Twitter - page 2

Elon Musk bags a seat on Twitter’s board and teases an edit button

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Elon Musk joins Twitter's board
Musk paid almost $3 billion for a 9.2% stake in the social media company.
Image: Twitter

Elon Musk this week earned himself a spot on Twitter’s board after becoming the social media giant’s largest shareholder. It was revealed on Monday that the Tesla CEO purchased a 9.2% stake in the company, worth almost $3 billion.

Musk also teased an edit button for tweets, which has been one of the most-requested features among Twitter users for many years.

Elon Musk splashes $3 billion to become Twitter’s largest shareholder

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Elon Musk spends $3 billion on Twitter
What's next for Musk and Twitter?
Image: Elon Musk/Twitter/Cult of Mac

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has acquired a 9% stake in Twitter worth almost $3 billion. The purchase, revealed in a recent regulatory filing, gets Musk a whopping 73,486,938 shares in the popular social media platform.

Despite being described as a passive investment, one analyst believes the move is “just the start” of Musk’s involvement with Twitter.

Oops! Microsoft scraps embarrassing tweet that featured an M1 iMac

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Microsoft tweet features M1 iMac
That's unfortunate.
Image: Twitter

There’s one thing you don’t do if you’re on Microsoft’s social media team, and that’s promote Apple products. It seems at least one person forgot that last week when they posted a tweet featuring an image of the M1 iMac.

The post, which was removed after a few hours, was about cleaning Windows machines “safely and smoothly.” Microsoft should know better than anyone that it’s not even possible to run Windows natively on M1 Mac models.

How to make your own GIFs with Twitter app

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How to record a GIF with the Twitter iPhone app
Making a Gif with Twitter’s iPhone app is a snap.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Twitter made creating a GIF as easy as posting an image. Using the iPhone camera, users can capture a short video in the social-networking service’s app that is automatically converted into a GIF.

Here’s how to make your own GIFs with the Twitter app. It’s easy and fun.

Twitter expands Safety Mode beta in a whole bunch of countries

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Apple's Twitter account and other high-profile accounts hacked in massive Bitcoin scam.
Making Twitter a better place.
Photo: Ravi Sharma/Unsplash CC

Twitter’s upcoming Safety Mode feature, which is designed to automatically detect and block trolls from your timeline, was this week expanded to more users in many English speaking countries before it rolls out to everyone.

Safety Mode first entered beta with a limited number of testers last September. It is now available to around half of all users in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and more as Twitter looks to “collect more insights” on how well it’s working.

The next Mac revolution: Companies rush to buy new M1 machines

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Adobe Photoshop does support the MacBook Pro notch.
"Engineering hours are much more expensive than laptops."
Photo: Apple

The new MacBook Pro lineup is an exceptional upgrade over its predecessors, with new M1 Pro and M1 Max chipsets that offer more mobile computing power than ever before. And big companies are scrambling to reap the benefits.

The likes of Reddit, Twitter and others are rolling out 2021 MacBook Pro units to employees so that they can take advantage of the massive performance gains. “Engineering hours are much more expensive than laptops,” one said.

Twitter fixes a big search problem on iPhone and iPad

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Twitter profile search iPhone
Install the latest Twitter update to get its new search tool.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Trying to find tweets posted by a certain user has long been a complicated process on Twitter. But it just got a lot easier on iPhone and iPad, thanks to a new button that can now be found on every user profile.

The button allows you to quickly search tweets posted by a specific account, while leaving out everything else.

Twitter tests Facebook-like emoji reactions for tweets

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Twitter emoji reactions
There are five "healthy" reactions to choose from.
Photo: Twitter

Twitter is giving a small number of users the ability to add Facebook-like emoji reactions to tweets as part of a new feature test.

In addition to being able to “like” a tweet, those taking part can react with the tears of joy, thinking face, clapping hands, love heart, and crying face emojis shown in the image above. Twitter says the test may be expanded to more users later.

Twitter tests new edge-to-edge interface for images and video on iOS

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Twitter tests new interface on iOS
A little inspiration from Instagram?
Photo: Twitter

Twitter looks set to finally take full advantage of the larger displays packed into modern smartphones. It is currently testing a new edge-to-edge interface that gives you a better look at images and videos in your timeline.

A new teaser video posted by Twitter on Twitter, and embedded below for your enjoyment, offers an early glimpse at what’s to come.

