Social Media Updates Archives - Page 6 of 9

Elon Musk’s Letter to Microsoft CEO: You Misused Twitter Data

Twitter has accused Microsoft of violating multiple provisions of the social media platform’s developers agreement for an extended period of time.

First reported by the New York Times, Elon Musk’s personal lawyer yesterday sent a letter to Satya Nadella, the CEO and Chairman of Microsoft, accusing the tech giant of excessive and abusive usage of Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API), a software tool that enables developers to access data from a website and deliver services based on this content.

Twitter has enforced rate limits on the use of its API which, the company explained in its letter, prohibits developers (such as Microsoft) from ‘exceeding’ or ‘circumventing’.

“Despite these limitations, the Microsoft Apps accessed Twitter’s APIs over 780 million times and retrieved over 26 billion tweets in 2022 alone. Indeed, for one of the Microsoft Apps, Microsoft’s account information outright states that it intends to allow its customers to “go around throttling limits,” said the letter.

Microsoft doesn’t currently pay Twitter for data

Twitter, in the letter, also accused Microsoft of using Twitter’s APIs free of charge which has, in turn, generated billions of dollars in revenue for Microsoft annually.

The Bill Gates-founded tech firm also stands accused of not paying a discounted rate offered by Twitter for continued access to its APIs and content.

Twitter’s API-driven apps like Hootsuite, Spriklr and Sprout Social were to free to use for some researchers, partners and developers who agreed to their terms, reported CNBC.

The letter further says: “Microsoft operated eight separate Twitter API apps, listed below, which appear to provide data and functionality for at least five separate Microsoft products and services, including Xbox One, Bing Pages, Azure, Power Platform, and Ads:

Xbox One Social
Bing Pages
Bing Pages 2
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Power Platform
Microsoft Ads
Microsoft Global Ads
Azure Logic Apps for Fairfax”

Interesting Engineering had earlier reported that ever since Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for an exorbitant price of $44 billion, he has been on a spree to gain revenue from a loss-making platform. He has fired thousands of employees, charged people on Twitter for a verification status and introduced a rate card for developers to have access to its API.

This comes a month after Musk, in a tweet reply, accused Microsoft of using Twitter data to train their AI and even threatened to file a lawsuit.

They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

The social media platform is now asking Microsoft to identify Twitter’s content currently in its control, the manner in which it used such content and to submit a written report describing its deployment of such content no later than June 7, 2023.

You can read the full letter as uploaded by CNBC.

WhatsApp Introduces ‘Chat Lock’ Feature for Enhanced User Privacy

Meta-owned WhatsApp has recently launched the highly anticipated ‘Chat Lock’ feature, allowing users to secure their conversations within a protected folder on the messaging app. This move aims to provide an additional layer of privacy and control over sensitive discussions.

Enhanced Security and Privacy

With the ‘Chat Lock’ feature, users can effectively lock their chosen conversations, removing them from the regular inbox and placing them in a dedicated folder accessible only through the device’s password or biometric authentication. This added security measure ensures that unauthorized individuals cannot access the locked chats, even if they have access to the unlocked phone.

How to Use Whatsapp Chat Lock

To lock a chat, WhatsApp users simply need to tap on the name of an individual or group conversation and select the lock option. The locked chat will then be moved to a separate section, hidden from the regular chat list and notifications. To access the locked chats again, users can pull down on the inbox and enter the device’s password or use biometric authentication.

🆕 privacy feature just dropped 🔒

With Chat Lock, now you can keep your most private and personal conversations under lock and key with a password. pic.twitter.com/NsM5NOka9A
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) May 15, 2023

Strengthening Privacy Measures

While WhatsApp already implements end-to-end encryption for its messages, the ‘Chat Lock’ feature adds an extra layer of protection, particularly in scenarios where users frequently share their unlocked phones with others. By securing individual conversations, users can ensure that their private discussions remain confidential, even when their devices are in the possession of others.

Similarity to Apple’s Hidden Photos Feature

The functionality of the ‘Chat Lock’ feature on WhatsApp bears similarities to Apple’s hidden photos feature on iCloud. Just as Apple users can protect specific images in a hidden folder, users can now safeguard their conversations in a locked chat folder, offering enhanced privacy and control over sensitive content.

