounts like genuine news organisations from paid-for Twitter Blue impersonations, for example.

He said the new approach will roll out next week on Friday 2 December and that “all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary”.

Responding to one Twitter user, Musk said that individuals with blue checkmarks can also choose to display a second, smaller logo that indicates they are part of an organisation, providing that organisation verifies their affiliation with it.

This means businesses and other organisations with a verified Twitter presence will also be able to offer their staff the chance to officially show they are part of the organisation.

The development could be especially useful for larger companies that need to ensure their staff aren’t impersonated - an issue that’s been rife on Twitter since Musk introduced paid verification.

A more detailed explanation of the changes is expected to be publicised when the new-look verification rolls out next week, Musk said.

Musk sought to overhaul the platform’s verification system as one of his first of many changes as CEO. The Tesla chief said that introducing paid verification would help limit the success and reach of ‘bot’ accounts, an issue which has led many users to be inundated with scam messages and exposed to misinformation.

Twitter Blue has been heavily criticised since its launch. One issue was that people thought account impersonations would become rife.

The prediction quickly turned to reality as many users impersonated Musk himself, as well as other organisations, posting unsavoury and PR-unfriendly tweets in an attempt to both defame the CEO and draw attention to the issues that 'verification-for-all' could present.

Other figures that were impersonated included senior politicians and former heads of state. The timing of the launch was further criticised for being so close to the midterm elections in the US.

Twitter systems are safe from collapse in the immediate future due to years of infrastructure planning, according to a senior engineer who left the platform in August.

Matthew Tejo, a former Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Twitter, explained in a blog post that much of his career at the firm was spent automating systems where possible, and disaster planning where it was not, and that the platform can continue to function providing there are no major changes to the systems in place.

The explanation of how Twitter's infrastructure was designed comes after members of the tech industry questioned whether Twitter would be able to run after new CEO Elon Musk fired large portions of engineering staff.

Tejo said that Twitter relies heavily on cache memory to handle traffic, keep response speeds low across the website, and massively reduce overall server costs.

These caches are then run on the Aurora framework, itself encompassed on the open source Apache Mesos project. While Aurora allocates applications to servers, Mesos aggregates servers, removing them in the case of breaks.

As Mesos is not capable of detecting all hardware issues, Twitter relies on manual monitoring from its IT department to check for problems such as bad disks. If one is found, repair workers in the data centre are automatically sent to rectify the problem.

The small number of Twitter’s remaining workforce - believed to be just 20% of its peak following the most recent round of resignations - could prove problematic, as the same amount of work now has to be completed by fewer engineers.

However, Tejo also revealed that at any given time, Twitter has two concurrently-running data centres capable of handling a total failure of the site, with each capable of running all the core services on the platform. This means that Twitter constantly has 200% capacity, for use in worst-case scenarios, and therefore is incredibly unlikely to die through a lack of server resources.

Twitter also uses custom tools to ensure that servers are safely distributed from the moment they are allocated: “Those tools make sure the team doesn’t have too many physical servers on a rack and that everything is distributed in a way that won’t cause problems if there are failures,” said Tejo.

Unknown problems with the infrastructure, or changes to it made in the wave of alterations brought in by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, could still destabilise the platform. Reflecting on the amount of effort that has gone into making Twitter at least partially self-sustaining, Tejo nevertheless acknowledged that he is “sure there are some bugs lurking somewhere”.

In the immediate aftermath of Musk taking over, Reuters reported that Musk was seeking to make $1 billion in infrastructure cuts in the coming months. The source reporters spoke to indicated that $1.5 to $3 million in server and cloud services costs had been identified as unnecessary, suggesting that the excessive safety redundancies which Tejo helped establish might not be maintained.

“I don’t want to be using systems or services that are hurriedly assembled under extreme duress, standards will slip, data will get lost,” Jeff Watkins, CPTO at xDesign told IT Pro.

“Worse still is that the likely outcome will be a great brain drain. As a result, the remaining team will likely not be the A-team.

“So the user data impact could be bad, but Twitter isn’t just used by the tweeting users via the website and mobile applications, it also has some interesting side-effect usage through its APIs, like detecting downtime in systems (from tweets mentioning the particular company). Destabilising what has become almost a social shadow-IT could have some unexpected consequences on a global scale.”

It remains unclear if Twitter's infrastructure will sustain the platform in the long term with fewer engineers working on it. Despite the excess server resources available, bugs are rampant in software and experienced engineers are required to address them to ensure the smooth running of services.

Twitter has undergone a period of rapid changes since Elon Musk completed his acquisition of the platform on 27 October. In the weeks since, a number of senior figures at the company left their roles, half its employees were fired overnight amidst chaotic scenes of workers being locked out of their emails, and a large number of remaining workers responded to Musk’s demands of harsher work conditions with a resignation ‘revolt’.

On Monday, The Verge reported that Musk made huge cuts to Twitter staff benefits, slashing company allowances for childcare, home internet, and wellness. The same report stated that staff will now have to provide higher ups with a full rundown of their completed work at the end of each week.

The latest memos sent to staff by Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk revealed that many employee benefits will be cut as the billionaire continues to cut costs across the company.

Allowances for child care, home internet, wellness, personal and professional development, and quarterly team activities have all been gutted.

Musk said the benefits may return when the company starts demonstrating a better financial situation.

The revelations come in the latest round of internal leaks made by employees who remain at the company, as seen by The Verge.

All Twitter staff will also be required to provide the CEO with weekly updates on their work. According to the memos, every Friday staff will be required to send a concise update on what they have been doing throughout the week.

Software engineers and other relevant technical departments will be required to provide examples of code where relevant. Staff in other departments will have to provide written summaries of their respective progress.

At the end of last week, Musk also reportedly required all software engineers to update him personally and provide screenshots of their ten “most salient lines of code”.

The latest overhauls at the platform come after Musk said he would be thrusting an “extremely hardcore” working culture on its remaining staff.

In his short time in charge at the company, the CEO has ordered swathes of layoffs and other policies have prompted remaining staff to resign en masse.

Hundreds of staff walked out on the company last week, rejecting Musk’s ‘Twitter 2.0’. The CEO set a 17 November deadline for staff to agree to his new vision for the company or be fired while receiving three months’ worth of severance pay.

In addition to the mandatory weekly reports and massive personnel cuts - around 50% (around 3,700 total) were fired earlier this month by email - Musk also promised longer working days at a higher intensity.

Next steps for paid verification

Elon Musk confirmed in a Tuesday tweet that one of his first acts as Twitter CEO, implementing $8 paid verification, would be put on hold due to rampant impersonations.

The paid verification feature, called Twitter Blue, was introduced at the start of November and was paused less than a week after its launch.

Numerous accounts impersonated high-profile figures, including Musk, and posted tweets that aimed to damage the genuine individual’s reputation.

Twitter Blue allowed anyone to pay a monthly fee for the platform’s heralded ‘blue tick’ - a symbol applied to an account, previously only available via Twitter’s in-house vetting process.

It meant any account could be ‘verified’ and organisations like news outlets would receive separate ‘official’ badges to demonstrate their legitimacy.

Musk introduced the feature to combat the rampant use of bots and other fake accounts on the platform used to spread misinformation and scams.

Twitter is facing threats to its continued survival, in the immediate aftermath of a fresh wave of employee resignations that came as the result of new "hardcore" demands placed on employees by Elon Musk, Twitter’s newfound owner and CEO.

Hundreds of employees, at the least, are understood to have called Musk’s bluff and refused to commit to the new conditions, resigning from the company in a united rejection of Musk's Twitter 2.0 vision, calling the existence of the platform into question.

Employees had been given a deadline of 5pm on Thursday 17 November to agree to demands alluded to in a company-wide communication. As reported by The Washington Post, Musk had laid out two choices: buy into ‘Twitter 2.0’, or receive three months of severance pay and begin looking for a new job.

The new conditions involved changing the company culture "to be extremely hardcore" and shifting to longer work hours at a higher intensity, Musk said.

A currently unknown number of the approximately 3,700 employees left at Twitter stayed on to an uncertain future.

In an email shared by the BBC, Twitter told employees that it is “temporarily closing our office buildings and all badge access will be suspended”. Offices are set to reopen on Monday, 21 November.

Zoë Schiffer, managing editor at Platformer, tweeted that insiders suggested the move to shut offices was prompted by fear of internal sabotage by exiting employees, which if true speaks to a rapid shift in company culture to one of fear and suspicion.

It’s not yet clear what company employees will return to then, but there is no guarantee that it will resemble the one they left on Thursday. Musk cannot now unring the bell of his heightened demands, which paint working at Twitter as a demanding and unstable environment unlikely to attract new tech talent to the same degree.

If Twitter survives the upheaval - and this isn’t a certainty - the company may no longer be able to promise an uninterrupted, stable, or consistently-moderated service. Alex Heath from The Verge claimed that employees who had worked in Twitter’s “command centre”, described as essential to Twitter’s everyday operations, have resigned, and if true, this illustrates the ideology of Musk's changes coming to a head with the reality of running a platform like Twitter.

If the former can't sustain the latter, the site won't so much change to reflect Musk's desires as combust under his watch, as critical systems no longer sustained by employees fail.

Reuters cited an inside source who said that the employee version of the Twitter app was experiencing a noticeable slowdown on Thursday evening, and that the public version would soon experience significant difficulties.

Downdetector, a website run by internet performance monitoring firm Ookla, tracked a large increase in Twitter reports coinciding with the end of the working day on 17 November. Incidents more than quadrupled, from fewer than 50 per hour throughout the day to a peak of almost 600 over the course of one hour in the late evening.

What rises up in Twitter's place, or remains amidst the ashes, remains to be seen. But under the new management, and the uncertainty that brings, companies, governments, and may wonder if, after all the changes, Twitter is still the same platform they signed up for.

Even if moderation on the platform isn't radically changed, and Musk has continued to stress that it will be, it's difficult to shake the feeling that the site is now populated by users anticipating the collapse of the servers or a possible move behind a paywall any minute.

“For the employees who are left behind, the workplace and working culture at Twitter will have already changed forever,” said Kevin Poulter, employment lawyer at Freeths to IT Pro.

“Fewer employees, greater demands and an increasingly regulatory framework will invite fear, failure and inevitable frustration. With the world personally and socially invested in the success of Twitter, this is difficult to watch.”

Musk batted away concerns in a tweet stating that “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried”. But, beneath the apparent indifference, actions taken by Twitter in the hours before the deadline speaks to an existential crisis occurring at the top levels of the firm.

Can Twitter sustain a ‘hardcore’ work culture?

Since Musk's 27 October takeover of Twitter, the controversial CEO has already made a number of questionable moves that have raised concerns about his ability to lead the company.

Musk's most-criticised steps include suggesting the company could go bankrupt, firing exactly half of all employees, and introducing paid verification which led to widespread imposters plaguing the platform. These caused reputational damage to the likes of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly which had billions wiped from its stock market value.

Such an uncertain environment is not likely to be met well by employees, and the changes brought about by ‘Twitter 2.0’ could even prompt legal action in some territories like the UK.

“Across Europe, employees are protected by the European Working Time Directive, which was adopted by European states, including the UK, in 1998 and entrenched in national law,” said Poulter.

