Tag: Twitter

PlayStation Permanently Suspends Online Accounts for No Clear Reason

tech FranklinWilbur

PlayStation Permanently Suspends Online Accounts for No Clear Reason

Many players claim they were booted from their PlayStation accounts yet they had barely touched their consoles in the last few months.
Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

If you woke up recently to find that Sony has “permanently suspended” your PlayStation account for no apparent reason, just know you’re not alone. Sony has kicked an unknown number of PlayStation IDs off its platforms, ostensibly for violating the company’s terms of service. Players claim they haven’t done anything that would necessitate booting them off Sony’s services, but so far the company has yet to make any official response.

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Players took to forums such as ResetEra and to Twitter to share their suspensions and question why the company isn’t accepting appeals. Banned users say they haven’t posted any lewd or insulting messages online or had any chargeback on their accounts. One user claimed they received a message back from PlayStation saying “fraud was detected in the account,” but would not provide details past that. The news was first reported by The Verge Monday.

Twitter is awash with users who all claim they logged in in the last few days only to find Sony had squashed their accounts. One user claimed they don’t normally interact with anybody save friends on their PlayStation, but was told: “We cannot provide further commentary with regards to this case.” Another player claimed the only actions they took online recently were to purchase Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Hogwarts Legacy. Others pleaded that they had only played games on their console a few times in the past month. One player said they hadn’t even been using their PlayStation as of late.

Pretty much all the complaints note how Sony’s customer service was not responding to players, and neither the official PlayStation or Ask PlayStation support Twitter profiles have yet to post any kind of update.

Gizmodo was not able to independently verify all the separate claims of unnecessary bans, and checking our own accounts we didn’t find ourselves placed on PlayStation’s rather opaque naughty list. We reached out to Sony for comment, and we will update this post if we hear back.

It hasn’t been a good week to be a PlayStation player if you own a lot of content through Sony’s services. VGC reported Monday that the PlayStation Store excised itself of more than 1,300 seasons of Discovery TV content and had even yoinked the shows off users’ accounts without any mention of a refund. An update on Sony’s legal page mentions this is due to “our content licensing arrangements with content providers.”

Walmart says it’s no longer advertising on X

tech FranklinWilbur

Walmart says it’s no longer advertising on X

Walmart has seen enough from X. The retailer, America’s single biggest employer and largest company by revenue, told Reuters on Friday it’s no longer advertising on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The departure follows owner Elon Musk amplifying antisemitic posts and flinging expletives at fleeing advertisers. “We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found other platforms to better reach our customers,” a Walmart spokesperson told Reuters.

Walmart’s exit adds to a growing list of companies that have pulled ads from the platform. Apple, Disney, IBM, Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery are among the businesses no longer buying ads on X. A group of advertisers told The New York Times on Thursday their temporary pauses will likely become permanent. “There is no advertising value that would offset the reputational risk of going back on the platform,” Lou Paskalis, CEO of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, told the paper.

X’s former advertisers had no shortage of reasons to jump ship. Musk’s latest series of self-inflicted wounds began when the billionaire appeared to endorse and amplify a post falsely claiming Jewish communities were stoking hatred against white people. Musk replied to the user who spewed the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying their comments reflected “the actual truth.”

Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images

Watchdog group Media Matters then published a report showing ads from well-known brands placed next to antisemitic content. X responded by suing the organization, accusing it of “knowingly and maliciously [manufacturing] side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white national fringe content.”

Musk’s attempt to smooth things over only made things worse. After apologizing for amplifying the antisemitic content at The New York Times’ DealBook event, he told advertisers backing off of the platform to “Go fuck yourself.” His company now potentially stands to lose $75 million.

Walmart employs around 1.6 million people in the US. The retailer made $611 billion in revenue in the 2023 fiscal year.

