Social media network also announces ‘Spaces’, a Clubhouse competitor that lets users participate in audio chats
Twitter has announced it will launch a “super follow” feature, which lets users charge followers for access to exclusive content, later this year.
The move comes as Twitter is branching out from advertising to find more ways to make money — both for itself and for its most prolific users.
Continue reading...Free app allowing access to 30,000 stations proves hit for audiences stuck at home
Ever fancied listening to some pop music from Prague? Rock from Russia, or talk from Taiwan? With the pandemic limiting travel abroad, an online app has ignited the imagination of millions, allowing them to experience new sounds and travel the globe by radio.
The free app, Radio Garden, which carries tens of thousands of radio stations broadcasting live 24 hours a day, has seen a huge spike in popularity during the Covid crisis. Its founders say in the past 30 days they had 15 million users, a 750% increase on the visitors they normally get in a month.
Continue reading...The founder of the online investigative collective Bellingcat talks about working with Alexei Navalny, open source reporting and the trouble with ‘cyber-miserablism’
Eliot Higgins launched Bellingcat in summer 2014, days after the Russian military shot down Malaysian Airlines MH17 over eastern Ukraine. The online outfit has broken a series of international scoops. In 2018 it discovered the identities of the two undercover assassins who poisoned Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Last year Bellingcat revealed extraordinary details of the plot by Russia’s FSB spy agency to poison the opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Higgins’s first book tells the story of how open source investigation has redefined reporting in the 21st century. He argues that the internet can still be a force for good, despite bad actors, complacent technology firms and an explosion in alternative “facts”. Higgins lives in Leicester with his wife, daughter and son.
Continue reading...Exclusive: officials say the employees tested negatively but were sent notifications telling them to self-isolate
Thousands of Amazon workers received the wrong Coronavirus test results after a mistake meant they were given inaccurate information by test and trace.
The Guardian understands that 3,853 staff members at the online retailer received an erroneous result. Officials said they had tested negatively but received notifications to say they had tested positive and asking them to self-isolate.
Continue reading...The troubled times we live in, and the rise of social media, have created an age of endless conflict. Rather than fearing or avoiding disagreement, we need to learn to do it well
In 2010, Time magazine made Mark Zuckerberg its person of the year. It described Facebook’s mission as being to “tame the howling mob and turn the lonely, antisocial world of random chance into a friendly world”. During the first decade of mass internet use, this was a popular theory: the more that people were able to communicate with others, the more friendly and understanding they would become, the result being a more peaceable and harmonious world.
In 2021, that vision seems painfully naive. Howling online mobs clash day and night, and some of them commit real-world violence. The internet is connecting people, but it isn’t necessarily creating fellow feeling. At its worst, it can resemble a vast machine for the production of mutual antipathy.
Continue reading...Firm stood against Facebook and Google over plan to make tech giants pay news organisations
Microsoft is calling for the US and the EU to follow Australia in introducing rules that require technology companies to share revenue with news organisations and support journalism.
The company, which stood against Facebook and Google in supporting the proposal, argues that it is necessary to impose such a levy to create a level playing field between large tech firms and independent media organisations.
Continue reading...Religious Twitter brings together nuns, monks, bishops and rabbis too and it may have something to teach us
There is a Rumi poem – it is my favourite. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,” writes the 13th-century mystic, “there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
I feel this way about religious Twitter.
Continue reading...US social media platform allows users to discuss sensitive subjects like Xinjiang and Taiwan, but many fear it could fall foul of China’s censors
Chinese internet users have flocked to the audio-only social media app, Clubhouse, for uncensored discussions on political and human rights subjects, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the persecution of Uighurs. But there are fears the popularity of the app could lead to censorship or recrimination.
The invitation-only US app, which is currently restricted to iPhones, allows users to listen in to discussions and interviews in quasi conference-call style online rooms. Running for almost a year, it became suddenly popular last week – particularly in China.
Continue reading...After investors caused havoc on the markets last week in a battle over the shares of a video-game chain, we explore the promise and pitfalls of the apps they used
A year ago shares in struggling US video game store GameStop were worth just $3.25 a pop, yet at the end of last month they had reached $482. This stupendous surge was created by thousands of armchair traders, organising themselves on internet forums such as Reddit, who were attempting to outwit hedge funds who had placed massive bets on the chain’s decline in a process known as short-selling.
This has resulted in billion-dollar losses for some hedge funds, and big profits for traders who cashed out before the stock fell back to less than $100. Many of these speculators were using a new generation of share-trading apps, such as eToro, Robinhood and Trading 212. Have these services tipped the scales of financial power in favour of the little guy? Here we answer some key questions …
Continue reading...The Covid crisis has turbo-charged profits and share prices. But are the big six now too powerful for regulators to ignore?
The coronavirus pandemic has wrought economic disruption on a global scale, but one sector has marched on throughout the chaos: big tech.
Further evidence of the industry’s relentless progress has come in recent weeks with the news that Apple and Amazon both raked in sales of $100bn (£72bn) over the past three months – 25% more than Tesco brings in over a full year.
Continue reading...Bezos, who founded the company in 1994, will step down after company recorded $100bn in sales for last three months of 2020
Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of Amazon, will step down as chief executive, the company announced on Tuesday.