“These regulations prevent employers from compelling employees to work long and excessive hours (with a standard maximum working week of 48 hours and a full day off each week), especially in high-intensity environments. Employees will be protected against suffering any detriment if they assert their legal rights to breaks and employers can face criminal prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive, with sanctions including fines and prison time.

“Aside from working time, the invitation to resign which employees appear to have been offered could result in a number of constructive unfair dismissal claims in the UK as employees feel forced to leave for fear of the agreed terms of their employment being breached.

“Indeed, being locked out of the workplace and prevented from working could be sufficient reason to believe your employment has been unilaterally terminated. Employees with over two years’ employment have unfair dismissal rights and protections against dismissal where there are no reasonable grounds for such action. Before resigning, employees are encouraged to seek professional legal advice and to consider the options available to them.”

Flexible working is another area in which changes are likely to prompt employee complaints. Two years ago, Twitter employees were told that they could now work from home indefinitely.

Last week, in leaked audio obtained by ABC News, Musk was heard telling employees “if you can show up at an office and you do not show up at the office: resignation accepted. End of story".

Twitter has sustained an exodus of senior company officials, amidst growing concerns about the direction of the company under the management of CEO Elon Musk, alongside questions around the company's financial viability.

Staff who have reportedly resigned include Twitter’s chief information security officer (CISO) Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer, Damien Kieran, chief compliance officer, Marianne Fogarty, and head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, prompting concerns about an absence of crucial safety leadership at the company.

In recent weeks, Roth has aimed to be a voice of calm, tweeting regular updates on the work Twitter has been doing to reduce hate speech and defending the widely-criticised introduction of paid verification, which comes as a feature of the $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription tier. His unexpected resignation, alongside many of his colleagues, speaks to the current volatility within Twitter.

Within the same 24 hours, Musk is understood to have been frank about the unstable financial situation of the company on an all-hands call with Twitter employees. Zoë Schiffer, managing editor at Platformer, tweeted that “Musk just told Twitter employees he’s not sure how much run rate the company has and ‘bankruptcy isn’t out of the question’”.

Just a week prior, Musk fired 50% of Twitter’s employees, later tweeting an explanation that “unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day [sic]”. At the same time, Reuters reported Musk had ordered employees to find $1 billion in Twitter infrastructure savings immediately, indicative of the company's urgent financial status.

Companies could also pull their advertising from the platform, as paid verification makes reputational damage by imposter accounts easier than ever. A number of high-profile company Twitter accounts have been convincingly-imitated since the change was made, including Apple TV, Nintendo and pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Company. Although some seek only to confuse users and satirise company comms, others are using their convincing fakery to promote cryptocurrencies, or push phishing links.

General Mills, Pfizer, and General Motors are understood to have paused advertising already, cutting into a key source of revenue for Twitter — advertising accounted for 91% of all the company's revenue in Q2 2022.

With key security officials now having left the company, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reported to be watching the resignations closely, and monitoring the continued adherence of the company to regulatory orders. In May, the FTC issued an order to Twitter, requiring the firm to pay a $150 million fine for using its users’ phone numbers and email addresses to serve targeted ads.

The order also required Twitter to implement an improved information security programme, and required the company to allow independent third-parties to carry out privacy and security assessments.

"We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern," Douglas Farrar, director of public affairs at the FTC, told Reuters.

"No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees. Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

Another high profile figure reported to have resigned was Robin Wheeler, VP Twitter client solutions, who is directly charged with ad sales and the company’s relationship with advertising customers. However, these reports were apparently premature, with Wheeler having tweeted “I’m still here,” indicating her continued presence at the company on the evening of 10 November.

It has been widely reported that Musk also sent employees an email on the morning of resignations, stating that employees would no longer be given the choice to work from home. In audio obtained by ABC News, Musk is heard saying: “If you can show up at an office and you do not show up at the office: resignation accepted. End of story."

Implementing this new policy would face significant challenges if applied in the UK, according to Kevin Poulter, employment partner at law firm Freeths.

“Employees may have previously varied their working practices, in writing or by custom and practice," Poulter told IT Pro. To change that unilaterally, with Musk as the only arbiter, will not sit well. It also undermines the right all employees with 26 weeks’ continuous employment have to request flexible working and for it to be granted unless there are limited reasons to refuse.

“It is doubtful that this approach will do anything to improve the prospects of a progressive and collegiate culture at Twitter, or stem the voluntary flow of resignations already announced by employees on the very platform from which they are departing.

“This was underlined by a warning, if not a threat, to employees that ‘bankruptcy is not out of the question’. It is important for employers to be open and transparent with staff, but it is only helpful when there is an already established relationship of community and trust. Leading on a threat is not likely to build confidence in the already significantly reduced workforce and may, in and of itself, be the reason Twitter falls.”

The news comes just a week after a wave of redundancies at Twitter, attributed to cost-saving measures. Employees had been notified the evening prior to the announcement they would find out the status of their employment by the next morning via email. But some such as company machine learning (ML) and algorithmic bias expert Rumman Chowdhury, became aware of their newfound redundancy beforehand as they lost access to their company email, or were remotely logged out of their Twitter Slack accounts or had business laptops remotely wiped.

Will Oremus from the Washington Post tweeted a copy of the notice, which was notably signed “Twitter”. In the hours following the redundancies, Musk faced criticism for failing to attach his name at the bottom, as has been the case with other recent cases such as Meta’s mass-firing of 11,000 employees.

Musk acquired Twitter on October 27, and quickly fired CEO Parag Agrawal and chief financial officer Ned Segal. In the weeks since this event, the social media platform has undergone a series of changes, such as the aforementioned introduction of paid verification, as well as the brief use of a secondary ‘official’ tag to separate known public figures from those who have paid for a blue tick.

Twitter has commenced a mass wave of layoffs that could see as many as 50% of the workforce fired, in the first major restructuring of the company since it was acquired by Elon Musk.

Twitter employees were notified on Thursday that by 09:00 PST on Friday 4 November, they would be made aware of the status of their employment via email.

Those remaining at the company would receive the notice sent to their Twitter email, while those fired would receive the notice to their personal email. Reportedly, the subject lines in both sets of emails are: 'Your Role at Twitter'.

At last count, Twitter had around 7,500 employees worldwide. It is expected that in all, the cut could see around 3,700 employees made redundant or just over 50% of the entire workforce.

“Team, in an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the email read, according to a Washington Post reporter who tweeted a copy.

“We recognise that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company's success moving forward.

“Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter.”

Twitter offices have been temporarily closed. Despite choosing to notify employees of their redundancy by email, a number of employees have tweeted that before they could even be formally notified, they lost access to their company account, or had access to the company Slack revoked.

Following the notice, Twitter employees had reportedly taken to the company Slack channels to post a string of blue hearts, representative of the company’s trademark blue colour scheme. However, some employees were being removed from Slack even as this was taking place.

Rumman Chowdhury, a director at Twitter’s machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability (META) team tasked with improving Twitter’s machine learning (ML) and reducing algorithmic bias, tweeted that her Google password had been changed without her knowledge early on Thursday evening.

In a similar situation, Simon Balmain, the now former senior community manager at Twitter, tweeted that he “got remotely logged out of [his] work laptop and removed from Slack”.

Employees are also understood to be struggling with control of their Twitter accounts following their firing. Alex Heath from The Verge noted that Twitter requires employees to link their work emails to their accounts for two-factor authentication (2FA), but with impending loss of access to their emails are scrambling to disconnect the two.

Entire teams are reported to have been fired at once, with one employee alleging that all members of a team currently working on a paywall bypass feature, which Musk has promised as part of his pitch for paid Twitter verification, have been fired.

Bloomberg reported that a class action lawsuit has already been filed against Twitter for its handling of the layoff, alleging that the company has breached a requirement for mass layoffs of this kind to be conducted with 60 days' notice.

Criticism of Musk’s methodology

Mass layoffs of this kind have drawn media scrutiny and social media attention in the past. In 2021 Vishal Garg, CEO at Better.com, went viral for a video in which he fired 900 employees over a Zoom call.

Debates around the convenience and cruelty of such a method were had in the fallout, with some concluding that email and video calls are arguably an effective way to notify large groups of people of any change.

However, a number of journalists and former employees are already criticising the methodology Twitter is using to notify its employees of their job status. Particular anger is being aimed at Musk for failing to attach his name to the company-wide email notifying employees of the decision, which is simply signed “Twitter”.

After acquiring the company for $44 billion at the end of October, Musk dissolved the board of directors and has subsequently assumed the role of sole director and CEO of the company.

In the week since, rumours have alleged Musk would downsize Twitter both for economic and ideological reasons, as the company’s strategic moves towards for-profit verification and to promote ‘free speech’.

Reuters reported that Musk has ordered Twitter teams to free up $1 billion in infrastructure costs, with a reported deadline of 7 November. This is the same deadline that was alleged for the introduction of paid verification, and cuts could be made to Twitter’s cloud costs.

The move comes amidst layoffs and hiring freezes by a number of tech giants. In October, Meta cancelled internships that it had already agreed to, in the name of cost-cutting, while cloud communications platform Twilio fired 11% of its workforce in September.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has ordered staff to slow hiring and be cautious around recruitment, as Google has urged its employees to improve productivity with ‘simplicity sprints’.

Twitter is reportedly switching to a paid model for verification, requiring users to pay $20 per month in order to retain their 'Blue Tick' status.

Internal Twitter sources and correspondence allegedly indicate that the company will increase the cost of its Twitter Blue premium subscription to $19.99 per month, as first reported by The Verge. Verification will then become conditional on subscription to this service, with existing verified users given a 90 day grace period in which to purchase a Twitter Blue plan, or lose their blue tick.

The same report claimed that developers within Twitter have been told that they will be fired unless the relevant changes are implemented in time for a 7 November launch.

Twitter verification was introduced in 2009, as a means of distinguishing real accounts of notable people and companies from imposters. Today, the feature is used to denote accounts including brands and companies, news sources, activists, celebrities, sports or entertainment personalities, and content creators. There is a long list of requirements in order to become verified, but accounts as a minimum must be “authentic, notable, and active”.

It's a favoured feature for many businesses, as it not only ensures consumers can tell real brands apart from fake accounts, but also allows firms to stand apart from competitors or be seen as more ‘trusted’ by virtue of the blue tick.

Verification has also been widely relied upon to curb disinformation on the website, which notably surges whenever national elections are held or during geopolitical events, such as the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Technology newsletter Platformer had claimed that verification would only be available to Twitter Blue subscribers on Sunday, citing individuals with knowledge of Twitter’s plans. However, this report indicated this would happen while Twitter Blue remained at its current price of $4.99 per month. The same day, Musk tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now”.

The claims come just days after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant for $44 billion, after months of negotiations sparked by his initial offer of $41.39 billion in April 2022. In July, Musk had attempted to pull out of the deal, asserting that Twitter had failed to provide accurate information on the number of spam accounts and bots on the website. The move prompted legal action from Twitter itself, which sought to hold Musk to his original offer, and led to a public and protracted period of negotiations culminating in Musk’s eventual commitment to buy the company.

On Thursday, 27 October Musk tweeted “the bird is freed”, indicating that the purchase had gone through. Shortly afterwards, several C-suite executives were fired by Musk, including CEO Parag Agrawal and chief financial officer (CFO) Ned Segal.

