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It’s day 8 of Gizmodo’s March Madness bracket challenge to name the greatest app of all time and one of the most controversial apps of our time has entered the ring. Venmo buried I Am Rich in yesterday’s battle of the money apps, taking more than 78 percent of the vote. Today, the king of micro-blogging apps takes on the bastion of long reads.If you’re just tuning in, you can read all about our selection criteria for this historic contest right here. Check out the full bracket of contestants embedded below. And as always,…

Twitter is officially dead. Since Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of it late last year, people have been saying it’s dead or dying or will die. Musk ended the argument when he renamed the app “X.” And now, so many people seem to pine for the days when Twitter was good. But let me tell you, it was never good. It was a place of sadness and attention farming; a place for enemies and humiliation. It was, in short, shit.Google’s AI Isn’t a Gimmick, It’s the Future | AI UnlockedAfter renaming and subsuming Jack Dorsey’s…

Threads is getting some new feature updates, inching it a little closer to the Twitter clone that was promised. The updated features will include a followers list, the option to subscribe to unfollowed users, and a revised “follows” tab, Threads developer Cameron Roth, said in a Threads post. Unfortunately, the most important tab is still missing. Nobody’s Really Watching ReelsUsers will see the updates on their profiles throughout Wednesday but may need to restart the app to see them come through immediately. Otherwise,…

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg traded insults over the weekend as competition between the billionaires heated up majorly in Zuck’s favor. On its fifth day of existence, Meta’s new Threads app hit over 100 million user signups, becoming one of the fastest growing apps in history. Meanwhile, Twitter’s traffic is “tanking,” according to Mathew Prince, CEO of network service company Cloudflare, whose data shows that visits to Twitter have been in steady decline since Musk took the reins, a trend that accelerated slightly over…

Meta released its hotly anticipated Twitter copycat, Threads, yesterday, moving the app’s release up from Thursday morning to early evening on Wednesday night. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 10 million users flocked to the app in its first few hours. Things on Threads were, to be frank, pretty boring. Ironically, that could be the secret to Threads’ success. On a chaotic internet fueled by outrage, dull may be what users and advertisers want.Twitter Verification is a Hot MessUsers arrived on Threads to find their…

Meta’s Twitter clone, called Threads, is a hair away from release, and already the discussion rages on whether Mark Zuckerberg’s latest attempt to copy what already exists will do what few bird app imitators have yet to accomplish. From what we know so far, Threads will be a relatively pared-down version of Twitter to start and will require an Instagram account. And users in the EU are apparently out of luck, for now. NPR Is Going Dark on Twitter | Future TechAccording to teaser posts on Instagram and early listings on…

Elon Musk apparently took a break from training for his upcoming battle royale with Mark Zuckerberg to do a new, incredibly unpopular thing to Twitter this weekend. In a bout of inspired stupidity, Musk tweeted out a new edict Saturday: from now on, anybody who doesn’t pay for Twitter will only be able to read a certain number of tweets per day. The subsequent uproar from platform users apparently encouraged some of them to seek refuge elsewhere, namely, on Twitter’s competitor site, Bluesky. Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl…

Image: BigTunaOnline (Shutterstock)After reports teasing a launch date of June for its Twitter rival, Instagram has let us down as we venture into July. However, there may be hope on the horizon as the competitor was briefly listed on the Apple and Google app stores over the weekend.Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl TweetBenzinga reports that the rival platform, called Threads, appeared on the Apple app store and Google Play store before promptly being taken down. Threads is the tentative name for Meta’s highly anticipated…

Twitter ran ads from household-name brands like Disney, Microsoft, and The Telegraph newspaper alongside neo-Nazi propaganda this week. Family-friendly media conglomerates, tech giants, and legacy newspapers running ads on social media platforms may try to do so with some confidence their names won’t appear plastered next to racist, hateful imagery, but that’s far from guaranteed on Elon Musk’s new Twitter. Users tweeted screenshots of the ads beside clips an antisemitic film, and Gizmodo was able to verify that the ads…

Twitter is in freefall—ad revenue is down more than half since last year, owner Elon Musk is mucking around and firing people left and right, and users (including me) have noticed a steep decline in the quality of their feeds. Bluesky, a near-clone of Twitter built on a decentralized protocol with the support of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is ascending as its forebear declines.How To Remove Followers From TwitterThe company is gaining users, but not too many—a new user can only join the social network with an invite…