Microblogging

Last Monday, Sacramento reached a scalding high of 113 degrees Fahrenheit, smashing the previous daily record of 108. The same day, a Twitter data center located in the California state capital failed, according to a report from CNN that cites a leaked internal company email.“On September 5th, Twitter experienced the loss of its Sacramento (SMF) datacenter region due to extreme weather. The unprecedented event resulted in the total shutdown of physical equipment in SMF,” Carrie Fernandez, the social media company’s vice…

It’s clear that Twitter vice president of product Keith Coleman genuinely believes in Birdwatch, the platform’s community-based debunking feature that will be expanding to 50% of U.S. users this week. The feature has been met with skepticism by some, who worry bad actors will misuse it and fill the social network with even more misinformation.Coleman has heard it all before. One of the most common questions he’s received is: Will Birdwatch be exploited?“Everyone is so used to things on the Internet being trolled or…

Former Disney CEO Bob Iger may have just given Elon Musk a gift.Photo: Jerod Harris (Getty Images)Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s excuse for trying to back out of his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter—too many bots, he says—is gaining steam. First, it was the Twitter whistleblower’s claims. Then, on Wednesday, Musk received an assist from former Disney CEO Bob Iger, who had wanted to buy Twitter for the House of Mouse years ago but ultimately didn’t. Iger’s revelation: Bots made up “substantial portion” Twitter’s users. In an…

Do you want to fact-check for Twitter?Image: Courtesy of TwitterTwitter is expanding Birdwatch, its misinformation debunking product “for the people, by the people,” in the U.S., a move that will put community-based fact checking to the test. In the coming days, there’s a good chance you’ll see notes on tweets in your timeline written by Birdwatch contributors that provide additional information or maybe even revealthat the tweet is completely wrong.Beginning this week, Twitter will begin to accept 1,000 new contributors…

Twitter Circles are here for everyone.Screenshot: TwitterIt’s all happening at Twitter: Not only is the bird app testing an edit button for paid users, but it’s also rolled out Twitter Circles, a way of limiting post visibility that’s reminiscent of something Google Plus tried to do all those years ago. Unlike the edit option, Circles isn’t exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers, and everyone should be able to access the feature now (or in the very near future).The idea is that maybe you don’t want all of the friends,…

It’s unclear whether Peiter Zatko’s information about bots on Twitter will help Musk get out of the deal.Photo: Chris Delmas / AFP (Getty Images)Tesla CEO and remorseful Twitter buyer Elon Musk is seizing on the explosive whistleblower complaint lodged against Twitter by its former head of security in an attempt to strengthen the case he’s making to walk away from his $44 billion deal to purchase the social media network. Lawyers for Peter Zatko stated late Monday that the former employee had received a subpoena from…

Photo: BigTunaOnline (Shutterstock)Why wait for the blue check mark when you can get a shield with ‘verified phone number’ right above your following count. And since you can have ten different accounts under one phone number, that is ten verified (phone number) accounts for you. So yes it is true, Twitter is now verifying your phone number, but in an effort to do what exactly?This feature was first noticed by user (and security researcher) Jane Manchun Wong, who pointed out that Twitter is working on this verification…

Photo: Jed Jacobsohn (AP)Twitter, which has a spotty history of applying policies governing misinformation, hate speech, and inciting rhetoric from government officials, elected representatives, and unverified propagandists, said Thursday that it is working to ensure “healthy civic conversation” ahead of the U.S. midterms.In a blog post, the company said it had reactivated its civil integrity policy, which works to limit messaging designed to deceive users about “when, where, or how” to vote. While the company says…

Image Source : AP Twitter down! Social networking site faces major outage HighlightsMicroblogging social site Twitter faced a major outage as several users unable to load tweets According to Downdetector, users began reporting the outage around 5:30 pm IST NetBlocks said Twitter was “experiencing major international outages" Twitter Down: Microblogging social site Twitter faced a major outage on Thursday as several users unable to load tweets. Twitteratis who are attempting to use the social media platform were…

Twitter users reported some problems with the microblogging site since Sunday, according to the outage monitoring website on Monday. "User reports indicate Twitter is having problems since 11:41pm EDT," tweeted Downdetector.com.As per the website, the outages are reported on websites the most.Social media is buzzing due to this outage. One of the users asked, "Did Twitter have an outage? I kept getting the oops something went wrong page and could not log in."One user commented on Downdetector.com, stating that he is…