Monthly Archives: April 2020

Twitter is an online news and social networking site where people communicate in short messages called tweets. Tweeting is posting short messages for anyone who follows you on Twitter, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience. Another description of Twitter and tweeting might bemicroblogging.

Some people use Twitter to discover interesting people and companies online, opting to follow their tweets.

Twitter's big appeal is how scan-friendly it is. You can track hundreds of engaging Twitter users and read their content with a glance, which is ideal for our modern attention-deficit world.

Twitter employs a purposeful message size restriction to keep things scan-friendly: every microblog tweet entry is limited to 280 characters or less. This size cap promotes the focused and clever use of language, which makes tweets easy to scan, and challenging to write. This size restriction made Twitter a popular social tool.

Twitter is easy to use as either broadcaster or receiver. You join with a free account and Twitter name. Then you send broadcasts (tweets) daily, hourly, or as frequently as you like. Go to the What's Happening box, type 280 or fewer characters, and click Tweet. People who follow you, and potentially others who don't, will see your tweet.

Encourage people you know to follow you and receive your tweets in their Twitter feeds. Let your friends know you are on Twitter to build up a following slowly. When people follow you, Twitter etiquette calls for you to follow them back.

To receive Twitter feeds, find someone interesting (celebrities included) and press Follow to subscribe to their tweets. If their tweets aren't as interesting as you thought they'd be, select Unfollow.

Go to your account at Twitter.com day or night to read your Twitter feed, which is continually changing as people post.

People send tweets for all sorts of reasons: vanity, attention, shameless self-promotion of their web pages, or pure boredom. The vast majority of tweeters microblog recreationally. It's a chance to shout out to the world and revel in how many people read their tweets.

However, a growing number of Twitter users send out useful content, and that's the real value of Twitter. It provides a stream of quick updates from friends, family, scholars, news journalists, and experts. It empowers people to become amateur journalists of life, describing and sharing something that they found interesting about their day.

Twitter has a lot of drivel, but at the same time, there is a base of useful news and knowledgeable content. You'll need to decide for yourself which content is worth following there.

Among other things, Twitter is a way to learn about the world through another person's eyes.

Tweets may come from people in Thailand as their cities become flooded. Your soldier cousin in Afghanistan might describe his war experiences; your traveling sister in Europe shares her daily discoveries, or a rugby friend could tweet from the Rugby World Cup.These microbloggers are all mini-journalists in their own way, and Twitter gives them a platform to send a constant stream of updates right from their laptops and smartphones.

Thousands of people advertise their recruiting services, consulting businesses, and retail stores by using Twitter, and it works.

The modern internet-savvy user has grown tired of television advertisements. People prefer advertising that is fast, less intrusive, and can be turned on or off at will. Twitter is precisely that; when you learn how the nuances of tweeting work, you can get good advertising results by using Twitter.

Yes, Twitter is social media, but it's more than instant messaging. Twitter is about discovering interesting people around the world. It can also be about building a following of people who are interested in you and your work or hobbies and then providing those followers with some knowledge value every day.

Twitter has become one of the most used social media platforms because it is both personal and rapid. Celebrities use Twitter to build a personal connection with their fans.

Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, and President Trump are some of the famous Twitter users. Their daily updates foster a sense of connectedness with their followers, which is powerful for advertising purposes and also compelling and motivating for the people who following the celebs.

Twitter is a blend of instant messaging, blogging, and texting, but with concise content and a broad audience. If you fancy yourself a bit of a writer with something to say, then Twitter is a channel worth exploring. If you don't like to write but are curious about a celebrity, a particular hobby topic, or even a long-lost cousin, then Twitter is one way to connect with that person or subject.

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What Is Twitter & How Does It Work? - Lifewire

Twitter greeted its users with a confusing notification this week. The control you have over what information Twitter shares with its business partners has changed, it said. The changes will help Twitter continue operating as a free service, it assured. But at what cost?

Twitter has changed what happens when users opt out of the Allow additional information sharing with business partners setting in the Personalization and Data part of its site.

The privacy setting in question. For most users, the box is checked by default.

