Meta isn't the only tech heavyweight making tools to help root out terrorist content. The Financial Times has learned Google's Jigsaw is developing a free tool to help smaller websites detect and remove extremist material. The project, built with the help of the UN-supported Tech Against Terrorism, makes it easier for moderator teams to deal with potentially illegal content. The effort has the assistance of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (founded by Google, Meta, Microsoft and Twitter), which offers a cross-service database of terrorist items. Two unnamed sites will test the code later this year.
As with Meta's open source utility, Google's tool is meant to assist sites that can't afford to develop AI detection algorithms or hire a large moderation staff. That may be critical when the European Union's Digital Services Act and the UK's looming Online Safety bill will both require that site operators pull extremist content to avoid penalties.
Both Google and Tech Against Terrorism see their project as necessary to close a gap in countering online terrorist activity. Extremists and misinformation peddlers kicked off mainstream platforms frequently turn to smaller outlets that can't always adequately police users. Ideally, this reduces the chances of terrorists finding safe havens.
There are limitations. Some social platforms have been reluctant to moderate content even when app store operators say it incites violence — Google's tool won't be very useful on websites that don't want it. It also won't stop terrorists from sharing material over well-encrypted messaging services or the Dark Web, where providers can't easily snoop on data traffic. This might, however, make it harder to jump to online alternatives.
There’s never really been a shortage of reasons to spend less time on Twitter. Even before Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover, the platform was long plagued by misinformation, hate speech, harassment and other ills that made it less than welcoming.
There’s never been a better time to quit Twitter. The Elon Musk-induced chaos at the company has breathed new life into a crop of alternative platforms, and has inspired a new wave of competing efforts to win over disillusioned Twitter users.
Competition emerges
Of all the alternatives out there, none have benefited as much as Mastodon. The open-source service was created in 2016, and first gained notoriety in 2017, when some Twitter users were upset with changes the company had made to the functionality of @-replies. At that time though, it didn’t gain much traction outside a small base of hardcore enthusiasts.
Mel Melcon via Getty Images
That all changed from the second Musk announced he wanted to buy Twitter. Mastodon saw an immediate spike back in April and the momentum has only increased, according to the nonprofit. “Mastodon has recently exploded in popularity, jumping from approx. 300K monthly active users to 2.5M between the months of October and November, with more and more journalists, political figures, writers, actors and organizations moving over,” founder Eugen Rochko wrote in a recent blog post.
The service isn’t a perfect analog to Twitter. Its platform, which runs on thousands of servers, can make signing up a bit confusing. And a couple of the platform’s most popular servers, like mastodon.social, have at times halted new sign-ups due to surging demand.
But, as Rochko points out, the decentralized platform has become one of the top platforms of choice for some of Twitter’s most influential — and most followed — users. Tellingly, when Musk briefly imposed a ban on accounts promoting alternative social networks, Mastodon’s official Twitter account was the only social app to be suspended.
Mastodon is far from the only previously-niche app to get a boost from turmoil at Twitter. Other apps like CounterSocial, which has a Tweetdeck-like interface, and Tribel, which describes itself as a “pro-democracy Twitter alternative” have also seen an uptick in sign-ups.
There’s also a wave of competition from fresh upstarts. Post News, a new service from former Waze CEO Noam Bardin has also tried to capitalize on Twitter’s dysfunction. The service, which is currently invitation-only, rushed to launch an early version of its beta in November in hopes of drawing away disillusioned Twitter users. Post, which bills itself as a place “to discover, read, watch, discuss and share premium news content without subscriptions or ads,” has more than 610,000 people on its waitlist, according to Bardin.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
Another app that’s emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, is Hive Social, an image-centric platform with a feed that looks more like Instagram than Twitter. The service was founded in 2019, and hit 1.5 million users in November, according to the company. The site has had some notable security issues, which it claims to have fixed, but has still managed to make an impression with Gen Z Twitter users.
Legacy platforms are also trying to seize the opportunity created by growing apathy for Twitter. Tumblr claimed to see a surge in new and returning users, according to Matt Mullenweg, CEO of parent company Automattic. The site has also made a habit of trolling Musk and his new policies for Twitter, including with the addition of a $7.99 “Important Blue Internet Checkmark” for users’ blogs. Mullenweg has also said Tumblr will adopt ActivityPub, the protocol powering Mastodon, to make the two services interoperable.