In addition to promises that his takeover of the company will lead to increased free speech across the platform, Musk also tweeted an open letter to companies who advertise on Twitter, in which he addressed their potential concerns over his goal of increased “dialogue” on the platform:

“I also very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you; it can show you a service or product or medical treatment that you never knew existed, but is right for you. For this to be true, it is essential to show Twitter users advertising that is as relevant as possible to their needs. Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!

“Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise. To everyone who has partnered with us, thank you. Let us build something extraordinary together.”

IT Pro has approached Twitter for comment.

Elon Musk has accused Twitter of keeping critical data security flaws under wraps, in a court filing as part of his continuing legal battle with the company.

Earlier this year, Musk launched a $44 billion bid to buy the social network and take it private. However, less than three months later, he attempted to withdraw his acquisition bid, citing concerns over bots, spam accounts and false users. The U-term has sparked a fierce legal battle, with Twitter’s board refuting Musk’s allegations and attempting to force the billionaire to abide by the terms of the merger agreement, which includes a $1 billion termination fee.

A five-day trial is scheduled to begin on October 17, with Musk seeking to avoid the purchase - the price for which Twitter is petitioning to be set at $54.20 per share - as well as the termination fee.

While Musk’s initial claims of inauthentic users have been roundly rejected by Twitter, the matter has been further complicated by new accusations from Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, former head of security for Twitter and longtime industry luminary.

Speaking at a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Mudge expanded on his previous claims that Twitter’s lax internal security and its policy of testing in production environments puts user data at risk of exploitation, as well as accusing the company of knowingly allowing foreign intelligence agents to operate within the organisation.

For its part, Twitter maintains Zatko was terminated due to poor performance and that his allegations are unsubstantiated, but the revelations have further increased the regulatory scrutiny that Twitter is under, and lend some credibility to Musk’s arguments.

His previously filed lawsuit has now been revised to include the whistleblower’s claims, particularly those that indicate meddling by China's Ministry of State Security. Musk also condemned Twitter for allegedly failing to comply with a 2011 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission pertaining to user data.

"Needless to say, the newest revelations make undeniably clear that the Musk Parties have the full right to walk away from the Merger Agreement - for numerous independently sufficient reasons," the Tesla CEO’s amended countersuit read.

3,207 apps have been identified as exposing the application program interface (API) keys of linked Twitter accounts, which can be used by threat actors to take control of accounts and use them for malicious purposes.

Digital risk monitoring platform CloudSEK identified the threat using BeVirgil, their security search engine for mobile apps, and set out the details in a report. Of the 3,207 apps, 230 apps were leaking all four authentication credentials necessary to fully take over accounts, which can be accessed simply by downloading and decompiling each app.

Researchers stated that with the leaked keys, threat actors could access Twitter accounts and perform a range of actions such as read direct messages, retweet and like other tweets, delete tweets, remove or add followers and access account settings.

CloudSEK also outlined a scenario in which threat actors could use a ‘bot army’ of seized accounts to perform attacks such as widespread disinformation campaigns, having verified accounts post malware or phishing links, inflate or deflate stock with spam posts, or promote cryptocurrency.

Aside from the immediate cost to companies of recovering accounts, the potential for reputational damage as a result of the vulnerability is sizeable.

Verified accounts in particular are prized by threat actors for their perceived trustworthiness, but after widespread tweets containing malware or phishing links, customers might struggle to trust a company’s Twitter again.

57 of the apps had premium or enterprise subscriptions for Twitter API, which cost between $149 and $,2499 per month. Researchers indicated that the apps affected ranged in size from small to very large 'unicorns'.

APIs are used to extend the functionality of an app to other developers, allowing them to embed the app in novel ways within their own program through the use of an interface.

Twitter uses OAuth tokens to link user accounts through the API without the need for the user’s password each time, and the standard is similarly used by Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

Researchers advised app developers to avoid directly embedding API keys in the code, and to observe several practices such as standardised review procedures, hiding keys in variables, and rotating keys regularly.

Advisories have been sent to the respective developers. However, Bleeping Computer reports that CloudSEK has not received acknowledgement from many of the apps exposing keys that changes have been implemented to fix the vulnerabilities. As a result, researchers have held off from publishing app names, to prevent spreading live vulnerability information.

"Whilst the "hack" itself is enabled by sloppy coding practices it highlights a very important point," commented Michael Tanaka, chief commercial officer at security firm MIRACL.

"The attacker can only abuse the privileges that the user has given to the app. Users should always review and question the purpose of any requested privileges, and if there is any doubt, deny them."

IT Pro has approached CloudSEK for comment.

This article has been updated to include comment from Michael Tanaka.

Twitter has seen its largest ever number of legal demands to remove content, as well as the most government legal demands targeting journalists and news organisations, the company has revealed.

In its 20th transparency report, Twitter released information for the period running from July 1 2021 to December 31 2021. Across the period, a record 47,572 legal demands were made regarding 198,931 accounts, comprising a mixture of court orders and other such formal demands by government entities and the lawyers of individuals for content to be taken down.

The largest ever measurement of such reports, it represents a 10% increase compared to the previous six-month period. This is reflective of both the increased user base of the platform and the greater role that Twitter is asked to play in disputes over disinformation and illegal content.

Twitter has credited the proactive removal of tweets that their in-house technology detects as abusive or spam, with keeping the platform clear of content that violates the terms of use even as the user base increases. The company revealed that 71% of tweets removed in this fashion were removed before they reached 100 impressions.

Also revealed in the report was that only 2.6% of Twitter users had put in place any kind of two-factor authentication (2FA) for their account, a low figure in the face of the threat to user passwords posed by phishing and hackers on any social media. Businesses with Twitter could face particularly severe consequences for lacklustre security, with threat actors already targeting Facebook business accounts.

The company's advocacy for greater transparency, bringing in labels for misinformation in the past few years among the aforementioned technology, has pulled the focus of governments and other public bodies, and could set a precedent for other social media giants. Just last month, TikTok announced a new API aimed at greater insight into their platform, and user demand for transparency around data use has already cost companies like Facebook billions of dollars.

Legislation such as the UK government's proposed Online Safety Bill would require platforms to provide far more moderation of the content on their platforms, compelling them to use or develop technology to detect and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) content and take it down. It would also require 'Category 1' companies to transparently identify 'legal but harmful content' on their platforms, such as cyberbullying or disinformation and prevent users from seeing it.

The efficacy of Twitter’s automated system in dealing with spam, bots and fake accounts has been the subject of scrutiny after Elon Musk cited his reservations about the system as his reason to pull out of his $44 billion acquisition of the company. In response, Twitter has sued Musk, and a trial date has now been scheduled for October 17.

The company also revealed that 349 accounts of journalists and news sources were subject to legal demands by governments, representing a 103% increase compared to the previous period.

On the whole, however, government information requests were down 7% in the period, with 11,460 total. Of this, the United States government accounted for 20% of global traffic, closely followed by Japan (24%) and India (11%). Despite the lower number of individual reports, the aggregate of accounts specified by government entities rose by 9%, indicating each government report concerned a larger range of accounts.

Due to US legislation, Twitter does not report on information requests related to national security processes. It is contesting this in court to provide greater transparency in further reports.

When faced with requests, Twitter can ‘narrow’ information, meaning that it selectively discloses some but not all information demanded in the request. It did this in response to 60% of global government information requests.

“This update comes at a time when government requests for account information and content removal continually hit new records, including demands to reveal the identity of anonymous account owners,” said the company in a blog post.

“This is why we continue to advocate for greater transparency from governments themselves about how these powers are used.”

Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $41.39 billion, just days after becoming the company's biggest shareholder.

The billionaire proposed yesterday to acquire all of the social media company’s outstanding common stock for the price of $54.20 a share, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

Musk said that this represents a 54% premium over the closing price of the common stock on 28 January, 2022, and a 38% premium over the closing price on 1 April, 2022, the day before his investment into Twitter was publicly announced.

If the transaction is completed, Twitter would be de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange and become a private company.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk stated in the filing. “However, since making my investment I now realise the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

Musk said this is his best and final offer, and if it isn’t accepted he would need to reconsider his position as a shareholder in the company.

“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” said the billionaire.

In a script from Musk added to the filing, it revealed that he believes the company needs to be private to go through the changes that he believes need to be made. After spending the past few days thinking this over, he decided to try acquire the company and take it private.

Musk refuses to play a back-and-forth game and claims to have moved straight to the end of the deal. “It’s a high price and your shareholders will love it,” he added.

If the deal doesn’t work, given that he doesn’t have confidence in management or believes he can drive the necessary change in the public market, he would have to reconsider his position as shareholder.

"The Twitter Board of Directors will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders," said a spokesperson from the company.

The Tesla CEO revealed on 4 April that he had acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter, which has caused one shareholder to sue the billionaire, according to The Guardian. Federal trade laws require investors to notify the SEC after surpassing a 5% stake in a company within 10 days.

However, Musk acquired his shares on 14 March but didn’t make this information public until 4 April. During that time, the lawsuit alleges he was able to buy additional shares at a deflated price.

The lawsuit seeks class action status on behalf of investors who sold their stock during the period and lost out on gains they would have made if Musk had disclosed his stake earlier.

Jack Dorsey has taken to social media to apologise for the role he has played in the centralisation of the internet, which he calls a ‘damaging’ development.

The former Twitter CEO took to the platform he founded to make the admission, saying the old days of the internet when communication platforms such as Usenet and IRC were the leaders in the space “were amazing”.

“Centralising discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realise I'm partially to blame and regret it,” he said, alluding to his work in creating the social media giant.

Twitter is one of the largest technology companies in the world with hundreds of millions of users and most recently a quarterly revenue of $1.57 billion.

It is also one of the most popular social networking sites and plays an important role in the professional world. Building a personal brand can help raise one’s profile in their respective industry and lead to opportunities thanks to increased networking value.

With access to millions of accounts and personal data, leaders in a centralised internet can harness that data to deliver tailored experiences to users, like recommending adverts that align with their interests or showing them content that would appeal to their passions.

People have become increasingly wary of the power large companies have on the internet and the personal data they safeguard, leading to growing calls for a more decentralised model.

The Onion Router (TOR) is an example of a decentralised internet product, operating on a peer-to-peer network - a decentralised model, though it is often painted in a negative light as it is perhaps most often used to access the dark web.

TOR works only when other users are online, each providing the same amount of computing resources to collectively prop up a network, removing the need for large servers.

Believers in a decentralised internet feel the security that it provides, plus the freedom from corporate and national governance, is a better way for the internet to operate. It would be free of censorship and allow users to own their data, though many think a hard definition for the concept is still under development.

Since founding, and recently leaving, Twitter, Dorsey has become a big proponent of blockchain technology and web3 - a future vision for the next generation of the internet which is largely decentralised - and the technologies that they support like cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Dorsey is CEO at Block, which is a company that ties several digital-payments businesses into one, including Square, CashApp, cryptocurrency company SprialBTC, and TBD - a decentralised finance system, as well as music platform Tidal.

Welcome to IT Pro's News in Review, a weekly bite-sized bulletin of the top tech stories of the week, for the week ending 3 December, 2021.