Advantages for Shared Devices and Special Occasions

Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, highlighted that the ‘Chat Lock’ feature would be particularly useful for users who occasionally share their phones with family members or in situations where others may handle their devices. By utilizing the ‘Chat Lock’ feature, users can maintain privacy and protect the confidentiality of their conversations, even during moments when someone else might access their phone.

Future Updates and Additional Security Options

The global rollout of the ‘Chat Lock’ feature is already underway, and WhatsApp users can expect more options and updates in the coming months. These forthcoming enhancements include locks for companion devices and the ability to create custom passwords for individual chats, allowing users to employ unique passwords separate from their device’s security measures.

The Demise of the Metaverse

The once-promising Metaverse, a technology that aimed to immerse users in a disorienting video-game-like world, has met its demise after being abandoned by the business world, despite being just three years old.

Born in 2021 when Facebook rebranded to Meta, the capital-M Metaverse drew inspiration from the movie “Tron” (1982) and the video game “Second Life” (2003). Its grand entrance captivated the tech industry and became a strategy to impress Wall Street investors. However, despite the initial hype, the lack of a coherent vision for the product ultimately led to its downfall. The tech industry swiftly shifted its attention to the more promising realm of generative AI, leaving the Metaverse behind.

Now consigned to the graveyard of failed ideas within the tech industry, the Metaverse’s short-lived existence and ignominious demise serve as a glaring indictment of the very industry that birthed it.

Ultimate Assurance

The Metaverse, as proclaimed by Mark Zuckerberg, was touted as the future of the internet. With a glitzy promotional video accompanying his name-change announcement, Zuckerberg promised a future where seamless interaction in virtual worlds would become the norm. Users would have the ability to “make eye contact” and feel as if they were physically present in the same room. This immersive experience was presented as a grand vision for the future. However, these lofty promises created sky-high expectations that the actual technology failed to fulfill.

One of the challenges faced by the Metaverse was its acute identity crisis. While Zuckerberg spoke passionately about it being a vision that spans multiple companies and the successor to the mobile internet, he struggled to articulate the fundamental business problems that the Metaverse aimed to solve. The concept of virtual worlds and interacting with digital avatars has existed since the late 1990s, but Zuckerberg’s one tangible product, the VR platform Horizon Worlds, did not provide a clear roadmap or a compelling vision. As a result, the Metaverse’s conceptual development remained stagnant, and the media’s portrayal of its future often bordered on unrealistic and irresponsible, with promises of billions of users and significant financial transactions without a clear value proposition or compelling reason for users to embrace the technology.

A high-flying life

The inability to define the Metaverse in any meaningful way didn’t get in the way of its ascension to the top of the business world. In the months following the Meta announcement, it seemed that every company had a Metaverse product on offer, despite it not being obvious what it was or why they should.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella would say at the company’s 2021 Ignite Conference that he couldn’t “overstate how much of a breakthrough” the Metaverse was for his company, the industry, and the world. Roblox, an online game platform that has existed since 2004, rode the Metaverse hype wave to an initial public offering and a $41 billion valuation. Of course, the cryptocurrency industry took the ball and ran with it: The people behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT company conned the press into believing that uploading someone’s digital monkey pictures into VR would be the key to “master the Metaverse.” Other crypto pumpers even successfully convinced people that digital land in the Metaverse would be the next frontier of real-estate investment. Even businesses that seemed to have little to do with tech jumped on board. Walmart joined the Metaverse. Disney joined the Metaverse.

Despite Zuckerberg’s obsession with the Metaverse, the tech never lived up to the hype.

Companies’ rush to get into the game led Wall Street investors, consultants, and analysts to try to one up each other’s projections for the Metaverse’s growth. The consulting firm Gartner claimed that 25% of people would spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse by 2026. The Wall Street Journal said the Metaverse would change the way we work forever. The global consulting firm McKinsey predicted that the Metaverse could generate up to “$5 trillion in value,” adding that around 95% of business leaders expected the Metaverse to “positively impact their industry” within five to 10 years. Not to be outdone, Citi put out a massive report that declared the Metaverse would be a $13 trillion opportunity.

A brutal downfall

In spite of all this hype, the Metaverse did not lead a healthy life. Every single business idea or rosy market projection was built on the vague promises of a single CEO. And when people were actually offered the opportunity to try it out, nobody actually used the Metaverse.

