Several days after Twitter stopped showing tweets to logged-out users, that basic functionality seems to be returning. Several Engadget editors are once again able to see individual tweets without being logged into their accounts. Profiles still seem to be busted for those who aren’t signed in, however. For instance, I’m able to see a user’s bio, but their feed of tweets isn’t showing up. Meanwhile, tweet previews are working in iMessage again for some folks.

Making tweets inaccessible to logged-out users was a “temporary emergency measure,” according to Twitter owner Elon Musk. “We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users,” he wrote.

The company gave a similar explanation as to why it temporarily put limits on the number of tweets each user is able to read per day. On Tuesday, it said it made that move, which busted various Twitter apps, to “detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform,” such as those who are scraping data to train artificial intelligence models. Twitter added that the rate limits were affecting a small percentage of users at that point.

Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment. Still, public tweets are once again becoming available for anyone to view just as Meta starts rolling out its Twitter competitor, which is called Threads. That service is expected to go live in several markets on Thursday, but not in the European Union.

Meta's rival to Twitter called Threads, an Instagram app is set to launch tomorrow in the US and UK, but it may not come to the rest of Europe anytime soon. A Meta spokesperson told Ireland's Data Protection Commission that the service will not be rolled in the EU "at this point," Independent.ie has reported. 

Threads may not be launching in much of Europe due to more stringent data privacy requirements. The DPC is apparently not blocking the service — instead, it's Meta that has "not yet prepared the service for a European launch outside the UK, which is not fully governed by GDPR or EU privacy rules," according to the report.

The EU just hit Meta with a ruling that it must obtain consent from users before delivering personalized ads in the region. Prior to that, the company was hit with a €390 million EU fine (about $425 million) for not receiving consent before serving up such ads. 

On top of that, in 2021, the DPC fined WhatsApp €225 million ($266.8 million at the time) or not providing enough detail on how it shares EU users' data with Facebook. That could pose a problem for Threads in its current state, as it automatically imports data from Instagram, including advertising and behavior information, according to the policy listed on its iOS App Store page. 

Threads is arriving amidst issues with Twitter like "rate limits" on tweets and degraded service for the power-user app Tweetdeck. Many of Twitter's active users have been seeking an alternative with apps like Bluesky and Mastodon, but some see Threads as the most viable option due to Meta's scale. That's despite any reservations they may have about CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's track record on privacy and other issues.

A judge has blocked the Biden administration and other federal officials from communicating with social media companies in a case that could have far-reaching implications. On Tuesday, a Trump-appointed judge granted the state attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri a temporary injunction against the federal government, reports The Washington Post. The two Republican lawyers sued President Joe Biden and other top government officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, last year, accusing them of colluding with Meta, Twitter and YouTube to remove “truthful information” related to the COVID-19 lab leak theory, 2020 election and other topics.

Although he has yet to make a final ruling in the case, Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote in his order that the Republican attorneys general “produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.” While the order grants some exceptions for the government to communicate with Meta, Twitter and YouTube, it also specifically targets more than a dozen individual officials. Among those are Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security.

The lawsuit is the latest effort by some Republicans to allege the Biden administration pressured social media platforms to censor conservative views. The GOP has aired that grievance in a few different venues — including, most notably, a contentious House Oversight Committee hearing at the start of the year related to the so-called “Twitter Files.” The lawsuit from the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri takes a different tack. Instead of directly targeting Meta, Twitter and YouTube, which argue they have a First Amendment right to decide what content is allowed on their platforms, the attorneys general sued the federal government. Whatever happens next, that strategy has already led to the most successful effort yet to counter online content moderation. 

Separately, it's worth noting Meta, Twitter and YouTube have all recently scaled back their moderation policies in one way or another. In the case of YouTube, for instance, the company said last month it would begin allowing videos that falsely claim fraud occurred during the 2020 election. Meta, meanwhile, last month back its COVID-19 misinformation rules for Instagram and Facebook in countries where the pandemic is no longer deemed a national emergency. 