US Judge Blocks Montana’s ‘Anti-Chinese’ TikTok Ban

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US Judge Blocks Montana’s ‘Anti-Chinese’ TikTok Ban

A US Federal Judge blocked a Montana law Thursday that would have banned TikTok in the state starting on January 1st, arguing the bill is unconstitutional on the basis that it violates users’ right to free speech.

“Even AI Rappers are Harassed by Police” | AI Unlocked

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy issued a temporary injunction to halt the law, saying it “violates the Constitution in more ways than one.” Molloy said the ban on the Chinese-owned app is permeated with a “pervasive undertone of anti-Chinese sentiment.” TikTok is suing Montana to have the law struck down entirely.

Hysteria over TikTok reached a fever pitch in 2022, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle voiced concerns that the app might be siphoning user data to the Chinese government. Many politicians including US congress members and former President Trump argued TikTok should be banished from the United States altogether.

But this paranoia ignores the reality of data collection online. The internet is built by design to harvest data and share it with anyone who wants a peak. That continues thanks to the federal government’s decades-long failure to pass any meaningful laws that regulate digital privacy, despite the fact that the majority of Americans support such legislation.

Many of the same politicians who made the loudest arguments against TikTok are personally responsible for blocking federal privacy bills that would address these problems, including Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. In March, congress hauled TikTok CEO Shou Chew in for a brutal five-hour hearing. In the months since elected officials got their moment to yell at Shou, the TikTok issue has largely fallen off the radar.

TikTok is banned on devices belonging to the federal government, and many states passed similar rules. Montana, however, broke new ground with a full-on ban in 2023. Montana State Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who has defended the ban, compared TikTok to “a cancer causing radio.”

“This is a preliminary matter at this point. The judge indicated several times that the analysis could change as the case proceeds and the State has the opportunity to present a full factual record,” said Emilee Cantrell, a spokesperson for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen. “We look forward to presenting the complete legal argument to defend the law that protects Montanans from the Chinese Communist Party obtaining and using their data.”

If you’re worried that an app might leak American data to China, you shouldn’t waste your time worrying about who owns TikTok. A 2020 Gizmodo investigation found that every major social media platform partners with Chinese ad-tech companies. That includes Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, and other consumer apps including Gmail and platforms like Yahoo. That means these apps share the exact same kind of user data with companies that are equally likely to pass that data onto the Chinese government as TikTok.

Beyond that, there are hundreds if not thousands of companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting data about Americans and selling it to anyone who wants it. For example, a study in November found that data brokers were happy to sell information about US military personnel for pennies, even when researchers pretended to be from Singapore, where TikTok has its headquarters.

The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t have to go through TikTok to get its hands on sensitive American data. China can just buy that data from American companies, and it’s dirt cheap.

That’s because there are zero comprehensive privacy rules at the federal level, despite widespread misconceptions. Many of the same politicians who made the loudest arguments against TikTok are personally responsible for blocking federal privacy bills, including Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.

Make no mistake, TikTok’s privacy practices are just as bad as any other tech company, but they aren’t unique or unusual by any measure. The company maintains that it has not and will never share data with the Chinese government.

TikTok celebrated the legal victory on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. “We are pleased the judge rejected this unconstitutional law and hundreds of thousands of Montanans can continue to express themselves, earn a living, and find community on TikTok,” the company tweeted.

What is an RSS feed? Here’s why you should still use one | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

What is an RSS feed? Here’s why you should still use one | Digital Trends

With so much new content on the web added daily, it can be tough to keep up with what’s happening online. People try several different ways, including visiting specific websites every day, doing Google searches, or relying on social media to keep them informed. One solution that sometimes gets overlooked is an old-school one: The RSS feed.

What is an RSS feed? It’s a technology that has influenced many modern internet tools you’re familiar with, and its streamlined, algorithm-free format could make it your next great tool for reading what you want online.

What is RSS?

