Following the decision to cut 11,000 employees, Meta has reportedly killed its smartwatch project and Portal smart displays.
Reuters reports that Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, revealed to employees that the tech giant will wind down its development of Portal and its smartwatch project.
“It was just going to take so long, and take so much investment to get into the enterprise segment, it felt like the wrong way to invest your time and money,” said Bosworth in a statement to Meta employees, according to Reuters.
Meta’s smartwatch development team will shift its focus to augmented reality glasses. On the other hand, Portal has not been a significant revenue generator for the company formerly known as Facebook.
Last week, Meta reduced its workforce by 13 percent or 11,000 Meta employees worldwide. Following the announcement, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, confirmed that it will continue its hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023. Meta has lost $9.4 billion on its metaverse technology in 2022 so far.
Twitter has officially launched its $8/month subscription service that includes an overhaul to the verification process.
Elon Musk, who officially acquired the social media giant last week, quickly got to work on a way to monetize how people obtain the blue checkmarks.
Now, those who pay the $8 monthly fee can receive the same checks that were previously given to public figures, including celebrities, businesses and journalists.
However, the check is simply available for purchase through the new subscription. As part of a new update, iOS users are told they can sign up now to receive the blue checkmark next to their names, “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.” (It’s unclear when it’s rolling out on Android.)
Critics have previously expressed concern that such a system would dilute the intended meaning of verification, which was to combat impersonations and fake news. It remains to be seen what will happen now that anyone can get a check.
Twitter is in a state of chaos thanks to widespread layoffs and edicts from its new owner surrounding outlandish money-making efforts like paid verification and DMs.
As Elon Musk often does, the recently crowned “chief twit” turned to the social media platform he now owns to blame “activist groups” for the “massive” drop in revenue the social media platform has experienced since his takeover.
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
Right on queue, this tweet was flagged by users with three fact-checking links, including coverage from the Wall Street Journal, MSN and the Daily Mail. The articles outline that major brands have pulled out from advertising on the platform because there’s widespread uncertainty surrounding the free speech-focused direction Musk plans to take Twitter.
While the fact-checked portion of Musk’s tweet isn’t visible to everyone, several Twitter users snapped screenshots.
WhatsApp’s long-awaited ‘Communities‘ feature has officially launched.
The feature, which is an extension of Groups, allows WhatsApp users to form sub-groups under a main community group, similar to Discord. For example, you can have a master chat/community about your organization, with sub-chats/groups consisting of individual teams within the organization.
The feature will replace the camera tab on Android devices, while the communities will appear as a new option on the bottom bar in iOS devices.
“Once you’re in a community, you can easily switch between available groups to get the information you need, when you need it, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the Community,” reads WhatsApp’s blog about the feature.
Within Communities, and normal groups, users would now also be able to create in-chat polls, initiate 32-person video calls, and form groups with up to 1,024 users, all while keeping chats completely end-to-end encrypted. “With Communities, we’re aiming to raise the bar for how organizations communicate with a level of privacy and security not found anywhere else,” says WhatsApp. “The alternatives available today require trusting apps or software companies with a copy of their messages – and we think they deserve the higher level of security provided by end-to-end encryption.”
Communities and all the accompanying features are rolling out now, and are expected to be available to all users globally “over the next few months.”
You can shop in Apple’s refurbished store to score a sly discount on new products. The company recently added the new M2 MacBook Air that released this summer, starting at $150 less than the brand-new model.
While this might not be the most significant discount around, Apple refurbished models still come with the company’s one-year limited warranty.
If you’re looking to get one of these computers for light work, you might score a better deal on the M1 MacBook Air, which is comparable to the new model. Read our full M2 MacBook Air review if you want a dive deeper into the laptop.
You can find all of Apple’s refurbished MacBook Air models here.
After several months of trying to back out of acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk now officially owns the social media giant.
While any billionaire buying the platform would have been cause for concern, the fact that the world’s richest — and arguably most immature — man has done so is especially worrisome. That’s because, among Musk’s many shortcomings, is the fact that he’s really quite inept.
Looking back on his past screw-ups, it’s not hard to feel pessimistic about how Twitter will fare under his control. With that in mind, here are seven things that Musk has messed up on that add to the notion that he’ll run Twitter into the ground.
