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☆ What the chaos at Twitter means for the future of social movements
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-11 | by ( Harmeet Kaur | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

CNN —When thousands of Egyptians marched through the streets during the Arab Spring of 2011, they had a tool at their disposal that earlier social movements didn’t: Twitter. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images“You can’t underestimate the impact of Twitter to social movements,” Amara Enyia, manager of policy and research for the Movement for Black Lives, told CNN. “There are now issues in how people see Twitter as a source of information and a source of political community,” said Kuo, whose research focuses on race, social movements and digital technologies. “It isn’t seen in the same way anymore.”Elon Musk's controversial policy changes at Twitter could have implications for social movements, some activists say. Twitter has been an incredibly powerful tool for social movements, Enyia said.

Persons: Michael Brown, George Floyd, Harvey Weinstein, Peter Macdiarmid, ” Amara Enyia, Elon Musk, wouldn’t, Rachel Kuo, ”, Kuo, ” Elon, Carina Johansen, NTB, Musk, Sarah Aoun, Aoun, Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, ” Aoun, Linda Yaccarino, Rich Wallace, Wallace, Chandan Khanna, we’ve, ” Kuo, Enyia, it’s, Jack Dorsey, Richard Drew, –, ” Enyia, don’t Organizations: CNN, Twitter, Occupy, Hollywood, Movement, Elon, University of Illinois, Getty, Intelligence, Protesters, Center, Defamation League, GOP, Equity, AP Locations: New York, Ferguson , Missouri, Cairo, Egypt, Urbana, Champaign, AFP, cybersecurity, Tahrir, Chicago

☆ Tesla’s governance autopilot heads for disaster
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Jonathan Guilford | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

It’s a vulnerable time for such pronouncements when the market Tesla (TSLA.O) effectively created threatens to overtake it. The stock price has tumbled some 60% since November 2021 compared to a 12% decline in the S&P 500 index (.SPX). A more deferential approach to Musk might have made sense during Tesla’s meteoric rise, when its mere existence bucked convention. The Department of Justice has initiated a probe into Tesla’s self-proclaimed “self-driving” capabilities, which have been involved in fatal crashes. Heeding advice from ISS and Glass Lewis would at least be a place to start, because leaving governance on autopilot also can have dangerous consequences.

☆ A top Twitter staffer said its new encrypted DM feature was tested by a cybersecurity firm, but insiders say the company never signed a formal deal due to layoffs – report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter announced its new encrypted DMs feature last week. The project's lead said it had been audited by a cybersecurity firm; company sources disputed this, per Platformer. A Twitter engineer leading the platform's new encrypted messaging feature for paid users appeared to falsely claim that it had been audited by a top cybersecurity firm, Platformer reported. The idea is that by having DMs encrypted, text can only be read by participants of that conversation – as is the case on platforms such as WhatsApp. "I had [cybersecurity firm] Trail of Bits audit our implementation.

☆ Bluesky Social: Twitter's former CEO has a new app that looks a lot like Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —The buzzy new social media app of the moment looks so much like Twitter it’s almost hard to distinguish the two. But under the hood, Bluesky, developed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, is vastly different. The Bluesky social media app logo is seen on a mobile device in April 2023. Like Mastodon, Bluesky appeals to a number of Twitter users who are frustrated with the direction of the platform under owner Elon Musk. As Eve 6 wrote on Twitter: “Bluesky invite codes are the new blue check.”

☆ Twitter descends into chaos as news outlets and brands lose verification
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Several prominent Twitter users including LeBron James, William Shatner and Stephen King also refused to pay to keep their verification badges, prompting Musk to personally intervene. “My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. Twitter verification is no longer an indicator that an account represents who it claims to represent; instead, it reflects that a user – or, apparently, the owner of Twitter – paid for Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service. Isaacson, who is verified on Twitter as a subscriber to Twitter Blue, tweeted a photo of Musk on Thursday from SpaceX’s Starship launch site.

