A 34-year-old programmer from Braunschweig is wagering that Michael Saylor’s debt fueled Bitcoin empire cannot withstand a crash, setting up an unlikely duel between a small investor and crypto billionaire.
Tag: twitter
Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, has started challenging India’s political elite, calling out Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and more. But will the government react to the irreverential bot?
In his final address to the nation, just days before his departure, U.S. President Joe Biden warned against the emergence of a “tech-industrial complex” that threatens democracy; a charge against tech barons, including Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, who have pledged allegiance to incoming President Donald Trump.
A look into how copyright laws may or may not be applicable to memes, which normally use an existing image without any consent. The question is a reminder of how the Internet has changed the basics of communication and commerce.
Romania’s out-of-nowhere far right presidential candidate Călin Georgescu has become the latest case study showing just how much sway social media platforms can have over elections, going even farther than Donald Trump on Elon Musk’s X.
With the announcement that Elon Musk will become part of Donald Trump’s administration, the tech billionaire’s influence on the U.S. will keep on growing. From pouring hundreds of millions into Trump’s campaign to bending social media narratives, Musk’s actions underscore the ease with which the techno-oligarchy can buy political sway, writes Natalia Viana of Brazil’s leading investigative platform Agência Pública.
Donald Trump’s success is also a revelation of the weaknesses of the American left, which is plagued by self-righteousness and the belief that painting your opponent as a threat to democracy is a political agenda. But blackmail is not a strategy.
The decision is yet another example of how Iran’s laws since the 1979 revolution have restricted women’s rights both inside and outside the home.
Has social media become a breeding ground for racism ? Elon Musk has turned Twitter (now called X) into his own opinion platform, giving free rein to disinformation and weakening fact checking and user moderation. Meanwhile, the AI feeding the platform’s algorithm is built on harmful, racist bias, writes Cem Say for independent Turkish daily Oksijen.
The American billionaire and founder of Tesla and SpaceX is increasingly openly supporting the ideas of the radical right and Donald Trump. Long gone are the days when Silicon Valley voted Democrat: Elon Musk is the embodiment of this openly self-assured “tech right”.
Updated February 26, 2025 at 05:00 p.m. It’s been 11 years since the iconic Oscars selfie posted March 3, 2014 during the 86th Academy Awards ceremony, featuring several high-profile celebrities. It captured the selfie craze, and the obsession with celebrity culture. Who took the 2014 Oscars selfie? The selfie was taken by Bradley Cooper, with […]
The pandemic brought a massive effort to limit the spread of bad health information. Did it do more harm than good?
The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.
Iran this week has reaffirmed its full support for Hamas, issuing new threats to escalate with more attacks like Oct. 7. This came after some in the region had criticized Iran for now joining the fray directly. With the rising rhetoric, Iran can’t stay passive forever.
In recent years, social interest in climatology has grown exponentially, turning meteorologists into quasi-rockstars who, thanks to technology, can interact with their audiences and provide real-time updates.
The flood of pro-Israel support from right-ring Hindu nationalists reveals more about the nature of their political project, its aspirations and ideological directions through the decades, than it does about Zionism.
Elon Musk has been criticized before for his management of Twitter, now known as X. But it was not until Saturday that the social network revealed just how inept and dangerous it had become, as fake news spread far and wide. It may never recover.
The culture of Silicon Valley was once associated with social liberalism and tolerance. However, the tech community worldwide, from moguls such as Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, to IT professionals in Poland, and self-described OSINT users in India, is showing signs of a noted right-wing shift.
Bye-bye blue bird, all hail X … Elon Musk’s recent rebranding of the Twitter platform app has sparked significant reactions from users and in the tech community, but brand designers also have their say. While rebranding can be for the better, success is never guaranteed — and can do more damage than good to a big name.
Republican contender for the U.S. presidency launched his bid on Twitter in conversation with Elon Musk. But the move backfired after numerous technical glitches — not the best start to his campaign.
For Worldcrunch’s editor-in-chief, the arrival of ChatGPT, a stunningly powerful AI-driven tool for automated writing, combined with the rising noise on social media, have brought us to a troubling inflection point in the way we communicate with each other.
