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Social media giant Twitter is negotiating to add roughly 80,000 square feet to its Mid-Market headquarters, a curious reversal of the trend toward ...

Media top headlines August 6 In media news today, Chris Cuomo continues his rampage against DeSantis while staying silent on his brother's scandals, media insiders react to the CNN hosts crisis with pity and criticism, and CBS appears to have 'moved on' from covering Andrew Cuomo's scandals after avoiding coverage on the evening broadcast.Conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey was released from "Twitter jail" on Friday after she was briefly suspended from the platform after she referred to New Zealand's transgender Olympic athlete Laurel Hubbard as a "man."Hubbard made history at the Tokyo Olympics for being the first openly transgender person to ever compete in any sport. Despite all the hype and the headlines that were generated across the globe, Hubbard came up short in the women's weightlifting competition. DAVE RUBIN FIRES BACK AT TWITTER FOR LOCKING ACCOUNT ON 'HARMFUL' COVID TWEET: 'THEY'RE COMING FOR EVERYBODY'Stuckey commented on Hubbard's poor performance. "Laura Hubbard failing at the event doesn’t make his inclusion fair," Stuckey wrote. "He’s still a man, and men shouldn’t compete against women in weightlifting."That, according to Twitter, violated the platform's "hateful conduct" policy, which states "gender identity" as one of the many traits that users "may not promote violence against, threaten,…

Popular social media apps of the world — Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp — are now trying to be a one-stop-shop for users' needs. That is why you will see almost all of them offering a version of the same kind of feature. Whether it is Reels, YouTube Shorts or Fleets, time and again, these apps test out features that their rivals offer in the hope that it sticks. The iteration of this phenomenon is that TikTok has started testing a feature called “TikTok Stories” and if you can guess it by the name, these are set to be ephemeral posts that will disappear after 24 hours. This feature should work like Instagram Stories, Snapchat posts or the recently discontinued Twitter Fleets. To recall, this kind of method for posting on social media was popularised by Snapchat and then adopted by Instagram as Stories. According to a report by The Verge, users will be able to create TikTok Stories by tapping a “create” button that’s been added to the sidebar. These Stories will come with the support to add captions, music and text. The company hasn’t mentioned the extensiveness of the testing of this feature nor has it said if…

Jeopardy! executive producer, Mike Richards has reportedly been fingered as the probable next in line to become the iconic quiz show's permanent host, and fans aren't happy about it.When Variety broke the story on Wednesday that Richards was in "advanced negotiations" with Sony Pictures Television to take over after the inimitable Alex Trebek's 36-year run at the helm of the show, fans began responding on social media with a mix of bemusement and bewilderment.Aisha Tyler, for instance, well-known for her roles in Ghost Whisperer, Friends, Talk Soup, and even an episode of Celebrity Jeopardy! retweeted a link to the article with the comment, "A: Will never watch @Jeopardy again. Q: Who is, everyone?" Richards has hosted a couple of reality shows in his career, including High School Reunion and Beauty and the Geek. But he's put thousands of hours into producing quiz shows and game shows. In addition to working on Jeopardy!, Richards has been key behind the scenes of The Price is Right, the celebrity edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and the revival of Let's Make a Deal. But after Trebek passed away at the age of 80 last year, Sony signed on a series of…

The Kroger Co. added former U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who served under ex-President Donald Trump, to its board of directors this week — and got a lot of flak for it on Twitter, where some called for a boycott.Chao's name trended nationally on the site Wednesday, along with the hashtag #BoycottKroger, thanks to a stream of tweets about her appointment to the mammoth supermarket's board. "I really don't have a lot of choices in my area to buy groceries, but now that they've added Elaine Chao to the board of directors, I'm willing to drive miles out of my way to buy them elsewhere. #BoycottKroger," one user tweeted.Another posted: "Kroger, if Elaine Chao is in, I'm out. For good."I really don’t have a lot of choices in my area to buy groceries, but now that they’ve added Elaine Chao to the board of directors, I’m willing to drive miles out of my way to buy them elsewhere. #BoycottKroger— 💀 Scary Larry 💀 🇺🇸🌊✊🏻🗽 (@StompTheGOP) August 4, 2021Some of the tweets specifically took issue with the company giving Chao the prestigious post because she's a former member of Trump's cabinet.Many also pointed out she's married to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, another controversial and powerful Republican…