☆ Just months after buying the platform, Elon Musk is officially the biggest account on Twitter, leapfrogging former president Barack Obama to reach 133 million followers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk overtook Barack Obama on Thursday to become Twitter's most followed account. Five months after buying the social-media platform, Musk has over 133 million followers. The Twitter CEO posted 72 times on Monday, and has his tweets boosted by engineers, per Platformer. According to the follower-tracking site SocialBlade, Musk saw the biggest increase last April – the month he first offered to buy Twitter – gaining 9.7 million followers. The Twitter CEO became the sixth-user to cross the 100 million mark last June, according to The Verge, which first reported the news.

☆ Elon Musk's office sleeping habits have existed since the early 1990s, according to a book about his first startup
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Per "The Founders," Musk's company rented a "spartan Palo Alto office space," and he would sleep at the office and shower at the nearby YMCA. Soon after taking over Twitter, Musk similarly said he would be sleeping at the office "until the org is fixed." Back at Zip2, Soni describes a "perpetually sleep-deprived" Musk openly berating other executives and colleagues in 1996. Musk's sleeping habits continued at his second company, too, as the company's cofounder Harris Fricker told Soni. In February, Musk said he has worked an average of more than 120 hours a week after taking over Twitter.

☆ U.S. regulators rejected Elon Musk’s bid to test brain chips in humans, citing safety risks
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Rachael Levy | Marisa Taylor | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +19 min

Companies that do secure human-testing approval typically conduct at least two rounds of trials before applying for FDA approval to commercially market a device. "Everybody in the industry was saying: 'Oh my God, they're going to run straight into a brick wall,'" Ludwig said of Musk's bid for FDA approval. For example, NeuroPace, which makes the brain implant to treat epilepsy, received final FDA approval in 2013 – 16 years after the company's launch. Beyond grants, it provides access to government experts who advise on how to gain FDA approval and commercialize a device. Musk's emails to Neuralink staffers often come from his SpaceX address, said two people who reviewed them.

☆ U.S. regulators rejected Elon Musk’s bid to test brain chips in humans
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +23 min

Musk’s missed deadlines for FDA approval of Neuralink July 2019:Musk says Neuralink is aiming to receive regulatory approval for human trials of brain implants by the end of 2020. “Everybody in the industry was saying: ‘Oh my God, they’re going to run straight into a brick wall,’” Ludwig said of Musk’s bid for FDA approval. For example, NeuroPace, which makes the brain implant to treat epilepsy, received final FDA approval in 2013 – 16 years after the company’s launch. The FDA’s concerns about the battery are also potentially serious, experts in brain devices said. Still, that proposal disappointed Neuralink because it could delay progress toward final FDA approval, one of the sources said.

☆ Twitter went down because an employee accidentally deleted data, and there was nobody left on the team responsible due to Elon Musk's cuts, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

On Wednesday, Twitter users were faced with the errant warning: "You are over the daily limit for sending tweets." And the team responsible for the service had all left the company in November, per Platformer. In a private message seen by Insider's Kali Hays, one Twitter employee described it as "a massive outage." Since Musk took over the company, employee numbers have fallen more than two-thirds, from over 7,000 to around 2,300, per the billionaire himself. After Wednesday's outage, Musk emailed Twitter staff telling them to "pause new feature development" in order to ensure "system stability and robustness," Fortune first reported.

☆ Twitter just made its first interest payment on Elon Musk's massive buyout debt – so it will avoid bankruptcy for now
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk borrowed $12.5 billion from banks including Morgan Stanley to take the social-media company private in October. Repaying the first instalment is a sign that Twitter won't have to file for bankruptcy. Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, borrowing $12.5 billion from banks including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays. If Twitter had failed to make the first interest payment, its management could have chosen to explore filing for bankruptcy as part of a debt restructuring process. Read more: Elon Musk has to make the first interest payment on the $13 billion debt he took on to buy Twitter – and the company's dire financial situation means it faces risks including bankruptcy

☆ Fact Check-Bill Gates turned off replies on his Twitter page in July 2020
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

One Twitter user said: “Elon Musk EXPOSED Bill Gates in the latest twitter files so hard that he has now turned off comments on his Twitter” (here). However, Reuters Fact Check found that Gates disabled tweet replies in July 2020. The last apparent tweet by Gates allowing replies from other Twitter users appears to be on July 2, 2020 (here). A spokesperson for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said allegations that he disabled Twitter replies in response to Musk’s actions are false. Bill Gates’ Twitter account has disabled tweet replies since July 2020, years before the “Twitter Files” were released.