Image used with permission by copyright holder

What RSS stands for depends on who you ask. The main consensus is that it stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” But you may also hear that it stands for “Rich Site Summary.”  At its heart though, RSS essentially refers to simple text files with necessary, updated information — news pieces, articles, that sort of thing. That stripped-down content gets plugged into a feed reader, an interface that quickly converts the RSS text files into a stream of the latest updates from around the web.

As internet content became more complex, so did RSS files, quickly adopting images, video, and more, but still in a stripped-down format for more effortless loading and compatibility across all feed readers. Readers usually automatically update to deliver the newest content right to your device. This approach allows internet users to create their online feeds filled with custom updates from the sites they regularly visit.

I thought RSS was old. Is it still used online?

Yes and no. RSS feeds are certainly still present (more on this later), but they aren’t as dominant as they once were. Social media sites like Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn, and others have become the go-to option for following sites, watching feeds, and learning about the latest content. Other online options such as Google News or Google Discover aggregate full links to the latest stories, with algorithms to pick out stories you may like.

Interest in RSS feeds has gone down over the past several years. Online brands already have to post to social media for their marketing goals, and they may not want to take the extra time to convert content into a bunch of RSS files. This added effort is why a new blog or website may only offer subscription content by following them on social media, but no RSS feed. Google doesn’t even like to support RSS feeds anymore, and Google Reader is a long-dead endeavor. However, RSS feeds still have their place.

How can RSS feeds make my life easier?

Screenshot showing Feedly's interface.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

RSS feeds remain great for an in-depth look at a site’s new content — not just the stuff that gets pushed up on social media. If you are genuinely devoted to a site and want to see everything it has to offer, then an RSS feed is still the best way to make sure you don’t miss anything. It’s an excellent alternative to social media if you want the news and articles without all the baggage that comes with having a X or Facebook account.

Additionally, RSS feeds are often very easy to read at your leisure and will update even if you are not online — they are particularly useful for catching up on the news during your downtime. As such, RSS feeds have grown into a beneficial tool, thanks to the emergence of well-crafted mobile apps that act as feed readers.

What are the best feed readers?

A gaming RSS feed displayed on a tablet screen.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

There are many different kinds. However, some of the most popular include:

Feedreader

Feedreader is a simple, minimalistic reader that makes curation easy with basic categories and accessible tools. It has a fantastic preview option to see what an RSS feed looks like before you sign up, and it gives alternative options if you decide you don’t like that particular feed.

Feedly

Feedly can be used for entertainment and professional purposes (for example, following competitors and keeping up on industry news). It has a simple interface with basic categories to collect individual RSS feeds and a home page filled with the latest news from everywhere. Feedly is currently one of the most popular feed readers online, although it was the victim of an attack in 2014.

Flipboard

Flipboard has won admiration for its beautiful design that looks particularly good on mobile devices. It’s an excellent choice if you want a more organic, e-zine-like way to peruse the latest news from your favorite sources.

The Old Reader

It might sound antiquated, but The Old Reader’s name is merely highlighting its simplicity. While it still enjoys some social elements, its core function is bringing you an easy to parse and organize news feed with support for tablets, desktops, and mobile devices.

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Threads may finally launch in Europe in December

tech FranklinWilbur

Threads may finally launch in Europe in December

Meta has decided to play ball with the European Union’s online services regulations in order to bring Threads to its member countries. According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta will make Threads available across Europe in December and, in compliance with EU policies, allow users to access the platform without needing to create a profile.

Threads first launched to most of the world in July as an alternative to Elon Musk’s increasingly polarizing X, formerly known as Twitter. Threads reached 100 million users in its first week but has experienced some drop-off. The Meta-owned platform currently has about 73 million active users compared to X’s 365 million.

An expansion into the EU will undoubtedly grow Thread’s global engagement, but time will tell how fast and to what extent. In October, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted that Threads could see a reach of one billion users in the next few years. Instagram, which people can use to make a Threads account quickly, has over two billion active users but didn’t hit the one billion mark until eight years after launch. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has also announced that deleting your Threads account will no longer delete your associated Instagram account — another point of contention.

