News

A union representing about 160,000 Hollywood actors is poised to go on strike after talks with major studios and streaming services have failed.

You know what they say about people in glass houses, right?

Twitter is considering legal action against Meta over its fast-growing rival app Threads. Threads, which was launched to millions on Wednesday, is similar to Twitter and has been pitched by Meta bosses as a "friendly" alternative.

Twitter's Elon Musk said "competition is fine, cheating is not" - but Meta denied claims in a legal letter that ex-Twitter staff helped create Threads. More than 30 million people have signed up for the new app, according to Meta.

The look and feel of Threads is similar to Twitter, BBC News technology reporter James Clayton noted. He said the news feed and the reposting were incredibly familiar.

In a move first reported by news outlet Semafor, Twitter attorney Alex Spiro sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday accusing Meta of "systematic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property" to create Threads.

Specifically, Mr Spiro alleged that Meta hired dozens of former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information" that ultimately helped Meta develop what he termed the "copycat" Threads app.

"Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information," the letter says. "Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice."

BBC News, which has seen a copy of the letter, has contacted both Meta and Twitter for comment. Mr Musk said that "competition is fine, cheating is not" in response to a post on Twitter that referred to the legal letter.

On Threads, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone posted that "no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee - that's just not a thing".

Both Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg have acknowledged the rivalry over Threads, which is linked to Instagram but works as a standalone app.

As it launched in 100 countries, Mr Zuckerberg broke more than 11 years of silence on Twitter to post a highly popular meme of two nearly identical Spider-Man figures pointing at each other, indicating a stand-off.

Shortly after, and as the word "Threads" trended globally on his platform, Mr Musk said: "It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram."

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a tweet on Thursday that while the platform, which has previously reported about 260 million monthly users, is "often imitated" it "can never be duplicated".

Both Meta and Twitter have undertaken significant layoffs this year, with Meta announcing in April that it would cut staff levels by approximately 10,000.

Twitter lost a large proportion of its 7,500 employees, as high as 80%, in waves of redundancies following Mr Musk's takeover last October.

Officials have received more than 1,000 calls in recent weeks from beachgoers, tourists, and residents reporting sick, dying, and dead sea mammals washed ashore amid a growing toxic algal bloom in the waters off the Pacific coast. CNN's David Culver has more.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/927640

It’s possible that the enforcement of a rate limit isn’t because of AI scraping, but rather because they failed to migrate before the June 30th deadline.

If you’re not logged into your Twitter account and try to view a tweet, you’ll be presented with a sign-in screen. And if you don’t want to have an account on the bird app, too bad!

Twitter hasn’t commented on this change, and given how sloppy the platform has been since Elon Musk’s takeover, it might just be a glitch. However, in a time when Twitter is struggling to grow its user base, it’s possible that this is a tactic to force silent lurkers into creating an account.

Like many of Twitter’s recent changes, this could easily backfire. If tweets aren’t publicly accessible, search engine algorithms could rank the site’s content lower, meaning that fewer people would be directed to the site from Google. Also, it’s just kind of annoying.

Musk — who is no longer CEO of Twitter, but still deeply involved in operations — may also be motivated by a desire to prevent AI tools from searching Twitter. Musk has previously admonished Microsoft, which dropped Twitter from its advertising platform, by saying: “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.”

As new CEO Linda Yaccarino settles into her new role, Twitter has remained riddled with technical errors. Earlier this week, a disproportionate amount of users were notified that they had been suspended for three days due to spam. We’re still not sure what happened there (and Twitter won’t answer our emails), but with Musk in the C-suite, policies can change faster than you can say “$44 billion,” so anything’s possible.

Wow! Good!

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news/t/79328

The collapse of the terraUSD stablecoin and the associated Luna token rocked cryptocurrency markets.

The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon on Wednesday, alleging that the e-commerce giant has tricked millions of consumers into signing up for its Amazon Prime subscription service through deceptive user interface designs.

The complaint filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington also takes aim at Amazon for allegedly trying to keep users subscribed who wished to cancel their memberships.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/806531

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/177673

Today, a bunch of new instances appeared in the top of the user count list. It appears that these instances are all being bombarded by bot sign-ups.

For now, it seems that the bots are especially targeting instances that have:

• Open sign-ups
• No captcha
• No e-mail verification

I have put together a spreadsheet of some of the most suspicious cases here.

If this is affecting you, I would highly recommend considering one of the following options:

1. Close sign-ups entirely
2. Only allow sign-ups with applications
3. Enable e-mail verification + captcha for sign-ups

Additionally, I would recommend pre-emptively banning as many bot accounts as possible, before they start posting spam!

Please comment below if you have any questions or anything useful to add.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has come out and said what legions of redditors feared – that a business plan to turn a profit by increasing the price of API access has been “reaffirmed” by a look at the Book of Musk.

The European Parliament just caused a major headache for smartphone and tablet manufacturers.

A submersible used to take people to view the wreck of the Titanic has gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Boston Coastguard told BBC News that a search and rescue operation was under way off the coast of Newfoundland.

It is unclear how many people were on board when it went missing.

Small submersibles occasionally take paying tourists and experts to view the wreck of the Titanic, some 3,800m (12,500ft) beneath the ocean surface.

OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that organises deep sea expeditions, confirmed in a statement that it owned the missing submersible and people were on board.

"We are exploring and mobilising all options to bring the crew back safely," it said on Monday. "Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families."

"We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers," it added.

The company charges guests $250,000 (£195,270) for a place on its eight-day expedition to see the famous wreck.

It bills the trip on its carbon-fibre submersible as a "chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary".

According to its website, one expedition is ongoing and two more have been planned for June 2024.