The changes affect two types of data sharing that Twitter does:

These changes affect users differently depending on whether they are subject to GDPR. Previously, anyone in the world could opt out of Twitters conversion tracking (type 1), and people in GDPR-compliant regions had to opt in. Now, people outside of Europe have lost that option. Instead, users in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world can only opt out of Twitter sharing data with Google and Facebook (type 2). Its unclear whether the share data with business partners setting previously affected type 2 sharing, or whether Twitter sharing this kind of data with Google and Facebook is a new phenomenon.

For people protected by GDPR, type-1 data sharing remains opt-in, and type 2Twitter sharing their data with Google and Facebooknever happens at all.

To understand whats going on, we need to look at another piece of Twitter news from last year.

On August 5, 2019, Twitter announced that it had identified and fixed a couple of bugs. As it turned out, some of its privacy settings were... not setting things correctly. Specifically, the opt-outs for device-level targeting and conversion trackingthe same conversion tracking described abovedid not actually opt users out. Twitter explained at the time:

Source: An issue with your settings choices related to ads on Twitter, at https://help.twitter.com/en/ads-settings

Twitter fixed both bugs, and its privacy settings began working the way they were supposed to.

The next event happened months later, when Twitter announced its quarterly earnings. Apparently, advertisers had really appreciated the data they werent supposed to be getting. Once Twitter shut off the hose of non-consensual device information, advertisers were unhappy. And Twitter announced a substantial hit to its revenue after fixing the bugs.

That leads us to today. Twitter apparently was happy to let users opt out as long as ad spending continued to grow. But last year, the privacy bugs and subsequent fixes seem to have shown Twitter exactly how much privacy options were costing it. Now, Twitter has removed the ability to opt out of conversion tracking altogether.

Today, users in Europe maintain the same agency and control over their personal data that theyve always had. They get to decide whether advertisers can use Twitters ad tools to tie actions on Twitter to device identifiers. Everyone else has lost that right.

The reason is simple: European users are protected by GDPR. Users in the United States and everywhere else, who dont have the protection of a comprehensive privacy law, are only protected by companies self-interest. All too often, Twitter, Google, and Facebook will give users only as much control as they think they need to in order to stave off regulation and competitors, but no more. When push comes to shove, theyll protect their bottom line.

This is why it shouldnt be up to tech companies to give us privacy. We need strong data privacy laws that protect users rights to privacy, access, and control. And we need to change a system that tempts companies to sell out their users for a few points of growth.

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Twitter Removes Privacy Option, and Shows Why We Need Strong Privacy Laws - EFF

The only way we can become immune to the environment; we must be out in the environment. Quarantining people inside of their houses for extended periods will make people sick! the pair tweeted from their official account, which boasts 1.4 million followers.

The account later appeared to be unlocked, indicating the violating tweet had been deleted. A public message appended over their post reads, "This Tweet is no longer available because it violated the Twitter Rules."

Twitter recently expanded its rules against medical misinformation to include posts that contradict guidance from authoritative health agencies. The social media company in recent weeks has separately found that posts by Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani broke its rules against Covid-19 misinformation.

Diamond and Silk have repeatedly accused Twitter and other social media platforms of suppressing their content online. The pair attended a White House reception in honors of black history month, where they praised Trump for helping to make them famous and urged participants to vote Republican.

"Mr. President, there are those that write history. Theres those that read history. And I want you to know that you are making history," said Hardaway, who uses the pseudonym Diamond.

A request for comment through their professional website was not immediately returned.

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Diamond and Silks Twitter account locked for breaking coronavirus misinformation rules - POLITICO

According to the Stanford report, one of the top three bot accounts taken down last month operated under the name Mirjana Kujovic [@1kujovic].

The accounts tweets found their way into Serbian and Russian media more than once. Following Putins 2019 visit, the Russian website fontanka.ru cited a January 17, 2019 Kujovic tweet as evidence of the warm welcome Putin received.

Months earlier, in October 2018, a negative comment made by the Kujovic account under tweets by Serbian opposition politicians Bojan Pajtic and Vuk Jeremic was then embedded in a story by the tabloid Espreso.

The same month, another tabloid, Srbija Danas, published a Kujovic tweet criticising academic Dusan Teodorovic, a founder of the opposition Movement of Free Citizens, PSG.

