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Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky set to give Elon Musk’s Twitter a run for its money

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Following the controversial changes made by tech billionaire Elon Musk on the microblogging site Twitter, its former CEO Jack Dorsey has launched Bluesky for those who are missing the old platform.

As the app opens and the option of creating an account is clicked, it says: “This is the company that keeps you online”.

The Bluesky was launched on iOS in February and on Android this month.

Its system is run on a decentralised network providing users more control over how the service is operated, giving more control over data storage and content moderation to users.

Recently Dorsey’s Bluesky gained the attention of people such as Democratic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chrissy Teigen, among others.

Find out what this Jack Dorsey’s new platform is.

What is Bluesky?

It is a new social network for microblogging same to Twitter, in which its users post different kinds of updates posts on their timelines. However, in the new app, there are no hashtags or options to message directly to other users.

The Bluesky was created independently of Twitter when Jack Dorsey was its CEO. However, it was funded by the company until it became independent in February last year.

Dorsey introduced his idea in a Tweet back in 2019, saying it also plans to “build an open community around it, inclusive of companies [and] organisations, researchers, civil society leaders.” Still, he warned, “this isn’t going to happen overnight.”

Dorsey said last year: “The biggest issue and my biggest regret is that [Twitter] became a company.”

He later clarified that “if a service was a protocol, it can’t be owned by a state or company.”

Twitter facing exodus?

People are finding alternatives to Twitter who are frustrated by the decisions of its CEO Elon Musk, who acquired it for $44 billion last year.

In the time span of six months, Elon Musk decided to make several controversial changes, such as blue ticks from prominent figures, sparking fears of disinformation and fake news.

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a conversation at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, California, US. — Reuters/File
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a conversation at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, California, US. — Reuters/File

Some of the important public figures are opting for Bluesky after Musk’s new direction.

Data.ai reported that Bluesky has been downloaded more than 375,000 times from the Apple App Store and the waitlist continues to be flooded with signup requests.

The number of downloads on Google Play can be seen more than 100,000 times.

It remains to be seen how Bluesky would sustain its presence and won’t be eclipsed as Mastodon — a similar platform gained attention last year.

The early shift toward Bluesky is a positive one, as it gives social media users more choice over where they spend their time, said Mark Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law who writes about online privacy.

“Competition might actually help users find the product features they want, like greater privacy protection, portability, and more significant content moderation,” added Bartholomew.

“Social media platforms have features that users dislike but they still feel like they must accept them to just be in the online space where everyone else is,” he said.

He also noted that People went to Bluesky because Musk forced them to, by “sabotaging his own platform.”

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TikTok offers a special in-app experience to commemorate the release of Jimin’s second solo album, MUSE, by BTS.

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Calibre fans everywhere get the chance to interact with only-available content, take part in challenges, and get temporary rewards by visiting the #Jimin_Who hub. To find a time-limited, exclusive profile frame, search for relevant terms like “Jimin” and “BTS.” You’ll be provided with difficulties. Moreover, the hub offers high-calibre content produced by Jimin, such as his solo and collaborative works, Fan Spotlight, which highlights exceptional ARMY members and their works, and an immersive event honouring Jimin’s second album, MUSE.

TikTok is committed to enabling fans and artists to interact and create, as this programme demonstrates. The TikTok community worldwide is expected to find resonance in this experience, as BTS is one of the most popular accounts and #kpop is one of the fastest-growing genres on the platform, producing 59.8 million posts and 602 billion video views.

BTS (@bts_official_bighit) broke numerous records throughout their more than ten-year tenure, becoming the fourth-largest artist account on TikTok and cementing their status as pop icons of the twenty-first century.

The group’s hashtags, #bts and #bts_official_bighit, are part of 94.1 million creator videos and 33.4 million videos, respectively, and have over 65.5 million followers and 1.4 billion likes. Because of his solo work, Jimin has become an international phenomenon, inspiring millions of creator videos and views.