This week:

• Ikea launches "full-scale investigation" into email-based cyber attack
• Jack Dorsey resigns as Twitter CEO
• CMA orders Facebook to sell Giphy

You can find more videos like this in our video library and even more on our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think of this week's video – you can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey has resigned as CEO of Twitter. His replacement is Parag Agrawal, who joined Twitter in 2011 and has been CTO since October 2017.

In a resignation letter posted to Twitter, Dorsey said that he was leaving because he wanted the company to move beyond the influence of its founders.

"There's a lot of talk about the importance of a company being 'founder-led'," he said. "Ultimately I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure. I've worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders."

He pointed to a solid team as the reason for leaving now. His trust in Agrawal runs "bone deep", he said, also citing the appointment of Salesforce president and COO Bret Taylor to the role of Twitter chair as a factor. Taylor joined the Twitter board in 2016 at Dorsey's request.

Dorsey will also leave the Twitter board in or around May this year.

"I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it," Dorsey said. "There aren't many founders that choose their company over their own ego."

Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006 and left in 2008, founding payments company Square, of which he is still CEO. He returned to Twitter as executive chairman in 2011 and then took over as CEO in 2015. He took the company from revenues of $774.8m in fiscal 2015 to $3.72bn in fiscal 2020.

Along the way, Twitter faced congressional scrutiny over content moderation policies and misinformation. He also pushed an initiative to decentralize Twitter with an initiative called Bluesky.

Twitter has suffered some financial setbacks recently, missing Wall Street expectations with its Q3 results last month. The company, which sold its mobile ad unit last month, reported revenue of $1.28bn for the quarter but an $800 million lawsuit settlement in September pushed losses to $537 million. The lawsuit alleged that the company had misled investors on engagement numbers. Its stock has plunged from $66.11 on October 18 to $48.68.

The stock price ramped 10% early on Monday following reports of Dorsey's resignation.

Tesla stock plummeted in early trading on Monday after Twitter followers voted for its founder Elon Musk to sell 10% of his shares.

Musk, the world's richest man and largest owner of Tesla stock, asked Twitter whether he should sell the stock on Saturday.

"Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock," Musk said in a tweet on Saturday, adding that he would abide by his Twitter audience's decision. "Do you support this?"

In the poll, 57.9% of respondents supported the sale.

Tesla shares fell 5.9% in pre-hours trading from $1,221.79 to $1,148.96. However, they began picking up shortly after, rising 1.65% in the first 15 minutes of trading.

The poll appears to reference the billionaire income tax, a proposal included to help pay for a Democrat spending bill. It would target those who had over $100 million of income in the last three years in a row or retain over $3 billion in assets.

The tax would require those with tradable assets to pay taxes on investment gains. This would end a long-standard tax-deferral capability in which investors don't have to pay tax on their investment gains until they sell their shares.

The proposal’s author, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore), criticized the move in a tweet on Saturday.

"Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll. It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax," he said.

Musk responded with a crude tweet criticizing Wyden's appearance.

Musk has criticized the proposal in the past. On Oct 25 he responded to a tweet reproducing a letter template that US citizens opposed to the plan could send to their elected representatives.

"Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you," he tweeted.

This is not the first time Musk has generated controversy on Twitter. In September 2019 the SEC accused him of fraud over his Twitter claims of taking the company private. He later stepped down as chairman of the company.

On Saturday, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill with Republican support. The Democratic party's next goal is to pass its larger social spending package.

Twitter is selling its mobile advertising unit for $1.05 billion – three times the amount paid when it was acquired in 2013.

MoPub, which is currently used by 45,000 mobile apps for monetisation management, was bought by Twitter in 2013 for $350 million in stock. Eight years later, the monetisation solutions provider is being acquired once again, this time by AppLovin, following a unanimous approval by Twitter's board.

Founded in 2012, AppLovin is a mobile technology company which already owns mobile advertising, marketing, and analytics platforms MAX, AppDiscovery, and SparkLabs, as well as mobile games publishing and marketing business Lion Studios.

A pandemic success story, last year’s lockdown-induced video game boom saw AppLovin’s 2020 revenue skyrocket 46% to $1.45 billion. The company states that 49% of its revenue comes from businesses using its software and 51% from consumers making in-app purchases, according to CNBC.

MoPub will help AppLovin bolster its mobile advertising reach with an additional estimate of 1.5 billion addressable users worldwide. Its product features will be integrated into AppLovin’s own existing platform, according to the company.

The sale will also allow Twitter to invest in "the core products that position it for long-term growth," according to CEO Jack Dorsey, and build on existing plans of doubling its revenue in 2023 to $7.5 billion, which it announced earlier this year.

"The sale of MoPub positions us to concentrate more of our efforts on the massive potential for ads on our website and in our apps," added Twitter CFO Ned Segal.

The news comes six months after AppLovin became a public company, currently trading at $77 per share. Prior to that, the company acquired German app distribution and analytics company Adjust for $1 billion in cash and stock.

Twitter’s sale of MoPub is likely influenced by Apple’s decision to make it more difficult for digital advertisers to track users on iOS devices by allowing users to decide whether they consent to tracking. The move was heavily citicised by Facebook, which accused Apple of “trying to move the free internet into paid apps and services where they profit”.

The rapidly rising number of COVID-19 cases in the US is forcing social media giants like Twitter and LinkedIn to reverse course on previous decisions they’d made.

In the case of Twitter, the company is closing its San Francisco and New York offices, which it had reopened just two weeks ago. It’s also pumping the brakes on plans to reopen its other offices.

“After careful consideration of the CDC’s updated guidelines, and in light of current conditions, Twitter has made the decision to close our opened offices in New York and San Francisco as well as pause future office reopenings, effective immediately,” a spokesperson told ITPro.

In a major shift Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that vaccinated Americans resume wearing masks in indoor public spaces if they live in high-transmission communities or have vulnerable household members.

As for LinkedIn, the company is doing a 180 and will allow most of its 16,000 employees to work remotely, according to Reuters. They’ll have the flexibility to work remotely full-time or work at an office part-time.

With this new policy, LinkedIn is backing off its plans to have employees work from the office 50% of the time when COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are lifted.

“We anticipate that we’ll definitely see more remote employees than what we saw prior to the pandemic,” LinkedIn’s chief people officer Teuila Hanson told Reuters. Hanson adding that some jobs would require in-office work.

The tech sector was one of the first industries to send workers home when coronavirus first hit the US last year.

However, tech giants have had different reactions now that the delta variant is rising, causing another public health crisis.

For instance, LinkedIn doesn’t require employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to return to the office, but Facebook and Google are.

But LinkedIn’s openness to remote work contrasts other tech giants’ hard-line stances on returning to the office. Apple announced it would require most employees to work from the office three days per week, while Google expects 60% of its global workforce to return to the office at least part-time.

Apple has reportedly pushed back its return to the office by at least a month due to the spike in coronavirus variants. The deadline is reportedly now set for October at the earliest. Furthermore, Apple is reportedly going to give its employees at least a month’s warning before ordering them to return to the office.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and TikTok have committed to changing their moderation policies to protect women from abuse online.

The announcement, made at the UN Generation Equality Forum in Paris, was orchestrated by the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF) in response to rising concerns over harassment online. The social media giants have agreed to a set of commitments developed during WWWF workshops on tackling gender-based abuse online.

The commitments focus on two areas: content curation and online abuse reporting. On the curation side, the workshops found that women needed more control over what they see online and who could comment on their posts. They also highlighted the need for better systems to report abusive content.

Each commitment has four considerations. On the curation side, companies must offer more granular settings over who can see and reply to posts. They must also provide more accessible language throughout the user experience, easy navigation and access to safety tools, and actively reduce the amount of abuse women see online.

The reporting commitment requires companies to offer users the ability to manage and track their reports, increase their capacity to address context and language, provide more policy and product guidance when reporting abuse, and establish additional channels for help and support during the reporting process.

The WWWF said it would measure the companies' performance in these areas and report it annually.

The foundation cited an Economist Intelligence Unit report measuring online violence against women.

The report found that 85% of women reported witnessing online violence against other women, including outside their networks. It also found 38% had personally experienced online abuse.

The most common abuse was misinformation and defamation, as 67% of survey respondents experienced it. The least common types of abuse were violent threats, which an alarming 52% of survey respondents reported experiencing.

Other abuse tactics included publishing personal information, impersonation, sharing damaging information across multiple platforms, image- and video-based abuse, and stalking or hacking.

Some of the tech firms supporting the commitments have some work to do regarding the more equitable treatment of various groups online and offline.

TikTok has drawn criticism for allegedly telling moderators to suppress videos from users deemed not attractive or rich enough and from users with disabilities. Google, which already changed its harassment reporting policies following a mass employee walkout, drew flak late last year for allegedly dismissing AI ethics co-lead Timnit Gebru after she questioned the company’s treatment of women and people of color.

Last year, Plan International sent an open letter to social media platforms demanding action after its survey found that harassment across the most popular platforms is driving girls and young women offline.

Despite knowing that social media platforms contribute to poor mental health, an alarming percentage of Americans would not give up their Facebook or Twitter accounts, a new study found.

A survey of social media users by the Reboot Foundation found that 70% said they would not give up their accounts for less than $10,000. Another 40% said they would choose to keep their social media accounts over their cars, TVs, and even their pets.

The research also looked at social media users’ mental health by asking users if they thought their social media use intensified any of the following feelings or conditions: anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, loneliness, or low self-esteem.

Over 50% of respondents said social media at least "somewhat" intensified those feelings for each of these conditions. At least 20% of those surveyed said social media use led to “very” or “extremely” intense feelings.

Despite people knowing social media has a detrimental impact on mental health, only about a third said they take steps to limit their social media use.

When asked how much money they would need to permanently cut all their social media accounts, over 70% said it would take $10,000 or more — 20% percent said it would take at least $1 million.

Most survey respondents felt they could use social media without seriously harming their mental health, but they acknowledged its negative impacts.

"These survey results clearly show the deep and somewhat disturbing attachments users have to their social media accounts," said Helen Lee Bouygues, Reboot's founder and president. "Even though users recognize the deleterious effects social media has on their mental health, they're unwilling–or unable–to limit their use of these platforms. It's not unlike a smoker and their cigarettes."

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill to penalize social media platforms that censor political candidates.

The new law, which comes into effect July 1, bars internet companies from suspending politicians' accounts before elections and makes it easier for Florida users to sue them for censorship.

SB 7072 bans social media platforms from "deplatforming" a candidate between their qualification and the election date. If they violate the ban, the Florida Election Commission could fine the platform $250,000 per day.

The law also includes broader measures that prevent social media platforms from censoring any Florida-based users in ways that it deems unfair.

"Social media platforms that unfairly censor, shadow ban, deplatform, or apply post-prioritization algorithms to Florida candidates, Florida users, or Florida residents are not acting in good faith," the text of the bill said.

Shadow banning involves limiting the visibility of one user's material by other users. Social media platforms must allow users to opt out of post-prioritization and shadow banning algorithms when reading material, the bill says. It must also provide a way for a user to see how many other users a post reached. It requires social media platforms to publish the standards they use for censoring, deplatforming, and shadow banning.

The anti-censorship measure also forbids posting an addendum to any content posted by a user. This would prevent social media companies from flagging false claims with fact checks, as Twitter did when former-President Trump posted misinformation online and violated its rules on civic and election integrity.