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Elon Musk Just Told Advertisers, ‘Go Fuck Yourself’

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Elon Musk Just Told Advertisers, ‘Go Fuck Yourself’

Elon Musk says that advertisers fleeing X after his endorsement of an antisemitic post could “kill” the platform formerly known as Twitter. And he has a simple message for those companies, which include Disney, Apple, and IBM: “Go fuck yourself.”

Musk, speaking Wednesday night at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit, said that advertisers with concerns about his conduct should stop spending on the platform, which has historically been dependent on ad revenue. “Don’t advertise,” Musk said in response to a question about X’s recent problems. “If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.”

Musk was referring to Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, which is among the brands that paused advertising on X this month in response to Musk’s recent actions. Iger spoke at the New York Times event earlier in the day and declined to comment on whether his company would resume advertising on X. “By him taking the position he took, we felt that the association with that position, and Elon Musk and X, was not a positive one for us,” Iger said.

Musk probably needs Iger’s ad spending more than Disney needs X. The multinational entertainment and theme park giant is valued at nearly $170 billion. When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, he took the company private, masking its financials, but in October of this year, X employees were awarded stock grants at a valuation of $45 per share, valuing the company at $19 billion—less than half of what Musk paid for the platform a year ago.

X’s advertising crisis was set in motion on November 15 when user @breakingbaht posted that Jewish communities have been “pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” Musk publicly replied, “You have spoken the actual truth,” a response widely seen as lending support to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory popular among right-wing extremists.

Speaking Wednesday at the New York Times event, Musk said that post was “one of the most foolish if not the most foolish thing I’ve ever done on the platform.” Earlier this week he traveled to Israel and met with Isaac Herzog, the country’s president, and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Speaking to Musk, Herzog said social media, “including some you lead, harbor so much of the age-old disease of antisemitism.”

Elon Musk to Boycotting Advertisers: Go F*ck Yourselves

tech FranklinWilbur

Elon Musk to Boycotting Advertisers: Go F*ck Yourselves

“Go fuck yourself.”

Thus spake Elon Musk during a conversation with Dealbook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday. Amidst a wide-ranging conversation with the New York Times sponsored event, the increasingly unhinged Tesla CEO said that he wouldn’t be “blackmailed” by advertisers who—in response to his recent, controversial comments—might want to pull their money from his flailing social media platform, X. Instead, Musk said that advertisers who were concerned about his more colorful ideations (including, specifically, Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger) should consider fucking off instead.

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Sporting, for some reason, a leather jacket that looked like it was culled from some sort of 1980s action movie, Musk proceeded to go off after Sorkin questioned him about how his recent comments might be hurting his business.

MUSK: “I hope they stop.”

SORKIN: “You what?”

MUSK: “Don’t advertise.”

SORKIN: “You don’t want them to advertise?”

MUSK: “If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.”

SORKIN: “But—”

MUSK: “Go…fuck…yourself.”

I’d say I was shocked but, to be honest, Musk’s comments are very, very on-brand for him. In recent weeks, the unrepentant billionaire’s mouth has caused X (formerly Twitter) a good deal of trouble. In addition to a tweet that kicked off widespread accusations of antisemitism, he also, just yesterday, decided to tweet about pizzagate, which raised more than a few eyebrows. Advertisers have, in the case of the “Jewish” episode, responded by pulling their ads from the platform, thus costing the struggling site important financing.

But, as ever, Musk clearly isn’t interested in a mea culpa (or, apparently, in salvaging the wounded cash flows of his company). Instead, he wants to stick to his guns—even if it tanks X as a result.

Elon Musk responds to companies that pulled ads from X: ‘Go fuck yourself’

tech FranklinWilbur

Elon Musk responds to companies that pulled ads from X: ‘Go fuck yourself’

Elon Musk, facing the fact that an already financially-precarious X could be poised to lose another $75 million in ad revenue following his boosting of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, has a new message for advertisers pulling back from the platform: “Go fuck yourself.”