Meta is also keen to challenge its longtime rival. The company recently launched a new “Notes” feature within Instagram that allows users to share status updates at the top of their inbox. At 60 characters, it's hardly a full-fledged Twitter alternative, but it might not be the last such feature we see from Meta. The New York Timesreports that the company has discussed several ideas to go after Twitter’s “bread and butter.”
The future for Twitter Quitters
It’s hardly the first time that unpopular decisions within Twitter have sparked an interest in alternatives. But in the past, surges to outside platforms have been relatively short lived. And most would-be competitors are still only a fraction of the size of Twitter.
Even with an influx of new users, Mastodon, Post News, Hive Social and Tumblr are still substantially smaller than Twitter. And, as unpopular and autocratic and Musk’s policy decisions seem, the idea of starting over on a new platform can feel daunting. Not everyone can easily rebuild their social graphs on alternative sites, and some may find the growing crop of Twitter clones to also be unwelcoming (this is especially true if you rely on accessibility features, as many of the newer platforms haven’t invested much in these features.)
Still, this particular moment feels different than other times when Twitter has struggled to keep disgruntled users around. For one, there are more choices than ever before for those looking for a reason to leave. But it’s also unique because there are more people actually active on these alternatives than ever before.
Thousands of Twitter users reported having issues accessing the website tonight on Downdetector. Based on people's reports, the outage started just before 7PM Eastern time and reached its peak at around 7:44PM. We haven't had any issues from our end, but reports continued well into the night and is still ongoing for some users. Downdetector reports also indicate that most people have had issues accessing the website itself — only a fraction had problems loading the social network through its apps.
According to The Guardian, users who couldn't access the website were met with a message that read "something went wrong, but don't fret — it's not your fault." Twitter has yet to issue an official statement for the outage. The Twitter Support account hasn't tweeted about it, and when some users posted about Twitter being broken, Elon Musk responded that he wasn't having any trouble loading the social network.
On Christmas Eve, Musk revealed that he had disconnected one of Twitter's more sensitive server racks, but that the social network still works. Musk famously purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October, months after initiating the acquisition and trying to back out of the deal. The company had laid off around half of the workforce and thousands of contractors since then, and one former employee told The Washington Post in November that they knew of six critical systems that "no longer have any engineers."
Isik Mater, the director of research at internet monitoring service NetBlocks, told The New York Times that "the problems with Twitter exhibit in multiple countries and are widespread." Mater also said that the "platform API is affected, which serves the mobile app as well as many aspects of the desktop site."
Twitter Blue has enabled new perks for subscribers including "prioritized rankings in conversations" and video uploads up to 60 minutes in length, according to an updated feature list spotted by TechCrunch. Both features were promised by Elon Musk last month when he said Blue subscribers who pay $8 per month would get "priority in replies, mentions & search" and the ability to post long videos.
Reply priority is now in effect, with the support page stating that "this feature prioritizes your replies on Tweets that you interact with." That seems to be the case on severaltweets I looked at, with Twitter Blue subscribers (many with few followers) appearing as the top replies. It's not clear if users paying $8 per month will always appear at the top in replies, or whether or factors are also used.
soon, subscribers with the blue checkmark will get priority ranking in search, mentions, and replies to help lower the visibility of scams, spam and bots
Twitter support said earlier that priority rankings will "help lower the visibility of scams, spam and bots." However, some users have expressed concern that the new system will lower the experience for non-paying users, or that paid priority might help spammers, trolls and others amplify their messages.
The new video rules will boost length from 10 minutes and 512MB to 60 minutes and 2GB at up to 1080p resolution, though only on the web — the 10-minute rule still applies to Android and iOS users. Twitter also notes that it may "modify or adapt your original video for distribution, syndication, publication or broadcast by us and our partners" or change the bitrate/resolution depending on a viewer's internet speeds.
Musk said that Twitter will eventually pay creators for uploaded videos, noting that it might even exceed the 55 percent cut that YouTube offers. However, it hasn't said whether that will be done with ads or other means. It's also not clear how it may address piracy issues, given that much of its moderation team has been let go or quit.
