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Users Even before Elon Musk sowed chaos on Twitter, the app had broken my heart. Illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo The first time a DM on Twitter changed my life, I was in crisis. I was working for a small Texas newspaper, out of sick days, and needing gallbladder surgery. But about 24 hours after I gave my two weeks’ notice, the universe handed me a parachute. I was packing my police scanner, work iPad, recorder, and notebooks for a memorial service. It was going to be a tough night on the job. The police chief of a small town had been shot to death. He had many young children, and I knew I’d witness their grief. His widowed wife’s grief. The grief of the community. I knew, from experience, that I would feel unwelcome and exploitative even as I did my best to be sensitive and empathetic and compassionate. I was dreading it. And then I got a notification. It was a DM on Twitter. Nov. 10, 2015, at 4:13 p.m: “Olivia—this is John Avlon, EIC of The Daily Beast. Got time for a quick call re: an open position here? If interested, send your best cell and email.” After

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Photo: Carina Johansen (Getty Images)Digital activism started with KONY 2012, which asked people to highlight the crimes of an African warlord in an attempt to aid a global manhunt to catch him. The ALS ice bucket challenge aimed to raise awareness of the horrors of a degenerative disease.The latest iteration of what’s also called “clicktivism” has a slightly less noble, but no less motivating, goal: To make fun of Elon Musk.Thousands of Twitter users have posted the same single phrase—“buying twitter for $44 billion to make it worthless in the span of 2 weeks is the closest elon musk will get to donating money”—since 3 pm Eastern Time Tuesday at the exhortation of a social media marketer to bombard the platform with the message.Saeed Awawdeh, a 25-year-old working on social media marketing in New York, who posts as @SaeedDiCaprio on Twitter, first came up with the idea earlier today while working at home. “This was orchestrated during my bathroom break ngl to u,” he said via—what else?—Twitter DM. The social media marketer says he quickly threw the tweet together in a short break from his desk, before posting it to the social network. “There were no thoughts in my head,”

After clearing out the C-suite, laying off half the company, and prompting high-profile resignations, the fragile CEO is canning anyone who defies him on the app Twitter employees who criticize or correct new owner Elon Musk, either on internal work channels or Twitter itself, are being fired by email, with no specific reason for termination given. “We regret to inform you that your employment is terminated effective immediately,” read an email shared with Rolling Stone by a former employee who pushed back against Musk. “Your recent behavior has violated company policy.” The rest of the email explains that the operations team will soon reach out with instructions for off-boarding, and is signed, simply, “Twitter.” The firings are just the latest wave of turmoil to hit the tech giant since Musk took it private weeks ago in a $44 billion deal and rapidly instigated a host of changes to the platform. Even as he fired most of the C-suite, laid off thousands of other employees, and drove remaining leadership to resign, he yukked it up on the app as always, rubbing elbows with far-right conspiracy theorists and posting a record number of rolling-laughing emojis in response to the anarchy unleashed. But

Nov 14 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday asked a U.S. appeals court to revive his lawsuit against Twitter Inc challenging his permanent suspension from the platform after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Lawyers for Trump, a Republican, told the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing that the ban from Twitter marked "overtly partisan censorship" and was "contrary to First Amendment principles deeply rooted in American history and law."His lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and a court order requiring Twitter to "immediately reinstate" his account that was permanently suspended on Jan. 8, 2021.Trump has vowed to keep posting to his own Truth Social media platform. Twitter's new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, has said that he would reinstate Trump's account.A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, and a Twitter spokesperson did not immediately reply.A lawyer for Trump, John Coale in Washington, told Reuters on Monday, "We want him to have the right to get back on" to Twitter.Twitter said last year it had permanently suspended Trump's account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" after his supporters stormed the U.S.

