X, formerly Twitter, today announced support for passkeys, a new and more secure login method than traditional passwords, which will become an option for U.S. users on iOS devices.
Today we’re excited to launch Passkeys as a login option for our US-based users on iOS!
For instance, this January, the U.S. Securities and Exchange’s X account was hacked to share an unauthorized post regarding Bitcoin ETF approval.
In the days since Musk’s takeover of Twitter/X, the company removed another security measure that helped keep accounts secure when it announced last year that it would no longer support SMS 2FA for non-paying accounts.
However, the reality was that removing the security protection made Twitter less secure, as a result.
MY FIRST X VIDEO MADE OVER $250,000!
Luckily for Musk, MrBeast is a fan of his — but, business comes first.
Throughout MrBeast’s test, though, some users raised concern that the video was being treated by X as though it were an advertisement, which could possibly juice engagement.
Ryan Broderick hypothesized that videos might be wrongly labeled as ads if a pre-roll ad plays before the video, but this still causes a lot of confusion on the user end.
A representative from X did not respond for comment.
SEC’s X account hacked, sharing ‘unauthorized tweet’ regarding spot bitcoin ETF The agency has "not approved" the listing and trading of spot bitcoin ETFs, chair Gary Gensler saysThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account has been hacked, a spokesperson confirmed with TechCrunch on Tuesday afternoon.
The unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs was not made by the SEC or its staff,” the spokesperson said.
The unauthorized post has since been deleted.
Around 4:30 p.m. EST, SEC Chair Gary Gensler tweeted, “The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted.
The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.”After the fake post went out, Bitcoin’s price spiked near $48,000 but has since fallen around $45,700, according to CoinMarketCap data.
In an announcement today, X shared its roadmap for the year ahead, which will include AI-powered experiences and the launch of peer-to-peer payments, among other initiatives.
In Musk’s vision, X users will be able to send money to others on the platform and extract those funds to authenticated bank accounts.
In the X blog post published today, the company claims it will launch peer-to-peer payments this year, to unlock “more user utility and new opportunities for commerce,” suggesting a tie-in with other X products, like creator revenue sharing and online shopping.
The latter has been a particular source of concern for X advertisers, who have found that despite X’s measures, their ads were placed next to toxic content or hate speech, leading many to withdraw.
80,000+ creators have also received payouts via X’s revenue-sharing program in under a year’s time, but X did not provide a figure.
Instagram has a feature where you can add music directly to your posts — a popular option among users who want to add life to their content and show off their musical taste.
Then, you click on the music note icon at the top of the editing screen, which brings you to Instagram’s music library of over 12,000 songs.
Previously only available on Stories and Reels, Instagram expanded its music feature in 2022 to bring the capability to image posts.
However, Instagram has yet to support music on carousels with videos.
The app is also reportedly experimenting with music on profiles — a nod to the MySpace era.
The once popular third-party podcast app Castro has seemingly shut down, after earlier saying that it was “actively seeking a new home” for its product.
Concerns over Castro’s future, and the fate of the indie podcast app industry as a whole, have broadened in recent years as Spotify entered the market to compete with Apple Podcasts.
That move influenced the exits of other smaller podcast apps, which included the sale of Pocket Casts to a collective of radio broadcasters, including NPR and BBC Studios.
Satellite radio provider and Pandora owner SiriusXM also bought the podcast app Stitcher in 2020 for $325 million.
Another request for comment from Casto owner Tiny was not returned as of the time of writing, but we’ll update if more information is provided.
The fact is that they are rich ideologues announcing their intent to pay any politician who will advance their agenda, whatever that politician’s other views.
That tech is more important than people is fundamental to their approach.
For instance, supporting politicians who oppose basic civil rights just because they have a more hands-off tech regulation proposal.
In the first place, the idea that this one issue is non-partisan is risible.
They can’t expect us to believe that their understanding of lobbying and politics is this naive.
More importantly for Mastodon, Meta committed to integrating Threads with ActivityPub, meaning users would be able to find and follow both Mastodon and Threads users across both services.
While many expected that integration wouldn’t arrive until early 2024, Meta surprised everyone by announcing yesterday that it would begin testing ActivityPub integration.
I’m pretty optimistic about this,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Threads.
Threads users’ profiles on Mastodon weren’t backfilled with their older posts before the integration went live.
With Threads’ integration into Mastodon’s ecosystem, users will have more choice in how they want to engage with Threads users and content, including by accessing those accounts from an app of their choosing.
Palace intrigue might be dominating the news cycle around OpenAI, but the AI startup — and its accelerator programs — are chugging along uninterrupted, so the PR team tells me.
OpenAI today announced the launch of Converge-2, the second cohort of its six-week Converge program for “exceptional engineers, designers, researchers, and product builders using AI to reimagine the world,” as the company describes it in a blog post published this morning.
As with members of OpenAI’s first Converge cohort, the 10-15 startups chosen to participate in Converge-2 will receive a $1 million equity investment from the OpenAI Startup Fund, the $100 million-plus entrepreneurial tranche announced last May backed by Microsoft and other OpenAI partners.
Do the math, and that’s at least a $10 million investment in the Converge-2 program — not an insubstantial chunk of change.
OpenAI is encouraging founders from all backgrounds, disciplines and experience levels to apply, including those based outside of the U.S.
What X needs most now is for Snap to post a solid Q4Not a day goes by without some drama involving Twitter X.
According to a recent report by Bloomberg, X’s ad revenue is expected to fall to $2.5 billion in 2023, and X is disputing the news, calling it incomplete.
Still, the report’s numbers line up neatly with what X’s owner said earlier this summer.
We’ll also revisit our previous look at Snap, another social network that is close-ish to X in scale and worth, to compare the two companies.
The question today is whether or not X’s revenues and valuation square up, so let’s dive in!
