Last week, Elon Musk finally had his long-awaited Thanos moment for legacy verification in a rapid scheduled disassembly. It was a busy day for the boss of Twitter and SpaceX when it comes to valuable lessons from watching billions of dollars of hard work explode. But if we’re to believe Musk (this time) after the… Read more »
If Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t so obsessed with his avatar wandering around on Web3, perhaps he would have called the parent company Lyrebird, rather than Meta, when it rebranded in 2021. The Australian native bird is famed for its mimicry – not just of other birds but everything from cameras clicking to chainsaws, babies… Read more »
When Elon Musk closed the deal to buy Twitter late last year, the company suddenly found itself facing a US$3 billion yearly deficit and was four months away from bankruptcy, the billionaire told the BBC in an interview last week. Why was Twitter in trouble? Because Musk bought it. “In rough numbers, in a normal… Read more »
The battle between Facebook and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) had a hearing in the High Court this week over the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the personal data of 300,000 Australians was harvested without their consent. Facebook has been fighting a court battle for three years following revelations that between… Read more »
Meta will trial a new subscription service for Facebook and Instagram users in Australia, at a cost of just under $25 per month. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the trial of Meta Verified on Monday morning, with Australia and New Zealand to be the first testing grounds for the service. The monthly subscription service will… Read more »
Twitter has been criticised for its move to make users pay for SMS-based two-factor authentication, with an expert warning that security on the platform is about to get worse. Last week it was announced that only paying subscribers to Twitter would be able to use two-factor authentication (2FA) via text message from next month. Two-factor… Read more »
The Australia Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) is combing through social media platforms to identify influencers that don’t disclose affiliations with the product and company they’re promoting. Social media users reported more than 100 influencers to the regulator. Most tip-offs were about beauty, lifestyle, parenting, and fashion influencers who failed to follow the advertising disclosure… Read more »
Melbourne-based link-in-bio startup Linktree has been caught up in the latest changes to Twitter under its quixotic new owner, Elon Musk. Linktree boss Alex Zaccaria, ironically, took to Twitter to argue Musk’s latest diktat was “anti-creator and antithetical” to the foundations of the Internet and Twitter, pointing out that Linktree drives double the traffic to… Read more »
What do a cybersecurity researcher building a system to generate alerts for detecting security threats and vulnerabilities, a wildfire watcher who tracks the spread of forest fires, and public health professionals trying to predict enrolment in health insurance exchanges have in common? They all rely on analysing data from Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging service,… Read more »
In the wake of Elon Musk closing the deal to buy Twitter on October 27 and soon after firing the management, users have been reconsidering the platform. Hashtags #TwitterMigration and #TwitterExodus are gaining popularity, and the most common name found in conjunction with it is Mastodon – the new home for fleeing tweeters. In fact,… Read more »
Following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27, the world’s richest man proposed a range of controversial changes to the platform. With mounting evidence that he is making it up as he goes along, these proposals are tweeted out in a stream-of-consciousness manner from Musk’s Twitter account. Primarily to raise revenue, one of the… Read more »
Twitter Australia’s entire news curation team is among the thousands of staff who lost their jobs after billionaire Elon Musk sacked half the workforce a week after his US$44 billion private takeover. The local Twitter team is less than 50 people, but around 20% of them worked in the news curation team. The job losses… Read more »
Twitter feels like I could wake up any morning now and find the whole site burned to ground, with Elon Mush standing in the smoking rubble, in a pair of yellowed Y-fronts, dribbling bathtub gin through broken teeth, laughing at me. — John Birmingham (@JohnBirmingham) October 31, 2022 It doesn’t seem that many people are… Read more »
Elon Musk has finally completed his US$44 billion deal to acquire Twitter and take it private. The world’s richest man has already begun putting his imprint on the social network by firing four of its top executives. While most people are likely familiar with the idea of taking a private company public – the process… Read more »
Last week, Todd Sampson’s documentary Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate screened on Channel Ten. The documentary focuses on harms that occur through social media and online platforms. It raises important points about the need for awareness and regulation, but these are often crowded out by alarmist tropes that don’t reflect what we know from decades… Read more »
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Tassie carbon accounting startup banks $5.3 million Seed round 
Eucalyptus head of growth Matt Rossi departs to launch his own marketing startup, Oodle 
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