The bill also authorizes social media platforms to provide free advertising for candidates. Other measures include rules that stop social media platforms from contracting with Florida government entities if they have been found guilty of anti-trust violations.

Announcing the law, DeSantis argued that Floridians, many of whom come from other countries such as Cuba, have faced censorship in the past. "If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable," he said.

Critics have already hit back against the bill. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said earlier this month that the bill was "mostly performative, as it almost certainly will be found unconstitutional." The EFF has worked with other internet nonprofits to create the Santa Clara Principles, a set of transparency and accountability principles that it encourages content moderation platforms to follow.

The Florida bill isn't the only one targeting social media companies. Texas has a similar bill that recently passed the state senate.

Calls for increased regulation of social media companies are also growing at the federal level. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued for them to be regulated like public utilities in April.

In a clear nod to Disney, a massive employer in the state and a large player in online content, the Florida bill included an exemption for companies that own theme parks.

Big tech leaders faced Congressional lawmakers Thursday in a hearing about misinformation on their sites. After heated discussions, lawmakers got few direct answers and were left unsatisfied.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Twitter's Jack Dorsey answered House representatives’ questions at the hearing, held by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. It was a testy session, which Committee chair Frank Pallone opened by arguing the three companies had done little to curb misinformation online.

The Committee members consistently asked for simple “yes or no” answers during the hearing in an apparent attempt to rein in answers from the CEOs and get more direct responses. They repeatedly challenged the tech executives when they tried to expand.

At one point, Rep. Billy Long asked them pointedly, "Just tell me if you know the difference between these two words: 'yes' and 'no,'" forcing each to answer. "This is a nuanced topic," Zuckerberg explained at one point before asking for space to expand.

Neither Zuckerberg nor PinPichaichai directly answered whether their platforms bore responsibility for the misinformation that helped to spark the riot. Dorsey answered "yes.”

The hearing also covered Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from liability for their users’ posts. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, cut off Zuckerberg halfway through his answer to her question about whether Section 230 should be considered when creating trade agreements.

"My primary goal would be to help update Section 230 to reflect the modern reality and what we've learned over 25 years. I do think that it plays a foundational role in the Internet," he said before Schakowsky stopped him and turned to the other CEOs.

Addressing Section 230 in a later answer, Zuckerberg said he was committed to reforming it. "230 broadly is important so I wouldn't repeal the whole thing," he said. Zuckerberg advocated for three changes to the law’s implementation. Firstly, he called for platforms to report how much harmful content they find. Second, he said platforms should be held accountable for their material. Finally, he warned that while these policies need to apply to large platforms, they should exclude smaller ones.

The hearing came one day after 12 state attorneys wrote to Dorsey and Zuckerberg urging them to do more to prevent misinformation over COVID-19 vaccination.

"The people and groups spreading falsehoods and misleading Americans about the safety of coronavirus vaccines are threatening the health of our communities, slowing progress in getting our residents protected from the virus, and undermining economic recovery in our states," Dorsey and Zuckerberg warned, adding that anti-vaxxer accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter reach over 59 million followers.

"Twitter and Facebook have yet to remove from all their platforms the accounts of prominent 'anti-vaxxers' who have repeatedly violated the companies’ terms of service," the letter added.

The CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter will appear before Congress today. Ahead of the hearing, the CEOs’ prepared remarks showed differing strategies for defending their companies and the laws designed to protect them.

The big tech CEOs have repeatedly testified before Congress over the past year amid lawmaker investigations into their competitive practices and content moderation policies.

Today’s hearing will be Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fourth appearance before Congress since July. It’ll be the third time for Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Google’s Sundar Pichai.

The tech CEOs will discuss Section 230, one of the tension points between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill.

Section 230 is a clause in the 1996 Communications Decency Act that offers media companies broad protection from lawsuits over user-generated comments on their websites. It paved the way for the rise of large platforms like Facebook and other social media sites that thrive on user content.

Here are selections from the CEOs’ prepared remarks:

Facebook: In his prepared testimony, Zuckerberg described the steps Facebook has taken to fight misinformation, particularly regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

He discussed Facebook’s efforts to remove hateful content from its platforms, including removing more than 250 white supremacist groups and nearly 900 militarized social movements.

Regarding Section 230, Zuckerberg plans to tell lawmakers they should consider only protecting companies that meet best practices to prevent the spread of unlawful content.

Twitter: In Dorsey’s prepared testimony, he outlined how Twitter plans to earn users’ trust of its users by promoting transparency. He said Twitter is working to make its procedures fair and to give users control over their privacy settings and the algorithms that influence what they see on Twitter.

Google: Like Zuckerberg, Pichai’s prepared testimony highlighted Google’s efforts to combat misinformation around the 2020 election and COVID-19.

Unlike Zuckerberg, he didn’t offer a proposal for reforming Section 230. Instead, he said he’s concerned that proposals to change or repeal the law will backfire.

“Section 230 is foundational to the open web: it allows platforms and websites, big and small, across the entire internet, to responsibly manage content to keep users safe and promote access to information and free expression,” Pichai said.

“Without Section 230, platforms would either over-filter content or not be able to filter content at all. In the fight against misinformation, Section 230 allows companies to take decisive action on harmful misinformation and keep up with bad actors who work hard to circumvent their policies.”

Tech workers think big tech is too powerful and that heavier regulations should be placed on artificial intelligence (AI).

Those are the main findings of a new Protocol survey. The company surveyed employees from large tech firms nationwide, and those surveyed ranged from IT associates to C-suite executives. Nearly 40% of the respondents worked at companies with more than 1,000 employees and over $500 million in annual revenue.

Protocol asked the workers about many burning issues facing the tech industry, and the findings were eye-opening.

Big tech is too powerful

Tech workers think Big Tech is too powerful. In fact, 78% of them said so, and just 11% disagree.

The survey found the same results for the quartet of Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple. More than 77% of tech workers said those companies have too much power, and only 8% disagreed.

However, none of that translates into remedies.

On the other hand, nearly 70% of workers wanted a big tech player to partner with or acquire their companies, and three-quarters said big tech companies should be allowed to acquire other firms.

Only 40% think Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple should be broken up.

Big tech shouldn’t work with law enforcement

After last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, tech giants, such as IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft, announced they were cutting ties or suspending work with police departments. They also halted police use of facial recognition technology.

Now, over 40% of tech employees think big tech should stop working with law enforcement altogether.

However, it’s worth noting that a sizable minority — just under 34% — disagrees with this notion.

Big tech should work more closely with Chinese tech companies

Of those surveyed, 60% said US-based big tech companies should work more closely with Chinese tech companies. Also, 56% agreed that US restrictions on Chinese tech companies had gone too far — 28% were neutral on this topic.

However, 46% of tech workers think the US should ban the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from doing business in the US

The government should regulate AI

Interestingly 73% of tech workers surveyed think the government should regulate AI. Only 9% disagreed, and 18% were neutral on the question.

Twitter has sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for launching an investigation into its content-moderation practices, arguing it violates the company’s First Amendment rights.

The company filed a complaint in Northern California's district court this week, arguing Paxton's investigation was retaliation for its decision to ban former-President Donald Trump's tweets in January.

"AG Paxton may not compel Twitter to publish such content over its objection, and he may not penalize Twitter for exercising its right to exclude such content from its platform," the company said.

Twitter had moderated Trump's content several times, first checking a Tweet about mail-in ballots in California in May 2020 and restricting his tweets repeatedly since.

The company locked Trump's account on January 6 as he encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol, resulting in riots and rioters and police officers’ deaths. At the time, the company requested the removal of three tweets for violating its civic integrity policy. It said if Trump failed to remove the tweets or Trump continued violating its rules, Twitter would make the lock permanent.

Twitter permanently banned Donald Trump's account on January 8, after he posted more tweets the company said violated its Glorification of Violence policy. Facebook also banned Trump posts, and YouTube blocked Trump from new uploads following the Capitol riots. Amazon also discontinued hosting services for conservative social network Parler, and Apple banned the service from its app store.

Paxton launched an investigation into Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google on January 13, five days after the Twitter ban. The Twitter investigation sought documents detailing the company's internal content-moderation process.

When announcing the investigations, Paxton called out "seemingly coordinated de-platforming" of Trump that silenced those with speech and political beliefs that don’t align with Big Tech companies.

Twitter argued that disclosing its content-moderation processes would harm its editorial discretion.

"These moderation policies and procedures are functionally equivalent to the internal editorial decision-making processes of news organizations: just as newspapers and magazines carefully guard their internal deliberations about what news they see as fit to print or what op-eds they will publish, so too does Twitter guard its internal deliberations and procedures for making editorial judgments," Twitter said.

The social media giant added that Paxton's investigation had a chilling effect on its ability to make those decisions.

The company said it attempted to work with Paxton's office to narrow the investigation’s scope, pointing out the request covered documents outside the Trump decision, including policies on posts involving suicide and self-harm. The investigation also explicitly called for information on internal discussions about Parler, even though Twitter has never censored any of Parler's content on its platform.

The lawsuit calls for a restraining order against Paxton's office to stop it from taking the investigation further.

This is not the first investigation to scrutinize content-moderation policies at Twitter and other large tech companies. In December, the FTC launched a wide-ranging investigation calling for information on internal moderation processes at companies including Twitter.

The internet has been one of the most revolutionary technologies of our age, and most agree that the transformation it’s brought to our society has been beneficial. Social media – one of the more recent arrivals on the scene – has also generally been a good thing, allowing us to connect with friends and family across the world, find people who have similar interests to us, and rapidly share jokes, memes and information.

This latter element, however, has slowly turned from a benefit into a problem. Disinformation and what might be termed “fake news” is seeping in everywhere, making it difficult to know what and who to believe.

In this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we speak to Andy Patel, a researcher with cyber security firm F-Secure, about what disinformation is, how it spreads and the negative effects it could have on businesses.

Footnotes

• QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?
• FBI warns of hackers spoofing its domain
• Dems ask Facebook, Google and Twitter for coronavirus disinformation reports
• WhatsApp restricts message forwarding to curb spread of 5G myths
• What is phishing?
• IT Pro Live: Fighting terrorism with technology
• Fake news 'is killing our minds', says Tim Cook
• Trend Micro's free web-based tool takes on hackers and fake news
• WhatsApp counters fake viral messages with new fact-check tool
• Satirical websites target Mark Zuckerberg with fake news
• Trump confirms US cyber attack on Russia election trolls
• What is hacktivism?
• The IT Pro Podcast: What COVID-19 can teach us about open data
• Biden team signals president-elect may target Section 230 and data privacy
• Dems ask Facebook, Google and Twitter for coronavirus disinformation reports
• Google turns its hand to fighting election abuse
• Facebook facing scrutiny amid claims it encourages spread of misinformation
• The IT Pro Podcast: The truth about 5G

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Twitter’s platform lead Nick Tornow tweeted out the news that the social media company has hired Rinki Sethi to be its new chief information security officer (CISO).

Tornow’s tweet read, “Today, I’m thrilled to welcome @rinkisethi as the new CISO of @twitter. An inspiring and experienced leader, Rinki comes to us via Rubrik, IBM, and Palo Alto Networks. At Twitter, she will lead our growing InfoSec team, protecting our customers and our company to earn trust.”