Twitter finally gets on board with ‘Sign in with Apple’

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Twitter finally gets on board with ‘Sign in with Apple’
You can now sign up for a Twitter account a little more privately.
Graphic: Twitter

Twitter added the option to ‘Sign in with Apple’ on Monday. This is a privacy feature that lets users hide their email address from the online service. And avoid hassle when signing in.

The social-networking service also implemented support for logging in with Google.

Twitter may have found a way to make itself a bit more savage

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Twitter may have found a way to make itself a bit more savage
Twitter asked some iPhone users to test upvoting and downvoting replies to tweets, instead of just liking some.
Photo: Twitter

Twitter is running an experiment that lets iPhone users downvote a reply to a tweet. It tests allowing users to actively show that they disagree with a response to a post on the social-networking service.

Twitter is often a venue for people to angrily argue politics, sports, entertainment, etc. Giving people the ability to downvote each other isn’t likely to calm the storm.

Twitter could let you post tweets only ‘trusted friends’ can see

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Twitter's possible trusted friends feature
What 'trusted friends' might look like inside the Twitter app.
Concept: Twitter

Twitter is exploring a new “trusted friends” feature that gives users more control over who can see certain tweets.

The move could make it possible to block some followers from seeing select posts — without actually blocking their accounts. It comes after rumors claimed Twitter is planning to add groups support to its platform.

How to easily share tweets to Instagram Stories in iOS

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Now it's easy to share tweets in Instagram Stories.
Now it's easy to share tweets in Instagram Stories.
Photo: Instagram

Twitter rolled out an update to its iOS app earlier this week that lets users quickly and easily share tweets to their Instagram Stories. It’s now nearly a one-click operation, but not quite.

Naturally, users have always been able to take a screenshot of a tweets and manually upload it to an Instagram Story. But the new interface takes some of the manual labor out of the process, making it simple and fast. And the results look good!

Twitter update lets you control who can reply to your tweets [Updated]

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Apple's Twitter account and other high-profile accounts hacked in massive Bitcoin scam.
New feature helps keep out the trolls.
Photo: Ravi Sharma/Unsplash CC

The latest update to the Twitter app for iOS allows users to limit who can reply to their tweets. Twitter started testing the feature with a small number of users in May. Thursday’s update rolls it out to everyone.

Update: Twitter admitted Thursday that it got ahead of itself. It announced this feature in the release notes of its latest iOS app, but then told The Verge “the ability to limit replies on tweets is not currently available to everyone.”

Teen ‘mastermind’ gets arrested for massive Twitter attack

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If hackers dump your personal data onto the dark web, you need to know about it. Dashlane Dark Web Monitoring can sound the alarm.
Rather than state-sponsored hackers, the Twitter hacker is someone too young to vote.
Photo: sebastiaan stam/Pexels CC

In mid July, a hacker gained access to Apple’s Twitter account, along with those other corporations, high-profile politicians, and celebrities. At the time, there was speculation it was done by Russian hackers. Or perhaps they were Chinese. Some pointed fingers at international criminal gangs.

Nope. Turns out it was a 17-year-old kid from Tampa.

Apple gets hacked, and the vanishing of prolific leaker Jon Prosser, this week on The CultCast

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CultCast 442: AirPods with health sensors
This week's gigantic Twitter hack gives us the creeps.
Image: The CultCast

This week on The CultCast: A massive Twitter hack has Apple pushing a bitcoin scam to millions! Plus: iOS 13.6 brings some cool new features to Apple News. And we’ll tell you the newest info on Apple Glass, while pondering the fate of Jon Prosser, the prolific Apple insider who vanished right after leaking details on the AR specs.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Easily create a beautiful website all by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast. Use offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Hackers hit Apple’s Twitter account in widespread bitcoin scam

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Apple's Twitter account and other high-profile accounts hacked in massive Bitcoin scam.
Apple’s very first Tweet ever isn’t about Bitcoin. Twitter got hacked.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Apple is one of many companies and people who had their Twitter accounts hijacked on Wednesday. A hacker found a way to post on what seems to be any account, indicating that it’s Twitter itself that has been hacked.

All the posts pointed readers toward a bitcoin scam.

Trump executive order targets social media’s ‘selective censorship’

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President Trump signs the executive order.
Pres. Trump signs an executive order that seeks to overturn protections for Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Photo: White House

Days after Twitter labeled a Tweet by President Trump as false, Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that seeks to overturn liability protections for social media services.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the president’s most powerful political opponent, called the move “a desperate distraction” on the day U.S. deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic reached 100,000.