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(CNN Business)For months, people have been clamoring to get access to Clubhouse, a buzzy invite-only social media app where members join virtual rooms to have live, unscripted discussions. Topics range from the "future of San Francisco," with the city's district attorney participating, and Kanye West to startup pitch events and various off color conversations. Unlike other social networks, the platform is audio-based — not text — making it feel like an interactive podcast (or a conference call). On any given night, according to a blog post this week from founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, there are thousands of different rooms that people can join for live conversations. "Hosts" act as moderators of conversations and those in the room can raise their hands, virtually, to have their mic turned on to lend their voice. Participants include a who's-who list of venture capitalists, tech leaders and celebrities. Davison and Seth, who are both well connected in the tech industry from previous roles at top companies, said their goal with Clubhouse "was to build a social experience that felt more human — where instead of posting, you could gather with other people and talk." In the less than a year since it…

Last Updated: Jan. 29, 2021 at 7:40 a.m. ET First Published: Jan. 29, 2021 at 6:33 a.m. ET The Tesla chief executive said ‘in retrospect, it was inevitable’ SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared to support bitcoin on Twitter on Friday Pool/Getty Images Bitcoin surged early on Friday after Elon Musk tagged the cryptocurrency in his Twitter biography. The price of bitcoin BTCUSD, +13.19% was last up 12.3% at $37,351, according to CoinDesk prices, after the Tesla TSLA, -3.32% chief executive appeared to express support for the cryptocurrency. After changing his Twitter TWTR, +7.01% bio to #bitcoin, he then tweeted “In retrospect, it was inevitable.” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — a vocal supporter of bitcoin — had the same bio as Musk early on Friday but it’s unclear when the platform’s founder made the change. Earlier this week, Musk waded into the battle between short sellers and retail traders over videogames retailer GameStop GME, -44.29%, tweeting a link to Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum along with the word “Gamestonk!!”

Twitter has spent years and millions of dollars fighting falsehoods with a now well-worn arsenal—fact-checks and warning labels and context labels and algorithmic tweaks and bans and bans on the President of the United States—but this week the company unveiled a totally new weapon: us. Select Twitter users who participate in the new program, called Birdwatch, can identify tweets they believe are misleading, write notes that provide context to the tweet, and rate the quality of other participants’ notes, the company says. The eventual goal is to add community-written notes directly beneath Tweets, through what Twitter calls “consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.” (The pilot starts with 1,000 qualified users; you can apply here.) It’s actually an old idea, harnessing the wisdom of the crowd that powers Wikipedia and a range of decades-old digital forums. But Twitter is not Wikipedia, and within minutes of the debut of Birdwatch many people, well, took to Twitter. “Unlike Wikipedia, Twitter is not one cohesive community, and users are not dedicated to a common purpose of sharing knowledge,” contended Tiffany C. Li, a professor at Boston University School of Law. “Imagine the harassment and disinfo you already see in replies and…

The social network is better than ever. Why not block all heads of state?Jan. 28, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit...Jordan AwanOfficially, Donald Trump left office only last week, but in truth the frenetic, ALL-CAPS soul of the Trump presidency took flight weeks before, when @realdonaldtrump, the president’s Twitter feed and the purest expression of his id, finally met an unceremonious end under Jack Dorsey’s long-reluctant banhammer.For the better part of five years, Trump’s Twitter was an instrument of power as frightening as it was bizarre: the federal government’s most consequential public-address system that also happened to be a grumpy old man’s favorite method for yelling at his TV. Trump used Twitter to hire and fire, negotiate war and peace, get out the vote, conjure conspiracies and finally to incite an insurrection, but mostly he used it to mint his favorite currency — attention — by goading and trolling the global media into talking only and ever about him.I had long been ambivalent about banning Trump’s tweets; as the president, Trump enjoyed near-infinite access to media, so shutting down this single channel didn’t seem worth the trouble.But weeks into Trump’s absence from Twitter, I have come around to the wisdom of banishment. I…