Kurir also got involved, quoting another later-deleted bot popular with pro-government tabloids in Serbia Ivan Ilic [@grofodValjeva].

The more than 8,500 accounts deleted by Twitter worked steadily to legitimate Vucics policies and undercut public support for his opponents, the Standard Internet Observatory wrote.

The accounts tweeted more than 43 million times 85 per cent retweets.

While some were active in 2009, within months of the Progressive Partys founding the year before, the network began ramping up its activities in mid-2018, the Stanford report said, right before the start of large, regular anti-government protests under the banner 1 of 5 million.

The average number of followers attracted by the accounts was just 66, but combined they reached roughly 2.3 million Twitter users. @belilav11 and @1kujovic racked up 12,167 and 10,867 followers and more than 330,000 and 390,000 engagements respectively.

Engagement, however, was not the primary purpose, the report said.

they existed primarily to boost retweet and reply counts for other accounts, it said. This was consistent with the political aims of this network, which revolved around artificially boosting Vucic and his allies on Twitter.

The network and its media allies, Milivojevic said, were working to manipulate the Serbian public.

With 43 million messages [tweets] in which someone is praised or criticised, that manipulation also entails a decline in trust in the media by erasing the boundary between truth and lies, Milivojevic told BIRN.

And the bots work in concert with genuine, popular Twitter users and pro-government tabloids and broadcasters, she said.

What is published in tabloids is taken over by influential Twitter users Then anonymous bots retweet and spread it, and from there on their tweets are going back to informative talk shows, where politicians or analysts bring them in [printed] and show them around, Milivojevic said, referring to the Pink TV talk show Hit Tvit [Hit Tweet].

Like the plague

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'Vox Populi': How Serbian Tabloids and Twitter Bots Joined Forces - Balkan Insight

I was deaf, sometimes profoundly, until I was about 12. Id have an operation Id had seven by then get partial hearing, then lose it again. Finally, they couldnt patch up my eardrum any more, so they had to fashion a new one. Id say my hearing is at about 65% now.

It made me a more thoughtful, peaceful person, as well as hyper-observant. I can read peoples body language, which has heightened my ability to make good decisions. Growing up with a disability also makes you obsessed with control, so Ive never even tried alcohol, even though it seems like Im drunk on Twitter.

I decided to absolve myself of shame before I turned 30. My therapist said: A doormat is already lying down thats why people wipe their feet all over it! That changed the course of my life. It was empowering for me to realise that there might be a way for me to change how people interact with me. Projecting a lack of give-a-fucks has meant fewer people fuck with me.

Ive been saying how I feel on the internet for 10 years, but I never had a big following, so I was never able to do much harm or much good. Out of nowhere, I now have more than 4 million people at my fingertips. After a decade of people not really listening to you, youre not prepared for that responsibility. I have learned to be much more careful when calling someone out, especially if that person is already at a disadvantage.

I think Im less annoying in person than I am on Twitter. I live online as a provocateur. Sometimes you have to say things that are going to piss people off in order to create discussion. Im outrageous about abortion. I say things that might come across as insensitive so that thousands of people join a conversation. Thats not to defend all my insensitivity. Sometimes I genuinely get it wrong.

The worst I feel is when someone has misconstrued my tone, or Ive misrepresented myself, and Ive hurt a group of people by mistake. That burns me to my core. I cant sleep and I cant eat. I recently criticised a rapper on Twitter for talking about doing a water fast, not knowing that she was mentally ill. I should have known better to send any kind of negativity her way. I felt gutted and embarrassed and very sorry.

Everything I try to say about [my coming out as queer] is always, without fail, twisted. So Im not talking about it any more. I said what I needed to say at the time. I addressed the unfortunate timing, its all out now, and there isnt really any more to be said.

Im happy to be called out. I dont mind learning in public. Ive become a better person for it. What I find frustrating is that when you admit you were wrong people seem to attack you more. When I apologise theres a hysteria of bullying. Were so unaccustomed to dealing with humility, you sometimes get treated worse than if you say nothing. Theres no accountability, and no opportunity to learn it really halts evolution. Its not a weakness to apologise.