Decentraland, the most well-funded, decentralized, crypto-based Metaverse product (effectively a wonky online world you can “walk” around), only had around 38 daily active users in its “$1.3 billion ecosystem.” Decentraland would dispute this number, claiming that it had 8,000 daily active users — but that’s still only a fraction of the number of people playing large online games like “Fortnite.” Meta’s much-heralded efforts similarly struggled: By October 2022, Mashable reported that Horizon Worlds had less than 200,000 monthly active users — dramatically short of the 500,000 target Meta had set for the end of 2022. The Wall Street Journal reported that only about 9% of user-created worlds were visited by more than 50 players, and The Verge said that it was so buggy that even Meta employees eschewed it. Despite the might of a then-trillion-dollar company, Meta could not convince people to use the product it had staked its future on.

The Metaverse fell seriously ill as the economy slowed and the hype around generative AI grew. Microsoft shuttered its virtual-workspace platform AltSpaceVR in January 2023, laid off the 100 members of its “industrial metaverse team,” and made a series of cuts to its HoloLens team. Disney shuttered its Metaverse division in March, and Walmart followed suit by ending its Roblox-based Metaverse projects. The billions of dollars invested and the breathless hype around a half-baked concept led to thousands — if not tens of thousands — of people losing their jobs.

But the Metaverse was officially pulled off life support when it became clear that Zuckerberg and the company that launched the craze had moved on to greener financial pastures. Zuckerberg declared in a March update that Meta’s “single largest investment is advancing AI and building it into every one of our products.” Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, told CNBC in April that he, along with Mark Zuckerberg and the company’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, were now spending most of their time on AI. The company has even stopped pitching the Metaverse to advertisers, despite spending more than $100 billion in research and development on its mission to be “Metaverse first.” While Zuckerberg may suggest that developing games for the Quest headsets is some sort of investment, the writing is on the wall: Meta is done with the Metaverse.

Did anyone learn their lesson?

While the idea of virtual worlds or collective online experiences may live on in some form, the Capital-M Metaverse is dead. It was preceded in death by a long line of tech fads like Web3 and Google Glass. It is survived by newfangled ideas like the aforementioned generative AI and the self-driving car. Despite this long lineage of disappointment, let’s be clear: The death of the Metaverse should be remembered as arguably one of the most historic failures in tech history.

I do not believe that Mark Zuckerberg ever had any real interest in “the Metaverse,” because he never seemed to define it beyond a slightly tweaked Facebook with avatars and cumbersome hardware. It was the means to an increased share price, rather than any real vision for the future of human interaction. And Zuckerberg used his outsize wealth and power to get the whole of the tech industry and a good portion of the American business world into line behind this half-baked idea.

The fact that Mark Zuckerberg has clearly stepped away from the Metaverse is a damning indictment of everyone who followed him, and anyone who still considers him a visionary tech leader. It should also be the cause for some serious reflection among the venture-capital community, which recklessly followed Zuckerberg into blowing billions of dollars on a hype cycle founded on the flimsiest possible press-release language. In a just world, Mark Zuckerberg should be fired as CEO of Meta (in the real world, this is actually impossible).

Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an industry of followers to submit to his quixotic obsession, and then killed it the second that another idea started to interest Wall Street. There is no reason that a man who has overseen the layoffs of tens of thousands of people should run a major company. There is no future for Meta with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm: It will stagnate, and then it will die and follow the Metaverse into the proverbial grave.

How Much TikTok Pays for Views

The ability to monetize their content is a pressing concern for many TikTok creators who have gained popularity on the platform. While TikTok offers a powerful avenue for building an audience, the question remains: Can users actually make money from it?

In order to earn a living, some influencers rely on brand partnerships and deals. Others venture beyond TikTok and explore platforms like YouTube or Twitch, which have more established in-app monetization programs.

To support creators in their pursuit of earning money, TikTok has introduced various features in recent years. One such initiative is the Creator Fund, through which TikTok compensates creators directly from its own resources. For instance, Vi Luong, a TikToker with approximately 1 million followers, revealed that she earned between $150 to $300 per month from the Creator Fund. The amount she received depended on her posting frequency and the performance of her content.

However, it’s important to note that TikTok’s current payout offerings are not as substantial as the ad-revenue sharing options provided by competitors like YouTube for long-form videos.