Related: Biden pledges to 'undo moral shame' of Trump era with new orders on immigration – live
Continue reading...Government claimed accounts of news sites, actors and activists sought to foment violence amid farmer protests
Hundreds of Indian Twitter accounts including those belonging to news websites, activists and actors were suspended for more than 12 hours on Monday after the government said users were posting content inciting violence.
The move came in the wake of weeks-long protests by Indian farmers against a new farm bill. The protests turned violent last week when riot police were sent in. One demonstrator was killed and hundreds of people were injured including police officers.
Continue reading...Jeff Bezos’s company is set for sales topping $100bn last quarter, and while rivals are nibbling, its position looks secure
The earliest references to the “one-stop shop” emerged during the first decades of 20th century as the fast-growing US economy spurred rapid retail innovation. A single location for various products provides obvious benefits: removing the hassle of travelling around town to visit different stores.
Jeff Bezos redefined that logic for the internet age, making Amazon a dominant (and perhaps ambivalent) force first in selling books, and then in pretty much everything else. Before 2020 Amazon was a phenomenon, but the coronavirus pandemic has made it all but ubiquitous.
Continue reading...The ebullient tech tycoon embarrassed China’s leaders and went missing. Now he’s back, but seems far less outspoken
Wearing burgundy lipstick and a long peroxide wig, the diminutive entrepreneur who would soon become China’s richest man took to the stage and belted out Can You Feel the Love Tonight? from Disney’s The Lion King.
Jack Ma, chief executive of e-commerce giant Alibaba, had earned the right to make a spectacle of himself. On that day in September 2009, in front of 16,000 adoring employees packed into Hangzhou’s Yellow Dragon stadium, the eccentric but iron-willed former English teacher was celebrating. He had built a bona fide tech champion, China’s answer to Amazon, eBay and PayPal rolled into one.
Continue reading...Internet giants that spread hate speech and conspiracy theories should face ‘democratic limits’, says European commission president
The end of Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House was celebrated by the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday, as she warned that the former US president’s rise highlighted the need to confront the internet giants who helped him spread “conspiracy theories and fake news”.
The European commission president spoke of her relief at Trump’s departure, but warned that the outgoing leader’s movement still existed, and that the digital platforms used to spread hate needed to be tackled.
Continue reading...The actor’s unexpected response to a complaint about an 18-year-old film could pave the way for big-name actors to personally insult Twitter users
One of the most surprising new avenues to have formed for celebrities over the course of the pandemic has been Cameo. For the uninitiated, Cameo is a service where celebrities can create personalised messages for their fans. For £75, Hodor from Game of Thrones will wish you a happy birthday or – if you have £750 lying around – Richard Dreyfuss will put on a Jaws shirt and struggle to pronounce your name.
But maybe this isn’t enough for you. Maybe you want to find direct engagement, with a much bigger star than Cameo offers, and for free. If that’s the case, I can heartily endorse not liking a Russell Crowe movie. Because, even if it takes him a while, Crowe will do his best to respond to your criticism. And if you’re really lucky, he’ll sound like an out-of-touch bus stop crackpot in the process. Here’s what happened.
Continue reading...Nadine Dorries, James Cleverly and Michael Gove joined the platform favoured by Trump supporters
At least 14 Conservative MPs, including several ministers, cabinet minister Michael Gove and a number of prominent Tory commentators joined Parler, the social media platform favoured by the far right that was forced offline last week for hosting threats of violence and racist slurs.
Parler was taken offline after Amazon Web Services pulled the plug last Sunday, saying violent posts and racist threats connected to the recent attack on the US Capitol violated its terms.
Continue reading...Error message greets visitors to site registered in name of Irish businessman who claims he does not know campaign group
Leave.EU has been forced to “Internexit” after the group’s EU domain name was temporarily suspended. It comes after the Irish businessman in whose name the pro-Brexit campaign group’s domain name is registered denied having any involvement with the organisation.
Now visitors to the site are greeted with an error message, and the EU’s online registry marks the domain as under a server hold, meaning it is “temporarily inactive and under investigation”.
Continue reading...The naysayers said the user-written encyclopedia would never work. Now it boasts 55m articles and 1.7bn visitors a month
Twenty years ago today, a tech startup called Nupedia launched a side project. The company had been hard at work producing a free online encyclopaedia, but it was slow going: its strict editing process, comprehensive peer review and focus on expert authors meant it finished only 21 articles in its first year.
The side project would do away with all of that. Instead, anyone would be able to write and edit articles. Nupedia’s founders were split over whether the trade-off – more content with a lower barrier to entry – was worth it, but by the end of its first year, the side project had amassed articles on more than 18,000 topics. Nupedia, by the time it shut in 2003, had finished just 25.
Continue reading...Class action lawsuit filed in US claims the houses have colluded with the online giant to keep prices artificially high
Amazon.com and the “Big Five” publishers – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster – have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices, in a class action filed by the law firm that successfully sued Apple and the Big Five on the same charge 10 years ago.
The lawsuit, filed in district court in New York on Thursday by Seattle firm Hagens Berman, on behalf of consumers in several US states, names the retail giant as the sole defendant but labels the publishers “co-conspirators”. It alleges Amazon and the publishers use a clause known as “Most Favored Nations” (MFN) to keep ebook prices artificially high, by agreeing to price restraints that force consumers to pay more for ebooks purchased on retail platforms that are not Amazon.com.
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