It’s never exactly easy to pull the plug on a social media account you’ve had for years. For many of us, our accounts are filled with years of photos, memories and memes that aren’t easy to part with ,even if we are ready to stop the daily scrolling habit. For Facebook, Instagram and other Meta-run services, deleting an account entirely isn’t necessarily straightforward, either.
And even though all the services are run by the same company, there isn’t one centralized way to delete all your Meta-associated accounts. The good news is that removing these accounts is in many cases a lot easier than it has been in the past, even if there are sometimes a few extra steps involved. Keep reading to find out exactly how to delete your Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus accounts.
First, download your data
Regardless of your reasons for wanting to leave your accounts behind, it’s worth it to take the time to download all your data before you delete them for good. Downloading your data will ensure you have a record of your prior posts, messages, photos and other activity.
These data archives look a little different for each service, but in general they contain your previous posts, a record of what accounts you follow, your messages and even some of your past activity on the services. Some, like Facebook, will even provide a record of what the site’s advertisers know about you.
In other words: it’s a lot of data. And it may not seem like a lot of that is worth hanging onto, but if you’ve used an account for years it’s a good way to preserve a record of your past photos, videos and other posts. (Though you should also be prepared for it to surface some data you might not want to remember, like conversations with former partners or cringey college photos.)
On Facebook, you can access your archive from: Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> download your information -> request download.
On Instagram, it’s More -> Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Data download -> Request download.
On WhatsApp, it’s Settings -> Account -> Request account info. (Of note, WhatsApp’s reports don’t include the content of your actual messages. If you want to preserve a copy of your messages, you’ll need to export your chat history on each message thread you wish to hang onto.
On Messenger, downloads have to be initiated through the mobile app. On both Android and iOS, go to Account Settings (located in the “chats” tab) -> Your Facebook Information -> Download your information. You’ll then be able to specify a few aspects of the data, like the media quality, data format and date range you want the download to cover.
For Oculus and Meta Quest users, you can use the “download your information” tool linked here.
Once you have your data archives stashed away, you’ll be ready to permanently nuke your accounts. Though, like the data downloads, it can take up to several days for the process to be complete.
How to delete Facebook
Dado Ruvic / reuters
Before you permanently delete Facebook, a word of caution: nuking your account will also nuke third-party accounts where you’ve also used Facebook to log-in. In some cases, you might be able to recover them via the app’s support channels, but there’s no guarantee. Follow the steps here to review which apps and websites you use Facebook as a log in.
Likewise, if your Oculus account is linked to your Facebook identity, then deleting your Facebook will also permanently delete your Oculus account, including your past purchases. (Of note, Meta now allows VR users to create a separate “Meta account” that doesn’t rely on Facebook.)
Once you’re sure you’re ready to delete, you can find the option from Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> Deactivation and Deletion -> Delete Account -> Continue to account deletion -> Delete Account
However, even after you’ve smashed the final “delete” button, Facebook notes that it still takes around 30 days for your information to be purged entirely. That also means that if you do happen to change your mind within 30 days, you can cancel the request. According to the company, it can take up to 90 days for the deletion process to complete, though your profile and other info won’t be visible to others on Facebook during that time.
How to delete Instagram
Wachiwit via Getty Images
For Instagram, you need to go to the “delete your account” page, which can be found here. From there, you’ll have to select a reason from the drop-down menu, and enter your password.
As with Facebook, Instagram notes that it can take “up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all the things you've posted,” though posts won’t be visible to others on the platform during that time.
How to delete Facebook Messenger
If you delete a Facebook account, your Messenger account will also be permanently deleted so you don’t need to go through extra steps if you’ve already purged your Facebook presence. But it’s also worth noting that simply deactivating your Facebook won’t affect your ability to use Messenger or other users’ ability to find you on the app.
If, however, you happen to use Messenger without an associated Facebook account, you can delete your account via the app. On Both iOS and Android: Account Settings -> Delete Your Account and Information and enter your password.
How to delete WhatsApp
WhatsApp accounts can be deleted directly from the app via Settings -> Account -> Delete My Account. The app will then prompt you to enter your phone number. As with facebook and Instagram, the company says the full deletion process can take up to 90 days.
How to delete an Oculus or Meta account
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
As noted above, if you used Facebook to login to your Oculus account, then deleting Facebook will take care of it. If, however, your Oculus login was separate, you need to log in to your account on Oculus’ website from a browser, then navigate to My Profile -> Privacy Center -> Delete Your Oculus Account.