Twitter has been even more of a mess than usual over the last few days, in part because it limited the number of tweets users could read each day. The decision came as a surprise to many, but the company said it was unable to give folks a heads up.

"We temporarily limited usage so we could detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform," a Twitter Business blog post reads. "Any advance notice on these actions would have allowed bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection."

While some have been skeptical of Twitter's reasoning for the move, the company says it limited the rate limit to stop bad actors from scraping public data to feed into artificial intelligence models and to prevent them from "manipulating people and conversation on the platform in various ways." It says that the rate limits currently impact a small percentage of users and it will provide an update when these efforts are complete.

It seemed strange that Twitter posted this update on its business blog until the company mentioned that rate limiting has had a "minimal" effect on advertising. Many pointed out that limiting the number of tweets users could read per day would make it harder for advertisers to reach users and for Twitter to make money.

Rate limiting broke Twitter's website and apps for the most part, including TweetDeck, an app that many power users rely on. To help remedy that, the company released "a new, improved version of TweetDeck." The company is moving all users over to the latest version, but there was another twist in store: Twitter is making the app exclusive to verified accounts, effectively putting a paywall on TweetDeck for the vast majority of users.

Meta will have to limit the reach of its personalized ads in the European Union. The region's Court of Justice has ruled that Meta's Facebook brand will need to obtain consent before delivering at least some personalized ads in the EU. The custom ads "cannot justify" processing that volume of data without users' permission, according to the ruling.

We've asked Meta for comment. In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, a spokesperson said the social media giant was still "evaluating the court's decision" and would say more in the future.

Meta is already appealing a €390 million EU fine (now worth about $425 million) for requiring that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users accept personalized ads just to use those platforms. The governing body requires "freely given" consent for features, and believes Meta violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by asking for ad targeting data just to use Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on a basic level. In the new ruling, the Court of Justice said it was up to a site operator to prove that people willingly give permission.

The decision is included in a larger court finding that local competition regulators, such as Germany's Federal Cartel Office, can factor in compliance with other laws (such as the GDPR) when investigating antitrust cases. Put simply, a country could decide that rule breaking in one area is evidence of broader anti-competitive behavior.

The ruling is somewhat vague, and it's not clear just how officials will interpret the requirement in practice. Meta might have to ask permission to provide personalized ads on Facebook and other platforms. That could improve privacy for users, but affect the company's bottom line. The outfit warned of a hit to its ad revenue when iOS 14 gave users the ability to reject ad tracking in apps — this could represent another blow that affects everyone in the EU, regardless of the device they use.

As Twitter continues to figuratively kneecap itself by limiting tweet views, Meta is hustling to bring its Twitter rival to reality. A listing for an app called Threads was spotted on the iOS App Store with an estimated release date of July 6th. In May, a report said the microblogging service was nearing completion and could be out as soon as the end of June. While an end-of-June launch didn't quite happen, the app could arrive when Twitter users are more willing (and maybe even eager) to finally jump ship.

Twitter boss Elon Musk announced at the weekend that verified accounts — which translates to paying users — can read 6,000 posts daily, while non-paying users can only read 600. He said the website is adopting the measure to "address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation."

From both the app listing and rumors, we’re expecting Threads will migrate your followers and circles from your existing Instagram handle, ensuring you should have an active timeline right from the outset. That is, if you’re an Instagram user.

– Mat Smith

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Since smartphones started eating casual photography’s lunch, camera makers have focused on devices designed for very specific uses. Action cams provide sharp, fluid video. Compact cameras target both tourists and vloggers. And DSLRs are available at some of the best prices we’ve seen. Then there are mirrorless cameras, which continue to improve their autofocus and video. And that’s where some guidance helps. Whether you’re a creator looking for just the right vlogging camera, an aspiring wildlife photographer or a sports enthusiast, we’ll help you find the perfect camera to match your budget and needs.