Many of the monetization features on TikTok rely on external entities, such as marketers and fans, to financially support creators. For instance, TikTok launched a brand-creator matchmaking platform in 2019, followed by an influencer marketing tool in 2021. Additionally, TikTok has introduced features like tipping, subscriptions, and gifting, enabling users to reward creators with virtual currency that can later be converted into real dollars.

As the short-video format gains popularity, social platforms across the industry are experimenting with different approaches to compensate creators effectively. The goal is to strike a balance between supporting creators financially and ensuring the sustainability and growth of the platform.

1. The Creator Fund and Creativity Program

In 2020, TikTok launched a Creator Fund, pledging to pay its users a total of $1 billion over a three-year period. The company has not publicly shared how much it’s paid out so far from that original commitment.

The fund is essentially a big pot of money TikTok uses to pay a subset of creators with at least 10,000 followers who have generated 100,000 video views in the previous 30-day period. TikTok told Insider it considers factors like video view counts, video engagement, and the location in which a video was seen, when determining Creator Fund payouts.

TikTok’s $1 billion target is small compared to YouTube’s overall creator payouts. YouTube’s CEO wrote in 2021 that the company had paid $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies over a three-year time frame. It also set up a $100 million fund in 2021, meant to last through 2022, specifically for its TikTok-like feature, shorts.

Other platforms like Snapchat have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to influencers to incentivize the creation of short videos. Instagram also previously paid some creators based on the number of views their Reels generate, offering “bonuses” for hitting certain short-video view thresholds, though it paused that initiative in early 2023.

Influencers who have revealed their Creator Fund payments publicly or with Insider over the last few years have reported earning just a few cents for every 1,000 views their videos generate.

For creators with millions of views on videos, a lower RPM can still add up to more than $1,000 in earnings.

Personal-finance influencer Preston Seo, who now has 2.4 million TikTok followers, earned a total of about $1,664 from the Creator Fund between January 2021 and May 2021, according to documentation he shared with Insider. His TikTok account earned between $9 and $38 a day on average.

Other top creators, such as MrBeast and Hank Green, have reported low Creator Fund payouts despite generating huge view counts.

“When [TikTok] established their Creator Fund, it was a good step forward, but it remains on the weaker side of platform monetization,” Eamon Brennan, the vice president of creator partnerships at creator agency and management firm Collab, told Insider in 2022. “I think regulating and expanding the actual monetization system of the platform itself would help everyone out.”

When asked about creators’ concerns around low fund payouts, a TikTok spokesperson said in July 2022 that the company understood “how important it is that our creators are appreciated for their work and look to our creator community for valuable feedback to better serve their needs.” They pointed to other monetization features like live subscriptions that are available to users.

In early 2023, TikTok began testing a new creator funding option it’s calling the Creativity Program. The new program is designed to pay creators “higher average gross revenue” for videos that are longer than one minute. Like the Creator Fund, users must have at least 10,000 followers and have achieved 100,000 video views in the past 30 days to join. Creators can only participate in one of the two programs at a time.

2. TikTok Pulse

In May 2022, TikTok announced it was launching a new contextual-advertising product in which brands could buy ads alongside “the top 4%” of content in different categories like fashion, cooking, and beauty. It agreed to split half of the revenue with the creator whose video appeared before the in-feed ad. Only creators with at least 100,000 followers qualify for the program.

The company announced in May 2023 it was also testing a version of the Pulse program for traditional media publishers called Pulse Premiere.

As with the Creator Fund, initial payments from TikTok Pulse have been underwhelming, creators told Insider.

Eight creators who shared their monthly payouts, view counts, and revenue for every 1,000 video views (RPM) from the program in 2022 earned anywhere from a few pennies to $17. The creators each had hundreds of thousands of followers; several produced content around gaming, while others made lifestyle videos.

While most of the creators who shared payment data with Insider saw Pulse RPMs in the $7 to $8 range, one creator reported an RPM closer to $3. The creator RPMs were competitive on TikTok Pulse when compared to other ad-revenue solutions like YouTube’s partner program for long-form video, but the revenue-generating views were comparatively low, often dipping below 1,000 views.

“I was super excited to join it, but I’m six cents richer today,” Betts Waller, a gaming creator who has around 380,000 followers on his TikTok account Forrest Dump, told Insider.