Of note, this process will only work until January 1, 2023, when Meta will force all Oculus accounts to migrate to the new Meta accounts mentioned above. For those newer Meta accounts, you can delete your presence by heading to auth.meta.com/settings, logging in, selecting “delete your account,” entering your password again and choosing “delete your data.”
Again, keep in mind this will prevent you from using your VR headset, and will remove any past purchases you’ve made.
In mid-November, Elon Musk said Twitter was working on a feature that would allow brands and organizations to identify accounts associated with them. A month later, the company has begun rolling that feature out. As first spotted by social media consultant (and former Next Web journalist) Matt Navarra, Twitter has added a new "Affiliate" badge that can appear alongside an account's verified checkmark. The purpose of the icon is to point you to the account's parent account if it's not the primary account of a brand or organization. For instance, if you visit the Twitter Support account, you can click on the badge to go straight to the main Twitter account. Brands now also have square profile pictures to further differentiate their presence on the platform.
Musk first announced the feature in the same week that Twitter made its first failed attempt at rolling out paid account verification. After the company began enrolling users into its revamped Twitter Blue subscription, verified trolls used the service to impersonate brands and celebrities. The situation was a nightmare for businesses like Eli Lilly. The pharmaceutical firm saw billions of dollars erased from its market cap after a fake "verified" account misled people into believing the company was making insulin free.
NEW! Twitter just added a new ‘Affiliate’ verification badge ⭐️😮
Brands will be able to verify other associated accounts as affiliated with their main Twitter account
Affiliate accounts show a miniture version of the main accounts avatar next to the verified check mark. pic.twitter.com/WlDHbrLUnT
Europe has hit Facebook owner Meta with a complaint that its Marketplace classified service is unfair to competitors. By tying its main social media site to Marketplace, it has a "substantial distribution advantage" over rivals, the EU Commission wrote in a press release.
"With its Facebook social network, Meta reaches globally billions of monthly users and millions active advertisers," EU Antitrust Commissioner said in a statement. "Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network Facebook to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace. This means that users of Facebook automatically have access to Facebook Marketplace, whether they want it or not."
In addition, the Commission found that Meta imposes imposes unfair trading conditions on competitors that advertise on Facebook or Instagram. That essentially allows it to use "ads-related data derived from competitors for the benefit of Facebook Marketplace," it said. The practices, if confirmed, would infringe on EU rules that prohibit the abuse of a dominant market position. The EU has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of Meta's annual revenue and prohibit the behavior.
In a statement, Meta's head of EMEA competition said the "claims made by the European Commission are without foundation" and that the company "will continue to work with regulatory authorities to demonstrate that our product innovation is pro-consumer and pro-competitive."
Last year, the EU Commission launched an antitrust probe into Facebook's classified advertising practices to determine if it broke competition rules by using advertiser data to its own benefit. The so-called Statement of Objects released today is a formal step in EU antitrust investigations, informing parties of complaints raised against them. Meta can now examine the documents, reply in writing and request an oral hearing to present their comments, according to the Commission.
Could the state of Twitter get any worse? Of course it can. While a lot of us were glued to the World Cup final, the social network made major policy changes, deciding to halt any kind of “free promotion” of competing social media sites. Or, at least, it did for a moment.
Twitter announced yesterday it would remove links to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Post and, er, Truth Social, from accounts whose "main purpose" is to promote content on those platforms. This includes links in Twitter bios and even, it seems, links to YouTube channels and profiles. The company would even restrict the use of third-party aggregators, like Linktree and Link.bio. Funnily enough, if you were willing to pay, you’d be fine. Twitter said it would continue to allow paid promotion for any of the platforms on its new prohibited list.
Twitter began enforcing the policy almost immediately. Yesterday, at 2:17 PM ET, Paul Graham, the founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator – and Silicon Valley royalty – said he was done with Twitter, following the rule change, and told his more than 1.5 million followers to find him on Mastodon. A few hours later, Twitter suspended Graham's account.
But then late last night, the official tweets announcing the link ban were deleted, as was the policy itself from Twitter’s website. So, well, we’re not entirely sure now. Musk also tweeted a poll asking if he should stick around as Twitter boss. At the moment, the answer is no.
– Mat Smith
The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.