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There’s an animated GIF generator now

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Remember the early days of the AI hype train, when everyone spent their time making stupid images using text prompts? If you want to recapture the nostalgic haze of, uh, late 2022, Picsart has you covered. The popular image editor just launched an AI-powered animated GIF generator, calling the tool its “most unhinged” platform yet. Type a bunch of nonsense into the chat box, wait a minute or so and marvel at your “chaotic and eccentric” creation. The platform’s integrated into the regular Picsart app and is available for iOS, Android devices and on the web.

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Twitter launches 'new' TweetDeck as the old version breaks down

The feature will also be exclusive to Twitter Blue in 30 days.

If you've been having trouble using Twitter recently, you aren't alone — the service has been having issues since it started limiting the daily number of posts users could view. Although many of the platform's issues stabilized over the weekend, TweetDeck remains broken unless users switch to the beta version of the list aggregator. Now, Twitter is gearing up to solve the issue by making that beta version of TweetDeck the main version. According to Twitter Support, the feature will become exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers in the near future, noting that "in 30 days, users must be Verified to access TweetDeck."

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Some HBO shows are streaming on Netflix in the US for the first time

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There really is an HBO show on Netflix. All five seasons of Issa Rae's highly acclaimed comedy-drama series Insecure are now streaming on Netflix in the US. Even more HBO shows are on the way, too. Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Six Feet Under and Ballers are also coming to Netflix as part of the deal, the company told Deadline. Meanwhile, Netflix users outside the US can stream True Blood on the service.

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If you've been having trouble using Twitter recently, you aren't alone — the service has been having issues ever since it started limiting the number of posts users could view each day. Although many of the platform's issues stabilized over the weekend, Tweetdeck remains broken unless users switch to the beta version of the list aggregator. Now, Twitter is gearing up to solve the issue by making that beta version of Tweetdeck the main version, announcing on Monday that it has "launched a new, improved version of Tweetdeck."

Despite officially launching, this "new" Tweetdeck still calls itself the "Tweetdeck Preview" while in app, and users still need to opt-in to using it in the menu of the original Tweetdeck interface. Even so, switching to the new interface does indeed restore basic Tweetdeck functionality for users that rely on its list aggregation features. Twitter says the process should be fairly straightforward as well, promising that saved searches, lists and columns should carry over instantly. Although Twitter says that the updated preview build should now support Twitter Spaces, polls and other features that were previously missing, it notes that Teams functionality is currently unavailable.

Twitter hasn't officially announced that it's retiring the old version of Tweetdeck, but in a thread discussing the issues a Twitter employee suggested the change would be permanent, stating that they were "migrating everyone to the preview version." 

Although switching to the new version of Tweetdeck potentially resolves the issue, many legacy users may still find themselves without access to the power-user tool in the near future. According to Twitter Support, the feature will become exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers in the near future, noting that "in 30 days, users must be Verified to access Tweetdeck." It's unclear if that change will be applied to all users in early August, or if all users will have a 30-day trial of the new Tweetdeck before being prompted to subscribe.

Over the last few days, Twitter not only stopped showing tweets unless you're logged in, but also started capping the number of tweets users can ready each ("rate limiting") — ostensibly due to "data scraping," according to Elon Musk. Those actions are starting to have an impact elsewhere across Twitter's ecosystem, with many users reporting that Tweetdeck (a power-user version of Twitter) no longer works. In addition, Google Search is reportedly showing up to 50 percent fewer Twitter URLs due to the logged-in requirement, Search Engine Roundtable reported. 

For a lot of users (including Engadget), Tweetdeck effectively stopped functioning, just showing a spinning wheel above most columns. That may be because a bug in Twitter's web app is sending requests in an infinite loop, effectively creating a "self-DDOS" (distributed denial of service), Waxy reported. As researcher Molly White tweeted, that effect is multiplied in Tweetdeck for anything other than the "Home" column, as it keeps "repeatedly retrying 404s," she wrote. 

