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Twitter blue checkmark: A symbol of shame?

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After receiving a severe backlash from verified users who lost their blue checkmarks from their accounts, Twitter started to provide verification marks to celebrities. But this time, they are unwilling to accept it.

People who refused to have the verification badge include the rapper Lil Nas X, The New York Times, the scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, journalist Kara Swisher, and satire account @dril, among others.

While people who have passed away have also had their verified status restored. Some of those accounts include Bob Saget, Kirstie Alley and Barbara Walters. 

Apparently, Elon Musk’s ignited chaos has largely damaged the honour and authenticity of the blue checkmark at a critical point when he has been eyeing to raise revenue from it. But the attempt proved otherwise as its advertising business witnessed a decline.

A number of high-profile personalities announced that they had been punished with the verification marks of Twitter, CNN reported.

People including actor Chrissy Teigen reported difficulties in attempting to remove the blue checkmark. She also tried to remove it by changing her display name and then ultimately met with success.

She wrote on Twitter: “It attached itself to me. How did it happen so fast? like the movie It Follows.”

The setback from a celebrity shows the gap in the strategy and execution of the plan and also shows how disconnected Elon Musk is from the high-profile Twitter users whose content has long kept the microblogging website afloat.

Cost of blue checkmark higher than revenue

After acquiring the social media giant for $44 billion last year, Musk said that the blue mark will not be only limited to high-profile users but to those who pay $8. 

He also said: “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”

The Twitter’s CEO’s decision to implement his plans were not welcomed. They had consequences such as a threat of spreading fake news via fake accounts made in the name of popular figures.

Similarly, Musk’s decisions have forced him to revert back to the old system where only a few had blue badges.

With the direction Musk has taken, those who have the badges are seen as loyal to the Twitter CEO but others are embarrassed to have badges on their account.

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan noted on Twitter: “So, how do all the Musk fanboys and MAGA folks on this site feel about the fact that your conquering hero said he’d bring ‘equality’ and ‘people power’ to this site and then charged you all for Twitter Blue while giving it to people like me for free? Do you feel… owned?”

Many high-profile users have refused to pay for the badge — such as NYT and actor William Shatner — which paint a bleak picture of how would  Twitter raise its revenue parallel to the egalitarianism which Musk intended to promote.

People who refused to pay included LeBron James, Stephen King and Shatner. In response, Elon Musk said he was paying for their subscriptions.

The accounts that lost the mark were restored including President Joe Biden and Pope Francis with labels as “a government or multilateral organisation account.”

Nevertheless, it is a reminder that social media would not be democratised as Silicon Valley tried to do because there are still people who are to enjoy special privileges even on social media with reference to their status in the real world. 

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TikTok offers a special in-app experience to commemorate the release of Jimin’s second solo album, MUSE, by BTS.

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Calibre fans everywhere get the chance to interact with only-available content, take part in challenges, and get temporary rewards by visiting the #Jimin_Who hub. To find a time-limited, exclusive profile frame, search for relevant terms like “Jimin” and “BTS.” You’ll be provided with difficulties. Moreover, the hub offers high-calibre content produced by Jimin, such as his solo and collaborative works, Fan Spotlight, which highlights exceptional ARMY members and their works, and an immersive event honouring Jimin’s second album, MUSE.

TikTok is committed to enabling fans and artists to interact and create, as this programme demonstrates. The TikTok community worldwide is expected to find resonance in this experience, as BTS is one of the most popular accounts and #kpop is one of the fastest-growing genres on the platform, producing 59.8 million posts and 602 billion video views.

BTS (@bts_official_bighit) broke numerous records throughout their more than ten-year tenure, becoming the fourth-largest artist account on TikTok and cementing their status as pop icons of the twenty-first century.

The group’s hashtags, #bts and #bts_official_bighit, are part of 94.1 million creator videos and 33.4 million videos, respectively, and have over 65.5 million followers and 1.4 billion likes. Because of his solo work, Jimin has become an international phenomenon, inspiring millions of creator videos and views.