Riot Games has filed a motion with the court overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy case to end the seven-year sponsorship agreement the two companies signed last August. In a brief spotted by crypto critic Molly White, Riot says the exchange still owes half of the 12.5 million it agreed to pay in 2022 for the studio to display FTX branding at LCS events. Riot adds the disgraced firm will owe it another nearly $13 million in 2023.
In 2021, Apple was the frontrunner to secure streaming rights to the NFL’s Sunday Ticket game coverage. Now, a year later, the company has reportedly dropped out of negotiations. With Disney bowing out of the negotiations as well, the talks have become a two-horse race between Amazon and Google. Amazon’s Prime Video is already the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football for the next decade. Last year, The Athletic reported the NFL was asking for more than $2 billion per year for Sunday Ticket rights, at least $500 million more than DirecTV had been paying to air Sunday games.
Guerrilla is working on more ‘epic solo adventures for Aloy,’ too.
A VR spinoff and Horizon Forbidden West expansion won’t be the last we see of Guerrilla Games’ Horizon universe. The studio has at least two more games in the works for the PlayStation franchise, including a multiplayer title. Guerrilla made the announcement in a recruitment tweet. Along with working on more “epic solo adventures for Aloy,” the star of the first two games, the studio has a separate team to create an “online project set in Horizon’s universe.” It added that the latter will feature new characters and a “unique stylized look.”
Fujifilm’s 40-megapixel X-H2 is the highest-resolution APS-C camera yet and the first with 8K video. It has a good balance between resolution and speed, with autofocus that’s good but not quite up to par with Canon and Sony. It has plenty of features for video, and the only drawback is rolling shutter, but even that’s not as bad as other rival APS-C cameras. Read on for our full review.
Yesterday Elon Musk launched another one of his famous Twitter policy polls, this time putting his own leadership on the line. "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll," he tweeted. The poll just ended and 57.5 percent of users voted "Yes," compared to 42.5 percent who voted no (with 17,502,391 votes) — a decisive 15-point margin.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
It remains to be seen if (and how, and when) Musk will abide by his poll, as he has yet to issue any comment about the results. Shortly after publishing the vote (and when it was already tilting toward "Yes"), he tweeted "as the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it." During the poll, Musk was seen at the World Cup in Qatar with former White House adviser Jared Kushner, live-tweeting the final between France and Argentina.
The vote follows a flurry of activity on Twitter. Yesterday, the social media site announced a rule change prohibiting users from linking to competing platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter rival Mastodon. That resulted in the ban of multiple users including Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, an early supporter of Musk's Twitter acquisition.
A massive backlash ensued, and shortly afterwards, Twitter deleted a blog post that had outlined the new policy. In yet another poll yesterday, @TwitterSafety asked users whether it should "have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms." The "No" votes currently command a 87 percent share from 224,365 users with 14 hours remaining.
YouTube has removed PornHub's official channel over what it called "multiple violations" of its community guidelines, Variety has reported. Pornhub's YouTube channel first launched in 2014 and had 900,000 subscribers, but it no longer appears in YouTube search and its URL now shows a 404 error.
YouTube said that Pornhub violated its policy against linking to sites that host content not allowed on YouTube. "Upon review, we terminated the channel Pornhub Official following multiple violations of our community guidelines," a spokesperson said. "We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and channels that repeatedly violate or are dedicated to violative content are terminated."
Pornhub's parent MindGeek said that it "vehemently denied" YouTubes claims that it linked out to porn sites. "Pornhub maintains the absolute best trust and safety measures on the internet and takes special care to ensure it does not violate any of YouTube’s Community Guidelines," a spokesperson said in a statement. "Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of discrimination against those in the adult industry."
On Friday, the anti-pornography group National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) wrote on its blog that it had flagged content that it believed violated YouTube policies. "After review, YouTube alerted NCOSE that they had terminated the channel for violations of their Community Guidelines." MindGeek, meanwhile, said that performers and sex workers are marginalized groups and called YouTube's "haphazard and arbitrary enforcement... dangerous and harmful."
Mastercard and Visa cut off payments to Pornhub in 2020, with Mastercard saying at the time that it found illegal content on the site. A federal judge refused to remove Visa from a lawsuit alleging that it aided MindGeek in monetizing child pornography. In September, Instagram banned Pornhub permanently, also citing violations of community guidelines.
