Articles about Twitter

Twitter could be about to undergo a huge rebrand as Elon Musk signals a desire to drop the bird logo

Twitter X rebrand

Since Elon Musk's arrival at Twitter, it has been difficult to keep track of the fast-paced changes. The latest signals from the billionaire owner indicate that even more dramatic changes are afoot -- including ditching the Twitter brand and all bird-related imagery.

In a series of tweets, Musk said "soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds". Indicating that the change could happen very quickly indeed, he added: "If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow".

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Why you might not want to sign up for Threads

reluctance dislike

Mark Zuckerberg claims that some 30 million people have signed up for Meta's Threads app since its launch on Thursday.

You might be tempted to think, “He would say that,” but in the rush to join the new Twitter alternative are people overlooking the security and privacy implications of the app? Quite a few experts think so.

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How to add and manage multiple accounts in Threads, Meta's new Twitter rival

Threads, Meta's Twitter alternative, is now live and already proving incredibly popular. It's very much a work in progress, with lots of features missing, but the developers are working hard at bringing these to the app.

One question I've seen asked quite a few times is how to add a second account to Threads, and it's definitely not as obvious as it could be. The process is easy enough though, just follow these steps.

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As Twitter flounders, rivals Mastodon and Bluesky flourish, and Meta launches Threads on Thursday

Threads by Instagram

The rocky journey for Twitter continues under Elon Musk, with this weekend seeing bizarre constraints introduced in an attempt to reduce unspecified "data scraping". Users of the service found themselves hit with rate limit warnings as Twitter placed restrictions on the number of tweets that can be viewed each day.

Rival Mastodon has already seen a steady influx of Twitter escapees, and this continued over the weekend with a 300,000 jump in the number of active users; Bluesky is also faring well, to the point that sign-ups have been paused to allow for tweaks and fixes to be implemented to accommodate the levels of interest. But now eyes are turning towards Meta, as the Facebook owner prepares for the launch this Thursday of its own Twitter alternative, Threads by Instagram.

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Twitter loses its second head of trust and safety since Musk take-over

Twitter logo and Elon Musk account

Content moderation on Twitter has been something of a prickly subject during Elon Musk's time as CEO. Having already lost Yoel Roth back in November, his replacement has now also resigned.

Ella Irwin is leaving the role after just six months as head of the trust and safety team. While Roth has been openly critical of Twitter since his resignation last year, the reasons behind Irwin's departure are not yet clear.

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Twitter's new CEO unveiled

Twitter logo and a woman in silhouette

In the past six months, Twitter has experienced considerable upheaval since Elon Musk assumed control. Thousands of employees have been let go, account authentication has been drastically altered, and idle accounts now face deactivation.

Yesterday, Musk revealed that he had found a new leader for the company, but didn't name his hire, disclosing only that it was a woman.

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Shell Frosting is a free tweaking tool to unlock hidden features of the Windows 11 taskbar

Shell Frosting

Complaints about Windows 11 center on various changes Microsoft has made to the Windows 10 successor, but the taskbar is something that crops up time and time again.

While there is some good news in that Microsoft is listening to feedback and working to implement some of the missing features users want, the bad news is that it is taking time. If you are impatient to see the return of taskbar labels and the option to never combine buttons, Shell Frosting is the tweaking tool you need.

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Twitter admits a 'security incident' allowed private Circles messages to be seen by anyone

Twitter logo and Elon Musk account

Following numerous complaints from users concerned that the Circles feature of Twitter was broken, the company has conceded that tweets that were supposed to be visible to only a select number of people were in fact accessible by anyone.

The idea of Twitter Circles is that messages can be seen only by people who have been added to a Circle. But Twitter has now revealed "a security incident that occurred earlier this year" that ignored privacy settings.

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Interest may be growing in Twitter rival Bluesky, but Mozilla is betting on Mastodon

Mastodon and Twitter

With changes implemented by Elon Musk having disastrous consequences for Twitter, there has been something of an exodus of users. It is "something of an exodus", because while many people are finding new social homes on the likes of T2, Spoutible, Mastodon or -- if they can get their hands on an invite code -- Jack Dorsey's Bluesky, many people are hedging their bets and maintaining something of a presence on Twitter until it becomes a little clearer what the likely successor is to be.

Realistically, the battle seems likely be fought between Mastodon and Bluesky, and Mozilla has just announced an expansion of its investment in the former. The company behind the Firefox web browser has launched its own Mastodon instance, Mozilla.social, in private beta.

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Twitter quietly updates Hateful Conduct policy to remove protections for transgender users

Transgender flag

Twitter has undergone some huge changes since Elon Musk took over at the social media platform, many of which have been very public. But others, like a recent update to its Hateful Content policy, have been quietly slipped out without announcement.

The policy change sees Twitter removing sections that specifically protected transgender users. This means that a long-standing ban on the purposeful deadnaming or misgendering of trans users has been lifted, leading to condemnation from LGBTQIA+ groups and angering the trans community.

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Twitter is now owned by X Corp as Elon Musk announces legacy blue checks will vanish in a puff of smoke on 4/20

Twitter logo next to dollars and smartphone

Twitter Inc no longer exists, having been merged into Elon Musk's X Corp. The change was spotted in documents relating to a lawsuit against Twitter, and it continues the CEO's drive to create X, "the everything app".

And having already made a great deal of fuss and noise about killing off "legacy" verification blue checks to force people to buy a Twitter Blue subscription, Musk has announced a new "final date" for their removal. It is 4/20. Because of course it is.

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Elon Musk says that only verified (i.e. paying) Twitter users will be able to vote in polls and appear on the For You tab

Twitter logo next to dollars and smartphone

Having tried various tactics to get Twitter users to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription, Elon Musk is now trying something new -- confiscation.

Having tried bribing users with Blue-exclusive features, and threatening non-subscribers with stripping them of verified status, the latest announcement sees Musk promising to take features away from anyone who doesn't pay up. Specifically, he warns that non-verified users will not be eligible to appear in the suggestions on the For You Tab, and they also will not be able to vote in polls on Twitter.

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Twitter says it is stripping all verified accounts of their 'legacy' blue ticks from April

Hello, my name is...

With the chaos that has followed the arrival of Elon Musk at Twitter, it's often difficult to know which announcements to accept at face value, and which to take with a pinch of salt.

The latest announcement concerns the blue ticks used to signify verified accounts. The social platform has announced that "legacy" checkmarks (that is, those that have not been paid for) will be removed starting on April 1 -- April Fool's Day.

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Twitter now shows how many times a tweet has been bookmarked

Twitter logo on wooden background

For fans of statistics, or anyone who has an idle curiosity, Twitter has introduced a new bookmark count feature. As well as making it possible for anyone to judge the interest an individual tweet has generated, the new analytics are useful for companies and individuals looking for a more accessible way to track interactions.

While there will be privacy concerns associated with this, Twitter assures users that "your Bookmarks are still private", promising that "we'll never display which accounts have added a Tweet to their Bookmarks".

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New pricing for Twitter API access is astonishingly expensive

Twitter logo next to dollars and smartphone

When Twitter announced that it was ending free access to its API, it said nothing about what the new pricing structure would look like. But now the company has finally revealed the price tags for different tiers of access -- and it is worse than anyone predicted.

In all, there are now three tiers to choose from, each allowing for different numbers of tweets and giving varying levels of access. The cheapest, the Small Package tier, costs a staggering $42,000 per month (or just over $0.5 million per year), while the Large Package costs an eye-watering $210,000 per month (or a shade over $2.5 million per year).

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