In mid-July, a 17-year-old Florida boy hacked Twitter and hijacked a number of high-profile accounts, including Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Bill Gates. He then used those accounts to post a Bitcoin scam. The hack exposed some serious issues in Twitter’s security, prompting the company to announce it would ramp up security on high-profile accounts.

Mike Convertino, Twitter’s former security chief, left the company in December 2019, and the role has remained vacant since.

As CISO, Sethi will lead the company’s information security policies and practices. As Tornow stated, Sethi has worked with Rubrik, IBM and Palo Alto Networks. She also helps out as an advisor for many startup companies, including Authomize and LevelOps.

Twitter has committed to open-sourcing its image-cropping machine learning algorithm after users identified potential racial bias.

The social media platform has confirmed it has “more analysis to do” on the algorithm that determines which elements of an image are shown when previewed after users posted examples of potential racial bias in the tool’s application.

Cryptography and infrastructure engineer, Tony Arcieri, conducted an experiment on the platform to highlight how Twitter’s automated image-cropping for previews might prefer white faces over black faces.

In the experiment, Arcieri used various combinations of a picture showing the faces of former US president Barack Obama and senator Mitch McConnell. Seemingly, regardless of positioning, or other potentially interfering factors such as the colour of the individuals’ tie, the algorithm preferred to show the face of Mitch McConnell in the cropped preview.

Twitter spokesperson Liz Kelley claimed, in response to the experiment, that the company’s own testing prior to the model being shipped found no evidence racial or gender bais present, though admitted further analysis was needed.

Kelley added that the firm will open source its machine learning algorithm “so others can review and replicate” the results of Arcieri’s experiment and get to the bottom of the issue.

Concerns about bias in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and especially machine learning, which can often be seen as a black box, are rife, with many arguing that technology companies haven’t prioritised eradicating discrimination in their systems.

The escalation of Black Lives Matter protests earlier in the year forced a number of tech companies into reflecting on the potential intrinsic bias present in many of their systems, especially facial recognition technologies.

A wave of organisations, including IBM and Amazon, rushed to either suspend or discontinue facial recognition systems and their use in law enforcement as a result of the movement, for instance.

The number of newly-launched AI-powered systems to have shown racial bias shows that tech companies, on the whole, have much more work to do in stamping this out. Microsoft’s AI news editor on MSN, for example, was shown to have wrongly identified a member of Little Mix in a story about band member Jade Thirlwall’s personal reflections on racism.

Twitter has announced that it will help secure high-profile accounts ahead of the US presidential election.

According to the announcement, Twitter will require or strongly recommend security updates for certain high-profile accounts that could influence the November 3 election. The hope is to protect them from potential election-influencing hacks.

Twitter plans to inform these accounts of the suggested and required changes via an in-app notification (pictured above). The accounts Twitter plans to target include:

• The US Executive Branch and Congress
• US Governors and Secretaries of State
• Presidential campaigns, political parties and candidates with Twitter Election Labels who are running for US House, US Senate, or Governor
• Major US news outlets and political journalists

Some of the security updates will include:

• Requiring a strong password — those with weak passwords will have to update it on the next login
• Users must verify their email address or phone number to reset their passwords
• Strong recommendations to activate two-factor authentication

Twitter will also implement additional internal security measures, starting with more advanced suspicious activity detection and alerts. It’ll also add additional login defenses and expedited account-recovery support.

This isn’t the first security measure social media companies have taken leading into the 2020 election. Facebook and Instagram launched their Voting Information Center in August, and Twitter released strict election misinformation rules around the same time. In January, Facebook banned deepfakes and manipulated videos.

Then, in September, Facebook announced it would stop approving political ads a week before the election. Finally, later in September, Twitter announced it would remove or label tweets intended to undermine public confidence in civic processes.

These law changes come on the heels of social media manipulation allegedly playing a role in the 2016 presidential election and the increased use of social media in politics.

Twitter announced it’s expanding its civic integrity policy and will remove or label tweets containing false information intended to undermine public confidence in civic processes, including the 2020 US election.

According to a blog post announcing the expanded policy, this will include:

• Tweets containing false or misleading information meant to confuse election laws or the officials executing them
• Tweets with disputed claims or unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying or election results certification
• Tweets containing misleading claims about election results, including victory claims before the results have been verified or tweets encouraging unlawful tactics to prevent a peaceful transfer of power

Tweets labeled under the policy will also have reduced visibility across Twitter, though anyone following the account in question will still see and be able to retweet the labeled tweet.

“In recognition of the changing circumstances of how people will vote in 2020, and in line with our commitment to protecting the integrity of the election conversation, we’re expanding this existing framework,” explained Twitter.

Twitter added, “The goal is to further protect against content that could suppress the vote and help stop the spread of harmful misinformation that could compromise the integrity of an election or other civic process.”

Twitter will begin applying the policy next week and emphasized it will be “applied equally and judiciously for everyone.” President Donald Trump has already used social media to sow doubts about the election, and Twitter has already labeled several of his tweets as containing false or misleading information.

Facebook made similar changes to its platform last week, as It won’t approve any new political ads during the week leading up to the presidential election. Facebook will also link any candidate’s post declaring an early victory to vote counts from Reuters and the National Election Pool.

Twitter flagged a manipulated clip posted by Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) that modifies a question activist Ady Barkan asked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The tweet has since been deleted from Scalise’s Twitter feed.

The tweet in question spliced quotes together from Barkan, who speaks using computer voice assistance, making it sound as if Biden had expressed support to defund police departments.

In the original interaction, Barkan said to Biden, “We can reduce the responsibilities assigned to police and redirect some of the funding into social services, mental health counseling, and affordable housing.” Barkan followed that up by asking Biden, “Are you open to that kind of reform?”

Democratic presidential nominee replied by stating he suggested that type of reform before and clarified that isn’t the same as defunding the police.

Barkan, looking for a more direct answer, asked, “But do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?” Biden responded with, “Yes, absolutely.”

Scalise’s video shortened Barkan’s question and spliced words between “funding” and Biden’s “absolutely.” In Scalise’s video, Barkan asks, “Do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding for police?” Biden responds with a definitive “Yes, absolutely,” which may lead some to believe Biden supports defunding the police.

Barkan responded to Scalise’s post, tweeting, "I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also criticized the video and urged Scalise to “take his doctored video down and apologize immediately.”

Scalise spokeswoman Lauren Fine told The Washington Post the video had been “condensed… to the essence of what he was asking, as is common practice for clips run on TV and social media, no matter the speaker.” Scalise reiterated this stance on Monday.

“Look, it shouldn’t have been edited,” Scalise told Fox News.

“But at the same time, the comments were always about — in fact, twice in that interview, he asked Joe Biden if he was for redirecting money away from police. And in both times, Joe Biden said yes,” Scalise added.

Biden spokesman Andrew Bates called the Scalise video a “deep fake” in a statement on Sunday. Bates added, “To doctor the words of an extraordinarily courageous and selfless American with a disability who speaks with the assistance of eye gaze technology, and who shows more strength, resolve, and care for others in every millisecond than Donald Trump has in his entire life is both morally abhorrent and a sign of utter panic.”

Over the weekend, Twitter and President Donald Trump were at it again, as the social media company flagged one of Trump’s tweets as violating “Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity.”

In the tweet, the President continued bemoaning Democrats’ support of mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic and the voting fraud he claims it’ll create. Twitter allowed the tweet to remain but placed a warning above it that reads, “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

In the tweet, Trump wrote, “So now the Democrats are using Mail Drop Boxes, which are a voter security disaster. Among other things, they make it possible for a person to vote multiple times. Also, who controls them, are they placed in Republican or Democrat areas? They are not Covid sanitized. A big fraud!”

This is not the first scuffle between social media companies and the commander-in-chief. Just a few weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter removed posts by Trump that claimed children were “almost immune” from COVID-19. Twitter also dinged Trump twice in June for copyright infringement and “manipulated media.” And back in May, Twitter restricted a Trump tweet for “glorifying violence.”

President Trump struck back in May with an executive order aimed at overturning Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996. The executive order has yet to create problems for social media companies, and some experts say it would meet severe legal challenges if he tried to enforce it.

Twitter will start labeling government and state-affiliated media accounts moving forward, much like it does with “Verified” accounts.

These labels will help users know they are looking at an official Twitter page and not a spoof. So, when you tag a government official or office, you know you’re getting the right account. The labels will also identify known state-affiliated media, giving you a better idea of what may be legit news and what may be propaganda.

Twitter will focus on a wide range of government-affiliated accounts, including:

• Foreign ministers
• Institutional entities
• Ambassadors
• Official spokespeople
• Key diplomatic leaders
• State-affiliated media entities, and their editors-in-chief and their senior staff

Twitter will display the tag directly under the organization or account name. In the previews Twitter revealed, the tags look pretty simple. If you’re looking at a Russian state-affiliated media page, the tag will read “Russian state-affiliated media,” while a government office in the US will have a “US government office” tag.

Twitter didn’t mention whether the tags for individual officials will list their title or just that it’s a government office.

Initially, Twitter won’t hit every official in all countries. It’ll start with the key officials in China, France, Russia, the UK and the US. Once it gets a firm grasp on these countries, it plans to expand its tagging to other areas and officials.

Twitter was also careful to define what it considers state-affiliated. According to the social media giant, “state-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

Twitter also announced it’ll no longer amplify or recommend state-affiliated media accounts or tweets.

This week, the tech world was rocked by a hack that saw multiple prominent Twitter accounts hijacked and used to spread a coordinated message. Accounts belonging to the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and even Barack Obama were taken over, and the impact was so severe that Twitter was forced to ban all verified users (me included) from tweeting until they sorted everything out.

While I’m sure that being unable to tweet would be classed as cruel and unusual punishment by some of my fellow journalists, it’s no surprise that Twitter clamped down as hard as it did: This constitutes a major breach and has come at a time when Twitter is a more powerful communications tool than possibly anything else on the planet. The platform has been used to announce global foreign policy, crash stock prices and even fuel revolutions.

So what did the attackers do with near-unfettered access to the virtual mouthpieces of the world’s most influential people? They tried to flog a Bitcoin scam.

The sheer lack of creativity is almost mind-boggling; here is a group that found itself with the power to rewrite economies or start wars at a stroke, and used it to try and fleece people for cryptocurrency.

What’s worse is it wasn’t even a good scam. If you’ve spent any length of time on Twitter, you’ll almost certainly have seen similar efforts floating around, often from dummy accounts made to look like those of celebrities. The fact that this one came from genuine accounts evidently lent it enough credibility to trick users out of more than $120,000 in bitcoin, but it was hardly sophisticated.

The possibilities of such an opportunity are almost limitless; leaving aside the potential for political manipulation (say, by endorsing a particular viewpoint or political candidate), a coordinated ‘pump and dump’ scheme would have been child’s play to execute, and would have made the perpetrators a hell of a lot more money than $120,000. All they would have needed to do is invest in a cheap stock, tweet out endorsements of said stock from accounts like Jeff Bezos, Kanye West and Joe Biden, and then cash out once the stock inevitably skyrocketed.

Even if they did want to rely on untraceable cryptocurrencies as their payment method, their offer to double any cryptocurrency sent to the target address was transparently bogus, whereas framing it as a promise to double any crypto-based donations to the COVID-19 relief effort, for example, would have been much more plausible coming from high-profile political and business leaders.

