Author: peterjang73

A nerdy father of two, a husband of a beautiful and understanding wife, an engineer who loves anime and tinkering with PCs and games, but most of all, loves God.
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Elon Musk says Twitter Blue will cost $8 and be required for verification

https://www.engadget.com/twitter-blue-price-increasing-8-per-month-180319987.html?src=rss

Twitter is increasing the price of its subscription service. Moving forward, Twitter Blue will cost $8 per month in the US, with pricing in other countries adjusted for the purchasing power of consumers in those markets, Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk announced today. The $3 jump from Blue’s current $5 per month fee amounts to a 60 percent price increase. 

At the same time, Twitter plans to add new perks to the service. As a subscriber, you’ll see fewer ads and have the ability to post longer videos and audio — which Twitter had tested prior to Musk’s takeover. It will also give you priority in replies, mentions and Twitter’s search feature, perks Musk claims are essential to reducing the amount of spam on the platform. "Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit," Musk said, all but confirming verification will be tied to Twitter Blue subscriptions. Lastly, Twitter Blue will include the ability to bypass paywalls — though that will come later and will depend on Twitter forging the necessary publisher partnerships. 

Tuesday’s announcement comes after days of speculation on how Twitter could change under Musk’s ownership. On Sunday, two separate reports said the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was considering increasing the price of Twitter Blue to as much as $20 per month and making the subscription a requirement for verification. Musk appeared to reconsider pricing after a tweet from author Stephen King criticizing the plan went viral. "We need to pay the bills somehow," Musk said. "Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?"      

Musk claimed the changes to Twitter Blue would also give the company a way to support content creators. On Monday, the owner of Nibellion, one of Twitter’s most prolific and popular gaming news accounts, said he was abandoning the platform, citing Musk’s takeover of the company and the difficulty he encountered monetizing his work. 

“I have miscalculated the value of my Twitter activity and realize that it is nothing worth supporting by itself for the vast majority of people," Nibel said. "It is not me who is popular, but it is that work that is useful. It is not valuable by itself, but a comfortable timesaver, and I get that now.” Accounts like Nibel are the lifeblood of Twitter. While they only represent about 25 percent of the user base, they account for more than 97 percent of tweets you see on the platform. 

Tweaks to Twitter Blue are likely only the start of the changes Musk has planned for Twitter. According to The New York Times, Musk has ordered company-wide layoffs that could affect as much as 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500-person workforce. He is also reportedly considering bringing back Vine, the company’s long-defunct short-form video service. In the meantime, Musk did not say when the changes to Twitter Blue would begin rolling out. 

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

November 1, 2022 at 01:10PM

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How Elon Musk bought and took over Twitter

https://www.engadget.com/how-elon-musk-bought-and-took-over-twitter-180045278.html?src=rss

Last week, Elon Musk officially completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. But Musk’s path from Twitter super-user to Twitter owner and CEO was anything but straightforward.

While he’s long been known as a prolific tweeter, it was a surprise to most that he was interested in exterting an even bigger influence on the platform. After quietly acquiring a majority stake in the company, he offered to buy the whole thing — even though it wasn’t for sale.

Twitter’s board seemed hesitant at first, but Musk’s money was hard to turn down. In a matter of days, the company agreed to alter its path entirely. Then Musk changed his mind… multiple times. First, the deal was “on hold.” Then, he wanted out entirely. Twitter sued, kicking off a massive legal battle in a Delaware court. But just before the trial was scheduled to begin, Musk said he would honor the deal after all.

Now, there are fresh questions about what exactly Twitter will look like under Musk. He’s proposed numerous changes, including changing Twitter’s moderation rules and reversing permanent bans. He also has a new plan to charge for verification. These decisions are only just beginning to play out, but have already caused massive upheaval both within the company and on the platform itself. Watch the video above for the full story.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

November 2, 2022 at 01:05PM

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Steam for Chromebooks Enters Beta With More Devices Supported

https://www.droid-life.com/2022/11/03/steam-for-chromebooks-enters-beta-with-more-devices-supported/

In March of this year, Steam arrived on Chrome OS machines as an alpha. This week, it’s beta time. Google announced that with ChromeOS 108, Steam for Chomebrooks brings broader availability, improved user experience, better performance, and increased compatibility.

This is a big deal because for many, using ChromeOS’s Dev Channel comes with inherent instability risks, so now that Steam has been made available via the beta channel, it opens up the service to a much wider range of users. The team also states that they have added support for devices with AMD Ryzen 5000 C-Series and Intel 12th Gen Core CPUs, as well as lowered the minimum CPU requirement to i3 and Ryzen 3. This simply means even more people can play their Steam titles via a Chromebook.

A full listed of the supported Chrome OS machines can be viewed here. For the detailed changelog of alpha to beta, look here.

Now go forth and game, people.