Once people get an appetite for you, suddenly the industry envelops you and boosts you. People write about you as if you are a saint, the saviour of humanity. They build you up to a point where the expectation of you isnt sustainable. You cant maintain that standard, which you never actually professed to have. Its stressful for female celebrities.

Theres a particular vitriol towards women with money. We can handle men living lavish lifestyles, but when a woman does the same thing we drag her down for how gaudy she is. You can see the beginnings of it with Phoebe Waller-Bridge. As soon as she signed that $20m deal with Amazon, people suddenly started to bring up her privilege, even though weve known about that from the beginning shes got a double-barrelled name!

Im not very interested in other peoples opinions of me. Thats liberating. I feel like I havent seen enough change over the course of my life. As Ive grown older, Ive become more aggressive, because nothing is moving fast enough. I cant just sit here and wish for the best any more. The fact that Ive got the privilege of a platform means I have a real chance to at least do something.

The podcast I Weigh with Jameela Jamil debuted on 3 April

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Jameela Jamil: I think Im less annoying in person than I am on Twitter' - The Guardian

Photo: Paul Morigi (Getty Images)

After spewing nothing but misinformation about what should be done to prevent COVID-19 cases, avid Trump allies Diamond and Silk were briefly locked out of their joint Twitter account.

A spokesperson for the social media site told Politico that the duo (born Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson) reportedly violated a term of Twitters rules regarding misinformation when they tweeted The only way we can become immune to the environment; we must be out in the environment. Quarantining people inside of their houses for extended periods will make people sick!

Their account was suspended on Wednesday (April 8), but has since been recovered. The tweet has been removed entirely, but that hasnt stopped the terrible twosome from going back on their page to talk about the illness. In a video posted to their account April 10, Diamond and Silk posted a video about being better, not bitter despite their brief suspension.

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Listen, just because bricks are being thrown in our direction, doesnt mean we have to stand there and be hit by the bricks, Diamond said as we rolled our eyes. There is something good in every day, and I can hardly wait to see all of the good thats gonna come out of all of this. They also urged their fans (?) to wash their hands, practice social distancing, and follow CDC guidelines.

We want this process to make us better, they said, which is a complete flip of what they proposed the other night, but we digress.

In other news, the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning world leaders about lifting lockdown restrictions too early, as it may result in a deadly resurgence of COVID-19 cases worldwide.

The way down can be as dangerous as the way up if not managed properly, WHO leader and microbiologist Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said of easing up on precautions. Currently, there have been over one million cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide, and the illness has claimed over 100,000 deaths.

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Diamond And Silk Were Suspended From Twitter, and for a Moment, Things Were Right With the World - The Root

Over the last five years, fast-food Twitter has made a name for itself with witty posts and highly-entertaining feuds with competing chains.

But fast-food chains aren't just committing to their public images; a new viral tweet thread suggests that companies are also stepping up their game privately and DMing with customers who reach out for personal interaction.

Twitter user @warmfourloko, who goes by Phil, tweeted a photo of his DMs with Subway from the last year, joking that the chain has been his "therapist."

The messages, which began in early 2019, include exchanges of "good mornings," Phil admitting that he's feeling "sad," and Subway encouraging Phil to "tell her how you feel."

The 21-year-old college student added in a later tweet that he took Subway's advice to "tell her how [he] feel[s]" and the move was a success.

In under 24 hours, the tweet received 587,000 likes and Twitter's revered tastemaker and comedy account @ArtDeciderdeemed the interaction "art."

Subway confirmed that the exchange was, in fact, authentic.

Phil says that he actually messaged "10 to 15" brand accounts to see how they would respond if he started regular conversations and ultimately chose to share Subway's responses.

"I thought it would be funny to see a personal, wholesome relationship between a brand and just some random guy," he told Insider. "I'm not really surprised it went viral. I know what kind of content people like to see."

While Phil describes Subway as one of his favorite fast foods already, the encouraging messages have inspired him to patronize the chain even more.

Phil, it seems, is not the only one reaching out to fast-food accounts for comfort.