Racist abuse of footballers on Twitter increased over the course of the 2020-21 season and the majority of offending accounts are still active on the platform, research by the Professional Footballers’ Association has found. More than six million tweets were analysed in a year-long study that identified 359 accounts as sending explicitly racist abuse to players, with the volume of abuse rising by 48% in the second half of the season.As of July 2021, according to the PFA, more than three-quarters of the accounts were still active. Racism formed a small section of the broader abuse, with the PFA reporting 1,674 accounts to Twitter for offensive content.Of those accounts, 367 were verified as belonging to individuals who were fans, members or season-ticket holders at UK football clubs. The statistics are consistent with research conducted by the Guardian into the extent of abuse directed towards the England squad during this summer’s European Championship.The new chief executive of the players’ union, Maheta Molango, said the fact that so many abusers are identifiable means platforms have no excuse for not taking action. “The time has come to move from analysis to action,” Molango said.“The PFA’s work with Signify clearly…

Twitter is expanding its efforts to provide users with accurate information about why a topic is trending.Twitter is improving the way it keeps users informed about trending topics via a collaboration with The Associated Press (AP) and Reuters.Teaming up with AP and Reuters will allow Twitter to increase the scale and speed at which it provides context to popular topics of conversation.Currently, Twitter explains top trends on a limited scale. This is accomplished by attaching additional information to the trend such as a Twitter Moment, a single tweet, or a written description.Twitter aims to bolster the delivery of this information in a few key ways:AdvertisementContinue Reading BelowScale: Users can expect to see more contextual descriptions about Twitter trends going forward.Speed: Information about popular topics of conversation will be provided in real-time as they emerge.Accuracy: This collaboration will make it possible for Twitter to deliver accurate information when facts are in dispute.Trustworthiness: Links to reports from trusted sources will be provided more frequently.In addition, Twitter will attempt to provide information about topics before they go viral.When there’s potential for the topic to generate misleading information, Twitter will try to get the facts out there before the misinformation spreads.“Rather than waiting until…

Aug 03, 2021 17:26 2 min read In a move that goes against its declared mission of curbing the spread of misinformation online, Twitter blocked API access to Fátima, a bot set up by independent Brazilian fact-checker Aos Fatos. With the decision, the bot can no longer detect links that may contain false information and share its findings with its followers. Twitter had already suspended Fátima’s profile for more than 10 hours, a move which was only reversed after the fact-checking agency contacted the platform. Aos Fatos affirms it was not notified ahead of time. “Fátima is recognized worldwide as an example of combating false information through the use of artificial intelligence. Instead of supporting it, Twitter decides to derail it while life-threatening lies continue to multiply on the platform. Besides its non-compliance with policies to combat misinformation, the company facilitates the work of professional fraudsters,” commented Tai Nalon, the website’s executive director. This came only one day after Twitter announced a partnership with news agencies Associated Press and Reuters in a campaign to prevent the spread of fake news on the social media platform. In March, Twitter announced that it would remove potentially misleading or erroneous posts about vaccines and punish users who…

With six games left, a cancelation of the season was announced over Twitter. Now the stadium sits empty with team logos and sponsor banners lining ...

Server queues are between 30 and 90 minutes As we learned a week ago, portaling FPS Splitgate was so popular during its open beta phase that 1047 Games had to extend the beta and delay launch. They're currently attempting to expand their servers and fit over 100,000 players. At the moment, interest in Splitgate is still outpacing their ability to expand, with queue times hitting 90 minutes yesterday. 1047 are now tracking server and queue status on Twitter while they work to keep up and say they are "working our tails off." Splitgate's developers reported pulling in an unanticipated 50,000 players across all platforms as of July 20th. It currently has nearly 60,000 players on Steam alone. "The rate of growth of our playerbase is faster than the rate we can increase server capacity," 1047 explain. "We are working on a long term solution to greatly increase server capacity to well over 100k concurrent but this takes time." They also shared an explanation of the situation from their server engineer, who likens the sudden popularity to being a five-top restaurant suddenly facing a queue of thousands of diners. They want to expand, sure, but setting up the infrastructure and hiring…