Theodore Kury, Director of Energy Studies at the University of Florida, sees value in thinking of social media as the pipeline that carries a new kind of utility: information. He makes the case for regulating companies like Twitter accordingly.
Elon Musk bought Twitter in the name of absolute freedom. But numerous research shows that social media hate speech leads to actual violence. Musk and others running social networks need to strike a balance.
Two anonymous Iranian Twitter users spoke about their hopes that Iran’s protests could hasten the end of the unpopular regime, and what Elon Musk’s takeover of the the platform could mean for them.
While some breathed sighs of relief that the Republicans’ predicted “red wave” sweep didn’t happen, others chuckle at how long it takes to count the votes. And then there’s Senõr Musk…
November 5-6 OUR WEEKLY NEWS QUIZ What do you remember from the news this week? 1. Defeated Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro urged his supporters to stop what kind of public protest against the election result? 2. What facility, the biggest of its kind in the world, did China lock down amid a new COVID […]
October 29-30 OUR WEEKLY NEWS QUIZ What do you remember from the news this week? 1. Which carmaker became the latest major company to leave Russia over its invasion of Ukraine? 2. Why did Iran’s anti-government protesters hold a special rally 40 days after Mahsa Amini was killed by Iran police? 3. A day […]
Ahead of Brazil’s national elections Sunday, the most interacted-with posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp contradict trustworthy information about the public’s voting intentions.
Oligarchs of the ‘Second Gilded Age’ in the like of Elon Musk are already able to influence the public’s minds through media ownership. But getting a hand on Twitter means having access to its users’ data and exploiting it for financial purposes.
As fog of war spreads across Ukraine, we’ve tried to gather some testimony, videos and images from verified journalists covering the beginning of the Russian invasion.
The Ukraine government’s official Twitter account is using memes and GIFs to poke Moscow and draw attention to the risk of a Russian invasion. It is one of just a few institutional accounts that has decided not to be careful
? Sannu!* Welcome to Friday, where the Taliban issue a decree on women’s rights, the U.S. avoids another government shutdown, and we discover the most metallic planet ever. Delhi-based news website The Wire also suggests Indians should pause before any nationalistic boasting about the choice of Parag Agarwal as new Twitter CEO. [*Hausa – Nigeria […]
So a dozen of the top CEOs in the world (including heads of Google, Microsoft, IBM and now Twitter) come from a country with 18% of the world’s population. But there are other numbers our overly proud fellow Indians should be running.
? Tashi delek!* Welcome to Tuesday, where Barbados is finally fully independent, we learn more about the origins of the Omicron variant and Santa gets a boyfriend in Norway. Chilean-based business magazine America Economia also looks at how airlines are reconfiguring cabins and enlarging seats in hopes of boosting a recovery in air travel. [*TIbetan] […]
Good-faith disagreements are a normal part of society and building strong relationships. Yet it’s difficult to engage in good-faith disagreements on the internet, and people reach less common ground online compared with face-to-face disagreements. There’s no shortage of research about the psychology of arguing online, from text versus voice to how anyone can become a troll and advice about how to argue well. But there’s another factor that’s often overlooked: the design of social media itself. My colleagues and I investigated how the design of social media affects online disagreements and how to design for constructive arguments. We surveyed and […]
Three survivors of terrorism in France are now being targeted online for the compassion they have shown towards the children of Islamic militants. They are taking the power in their own hands and taking the social media giant to court.
When I was a kid — 12,13 — my dad’s shrink friend was a frequent guest in our house. His usual business on these visits was to review for us the degenerating state of the world, and list the ways it all made his profession difficult. “Wanna catch a glimpse of the future?” he asked […]
By closing Donald Trump’s social media accounts, the Big Tech platforms have recognized for the first time their fundamental responsibility for the content they broadcast. But for this and other reasons that now also means the regulators must step up.
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Hashtag Activism And Human Rights In Iran
Iranian authorities have proven themselves amenable to online pressure. But to effect lasting change in the Islamic Republic, people also need to engage in real-world action.
Facebook, Google and other platforms are not doing enough to make political ads more transparent.