Unlike brands like Nintendo and Eli Lilly, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) knew who was behind the parody account recently impersonating the lawmaker on Twitter. Washington Post reporter Geoffrey Fowler had asked permission to create the fake Markey account, part of the reporter’s quest to see how hard it could really be to impersonate a public official under Elon Musk’s new paid verification system. What Fowler found was that it wasn’t hard at all to launch a fake Markey account. As soon as Fowler confirmed the ease with which any public official could be impersonated, an outraged Markey used his real Twitter account to call out Musk for allowing the impersonation because he favors “putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation.” Musk took almost two days to respond to Markey, opting to troll the Senator rather than take the complaint seriously. “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?” Musk tweeted. The fake Markey account has been taken down, but that clearly did not settle the matter, and now Musk poking fun at the senator could have consequences that go beyond a tweet thread. Markey has chosen to wield a bigger platform than the one

ExplainerCompaniesMedia & MarketingElon Musk, the renegade entrepreneur who acquired Twitter for $US44 billion last month, has admitted the social media platform could die. How did Twitter end up in such a mess, and does Musk actually have a plan to save it?Nov 14, 2022 – 5.00amTwitter could die. That was the message from its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, at a staff meeting on Thursday (Friday AEDT).It was a startling admission from the renegade entrepreneur who had acquired the social media platform for $US44 billion ($66 billion) less than a month ago.Elon Musk says Twitter is losing millions of dollars each week.  David RoweBut in reality many of the decisions that Musk has made about Twitter since first expressing a desire to buy the company in April have left people dumbfounded. He has begun stripping the company down, firing thousands of workers, while also coming up with proposals to change the website seemingly on the fly.How did Twitter get into this mess?Twitter was founded by NYU student Jack Dorsey and several others in 2006 as a simple social media website that allowed users to post 140-character messages on a public forum.Along with companies such as Facebook and YouTube, Twitter typified

Skip to main content The Packers have won a game! It's been 42 days since you could say that.But after Mason Crosby made a 28-yard field goal in overtime, the Packers' five-game losing streak is over thanks to a 31-28 comeback win over the Dallas Cowboys.Besides snapping the losing streak and McCarthy's return as the Cowboys head coach, the game was also noteworthy for Christian Watson's breakout performance in which the rookie wide receiver had a season-high 107 yards and three touchdowns, including the final two when the Packers trailed 28-14 to start the fourth quarter.Here's how social media reacted to the victory that had Lambeau Field going wild as the Packers improved to 4-6.For the first time in years, Mike McCarthy's coaching helped the Packers win a game.— Barry (@BarryOnHere) November 14, 2022Mike McCarthy's return to Lambeau is spoiled in OT, with the Packers coming away with a 31-28 win.Entering today's game, the Cowboys were 180-0 all-time when leading by 14 points through 3 quarters. Including playoffs, they were 195-0 all-time. pic.twitter.com/i1ly80ALnA— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) November 14, 2022That's it. Aaron Bleepin Rodgers does it to us again. Packers win.— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) November 14, 2022Could that turn

In an ad for the crypto exchange FTX featuring Stephen Curry earlier this year, a narrator repeatedly portrays the NBA star as a “crypto expert.” The legendary player denies this over and over, finally saying, “I’m not an expert, and I don’t need to be. With FTX I have everything I need to buy, sell, and trade crypto safely.”  “Safely” is now in question. This week FTX declared bankruptcy, its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried resigned, and many investors who trusted the platform are wondering if they’ll ever get their money back.  A slew of other top athletes also appeared in ads for FTX, including NFL star Tom Brady, who was given equity stake in FTX and became an ambassador for the company in a long-term partnership. The company even bought the naming rights for the Miami Heat’s home arena. But it isn’t just the FTX chaos affecting major sports stars. Elon Musk’s tumultuous takeover of Twitter has also had an impact, with major figures like LeBron James getting trolled by users pretending to be them thanks to a new, easily abused authentication feature. The turbulence shows star athletes are not immune to the confusion and upheaval roiling the tech industry. This week

Hey, friends! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap the top TechCrunch headlines from the past seven days. Get it in your inbox every Saturday AM by signing up here. Ready? Let’s go. most read Twitter had a week so strange that it could easily make up this entire newsletter, so we’ll keep to the bullet points: Last week Elon laid off a huge chunk of the company. This week, some of those who were let go were reportedly asked to come back. Twitter started giving blue verified checkmarks to anyone who’d pay $8. Things got chaotic fast. Twitter rolled out a new, second checkmark for “Official” accounts. And then got rid of them. And then…brought them back? By Friday morning, after fake “verified” accounts popped up for everything from companies to athletes to politicians, Twitter paused the $8 verification badge program. A number of execs quit — to the point where the exits perked the ears of the FTC. Elon reportedly told Twitter employees that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question” for the company. FTX collapses: Once one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, FTX effectively exploded this week. It briefly looked like