It's possible to at least get your columns to show up by using a new beta version of Tweetdeck, as Engadget's Matt Brian tweeted. However, those columns are still subject to the rate limits (800 tweets for non-Twitter Blue subscribers), and so most users will stop seeing new tweets shortly after Tweetdeck loads.

On top of that, Google Search may be showing up to 50 percent fewer Twitter URLs following Musk's move to block unregistered users. Using the site command, Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz found that Google now has about 52 percent fewer Twitter URLs in its index than it did on Friday. It's still showing recent tweets in the Search carousel, but normal indexing seems to be broken at the moment. "Not that a site command is the best measure, but... Twitter is down [around] 162 million indexed pages so far since this change," Schwartz tweeted. 

There's no confirmation that the "self-DDOS" theory is accurate, but a post from developer Sheldon Chang (on Mastodon) indicated that shutting off anonymous access to Twitter may be playing a role in the issues. Twitter has promised that the login requirement and rate limiting are "temporary," but has yet to give a date for eliminating those restrictions. 

On early Friday afternoon, internet users began noticing that Twitter was no longer allowing people to view tweets if they weren’t signed into the service. At the time, it was hard to tell if the change was the result of a technical error or an intentional decision by the company’s leadership. Later in the day, however, Elon Musk addressed the issue.

“Temporary emergency measure,” he claimed in a tweet. “We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk subsequently shared more context. “Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience,” he said, replying to a tweet from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney lamenting the “increasingly broken” state of the internet. In a separate tweet, spotted by Mashable, Twitter engineer Aqueel Miqdad said the company would re-enable logged-out access “in the near future.”

Of course, without more information, it’s hard to tell if Twitter users are experiencing degraded service because of the data scrapers Musk claims are targeting the platform so aggressively. There’s not a team at Twitter that Musk’s cost-cutting hasn’t touched. In fact, the group responsible for maintaining the stability of Twitter’s servers has seen its fair share of layoffs and high-profile departures. In June, the company had also not paid its Google Cloud contract for several months.

The technology industry isn't thrilled with Arkansas' law requiring social media age checks. NetChoice, a tech trade group that includes Google, Meta and TikTok, has sued the state of Arkansas over claimed US Constitution violations in the Social Media Safety Act. The measure allegedly treads on First Amendment free speech rights by making users hand over private data in order to access social networks. It also "seizes decision making" from families, NetChoice argues.

The alliance also believes the Act hurts privacy and safety by making internet companies rely on a third-party service to store and track kids' data. State residents often don't know or associate with the service, NetChoice claims, and an external firm is supposedly a "prime target" for hacks. The law tries to regulate the internet outside state laws while ignoring federal law, according to the lawsuit. As Arkansas can't verify residency without requiring data, it's effectively asking everyone to submit documents.

State Attorney General Tim Griffin tells Engadget in a statement that he looks forward to "vigorously defending" the Social Media Safety Act. The law requires age verification for all users by submitting driver's licenses and other "commercially reasonable" methods. Anyone under 18 also needs to get a parent's consent. There are exceptions that appear to cover major social networks and their associated categories, such as those for "professional networking" (think LinkedIn) or short entertaining video clips (like TikTok).

Arkansas' requirement is part of a greater trend among politicians to demand age verification for social media. States like Utah, Connecticut and Ohio have either passed or are considering similar laws, while Senator Josh Hawley proposed a federal bill barring all social media access for kids under 16. They're concerned younger users might be exposed to creeps and inappropriate content, and that use can harm mental health by presenting a skewed view of the world and encouraging addiction.

There's no guarantee the lawsuit will succeed. If it does, though, it could affect similar attempts to verify ages through personal data. If Arkansas' approach is deemed unconstitutional, other states might have to drop their own efforts.