Of course, as we discussed on this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, the crypto scam may have merely been a smokescreen, and the DM records of victims may well have yielded a veritable treasure trove of information that could be used to compromise other accounts or to carry out blackmail in the future.

The most interesting omission was that of the Tweeter-In-Chief, US president Donald Trump. He would have been a goldmine for this type of scam, but was omitted from the list of victims. The logical explanation is that Twitter has ring-fenced his account, with only a handful of employees permitted to access or modify it – a rule that was presumably enacted after a departing employee deactivated Trump’s account in 2017.

Amidst all this, I’m reminded of simpler times, when hackers would use their skills not simply to siphon money from the gullible but to advance genuinely-held ideals, or even simply to amuse themselves with mischief. The advent of cyber crime as a legitimate large-scale revenue stream may have put paid to the days of hackers as harmless tricksters, but at the very least, it would be nice to feel like they’re at least putting some effort in.

Indeed, reports on this latest incident indicate that the perpetrators may simply have paid off a Twitter employee to give them access to internal tools, and between that and the growing trend of ransomware as a service, it seems that even cyber thieves are now outsourcing their work. Hackers may be criminals, but if they’re going to steal from us, is it too much to ask that they at least take a little pride in their work?

Twitter’s on fire right now, as major verified accounts are being hacked in a massive Bitcoin scam, but that can’t stop the social media giant from releasing new updates. Twitter just announced that it’ll soon make accessing direct messages on the web more streamlined by putting a direct messaging tool right on your home timeline.

Like Facebook’s messaging system, Twitter’s DM tool will live on the lower-right corner of your screen and will blink when you get a message. You can then open it, reply and minimize it without leaving your timeline.

There is no mention as to when this new feature will be available to everyone, but I verified that it’s not available on my personal Twitter page or on the ITPro Twitter page. Some replies to Twitter’s announcement show screenshots of the new DM system, indicating this may be a slow rollout.

While some users will find this feature useful, particularly those who do a lot of DMing, Twitter has gotten some flak from its users over this update. The common thread among users is they’ve been asking for an editing function for ages, but Twitter keeps stonewalling them and addressing less widespread needs.

Other users have complained that once the DM tab appears on the page, there’s no way to delete it.

Fueling the disgruntled Twitter users’ flame is the fact this update comes amid one of the social media platform’s biggest hacks.

Democrat members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have formally requested Twitter, Facebook and Google deliver monthly reports on coronavirus disinformation on their respective platforms, according to The Hill.

It also requested a briefing on how each platform is managing this disinformation.

The group of Democratic representatives, which includes Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and subcommittee leaders Representatives Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), requested the companies deliver their respective briefings by July 22.

The group believes it’s necessary to educate those who may use the fake information to make key health decisions, like whether to wear a mask or not.

This request comes on the heels of the European Union’s similar request to the same three tech companies in June. The companies agreed to provide this data and insight into how they’re fighting fake COVID-19 news and information, according to The Verge.

In the request, the committee members wrote: “Given the Committee’s jurisdiction over consumer protection and its ongoing oversight efforts around COVID-19 disinformation, we request that your company provide the Committee with monthly reports similar in scope to what you are providing the European Commission regarding your COVID-19 disinformation efforts as they relate to United States users of your platform.”

None of the three companies have officially or unofficially responded to the request, but we expect them to comply.

Twitter is reportedly working on a new subscription platform. The tech giant has posted two online job postings hinting at the new platform. “This is a first for Twitter!,” the company stated in one of the job postings.

On its career portal, Twitter lists a senior full-stack software engineer position that talks up the new subscription platform. Per the posting, the platform is meant to be “reused by other teams in the future.” While the job description offered few specifics on the subscription platform, the person who lands the gig will join the new Gryphon web engineering team and work closely with Twitter.com and the company’s Payments team.

Twitter also posted an ad on LinkedIn seeking a backend Scala software engineer based in Great Britain or Scotland. The hire will work for Gryphon and, according to the job posting, will “be collaborating to rebuild some of Twitter’s services to produce a subscription management platform.”

A person familiar with Twitter’s plans told The Wall Street Journal the company is exploring numerous revenue-generating initiatives. At this time, though, the social media company has made no product decisions.

While Twitter isn’t ready to confirm a new subscription platform, the job postings have led to discussions about what Twitter may have in store for its users. There’s plenty of speculation that Twitter may develop an ad-free, highly customizable premium version of its social media network.

The news of Twitter launching a premium subscription service also comes just months after Elliot Management sought to oust Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey. Elliot Management ultimately backed off, but Dorsey has been under pressure to increase share prices.

Following reports of the job postings, Twitter shares climbed more than 7%.

Twitter hit back at President Donald Trump yesterday by hiding one of his tweets behind a warning label.

Twitter affixed a public interest notice on the tweet for violating its policies against abusive behavior. This isn’t the first time the social media platform has hidden one of the president’s tweets behind a warning label.

The president’s offending tweet followed a clash between protesters and law enforcement near the White House on Monday night. The tweet reads: “There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington DC, as long as I’m your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!”

Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump Campaign, responded to Twitter’s actions with his own tweet. In it, Murtaugh questioned Twitter’s bias against President Trump.

President Trump’s tweet refers to an autonomous zone created by Seattle protesters amid national protests against police brutality and the prevalence of racially charged violence in the US. The president has repeatedly chastised Seattle officials for allowing protesters to create the police-free zone and has continually expressed his distaste for those in support of it.

Over the last month, Twitter has spent a lot of time handling President Trump’s controversial tweets. Last week, Twitter appended a warning label to one of President Trump’s tweets after determining it violated its policies on manipulated media. The tweet featured a manipulated version of a viral video showing two toddlers hugging.

Twitter has also fact-checked and restricted a number of President Trumps’ other tweets, including those related to the death of George Floyd, mail-in voter fraud and tweets Twitter claimed glorified violence.

While President Donald Trump’s social media posts are infamous for disseminating his latest thoughts, policy musings and catchy nicknames, some social platforms have labeled several of his latest posts as spreading misinformation and glorifying violence.

The saga of his controversial posts continued this week when, just yesterday, Twitter added a warning label to one of President Trump’s tweets after determining it violated its policies on manipulated media.

On the same day, Facebook removed 88 ads posted by the president, his campaign and Vice President Mike Pence. Facebook says the ads were “violating our policy against organized hate.”

On Thursday, President Trump tweeted a doctored version of a viral video showing two toddlers, one black and one white, hugging. In President Trump’s version of the video, ominous music plays while a fake CNN headline reads: “Terrified toddler runs from racist baby.” The headline later asserts, “Racist baby probably a Trump voter.”

The video then cuts to the original clip of the toddlers hugging and cuts to a black screen that reads, “America is not the problem. Fake news is.” At the time of Twitter’s labeling, the video had received 3.8 million views and more than 75,000 retweets.

Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough told The Washington Post: “This tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context.”

President Trump is no stranger to posting manipulated videos on his social media accounts. In the past, the president shared doctored videos of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has flagged a tweet from the president, as it previously labeled two of Trump’s tweets as promoting false claims of mail-in voting fraud.

The social media giant also restricted a tweet from President Trump, explaining it broke Twitter’s rules related to the “glorification of violence.” The company later disabled a tweet from the president featuring a video tribute to George Floyd. Twitter removed the video citing copyright complaints.

Facebook also pushed back against President Trump’s social media posts this week by removing 88 ads posted by the accounts of the president, his campaign and Vice President Mike Pence. According to Facebook, the ads violated the company’s policy against organized hate. The identical ads featured an upside-down red triangle, a symbol used by the Nazi party to identify political dissidents housed in concentration camps during World War II.

A Facebook spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement to NBC News: "Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”

A Twitter account for the Trump campaign claimed the image was “widely used by Antifa.” In an emailed statement, Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, added, “Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which looks exactly the same, so it’s curious that they would target only this ad."

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, encouraged the Trump campaign to take more caution when it comes to the symbols it uses.

"Whether aware of the history or meaning, for the Trump campaign to use a symbol – one which is practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps -- to attack his opponents is offensive and deeply troubling," Greenblatt remarked in an email.

Twitter disclosed 32,242 accounts in its unique archive of state-linked information operations.

The permanently removed account sets and related content include operations linked to the People's Republic of China (PRC), Russia and Turkey. Twitter suspended the accounts for violations of its platform manipulation policies. It also shared key data from the disclosure with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO).

People’s Republic of China (PRC)

Twitter first identified PRC’s activity in August 2019, and technical links in the new network remain consistent with this activity. The proactive removal of these accounts relates to its technical efforts following the study and investigation of the PRC’s past coordinated information operations.

The current PRC disclosure involves two sets of interconnected accounts:

1. 23,750 accounts from the network’s highly-engaged core, which did not gain traction on Twitter, and have low follower accounts and low engagement
2. About 150,000 amplifier accounts, which have little to no follower accounts and artificially inflate impression metrics by engaging with core accounts; these accounts were not included in the public archive

Accounts in this network engaged in manipulative and coordinated activities, tweeting mostly in Chinese to promote geopolitical narratives about the Communist Party of China and to publish falsehoods about Hong Kong politics.

Russia

Twitter investigated accounts tied to Current Policy, a media website that engages in Russian state-supported political propaganda. It suspended and disclosed 1,152 accounts and associated media for violating Twitter’s platform manipulation policy by cross-posting and amplifying politically motivated content in an inauthentic, coordinated way.

Turkey

Twitter detected this network of accounts in early 2020, which used coordinated inauthentic activity to target mostly domestic audiences. Analysis of the network’s technical indicators and account behaviors determined that 7,340 accounts were being used to promote the AK Parti (a conservative political party, also known as the Justice and Development Party) and show support for President Erdogan.

Accounts were determined to be associated with the AK Parti’s youth wing and a centralized network with compromised accounts. The network includes compromised accounts tied to organizations critical of President Erdogan and the Turkish government.

The aforementioned state actors have repeatedly targeted compromised accounts through account hacking and takeover efforts. Commercial activities, including cryptocurrency spam, also took place across the network.

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's executive order relating to social media companies censoring online content.

The lawsuit marks the tech industry’s first major legal effort to resist President Trump’s plan to dismantle Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996.

The lawsuit, which was filed in a Washington federal court on Tuesday, accuses President Trump of violating the First Amendment and seeking to "chill the constitutionally protected speech of all online platforms and individuals."

The lawsuit also takes aim at President Trump for “publicly attacking Twitter and issuing the Order” in response to the company fact-checking his tweets concerning mail-in voting.

CDT, which receives funding from tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter, explained in a statement the purpose of the lawsuit is to protect tech platforms providing accurate information about how to vote in the 2020 election.

“Access to accurate information about the voting process and the security of our elections infrastructure is the lifeblood of our democracy. The President has made clear that his goal is to use threats of retaliation and future regulation to intimidate intermediaries into changing how they moderate content, essentially ensuring that the dangers of voter suppression and disinformation will grow unchecked in an election year,” explained CDT president & CEO, Alexandra Givens.

“The government cannot and should not force online intermediaries into moderating speech according to the President’s whims. Blocking this order is crucial for protecting freedom of speech and continuing important work to ensure the integrity of the 2020 election,” Givens concluded.

