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‘Blackmail’ fails? Twitter makes about-face & unfreezes New York Post account suspended over Hunter Biden story

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4 years ago

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Twitter has again altered its “hacked materials” policy, reversing a decision to lock the New York Post out of its account over tweets promoting a controversial report about the business dealings of the Biden family.

The company said on Friday that it would overturn a prior move to lock the Post out of its handle, dropping its demand that the newspaper remove the offending tweet while calling the decision “fair and appropriate.”

“Our policies are living documents. We’re willing to update and adjust them when we encounter new scenarios or receive important feedback from the public,” the company said in a series of tweets. “One such example is the recent change to our Hacked Materials Policy and its impact on accounts like the New York Post.”

This means that because a specific [New York Post] enforcement led us to update the Hacked Materials Policy, we will no longer restrict their account under the terms of the previous policy and they can now Tweet again.

While Twitter had already updated its policies on “hacked materials” and scrapped an outright ban on the Post story – allegedly sourced from Hunter Biden’s laptop – the newspaper remained locked out of its account for some two weeks.

In testimony to the Senate earlier this week, company CEO Jack Dorsey said the Post could have its handle back only after it removed the tweet, even noting it could immediately repost the same article without facing another ban, what the paper condemned as an attempt at “blackmail.”

“Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sounded like every mob enforcer and shakedown artist in history: Nice paper you got there, New York Post. Shame, should something happen to it,” the Post editorial board wrote in an article this week. “He knows full well media outlets depend on social media, and Google search algorithms, to help readers access our reporting.”

The Post’s op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari said the paper refused to take down the tweet as a matter of “honor and principle,” arguing that Twitter “had – and still has – zero evidence we used hacked material,” responding to CNN’s Jake Tapper after he suggested it delete the missive as “a way to end this.”

“[Jake Tapper], as a reporter, why don’t you show an iota of solidarity with America’s oldest daily?” Ahmari shot back.

The story that landed the Post in hot water relied on a trove of emails reportedly obtained from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, detailing his overseas business ventures in Ukraine and China, among other things. The documents indicate that the elder Biden was more involved in his son’s dealings than he’s let on, previously insisting he “never discussed” business with Hunter.

Hours after the article ran, however, social media platforms leapt into overdrive to blacklist the story, with Twitter barring users from posting it altogether, or even sending it in direct messages, while a Facebook rep freely admitted the platform would work to limit the article’s distribution in news feeds. While former business associates of the Bidens have since corroborated some of the email exchanges as genuine, major news organizations continue to label the report as “disinformation,” some going as far as to declare it a Russian psy-op to discredit the Democratic nominee.

Despite efforts to ignore the story in the corporate press, the report has sent a wave of controversy through the media world, with the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald announcing his resignation from the outlet he helped create on Thursday, saying editors tried to quash a column about the Biden emails.

“The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles,” he said, adding that editors declined to publish his op-ed “unless I [removed] all sections critical of Joe Biden.”

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How much YouTube pays for 1 million views, according to creators

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2 years ago

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May 6, 2023

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  • YouTube creators earn money from Google-placed ads on their videos.
  • A number of factors determine how much money they make, including video views.
  • Creators said how much YouTube pays for 1 million views ranged from $3,400 to $30,000.

While many factors — content niche and country, among them — determine how much money a YouTuber earns on any particular video, the number of views it gets is perhaps the most significant.

When a YouTube video hits 1 million views, there’s almost a guaranteed big payday for its creator. In some cases, creators can make five-figures from a single video if it accrues that many views.

Three creators explained how much money YouTube had paid them. YouTube pays $3,400 to $30,000 for 1 million views, these creators said.

When tech creator Shelby Church spoke with Insider, she had earned $30,000 from a video about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). At the time, the video had accrued 1.8 million views.

Her RPM rate — or earnings per 1,000 views — are relatively high, she said, because of her content niche. Business, personal finance, and technology channels tend to earn more per view.

“YouTubers don’t always make a ton of money, and it really depends on what kind of videos you’re making,” she said.

Influencers can earn 55% of a video’s ad revenue if they are part of YouTube’s Partner Program, or YPP. To qualify for the program, they must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their long-form videos.

They can also make money from shorts, YouTube’s short-form video offering. In order to qualify, creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers. YouTube pools ad revenue from shorts and pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing. Creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.

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Tesla employees shared sensitive images recorded by cars – Reuters

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2 years ago

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April 8, 2023

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Some pictures were turned into memes and distributed through internal chats, former workers told the agency

Tesla workers shared “highly invasive” images and videos recorded by customers’ electric cars, making fun of them on internal chat groups, several former employees of Elon Musk’s company have told Reuters.

The electric-car manufacturer obtains consent from its clients to collect data from vehicles in order to improve its self-driving technology. However, the company assures owners that the whole system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy,” the agency pointed out in its report on Thursday.

According to nine former workers who talked to the agency, groups of employees shared private footage of customers in Tesla’s internal one-on-one chats between 2019 and 2022.

One of the clips in question captured a man approaching his electric car while he was completely naked, one of the sources said.

Tesla recalls over 360,000 cars over self-driving threat

Others featured crashes and road-rage incidents. One particular video of a Tesla hitting a child on a bike in a residential area spread around the company’s office in San Mateo, California “like wildfire,” an ex-employee claimed.

“I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected… We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” another former worker told the agency.

Seven former employees also told Reuters that the software they used at work allowed them to see the location where the photo or video was made, despite Tesla assuring its customers that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.”

The agency noted that it could not obtain any of the pictures or clips described by its sources, who said they were all deleted. Some former employees also told the journalists that they had only seen private data being shared for legitimate purposes, such as seeking assistance for colleagues. Tesla did not respond when approached for comment on the issue by Reuters.

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Nordic nation’s military bans use of TikTok – media

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2 years ago

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March 27, 2023

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Sweden’s Defense Ministry has reportedly barred employees from using the Chinese-owned app on their work phones

Sweden’s military has reportedly cracked down on TikTok, decreeing that staff members are no longer allowed to use the Chinese-owned video-sharing application on their devices at work because of security concerns.

The Swedish Defense Ministry on Monday issued its decision, which was viewed by Agence-France Presse, banning the use of TikTok. Security concerns were raised based on “the reporting that has emerged through open sources regarding how the app handles user information and the actions of the owner company, ByteDance,” the ministry said.

The move follows similar restrictions imposed by other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, France banned government employees from downloading “recreational applications,” including TikTok, on their work phones. Norway barred use of the app on devices that can access its parliament’s computer network, while the UK and Belgium banned it on all government phones. Denmark’s Defense Ministry and Latvia’s Foreign Ministry imposed their TikTok bans earlier this month.

China responds to TikTok allegations

“Using mobile phones and tablets can in itself be a security risk, so therefore we don’t want TikTok on our work equipment,” Swedish Defense Ministry press secretary Guna Graufeldt told AFP.

The US, Canada and New Zealand previously banned their federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing fears of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of Congress may try to ban the app from the US market altogether after testimony at a congressional hearing last week by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew failed to ease their security concerns. “They’ve actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America,” US Representative Mike Gallagher said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.

Chinese officials have denied claims that TikTok is used to collect the personal data of its American users. “The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters last week. She added that Washington has attacked TikTok without providing any evidence that it threatens US security.

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