Musk repeated the sentiment multiple times during an appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook event. “Don’t advertise,” Musk said. “If somebody is going to try and blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”

“Hey Bob,” Musk added, in an apparent reference to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who appeared at the same event earlier in the day and spoke about the company’s decision to pull ads following Musk’s tweet earlier this month. Iger said that Disney’s association with X was “not necessarily a positive one for us,” according to Variety.

While Musk again denied being antisemitic, he did express some regret for engaging with the tweet that’s resulted in another exodus of advertisers from X. “I should have not replied to that particular person… I essentially handed a loaded gun to those who hate me,” Musk said about the post, per Variety.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. X CEO Linda Yaccarino had a front-row seat to the remarks, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which reports the former ad exec sat “stone-faced” during Musk’s tirade.

Elon Musk responds to companies that pulled ads from X: ‘Go fuck yourself’

tech FranklinWilbur

Elon Musk responds to companies that pulled ads from X: ‘Go fuck yourself’

Elon Musk, facing the fact that an already financially-precarious X could be poised to lose another $75 million in ad revenue following his boosting of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, has a new message for advertisers pulling back from the platform: “Go fuck yourself.”

Musk repeated the sentiment multiple times during an appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook event. “Don’t advertise,” Musk said. “If somebody is going to try and blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”

“Hey Bob,” Musk added, in an apparent reference to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who appeared at the same event earlier in the day and spoke about the company’s decision to pull ads following Musk’s tweet earlier this month. Iger said that Disney’s association with X was “not necessarily a positive one for us,” according to Variety.

While Musk again denied being antisemitic, he did express some regret for engaging with the tweet that’s resulted in another exodus of advertisers from X. “I should have not replied to that particular person… I essentially handed a loaded gun to those who hate me,” Musk said about the post, per Variety.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. X CEO Linda Yaccarino had a front-row seat to the remarks, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which reports the former ad exec sat “stone-faced” during Musk’s tirade.

Fake AI images are showing up in Google search | Digital Trends

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Fake AI images are showing up in Google search | Digital Trends

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Right now, if you type “Israel Kamakawiwoʻole” into Google search, you don’t see one of the singer’s famous album covers, or an image of him performing one of his songs on his iconic ukulele. What you see first is an image of a man sitting on a beach with a smile on his face — but not a photo of the man himself taken with a camera. This is fake photo generated by AI. In fact, when you click on the image, it takes you to the Midjourney subreddit, where the series of images were initially posted.

I saw this first posted by Ethan Mollick on X (formerly known as Twitter), a professor at Wharton who is studying AI.

Looking at the photo up close, it’s not hard to see all the traces of AI left behind in it. The fake depth of field effect is applied unevenly, the texture on his shirt is garbled, and of course, he’s missing a finger on his left hand. But none of that is surprising. As good as AI-generated images have become over the past year, they’re still pretty easy to spot when you look closely.

The real problem, though, is that these images are showing up as the first result for a famous, known figure without any watermarks or indications that it is AI-generated. Google has never guaranteed the authenticity of the results of its image search, but there’s something that feels very troubling about this.

Now, there are some possible explanations for why this happened in this particular case. The Hawaiian singer, commonly known as Iz, passed away in 1997 — and Google always wants to feed the latest information to users. But given that not a lot of new articles or discussion is happening about Iz since then, it’s not hard to see why the algorithm picked this up. And while it doesn’t feel particularly consequential for Iz — it’s not hard to imagine some examples that would be much more problematic.

Even if we don’t continue see this happen at scale in search results, it’s a prime example of why Google needs to have rules around this. At the very least, it seems like AI-generated images should be marked clearly in some way before things get out of hand. If nothing else, at least give us a way to automatically filter out AI images. Given Google’s own interest in AI-generated content, however, there are reasons to think it may want to find ways to sneak AI-created content into its results, and not clearly mark it.

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