President Trump’s executive order has already been called into question. Trump claims to be targeting social media companies for censoring conservative voices, but social media companies are private companies.

This means, unlike the government, social media platforms can moderate its users’ content as they see fit.

President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign tweeted a video tribute to George Floyd on Thursday. Twitter has since disabled the tweet. The video, which is available on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, features a collection of photos and videos of protest marches and rioters. Twitter removed the video shortly after it was posted, citing copyright complaints related to it.

The nearly four-minute-long video was first posted to the Team Trump Twitter account on Thursday afternoon. In the video, President Trump can be heard speaking about the tragedy of Floyd’s death while images of Floyd and peaceful protesters mourning his death pan in and out of the frame.

Later in the video, President Trump speaks of the violence from “radical leftwing groups” while highlighting images of riots, looting and destruction of property. President Trump ends the video, calling for “healing, not hatred.”

Twitter received at least one complaint from a copyright owner of at least one of the images in the video, a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill. In response to the complaint, Harvard University's Lumen Database, a third-party research group used by Twitter, reviewed it and determined the complaint to be valid under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Andrew Clark, a spokesman for the Trump campaign called Twitter’s move “yet another reminder that Twitter is making up the rules as they go along.” Adding, “Twitter has repeatedly failed to explain why their rules seem to only apply to the Trump campaign but not to others. Censoring out the president’s important message of unity around the George Floyd protests is an unfortunate escalation of this double standard.”

This isn’t the president’s first spat with Twitter. President Trump and the social media platform have been embroiled in an ongoing saga that has included Twitter fact-checking and restricting a selection of President Trumps’ tweets. In response, the president signed an executive order targeting social media companies and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996.

Twitter appointed former Google chief financial officer Patrick Pichette as the company’s new chairman of the board on Tuesday. Pichette previously served as Google’s CFO from 2008 until 2015 and joined Twitter’s board of directors in 2017. Pichette will replace Omid Kordestani as chairman of the board. Kordestani has served as Twitter’s board chairman since October 2015 and will remain on the board as a director.

Pichette previously worked as CFO of Google and left the company in 2015. In 2018, Pichette became a general partner at inovia Capital and later joined Twitter as a lead independent director.

“Given the strength and depth of Twitter’s management team and Board, we believe that now is the right time to evolve our governance structure in-line with best practices,” Pichette said in a statement.

He continued, “We are pleased to demonstrate our commitment to good governance and be in the position to make this important change. We look forward to continuing to benefit from Omid’s expertise on the Board.”

Kordestani, who also worked at Google as its chief business officer and senior officer, will remain on Twitter’s board as a director. According to an SEC filing, Kordestani will be compensated accordingly.

“It has been my great pleasure to work alongside Twitter’s management team and help advance its mission over the past five years,” Kordestani’s statement reads. “I have seen firsthand the significant changes Twitter has undertaken to strengthen and stabilize its leadership structure to achieve long-term sustainable growth and feel confident that I can now step back from my active role as executive chair.”

The addition of Pichette as board chairman comes just three months after $40 billion hedge fund Elliot Management sought to oust Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey while also pushing for improved corporate governance and higher share prices.

The two ultimately reached an agreement that allowed Dorsey to remain CEO while also handing a number of board seats to Elliot Management and Silver Lake. Jesse Cohn of Elliot Management, Egon Durban, Silver Lake’s co-chief executive and artificial intelligence expert Fei-Fei Lei have also joined the board as part of Twitter’s deal with Elliot Management and Silver Lake.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers discovered much of the discussion surrounding coronavirus and reopening America has been fueled by bots.

To analyze bot activity surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, CMU’s team of researchers collected over 200 million tweets discussing the coronavirus or COVID-19.

As they explain in a May 20 study, of the top 50 influential retweeters gathered by the study, 82% were found to be bots. Of the top 1,000 retweets studied, 62% were discovered to be bots.

To determine if an account was a bot, the research team used multiple methods, including artificial intelligence, to analyze how many followers an account relative to its tweet frequency and the account's mentions network.

The team claims that tweeting more than is considered humanly possible or appearing in one country and then another within just a few hours can also suggest an account is a bot.

"We're seeing up to two times as much bot activity as we'd predicted based on previous natural disasters, crises and elections," explained Kathleen Carley, a professor in the School of Computer Science’s Institute for Software Research and director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) and Center for Informed Democracy & Social - Cybersecurity (IDeaS.)

According to Carley, as savvy individuals find themselves with extra time on their hands, they’ve begun creating do-it-yourself-style bots. The number of groups hiring teams to create sophisticated bots has increased too.

Carley attributes the surge in bots to the pandemic, explaining: "Because it’s global, it’s being used by various countries and interest groups as an opportunity to meet political agendas.”

CMU’s research also found that many of the online discussions related to reopening America point to bot activity. “

One indicator is the large number of bots, many of which are accounts that were recently created,” the study explains. In all, CMU found that human accounts with bot assistants generated 66% of the tweets, while 34% of the tweets were generated by accounts that are definitely bots.

"When we see a whole bunch of tweets at the same time or back to back, it's like they're timed," Carley said. "We also look for use of the same exact hashtag, or messaging that appears to be copied and pasted from one bot to the next."

Carley pointed to a subset of tweets regarding popular conspiracy theories, like 5G towers being linked to coronavirus and other health care hoaxes, as creating divides amongst groups too.

"Conspiracy theories increase polarization in groups. It’s what many misinformation campaigns aim to do," Carley said. "People have real concerns about health and the economy, and people are preying on that to create divides."

At this time, the research team has yet to identify the specific entities driving these bot accounts. Without this information, it can be difficult to stop bot accounts altogether. Carley says users can avoid falling victim to bot accounts though.

"Even if someone appears to be from your community, if you don't know them personally, take a closer look, and always go to authoritative or trusted sources for information," Carley said. "Just be very vigilant."

There’s a quote I first came across on Twitter during the context of a political scandal of some description that I keep coming back to. While the furore it refers to has now faded from memory, buried beneath an endless onslaught of controversies, the quote has stuck with me.

“If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the window and find out which is true.”

It’s attributed to retired American journalism professor, Jonathan Foster, and illustrates the difference between balance and fairness, and how the quest for balance can often get in the way of the truth. Although the quote is about the practice of journalism, it's becoming increasingly applicable to social media, too. The world’s two biggest social media companies have once again been dragged into a public debate on whether or not they have a duty to hold their users to some standard of truth - sparked, of course, by one user in particular.

US president Donald Trump this week signed an executive order seeking to strip social media companies in general – and Twitter in particular – of the legal protections they enjoyed as public forums, rather than editorial publishers. His argument is that, by adding a small label to his demonstrably false and deliberately misleading public statements, Twitter is essentially taking an editorial stance.

This sounds ridiculous on its face; after all, how can fact-checking be a partisan issue? The sad reality, however, is that truth has become a partisan issue, and it’s largely the fault of social media companies.

Attention has been the currency of the internet for decades; since advertising is how the vast majority of websites pay their bills, they need to attract as many eyeballs as possible, and so sensationalism and hyperbole has been the overall tenor of the internet. Everything on the internet is the BEST THING EVER, or the ABSOLUTE WORST. Stories will SHOCK or DISGUST you; there is simply no middle ground.

This general tone has been the background radiation of internet discourse for years, but it’s been amplified beyond recognition by social media. Like every other online service, these companies need to keep users on their platforms as long as possible, so highly-shareable, viral content is promoted, rewarded and optimised for maximum transmission.

When this is cute cat videos or a ten-hour loop of Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace saying ‘buttery biscuit base’, this isn’t really a problem. Sadly, joy isn’t nearly as powerful an emotion as anger, and posts designed to shock and outrage are much more likely to be virally spread than harmless memes. The upshot of this is that social media has become increasingly toxic – a phenomenon that has been well-documented.

But it was in 2016 that the lid was truly lifted on this simmering digital cesspool.

On either side of the Atlantic, two separate political events took place that year that fundamentally altered the rules of society. Suddenly, blatant outright lies became an accepted political tool. In saner times, inflammatory and provably false claims were the sole province of conspiracy theorists and rabble-rousing demagogues, but from 2016 onwards, they’ve been a key part of mainstream political debate.

It’s easy for both users and providers of social media to dismiss wild pronouncements about political issues – such as the idea that the royal family murdered Princess Diana – as the ravings of online lunatics. When similarly wild allegations are coming from news broadcasters and world leaders, that background radiation of conspiracy theories and outright lies turns into a full-blown Fukushima of falsehoods, and the concept of truth itself has been so poisoned that any evidence contradicting a particular worldview can simply be dismissed as biased propaganda, or a lie itself.

Today, Trump constantly makes untrue statements about everything from mail-in ballots being rigged to a news anchor murdering his employee, and faces little or no censure from his party or the press. Worse still, those claims are amplified and repeated by his legions of social media fans. The same is true in the UK – just look at the vociferous defence of Dominic Cummings from various sections of the right-wing commentariat.

All of this also fuels the far end of the conspiracy theory spectrum, as the idea that 5G is somehow linked to coronavirus – something for which there is no scientific proof – becomes commonplace enough that telecoms masts up and down the country are targeted by mobs of vandals and protesters.

Social media has fuelled this whole problem. Figures like Alex Jones and Donald Trump do not exist in a vacuum; their populist lies are only a viable self-promotional tactic because Facebook and Twitter have engineered a global discourse where mass hysteria is the most profitable outcome. They are integral to the continued spread of damaging falsehoods, and if the situation continues to worsen, the entire concept of objective truth may be fundamentally undermined beyond repair.

Facebook and Twitter have a responsibility to fix the mess they’ve created. There is a difference between not wanting to police morality or ideology, and simply being too cowardly to take a stand. Some things are provably incorrect; banning the spread of such statements doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights. The mainstream press won’t fight this problem, and the legal system can’t – it’s time for social media to do the right thing.

Twitter has rolled out a feature that allows users to moderate their replies by choosing who could respond to their tweets.

Before the release of this feature, anybody could reply to a tweet, leading to a dumpster fire of replies for some users.

Now, Twitter users with beta access can decide who can reply to which of their tweets on a tweet-by-tweet basis. As you can imagine, this feature could fundamentally change how many use the platform altogether.

Self-moderation across social media platforms is nothing new. YouTube and Instagram, for instance, already allow users to disable comments on a post-by-post basis. When it comes to Twitter, though, the platform thrives on conversations between its users.

Keep in mind that those conversations haven’t always been the most pleasant. For many, disabling replies in Twitter is a step in the right direction.

Overall, the ability to control who replies to a tweet could help remedy one of Twitter’s largest problems: harassment. Many Twitter users can attest to being inundated by replies from angry strangers with nothing to do but harass their fellow Twitter users. Though these conversations take place online, they can still be unexpected, overwhelming and remarkably difficult to cope with.

By allowing users to turn off replies, Twitter is also impacting how various communities and cultures interact when it comes to ideological, cultural and political differences. Without a means to reply to a tweet, that knee-jerk reaction that often leads to brigading may dissipate.

Of course, disabling replies on the platform isn’t going to fix all of Twitter’s problems. Trolls will always troll, even if it means finding another means to do so. As unfortunate as that is, it seems to be the reality we find ourselves in today.