Twitter user Nick Sanders replied to the viral tweet that he "low-key" related to the sentiment, posting a similar interaction with pasta chain Noodles & Company. In the messages, he chatted with the company, and they offered to treat him to their Barbecue Pork Mac & Cheese following his recovery from jaw surgery. Noodles & Company respondedby inquiring why they "never chat [with Sanders] anymore."

The photo received over 19,000 likes and the company's response received over 35,000 likes.

A spokesperson for Noodles & Company confirmed to Insider that the messages were an "authentic exchange" with the company's social media managers.

"As you can see looking at our social platforms, our social media strategy is rooted in genuinely connecting with our guests and this is just one example of the thousands of conversations we have with guests each year," the spokesperson told Insider.

Fast-food chains may not be the only ones showing their followers love. Twitter user @LuckyHD, who goes by Aidan, shared an alleged exchange with Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, calling the interaction "one of the moment's [he'll] never forget."

Aidan told Insider he was eating Pop-Tarts Bites and struck by how delicious they were, so he decided to message the Pop-Tarts account.

"[I] was not expecting a response," he recalled.

Aidan says he's never messaged any brand accounts before and was "shocked" to get a response.

Kellogg's declined to comment for this story.

Not everyone was lucky enough to forge a connection with a company's social media team. Twitter user @ohFusioN, who goes by Juan, claimed that Postmates' customer support responded to messages before "dipp[ing]" when things got personal.

Juan told Insider that he messaged the delivery service's Twitter account on New Year's Eve, asking for some help.

"Drunk me thought they would give the best relationship advice," he recalled.

Comments ranged from jokes about the message's authenticity to offering the support that Postmates allegedly would not provide.

Juan says he's surprised the other Twitter users had such successful encounters with brand accounts.

"I've seen several [posts] where it'll be a couple of messages and that's it, but they maintained [the exchange] for years," he explained.

Postmates did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Ultimately, Phil, the original poster, is not surprised by other Twitter users' similar experiences with brand accounts.

"I see brands do this pretty frequently," he said, "[so] they come off as more of a person than a corporation."

Update: this story has been updated to include responses from Phil, Subway, and Noodles & Company.

Read more:

7 fast-food Twitter feuds that defined the decade

The 'choose your quarantine house' social media game is letting people choose their isolation dream team, from Beyonc to Logan Paul

The Cheesecake Factory announced it wasn't paying April rent, eliciting calls of solidarity online amid a growing strike movement

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A Twitter user went viral for posting his DMs with Subway, which he called his 'therapist' - Insider - INSIDER

Sarah Parcak, a renowned space archaeologist from Maine, won the hearts of countless exhausted parents when she announced on Twitter that she was refusing to homeschool her son anymore during the coronavirus pandemic.

We just wrote a hard email," she wrote at 7:57 a.m. Wednesday morning. "I told our sons (lovely, kind, caring) teacher that, no, we will not be participating in her virtual classroom, and that he was done with the 1st grade. We cannot cope with this insanity. Survival and protecting his well being come first.

In a series of tweets, Parcak explained how both she and her husband work full-time, and that her sons happiness "trumps crappy math worksheet management.

Her thread of tweets quickly went viral and garnered thousands of likes and retweets.

Then, less than 10 hours later, Parcak returned to Twitter to make another announcement: Shed been awarded a coveted Guggenheim Fellowship.

Uh, I have news. I was just named a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, for my next book project (which was proposed *last September* so my crystal ball is LIT) Surviving Collapse: The Global History of Human Resilience," she tweeted at 5:44 p.m. "Its been a day yall. Feeling overwhelmed, grateful, and humbled.

Just like her Twitter thread about her frustrations with homeschooling (which received more than 33,000 likes and 2,900 retweets), news of her Guggenheim Fellowship spread quickly through the Twitterverse, and she was showered with kind words of praise and congratulations.

The Bangor, Maine native is no stranger to the spotlight. As an archaeologist and Egyptologist, Parcak uses satellite images to search for lost sites of past civilizations and has described her work as if Indiana Jones and Google Earth had a lovechild." Shes been a guest on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," her research has been featured on the BBC and PBS, and her TED talks have been viewed millions of times. In 2016, Parcak won a $1 million TED Prize.