In over 22.9 million creator videos, hashtags pertaining to #jimin have appeared. The group’s TikTok dance video, which was viewed over 36.2 million times and received over 8.6 million likes, was inspired by Jimin’s #1 song, “Like Crazy,” which he released last year after his debut solo album FACE. The song inspired over 300,000 creator videos. The MUSE pre-release single “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (feat. Loco)” has received 2.5 million likes and 11 million views on Jimin’s recent exclusive behind-the-scenes video.

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63,000 Instagram accounts are deleted by Meta

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The “Yahoo boys,” a group of Nigerian internet scammers, are well-known for their elaborate schemes, which include posing as needy individuals or promising phenomenal returns on investments from prominent Nigerian figures.

63,000 Instagram profiles, according to a statement by Meta, which also mentioned that 7,200 Facebook pages, groups, and accounts that offered advice on con artistry had been deleted.

The organisation also eliminated a smaller, more tightly-knit network of about 2,500 computers that belonged to a collective of about 20 people.

The prospect of compromising photos—fake or real—being released is used in sexual extortion, or “sextortion,” to coerce victims into paying to halt the abuse.

Meta notified the scammers’ attempts to the U.S. National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, as most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and largely targeted adults, but there were also attempts made against kids.

The disruption of these networks was not new, according to Meta officials, who also disclosed the current operation in an effort to “raise awareness.”

Governments, particularly lawmakers in the US, where Meta is headquartered, have increased pressure on the social media behemoth to address allegations that its executives have disregarded data indicating that its services are harmful to children. As a result, the company has been under defensive fire in recent years.

One American senator charged Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, and other prominent figures in the social media space earlier this year, saying they had “blood on their hands” for not doing enough to shield young people from the growing risks of sexual predatory content on their platforms.

Additionally, in an effort to raise awareness of these risks, the U.S. Surgeon General has advocated for social media apps to have a warning label attached.

A part of the national penal code that dealt with fraud ineffectively gave rise to the term “419 scams” for Nigerian con artists.

Online frauds have increased in number, with individuals responsible operating from wealthy neighbourhoods, college dorms, or impoverished suburban areas while the nation of more than 200 million people experiences increasing economic woes.

A few users, according to Meta, were giving advice on how to pull off scams.

It stated, “Among their attempts were links to photo collections that they could use to create fictitious accounts, as well as offers to sell scripts and instructions to deceive people with.”

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Google abandons its plans to do rid of cookies in Chrome

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The significant change in course comes as a result of worries expressed by advertisers, who provide the majority of the company’s revenue, that their capacity to gather data for customised advertisements will be restricted due to the removal of cookies from the most widely used browser in the world, leaving them reliant on Google’s user databases.

Due to worries that Google’s proposal would stifle competition in the digital advertising market, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has also carefully examined the proposal.

“Rather than discontinuing third-party cookies, we would launch a fresh experience in Chrome that empowers individuals to make a knowledgeable decision that is applicable to all of their online browsing, and they could modify that decision whenever they choose,” stated Anthony Chavez, vice president of the Privacy Sandbox project, which is supported by Google, in a blog post.

A major objective of the Privacy Sandbox project, which was started in 2019 by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab unit, is to phase out third-party cookies while simultaneously improving online privacy and boosting digital enterprises.

Though they can potentially be used for unauthorised monitoring, cookies are information packets that websites and advertisers use to identify specific online users and follow their browsing patterns.

Within the European Union, publishers are required to obtain explicit agreement from users before storing cookies, as per the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Cookie deletion is another feature that most popular browsers offer.

While continuing to fund the Privacy Sandbox programme, Chavez stated that Google was collaborating on the new strategy with publishers, privacy organisations, and regulators like the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and CMA.

Many responded differently to the announcement.

Analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf of eMarketer stated in a statement, “Advertising stakeholders won’t have to prepare to quit third-party cookies cold turkey.”

One example of how cookies can hurt consumers is when they display predatory advertisements that target specific demographics, according to Lena Cohen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. According to Cohen, Google’s choice to keep accepting third-party cookies is a direct result of their advertising-driven business model, even though other major browsers have been banning them for years.

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