☆ Twitter has given new square business badges to some of its staff, news outlets, and a close friend of Elon Musk — but not Musk himself
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter introduced a new square badge to show where company verified accounts are employed. At least 10 Twitter staff have the new badge, but Elon Musk doesn't. Musk himself, however, has not got a square badge, despite owning the company and spearheading the verification changes. Musk retweeted the official announcement for the feature, but is yet to address the poll which saw Twitter users vote for him to step down as CEO. The news outlet Bloomberg also has access to the square badge, which is currently being used for different sections of the outlet's coverage, but not individual journalists.

☆ Elon had to choose between Twitter and Tesla. He's choosing Tesla.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Elon Musk has been forced to make a tough choice: Tesla or Twitter. He's picking Tesla, which represents nearly half his $156 billion in estimated wealth, and the Twitter poll gave him a handy escape pod. That red ink wasn't as much of a problem when interest rates were low, and Tesla's shares were soaring. But as the Federal Reserve has aggressively hiked interest rates to curb inflation, using Tesla stock to pay off the debt on the Twitter buyout is a problem for Tesla. "Tesla is so much an Elon stock, it stands or falls because of him," Beauchamp said.

☆ Elon Musk brought his mom to a meeting with advertisers where he tweeted about Trump. He later fired an exec who didn't find the tweet funny, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk went to New York on Halloween to meet with advertisers and visit the Twitter office. He brought his mom, Maye Musk, along to the meeting where execs asked about un-banning Trump. The billionaire then tweeted a joke about Trump during the meeting. Two advertising executives from Twitter also came along, as well as Musk's friend Jason Calacanis, and Maye Musk. Horizon Media CEO, Bill Koenigsberg, told Musk that some of his clients had heard about the meeting, according to Bloomberg.

“I haven’t seen sunlight in what seems like a long time,” Li told CNN, a week after the protests broke out. In recent years, Beijing has extended its crackdown on dissent to the foreign platform, detaining and jailing Chinese Twitter users who criticized the government. TwitterLi received thousands of submissions a day – and up to dozens per second at the height of the protests. Journalists, observers and activists monitored his feed closely, and some of his posts were aired on televisions across the world. And then they went to our house at midnight to harass my parents,” Li said.

☆ Users are uploading entire movies to Twitter – and many aren't being blocked
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-20 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter users are uploading entire movies to the platform and most are yet to be taken down. Movies including "Hackers" and "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" have been posted on the site. However, Insider found posts on Sunday allowing users to view a full-length film that have not been blocked. Another Twitter user posted "Need for Speed" in 66 tweets through an account with the username "Need for speed movie", which was also still viewable on Sunday. Earlier this month, Elon Musk laid off close to 3,500 Twitter employees after he took control of the company.

☆ Tosca Musk, Elon’s sister, has a business venture of her own – and it’s all about romance and female sexuality
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-20 | by ( Faith Karimi Cnn Photographs Austin Steele | Faith Karimi | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +15 min

It’s their first public film premiere since the pandemic started. Musk, 48, is the force behind Passionflix, which adapts romance novels into movies and streams them to a devoted niche audience. “Passionflix focuses on adapting romance novels exactly as the fan and the author envision it,” Musk says in a separate CNN interview. From left to right: Tosca Musk, Kimbal Musk, mother Maye Musk and Elon Musk at Maye's 50th birthday party in 1998. One of the founding members, she says she spent the pandemic years curled up on her couch, watching Passionflix movies.