Parcak is a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and serves as the founder and president of GlobalXplorer, a nonprofit online platform that uses crowdsourcing to analyze satellite images and cutting edge technologies to protect and preserve cultural heritage. She also co-directs the Joint Lisht Mission with Egypts Ministry of Antiquities, and shes the author of Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology and Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past."

Parcaks tweets about homeschooling during a pandemic clearly resonated, as parents around the country attempt to oversee their childrens classwork while trying to hold onto their jobs. The challenges, especially for parents of young children, can be overwhelming.

Obviously kids 10+ can cope better with independent work (sometimes)," she noted. "The littles cannot.

With her new book, Surviving Collapse: The Global History of Human Resilience," in the works, Parcak will have even more on her plate. Its a fitting title, given the circumstances that were all living in today. After announcing the news of her fellowship, she followed up with a couple more tweets.

I hope a lot of you who applied [for a Guggenheim Fellowship] also got great emails today," she wrote. If you applied, keep applying. What is today. I dont even know anymore.

Apparently now I need to write the book.

Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @emilysweeney.

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This mom went on a Twitter rant about trying to homeschool her first-grader. A few hours later, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow - The Boston Globe

Shortly after noon on a Tuesday, I popped into Animal Crossing: New Horizons to check on turnip prices. Todays number? A tasty 439 bells, four times the price I picked them up for. I turned a profit worth hundreds of thousands, invited friends to come by, and then decided to go one step further: offer access to my island via a shareable code, which I broadcasted on Twitter. It was instant chaos.

One of the riskier ways to turn a profit in New Horizons involves playing the stalk market buying turnips on Sundays before noon and then figuring out what day is your best chance to sell them. Wait too long (or attempt to cheat by changing your Switchs date settings to time-travel), and theyll rot. Prices change twice a day, every day. Its the gamblers dilemma: hold out for a higher price point and better profits, or quit while youre ahead. Anyone with an island boasting high prices is, for a short period of time, a golden goose.

This was the enviable position I found myself in, and it was incredibly, undeniably gratifying. Im the prettiest girl at the party, I joked to a friend while co-workers swarmed my island like a beach in July. They sold their rootstock, left gifts, and asked if they could share with friends. The entire experience felt so good a wholesome offering to the people I miss, a bright spot in otherwise troubled days that I craved a bigger dopamine hit. Twitter is the only dealer I have left these days for a quick high. I typed out a tweet with my islands prices, stipulated a few rules (be nice, dont take anything besides fruit, seriously please be nice), and hit send. Almost immediately, my game pinged to tell me someone was on the way.

For the next hour, strangers waited in a virtual line for a flight to my island. New Horizons caps capacity at eight people. It also insists that every player present must watch an on-screen announcement every time someone new arrives, which means the process can be slow and painful for everyone involved. If you want to sell your turnips, you need to be a little more than patient.

And then theres an element of trust you give to visitors that they wont wreck your safe little bubble. Nintendo has anti-griefing measures that wont allow players to use shovels or axes without permission, which can prevent people from digging holes or chopping down trees; that still wont stop them from stealing things, stripping all of your resources, or trampling your flowers. The common wisdom from friends: do not let strangers in. Here is anecdotal evidence about a friend of a friend whose island was pillaged and razed.

In my case, I was shocked by how well-behaved everyone was. I parked my villager on a stump near the airport and let people filter in and out while my game sat unattended. Instead of dumping trash or raiding my orchards, players left little presents for me: board games, Godzilla statues, hats. A generous stranger left a tip of 99,000 bells directly in front of me that, miraculously, no one pocketed. Others snapped friendly pictures posing with my character. (One player did enter my house to flop down in my bed and send me a picture after. Perverted.) When I checked my bulletin board, expecting graffiti of dicks, people had instead drawn little turnips or left thank you notes. It left me feeling peaceful, the sort of warm fuzzies you get when strangers show you kindness they didnt have to give at all.

My connection eventually crashed, and everyone was booted back to their own islands. The cheerful pings announcing new arrivals stopped, and I knew that, in a few hours, my prices would turn again. Suddenly, I felt a little lonely.

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I opened my Animal Crossing island to Twitter, and it wasnt a disaster - The Verge