The Thai cave rescue
These are clearly the words of someone who cared about saving people and not his own fragile ego.
Between June and July 2018, rescue efforts were underway for a junior football team in a Tham Luang cave in Thailand. Initially, Musk revealed plans to build a mini-submarine to rescue the team, although this was viewed by many as both infeasible and a publicity stunt. Even though the mini-sub was ultimately never used in the rescue, Musk was quick to slam his critics, including, most infamously, by calling Vernon Unsworth, one of the people who did save the team, a “pedo guy.”
That Musk initially didn’t back down from his comments, and reportedly even pressured Thai officials to praise his mini-sub, only made him look worse. While many would surely agree that the most important thing was making sure the kids and their coach go out safely, Musk just had to make it all about himself.
Being such a loose cannon that his Twitter account has to be legally monitored
He also stepped down as chairman. He’s since been trying to appeal this ruling and, in typical “old man tries to be hip” form, even referenced an Eminem song to do so.
Covering up Tesla issues
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
Musk loves to talk about free speech, but it’s something he very clearly doesn’t believe in. On top of defaming falsely accusing Unsworth of pedophilia simply for criticizing him, Musk has a track record of going after people who say things he doesn’t like.
While Tesla is far from the only company that has had autonomous vehicle stumbles, Musk is notorious for lying about Autopilot. Every year, he’s made promises about Tesla’s self-driving car ambitions, and every year, they don’t come to pass. Tesla even admitted privately last year that Musk has been exaggerating FSD’s capabilities.
Alright, this is mostly a joke and really doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but it’s nonetheless amusing that a narcissist who tries so desperately to look funny and cool on Twitter was caught proudly sharing a bad Elden Ring build. Essentially, he gave his character two shields when you only benefit from having one. This is a problem because it weighed his character down, thus preventing him from executing critical maneuvers like dodging.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Musk spread a variety of misinformation related to the virus, including promoting a widely discredited paper about the alleged benefits of chloroquine and claiming death statistics were inflated. That would be bad in and of itself, but that doesn’t even address his most recent wrongdoing.
Just three days after buying Twitter, Musk shared a fake news story about Paul Pelosi, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Speaker of the House. On October 28th, Paul Pelosi was assaulted with a hammer inside his home by a man looking for his wife. However, Musk soon tweeted a link to a story in a faux newspaper, the Santa Monica Observer, alleging that Paul Pelosi was injured during a drunken fight with a male prostitute. “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” Eventually, Musk deleted the tweet, but instead of actually owning up to the mistake, he took the chance to take a dig at The New York Times instead.
The fact that the person in charge of Twitter can’t even discern what’s blatantly false before sharing it is certainly worrisome. That Musk is the third-most-followed account on Twitter only makes such politically-charged tweets all the more dangerous.
An Instagram outage that occurred this morning resulted in millions of accounts being incorrectly listed as suspended.
“we suspended your account on October 31, 2022,” is the message many users received this morning. The problem seems to be affected both iPhone and Android users, with some reports stating that the app continuously crashed.
We're aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We're looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience. #instagramdown
On Twitter, Instagram tweeted that it’s “aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We’re looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience.”
However, the situation appears to be slowly being resolved. Some users have been able to access their Instagram accounts again, and Down Detector indicates a drop in outage reports starting at roughly 12pm ET/9am PT.
For what it’s worth, my Instagram account seems to still be working fine. No one on the MobileSyrup team has run into problems either.
This story will be updated when Meta-owned Instagram is fully back online. Have you run into issues using Instagram today? Let us know in the comments below.
Nibel, one of the most prominent gaming news accounts on Twitter, has announced that he’s leaving the platform.
In a statement posted to his now-private account, Nibel said he’s decided to “focus my time and energy elsewhere and move on from Twitter.” Over the years, Nibel — most recognized through profile pictures from anime like Mob Psycho 100 — grew in popularity for sharing gaming news from a variety of outlets, and with nearly 450,000 followers at the time of writing, he has had a significant reach.
In a post on Patreon, Nibel elaborated on the decision to leave Twitter. The first factor was that he was “not able to create an interesting and sustainable Patreon, which is evident in the number of Patrons stagnating during the first weekend and the first (of many) pledges being deleted in the first week.” Thanking Patrons for the support, he said he’ll look into refunds for recent payments and has already deactivated billing.
