Twitter is expanding its Spaces feature, adding paid Ticketed Spaces — at least on iOS.
Spaces is Twitter’s answer to Clubhouse, and provides the ability to have audio conversations with one’s followers. The company is looking to help creators monetize Spaces by providing paid Ticketed Spaces.
The company announced the feature via (surprise) tweet. Ticketed Spaces is currently rolling out to iOS only, but the company hopes to expand it soon.
Twitter is reversing design changes after users reported eye strain and headaches as a result of the new look.
The social media platform rolled out a new font and updated look, but some users were immediately impacted by it — and not in a good way. Headaches and eye strain were reported among people with sensory sensitivities, astigmatism and dyslexia.
Twitter announced it was reversing the changes in an effort to alleviate the problem.
It remains to be seen if the rollback is permanent and will apply to all, or if the company will offer users a choice between the old and new look.
Bug bounties are a common incentive in the tech industry, but Twitter is introducing the first “algorithmic bias” bounty.
Twitter pulled its auto cropping algorithm in May after the company found it had a number of biases. The company is working to address that, enlisting the community’s help.
“For this challenge, we are re-sharing our saliency model and the code used to generate a crop of an image given a predicted maximally salient point and asking participants to build their own assessment,” writes Jutta Williams, Product Manager, Twitter META. “Successful entries will consider both quantitative and qualitative methods in their approach. For more details on the challenge, including how to enter and the rubric we’ll use to score entries, visit the submission page on HackerOne.”
First place will receive $3,500, second place $1,000 and third place will receive $500. There will be a $1,000 price for Most Innovative and $1,000 for Most Generalizable (applies to the most types of algorithms).
Twitter appears to be down for some users in France, with at least some blaming ad-blocking software.
Twitter users started reporting an outage on Downdetector Sunday, primarily when accessing Twitter via a desktop web browser. Phone and tablet apps appeared to work just fine.
Interestingly, according to some users, turning off ad-blocking software in their web browser fixed the problem. So far, Twitter has not issued a statement or acknowledgement.
It remains to be seen if the issue was the result of an error, or if Twitter is beginning to target ad-blocking software.
Twitter is partnering with Eric Holthaus, the “Rebel Nerd of Meteorology,” to offer a local weather service.
Twitter has long-since established itself as a major source for news, with usage spiking during significant events and major stories breaking on the platform. The company is now partnering with Eric Holthaus to help branch out into local weather.
The service clearly aims to offer a more social approach to weather, involving users as much as informing them.
“Every single evening, you’ll get a short message in your inbox with a forecast made by a meteorologist in your city, along with a news story, a poem, a meme, a short video, or a call to action,” says Tomorro’s About page. “Our goal is to share the joy of being alive at this particular moment in history, and be there with you no matter what the weather.
“When the weather gets scary, we’ll have a team of experts to talk you through it. When there’s injustice happening somewhere that needs more attention, we’ll let you know about it. When there’s a project or idea that could use your help, we’ll ask you to pitch in if you want to. Our goal is to change the narrative of our shared Tomorrow. The bottom line is: The climate is changing, and it’s going to take all of us to build a better world that works for everyone.”
The service is currently available in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas / Fort Worth, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, Republica Dominicana, San Antonio, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington DC. More cities will continue to be added over time.
Jane Manchun Wong has struck again, spilling details on Twitter’s upcoming Twitter Blue subscription service.
Jane Manchun Wong is a well-known leaker who often manages to find out details about an upcoming service or feature before they’re released. Twitter has been rumored to be working on a subscription service for some time, even buying Scroll to serve as the basis of it. Wong originally leaked the name and price of the upcoming service.
Wong has now discovered additional details, including that Twitter Blue will come with color themes and custom app icons.
Twitter has brought Spaces to the browser, both on the desktop as well as mobile.
Spaces is Twitter’s Clubhouse competitor, the popular invitation-only, audio-based, social media platform. Twitter began testing Spaces in November 2020, before officially launching it in early May 2021.
The company is now bringing Spaces to desktop and mobile browsers.
Twitter has announced it is pulling its algorithm responsible for automatically cropping images amid bias issues.
Twitter began hearing feedback in October 2020 that there were issues with how the algorithm was functioning, that it was not treating everyone equitably. The company investigated and did find issues with it.
Testing showed there was an 8% difference from demographic parity favoring women. Likewise, there was a 4% difference in favor of white people instead of black. Similarly, there was a 7% difference in favor of white women instead of black, and a 2% difference in favor of white men instead of black.
One area where the algorithm did not appear biased was in the realm of the “male gaze.”
We also tested for the “male gaze” by randomly selecting 100 male- and female-presenting images that had more than one area in the image identified by the algorithm as salient and observing how our model chose to crop the image. We didn’t find evidence of objectification bias — in other words, our algorithm did not crop images of men or women on areas other than their faces at a significant rate
Ultimately, however, the biases were enough to make Twitter reevaluate use of the algorithm.
We considered the tradeoffs between the speed and consistency of automated cropping with the potential risks we saw in this research. One of our conclusions is that not everything on Twitter is a good candidate for an algorithm, and in this case, how to crop an image is a decision best made by people.
Twitter has announced it is relaunching its verification process, opening the door for anyone to apply.
The coveted blue check mark next to a name indicates an account that has been verified, and it carries a level of trust and authority with it. Unfortunately, the company was less than clear in times past about who could or could not become verified. There were also many instances of the process being abused, with individuals being given verification without good reason.
Twitter is now relaunching the verification process with clearer rules and an invitation for anyone to apply.
“Over the past several months, we’ve been working to bring clarity to the verification eligibility criteria and launched a new policy shaped by public feedback,” according to the company’s blog. “We also started enforcing that policy by automatically removing the verified badge from accounts that no longer meet the updated criteria for verification, such as those that are inactive or incomplete. We’re grateful for all who participated in our public feedback period and shared ideas for how we can improve verification on Twitter.”
While anyone can apply, they must fit within six categories to be approved: government; companies, brand and organizations; news organizations and journalists; entertainment; sports and gaming; and activists, organizers and influential individuals.
The company says the verification application will start showing up in the Account Settings tab over the next few weeks.
Details have emerged about Twitter’s upcoming subscription service, including Undo Tweets and Bookmark Collections.
Jane Manchun Wong is a well-respected tipster with a knack for uncovering tech companies’ new features before they’re announced. She has weighed in on Twitter’s upcoming subscription service, which the company bought Scroll to serve as the basis of.
According to Wong, the subscription service will be named “Twitter Blue” and will cost $2.99 a month. The service will also bring some of the most requested features, including Undo Tweets and Bookmark Collections.