// Chrome OS

Read the original post: Steam for Chromebooks Enters Beta With More Devices Supported

via Droid Life: A Droid Community Blog https://ift.tt/UZ6Q8BH

November 3, 2022 at 11:55AM

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Facebook Segments Ads by Race and Age Based on Photos Whether Advertisers Want It or Not, Study Says

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-meta-photos-ads-race-gender-age-study-1849706492


The ad on the left was delivered to 56% white users. The ad on the right was delivered to only 29% white users. Both ran at the same time, with the same budget and the same targeting parameters.
Screenshot: Thomas Germain

Facebook’s promise to advertisers is that its system is smart, effective, and easy to use. You upload your ads, fill out a few details, and Facebook’s algorithm does its magic, wading through millions of people to find the perfect audience.

The inner workings of that algorithm are opaque, even to people who work at Meta, Facebook’s parent company. But outside research sometimes offers a glimpse. A new study published Tuesday in the Association for Computer Machinery’s Digital Library journal finds that Facebook uses image recognition software to classify the race, gender, and age of the people pictured in advertisements, and that determination plays a huge role in who sees the ads. Researchers found that more ads with young women get shown to men over 55; that women see more ads with children; and that Black people see more ads with Black people in them.

In the study, the researchers created ads for job listings with pictures of people. In some ads they used stock photos, but in others they used AI to generate synthetic pictures that were identical aside from the demographics of the people in the images. Then, the researchers spent tens of thousands of dollars running the ads on Facebook, keeping track of which ads got shown to which users.

The results were dramatic. On average, the audience that saw the synthetic photos of Black people was 81% Black. But when it was a photo of a white person, the average audience was only 50% Black. The audience that saw photos of teenage girls was 57% male. Photos of older women went to an audience that was 58% women.

The study also found that the stock images performed identically to the pictures of artificial faces, which demonstrates that it’s just demographics, not other factors, which determines the outcome.

G/O Media may get a commission

Assuming Facebook targeting is effective, this may not be problematic when you’re considering ads for products. But “when we’re talking about advertising for opportunities like jobs, housing, credit, even education, we can see that the things that might have worked quite well for selling products can lead to societally problematic outcomes,” said Piotr Sapiezynski, a researcher at Northeastern University, who co-authored the study.

In response to a request for comment, Meta said the research highlights an industry-wide concern.“We are building technology designed to help address these issues,” said Ashley Settle, a Meta spokesperson. “We’ve made significant efforts to prevent discrimination on our ads platform, and will continue to engage key civil rights groups, academics, and regulators on this work.”

Facebook’s ad targeting by race and age may not be in advertisers’ best interests either. Companies often choose the people in their ads to demonstrate that they value diversity. They don’t want fewer white people to see their ads just because they chose a picture of a Black person. Even if Facebook knows older men are more likely to look at ads depicting young women, that doesn’t mean they’re more interested in the products. But there are far bigger consequences at play.

“Machine learning, deep learning, all of these technologies are conservative in principle,” Sapiezynski says. He added that systems like Facebook’s optimize systems by looking at what’s worked in the past, and assume that’s how things should look in the future. If algorithms are using crude demographic assumptions to decide who sees ads for housing, jobs, or other opportunities, that can reinforce stereotypes and enshrine discrimination.

That’s already happened on Facebook’s platform. A 2016 ProPublica investigation found Facebook let marketers hide ads for housing from Black people and other protected groups in violation of the Fair Housing Act. After the Department of Justice stepped in, Facebook stopped letting advertisers target ads based on race, religion, and certain other factors.

But even if advertisers can’t explicitly tell Facebook to discriminate, the study found that the Facebook algorithm might be doing it based on the pictures they put in their ads anyway. That’s a problem if regulators want to force a change.

Settle, the Meta spokesperson, said that Meta has invested in new technology to address its housing discrimination problem and that the company will extend those solutions to ads related to credit and jobs. The company will have more to share in the coming months, she added.

The researchers created nearly identical images to prove demographics were the deciding factor.
Screenshot: Thomas Germain

You could look at these results and think, “so what?” Facebook doesn’t publish the data, but maybe ads with pictures of Black people perform worse with white audiences. Sapiezynski said even if that’s true, it’s not a reasonable justification.

In the past, newspapers separated job listings by race and gender. Theoretically, that’s efficient if the people doing the hiring were prejudiced. “Maybe this was effective, at the time, but we decided that this is not the right way to approach this,” Sapiezynski said.

But we don’t have even enough data to prove Facebook’s methods are effective. The research may demonstrate that the platforms ad system isn’t as sophisticated as they want you to think. “There isn’t really a deeper understanding of what the ad is actually for. They look at the image, and they create a stereotype of how people behaved previously,” Sapiezynski said. “There is no meaning to it, just crude associations. So these are the examples, I think, that show that the system is not actually doing what the advertiser wants.”

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

October 26, 2022 at 05:03PM