In over 22.9 million creator videos, hashtags pertaining to #jimin have appeared. The group’s TikTok dance video, which was viewed over 36.2 million times and received over 8.6 million likes, was inspired by Jimin’s #1 song, “Like Crazy,” which he released last year after his debut solo album FACE. The song inspired over 300,000 creator videos. The MUSE pre-release single “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (feat. Loco)” has received 2.5 million likes and 11 million views on Jimin’s recent exclusive behind-the-scenes video.

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63,000 Instagram accounts are deleted by Meta

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The “Yahoo boys,” a group of Nigerian internet scammers, are well-known for their elaborate schemes, which include posing as needy individuals or promising phenomenal returns on investments from prominent Nigerian figures.

63,000 Instagram profiles, according to a statement by Meta, which also mentioned that 7,200 Facebook pages, groups, and accounts that offered advice on con artistry had been deleted.

The organisation also eliminated a smaller, more tightly-knit network of about 2,500 computers that belonged to a collective of about 20 people.

The prospect of compromising photos—fake or real—being released is used in sexual extortion, or “sextortion,” to coerce victims into paying to halt the abuse.

Meta notified the scammers’ attempts to the U.S. National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, as most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and largely targeted adults, but there were also attempts made against kids.

The disruption of these networks was not new, according to Meta officials, who also disclosed the current operation in an effort to “raise awareness.”

Governments, particularly lawmakers in the US, where Meta is headquartered, have increased pressure on the social media behemoth to address allegations that its executives have disregarded data indicating that its services are harmful to children. As a result, the company has been under defensive fire in recent years.

One American senator charged Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, and other prominent figures in the social media space earlier this year, saying they had “blood on their hands” for not doing enough to shield young people from the growing risks of sexual predatory content on their platforms.

Additionally, in an effort to raise awareness of these risks, the U.S. Surgeon General has advocated for social media apps to have a warning label attached.

A part of the national penal code that dealt with fraud ineffectively gave rise to the term “419 scams” for Nigerian con artists.

Online frauds have increased in number, with individuals responsible operating from wealthy neighbourhoods, college dorms, or impoverished suburban areas while the nation of more than 200 million people experiences increasing economic woes.

A few users, according to Meta, were giving advice on how to pull off scams.

It stated, “Among their attempts were links to photo collections that they could use to create fictitious accounts, as well as offers to sell scripts and instructions to deceive people with.”

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Google abandons its plans to do rid of cookies in Chrome

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The significant change in course comes as a result of worries expressed by advertisers, who provide the majority of the company’s revenue, that their capacity to gather data for customised advertisements will be restricted due to the removal of cookies from the most widely used browser in the world, leaving them reliant on Google’s user databases.

Due to worries that Google’s proposal would stifle competition in the digital advertising market, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has also carefully examined the proposal.

“Rather than discontinuing third-party cookies, we would launch a fresh experience in Chrome that empowers individuals to make a knowledgeable decision that is applicable to all of their online browsing, and they could modify that decision whenever they choose,” stated Anthony Chavez, vice president of the Privacy Sandbox project, which is supported by Google, in a blog post.

A major objective of the Privacy Sandbox project, which was started in 2019 by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab unit, is to phase out third-party cookies while simultaneously improving online privacy and boosting digital enterprises.

Though they can potentially be used for unauthorised monitoring, cookies are information packets that websites and advertisers use to identify specific online users and follow their browsing patterns.

Within the European Union, publishers are required to obtain explicit agreement from users before storing cookies, as per the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Cookie deletion is another feature that most popular browsers offer.

While continuing to fund the Privacy Sandbox programme, Chavez stated that Google was collaborating on the new strategy with publishers, privacy organisations, and regulators like the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and CMA.

Many responded differently to the announcement.

Analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf of eMarketer stated in a statement, “Advertising stakeholders won’t have to prepare to quit third-party cookies cold turkey.”

One example of how cookies can hurt consumers is when they display predatory advertisements that target specific demographics, according to Lena Cohen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. According to Cohen, Google’s choice to keep accepting third-party cookies is a direct result of their advertising-driven business model, even though other major browsers have been banning them for years.

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