☆ Elon Musk can be 'vicious' in the workplace, a former SpaceX VP says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Grace Dean | Kiera Fields | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A former SpaceX VP says Elon Musk can be "vicious" in the workplace. Jim Cantrell told Insider staff never knew whether there were getting "good Elon" or "bad Elon." He added Musk could change Twitter's business performance "from sheer force of willpower." Musk added Twitter to his portfolio in late October, acquiring the social-media platform for $44 billion. One workplace-culture expert previously told Insider that Musk's "autocratic leadership" would be in "great contrast with the type of openness and flexible mindset that is integral to Twitter's culture."

☆ Trump Media deal partner DWAC adjourns shareholder meeting for sixth time as it seeks votes to delay merger
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Jack Stebbins | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The Truth social network logo is seen displayed behind a woman holding a smartphone in this picture illustration taken February 21, 2022. Digital World Acquisition Corp ., the shell company set to take Trump Media and Technology Group and its Truth Social platform public, adjourned a shareholder vote on the planned merger for a sixth time Thursday as its Dec. 8 liquidation date nears. DWAC needs 65% of its shareholders to approve an extension of the Trump Media merger to September 2023, a year beyond its original deadline. At least $138 million of the $1 billion that would go to Trump Media has been pulled by these investors. The former president, however, has indicated he will be staying exclusively on Truth Social.

☆ Senate Democrat wants national security investigation of Saudi Arabia’s role in Elon Musk-Twitter deal
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( Matt Egan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN Business —Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy is calling on the federal government to investigate national security concerns raised by Saudi Arabia’s role in Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The Connecticut Democrat urged the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, to conduct an investigation into the “national security implications” of the Saudi involvement. Even though Musk already closed his takeover of Twitter late last week, it may still be subject to national security review. Earlier this month, Twitter shares dropped after Bloomberg News reported Biden officials are in early discussions about possibly subjecting some of Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the Twitter deal. “We do now know of any such conversations,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement on October 21.

☆ Elon Musk says he is 'obviously overpaying' in his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk says he's "obviously overpaying" with his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. Musk is the world's richest person with an estimated net worth of $209 billion. Musk is the world's richest person, with a current net worth of $209 billion, according to estimates by Bloomberg. Musk U-turned on his decision to buy Twitter – and then U-turned againMusk initially offered to buy Twitter in April after accumulating a 9.2% share, making him its biggest shareholder, and trying to join its board of directors. Bloomberg reported that Twitter froze its employees' ability to access and trade shares on Monday in a sign that Musk's deal is close to completion.

☆ Cozi imense la prezidențialele din Uganda: Liderul țării timp de 40 de ani, Museveni, înfruntă o vedetă pop
▼ + stars: | 2021-01-14 | by ( ) www.jurnal.md time to read: +4 min

Votul a fost întârziat în câteva locații din Kampala și a început cu aproape jumătate de oră după startul oficial de la ora 7.00 (ora locală). Museveni a condus Uganda fără pauză de la acapararea puterii în 1986, când a ajutat la încheierea anilor de tiranie de sub Idi Amin. Perioada de dinaintea zilei alegerilor a fost marcată de represiuni împotriva rivalilor lui Museveni și a criticilor anti-guvernamentali dar și de atacuri fără precedent asupra presei și a activiștilor pentru drepturile omului. Însă, Wine, al cărui nume real este Robert Kyagulanyi, a acuzat șeful statului că prezidează asupra corupției și a eșuat în a creea locuri de muncă. Populația are o vârstă medie de mai puțin de 16 ani, iar mulți cetățeni ai Ugandei nu au văzut alt lider în afara lui Museveni, scrie digi24.ro.

Persons: Museveni, Wine, Joseph Nsuduga, Miercuri, Natalie Brown, Robert Kyagulanyi Organizations: ONU, Uniunea, Naționale Locations: Est - Africană, Uganda, SUA, UE, Uniunea Africană, Ugandei

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