Sophomore forward Jalen Hill yells and points during the game against No. 15 Texas Tech on Dec. 22. Sophomore forward Jalen Hill yells and points during the game against No. 15 Texas Tech on Dec. 22. Ty Russell/OU Athletics/Pool photo No. 24 Oklahoma (10-4, 6-3 Big 12) narrowly upset No. 5 Texas (11-3, 5-2), 80-79, in Austin on Tuesday evening.The win marks the Sooners' second-straight victory over an Associated Press top-10 opponent, after they defeated then-No. 9 Kansas in Norman Saturday. Here's how Twitter reacted to an OU win over the Longhorns that went down to the wire:🗣 GO SOONERS!No. 24 Oklahoma knocks off No. 5 Texas in Round 1 of the Red River Rivalry! #Sooners pic.twitter.com/q3gsah8FGI— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) January 27, 2021 BOOM! SOONERS TAKE DOWN #5 TEXAS IN AUSTIN— Barstool Sooners (@OUBarstool) January 27, 2021Oklahoma starts a big week with a big win. Sooners over Texas by one in Austin. Next up for Lon Kruger's squad? Alabama on Saturday in Norman. The buzz is already palpable.— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) January 27, 2021Blake Nevins on the inbounds throw. Uh, ok. Game over.— Cedric Golden (@CedGolden) January 27, 2021Sooners got 32 free throw attempts compared to Horns' 19. pic.twitter.com/3U82fL1uJv— Brian Davis…

The Kentucky Wildcats lose yet another game, their second loss of the season to the Alabama Crimson Tide, 70-59. After a good showing against LSU on Saturday, the bad version of the Wildcats reared its ugly head again, and the Wildcats could not crack 60 points, as has been a trend all season long. Kentucky battled for most of the game, around 37 minutes or so, before another total collapse in the final minutes for the second straight week. It’s apparent that Kentucky has no real closer on the team and has no way to close any team out In a back-and-forth scenario. Olivier Sarr was the main focal point of the offense tonight, as was Davion Mintz, before Calipari stopped going with the lineup that had kept them in the game all night long. Missed shots and costly turnovers in the final minutes ruined any hopes for a win in this game, and the season as a whole. Here is what Twitter had to say about Kentucky’s 10th loss of the season: Every offensive trip for Kentucky feels like the equivalent of converting a 3rd and long.— Chris Fisher (@ChrisFisher247) January 27, 2021 Total collapse the last 4 minutes…

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell chats with President Donald Trump in the White House in 2017. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo Twitter has pulled the plug on the account of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. A spokesperson for Twitter said, "This account was suspended for repeated violations of our civic integrity policy.” Twitter confirmed late Monday that the ban on the entrepreneur from Minnesota is a permanent one. The ban is the latest in a series of disciplinary actions taken by Twitter that include, most notably, the banning of former President Donald Trump in an effort to reduce the spread of blatant political lies and punish those who incited violence, particularly in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Lindell has been a vocal backer of Trump, and reports surfaced earlier this month that he suggested the president declare martial law in the wake of what he saw as widespread election fraud. Among other things, Lindell alleged that the voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems were part of a conspiracy to rig the election against Trump. Upon threat of lawsuit from Dominion, Lindell told the New York Times: "I would really welcome them to sue me because I have…

How should we respond to Facebook and Twitter banning political speakers who knowingly repeat factual falsehoods?I have some experience with deciding what to publish, but no good ideas about what to do with these two Internet age companies.For a half-century at newspapers, my job included deciding whether to print stories or letters that contained ... “hogwash.”But I am still puzzling about Facebook and Twitter. They do not fit within traditional laws and limits.As an editor, I allowed some upsetting stuff to be published, following the hoary cliché that newspapers should “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”I disallowed some stuff, too. When a Ku Klux Klan member yammered from near Punxsutawney, we published a news story about his demonstration in DuBois. We did not print direct quotations, photos of hooded Klansmen or of crosses. We told readers what happened. We drew the line at what might promote his vile, racist bigotry.I also got into a hassle about an obituary. The deceased had three surviving brothers. His obituary named two. His widow said he insisted in not naming the third brother because of a feud. That brother was a subscriber to our newspaper. We decided that either the obituary would name…

Even before public announcements of the first cases of COVID-19 in Europe were made, at the end of January 2020, signals that something strange was happening were already circulating on social media. A new study of researchers at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, published in Scientific Reports, has identified tracks of increasing concern about pneumonia cases on posts published on Twitter in seven countries, between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The analysis of the posts shows that the "whistleblowing" came precisely from the geographical regions where the primary outbreaks later developed. To conduct the research, the authors first created a unique database with all the messages posted on Twitter containing the keyword "pneumonia" in the seven most spoken languages of the European Union - English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Dutch - from December 2014 until 1 March 2020. The word "pneumonia" was chosen because the disease is the most severe condition induced by the SARS-CoV-2, and also because the 2020 flu season was milder than the previous ones, so there was no reason to think it to be responsible for all the mentions and worries. The researchers then made a number of adjustments…