Waller only had eight video views qualify for Pulse earnings over the pay period between September 30 and October 30 2022, despite posting videos that garnered tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of views.

Other creators saw a similar pattern of Pulse-monetized views falling far below total video-view counts for a payment period.

A company spokesperson told Insider that even if a user’s video generates millions of views, it doesn’t mean that each video view is followed by a Pulse ad. Due to the nature of the TikTok algorithm, some videos will contribute to more ad impressions than others, they said.

“We’re continuing to work on improving Pulse so that we can better support our creators and advertisers, and look forward to expanding our monetization opportunities,” they said.

YouTube rolled out a similar ad revenue-sharing program for its shorts feature in early 2023. Six creators who shared their February 2023 payouts with Insider reported earning hundreds of dollars for videos that garnered millions of views, amounting to effective RPMs of around 4 to 5 cents.

Twitter Acknowledges Accidental Exposure of Private Circle Tweets in ‘Security Incident’

After weeks of silence, Twitter has finally acknowledged a bug that caused tweets shared within users private Twitter Circles to become public. Affected users received an email from the platform on Friday, notifying them of a “security incident” that resulted in their semi-private tweets being visible to a wider audience beyond their intended Circle of close friends.

The email, obtained by Fortune, stated, “In April 2023, a security incident may have allowed users outside of your Twitter Circle to see tweets that should have otherwise been limited to the Circle to which you were posting.” It further explained that the issue was promptly identified and resolved by the Twitter security team, ensuring that the affected tweets were no longer visible outside of the intended Circle.

Twitter Circle allows users to share tweets exclusively with a private group of followers, thereby limiting their visibility to a select audience rather than broadcasting them to all followers or the public. However, in April, users started encountering glitches with this feature. In a test tweet, one user discovered that a person outside their Twitter Circle could see a tweet they had specifically sent to their personal list of followers.

Confirmed someone I'm not even following was able to see a private Twitter Circle tweet (thank you @TheSahilDev)

This hurts trust in the platform a lot. Should be top priority @TwitterEng pic.twitter.com/BCYPkikJ2p
— Theo – t3.gg (@t3dotgg) April 8, 2023

One month after this incident, impacted users received the email from Twitter, acknowledging the issue and reassuring them that the security team had addressed the problem. The exact number of users affected by this bug remains unknown.

“Twitter is committed to protecting the privacy of the people who use our service, and we understand the risks that an incident like this can introduce, and we deeply regret this happened,” expressed the company in the email to affected users, according to Fortune.

WhatsApp Announces New Features

WhatsApp, the popular messaging platform owned by Meta, has recently unveiled three exciting features aimed at enhancing the user experience. These additions, reported by WaBetaInfo, focus on improving polls, forwarding media with captions, and sharing documents with captions.

While these updates are being rolled out worldwide, users can access them gradually by installing the latest version of the app. However, it’s important to note that the availability of these features may vary and could take some time to reach all users.

Polls

The latest update introduces a new feature that streamlines the process of reaching a definitive answer in polls. Poll creators now have the option to enable a single-vote setting, disabling the “allow multiple answers” toggle. This empowers creators to gather more accurate responses.

Furthermore, users can now conveniently filter messages by polls, similar to searching for photos, videos, or links. By selecting the “polls” option, users can easily locate specific poll-related texts, making it effortless to reference and analyze poll results.

According to a statement from the app-tracking website, the latest app updates ensure that poll creators stay informed about responses by receiving notifications when people vote on their polls. This enhances the engagement and interaction between poll creators and participants.

Forward Media with Captions

In the latest feature update, WhatsApp users can now forward media, including photos, videos, and GIFs, with captions. This gives users the flexibility to share content while retaining, removing, or enhancing the existing captions as they see fit. This feature enables users to provide context or additional information to enrich the shared media.

Moreover, users can also forward documents along with captions, simplifying the process of locating specific files in the future. By adding helpful captions to the forwarded documents, organization and retrieval become easier and more efficient.

These enhancements provide users with greater control and customization options when sharing media and documents, ultimately improving communication and collaboration.

WhatsApp continues to prioritize user experience by introducing innovative features that cater to users’ evolving needs. Stay tuned for more exciting updates as the platform strives to enhance your messaging experience.