He went on to say that Twitter itself has also compelled him to step away from his work.
“I don’t think Twitter has yet experienced good leadership, and this trend will not change with Musk either,” referring to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who officially took control of Twitter last week following his $44 billion USD (about $60 billion CAD) acquisition of the social media giant. “I do not trust the platform. I do not trust Musk and his seemingly infinite immaturity. I do not think Twitter will fall apart instantly but that it could be die a slow death. Why waste more time?”
Nibel ended his post by noting that he’ll keep the Twitter account up (“at least for now”) so that people can’t cause issues with the handle. Indeed, Nibel has criticized Twitter for difficulties in getting verified, as this lead to many accounts sharing fake news while posing as him.
Nibel is the latest person to announce a Twitter departure following Musk’s takeover. Other notable figures to do so include Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles and Bill & Ted star Alex Winter.
Musk’s first weekend in charge of Twitter has already been met with multiple controversies. Over the past few days, Musk shared a fake news story about the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Musk quietly deleted the tweet without taking accountability for sharing a conspiracy theory to his more than 110 million followers.
China-based social media platform TikTok isn’t content to just stick to short-form video. According to a new report from the Financial Times, TikTok has plans to announce an “enormous” push into the gaming space.
Back in 2019, TikTok launched games in China and then in 2021, released a few titles to the rest of the world. Then earlier this year, reports emerged that TikTok expanded its partnership with Zynga to release more HTML-5 titles that it tested in Vietnam.
According to the Financial Times, users will soon be able to access games through a button on its home page. This section of the app will be the home for all gaming content, including the ability to “pay for additional content,” says the publication.
TikTok is expected to make an announcement regarding its renewed gaming efforts on November 2nd called ‘TikTok Made Me Play It.’ Companies like Electronic Arts, 2K, VNG Corporation, NetEase Games and Homa will reportedly make announcements. It’s unclear what mobile games TikTok will release.
TikTok sent the following statement to Financial Times regarding the report:
“We’re always looking at ways to enrich our platform and regularly test new ideas that we think can bring value to our community.”
If these rumours surrounding TikTok’s gaming ambitions are accurate, they sound very reminiscent of Netflix’s recent gaming push. The video streaming giant recently confirmed that it’s developing 55 new games and that it’s considering launching a game streaming service.
Netflix currently offers titles like Moonlighter, Into the Breach, Spiritfarer and more as part of its subscription.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed for the first time why he intends to acquire the micro-blogging platform Twitter.
In a recently published tweet addressed to current and potential Twitter advertisers, Musk said that there has been a lot of speculation regarding why he bought Twitter, and “most of it has been wrong.”
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” writes the world’s richest man.
Musk fears that as people’s ideologies bifurcate, social media too will splinter, ultimately generating hate and division among people. “In the relentless pursuit of clicks, much of traditional media has fueled and catered to those polarized extremes, as they believe that is what brings in the money, but, in doing so, the opportunity for dialogue is lost,” he said.
On the other hand, Musk also noted that the platform can not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” and that there will be consequences for those who take advantage of the freedom of speech the platform intends to offer under Musk’s leadership. “Our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experiences according to your preferences,” said Musk.
“I didn’t do it [buy Twitter] to make money,” said Musk. “I did it to try to help humanity.” This is a rather over-the-top statement, but at least this clarifies Musk doesn’t intend to become some sort of a social media overlord with the acquisition.
Another reason why Musk acquired Twitter is that he thinks he can fix advertising on the platform. He says when done right, advertising in itself can be a form of content that can delight, entertain and inform users.
“Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!” he writes.
Musk added that under his leadership, he aspires for Twitter to be the “most respected” advertising platform in the world that can strengthen brands and help enterprises grow.
It’s worth noting Musk’s acquisition of Twitter hasn’t formally been completed yet. He revived his original $44 billion USD (about $59 billion CAD) acquisition offer in early October, and subsequently, the Twitter vs. Musk trial that was initially set to take place on October 17th was postponed to November.
According to Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, head of the Delaware Chancery Court, Musk has until tomorrow, Friday, October 28th, to close the acquisition deal.
