Tag Archive for: Twitter’s

How Threads’ Privacy Policy Compares to Twitter’s (and Its Rivals’)


Meta’s long-awaited Twitter alternative is here, and it’s called Threads. The new social media app launches at a time when alternatives, like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spill, are vying for users who are dissatisfied with Elon Musk’s handling of Twitter’s user experience, with its newly introduced rate limits and an uptick in hate speech.

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, so the company’s attempt to recreate an online experience similar to Twitter is likely to attract plenty of normies, lurkers, and nomadic shitposters. Meta is working to incorporate Threads as part of the online Fediverse, a group of shared servers where users can interact across multiple platforms.

If you’re hesitant to share your personal data with a company on the receiving end of a billion dollar fine, that’s understandable. For those who are curious, however, here’s what we know about the service’s privacy policy, what data you hand over when you sign up, and how it compares to the data collected by other options.

Threads

Threads (Android, Apple) potentially collects a wide assortment of personal data that remains connected to you, based on the information available in Apple’s App Store, from your purchase history and physical address to your browsing history and health information. “Sensitive information” is also listed as a type of data collected by the Threads app. Some information this could include is your race, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, and religion as well as your biometric data.

Threads falls under the larger privacy policy covering Meta’s other social media platforms. Want to see the whole thing? You can read it for yourself here. There’s one caveat, though. The app has a supplemental privacy policy that’s also worth reading. A noteworthy detail from this document is that while you’re able to deactivate your Threads account whenever, you must delete your Instagram if you fully want to delete your Threads account.

Below is all the data collected by Threads that’s mentioned in the App Store. Do you have the Facebook or Instagram app on your phone? Keep in mind that this data collection by Meta is comparable to the data those apps collect about you.

For Android…

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Twitter’s new encrypted message feature criticized by security and privacy experts



Washington
CNN
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Privacy and security experts widely panned a new feature that Twitter unveiled Wednesday that encrypts some direct messages between users, raising questions about the future of user safety on the platform.

Twitter’s early efforts at securing direct messages with encryption appear to be riddled with caveats, flaws and risks that may endanger users, the experts said after the company rolled out its initial release.

With the first iteration of the feature, only users who are paying subscribers to Twitter Blue or whose organizations have paid to be verified with the company may use encrypted messages.

In addition, encrypted messages may only be sent between two individuals, not groups. Encrypting images, video and other media is not supported. Both participants must either have exchanged direct messages in the past, or the recipient of an encrypted message must already follow the sender.

Perhaps most crucially, Twitter acknowledged that even with the encryption feature enabled, the company itself, and other third parties, can still potentially access user messages.

“I’m trying to be positive about Twitter deploying encrypted DMs even though there are so many things about this system that make it feel like a v0.1 release, or are just obnoxious,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer and computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a tweet.

Twitter’s former chief information security officer, Lea Kissner, publicly pleaded with Twitter’s current engineering team to improve the feature quickly.

“Twitter folks, seriously. I left some design docs somewhere. Please use them,” Kissner said on Bluesky, a rival platform.

Twitter has described encrypted messaging as key to the company’s future of becoming “the most trusted platform on the internet.” But the rollout provides another example of how, under CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has forged ahead with significant changes to the platform over the warnings of independent researchers about potential unintended consequences…

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Musk leaks Twitter’s Hunter Biden files – POLITICO


Elon Musk is stoking controversy on a new front, this time revealing sensitive internal deliberations at Twitter around Hunter Biden’s personal computer files in the fall of 2020.

On Friday evening, Twitter’s new owner promoted a leak of documents on his personal account, just the latest sign that the tech billionaire continues to steer the platform in a direction more favorable to conservatives and libertarians. Ahead of the midterm elections, Musk urged his followers to vote Republican. Last month, he reinstated former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account after taking an informal online poll.

The internal company discussions, which predate Musk’s ownership, offer insight on the dissent and confusion inside Twitter as it responded to the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s files in the closing weeks of the last presidential campaign.

POLITICO has not independently verified the communications, which were given to Substack writer Matt Taibbi, a longtime critic of online censorship and mainstream media outlets. Taibbi unspooled portions of the leak in a lengthy Twitter thread on Friday night.

Musk teased the event hours before it began to spill out in Taibbi’s tweets, promising, “This will be awesome,” and suggested he was personally involved in its preparation.

“We’re double-checking some facts, so probably start live tweeting in about 40 mins,” Musk tweeted as users waited for the promised disclosures. His latest controversial move came before the dust had settled from his last one, which saw Musk block Ye’s account after the rapper tweeted, “I like Hitler.”

Within the current contours of the culture wars, the right has taken up the mantle of free speech, while the center and left have cited concerns about disinformation and hate speech to argue for greater limits in online expression. Since taking the reins of Twitter in October, Musk has endeared himself to the right and incensed the left with his laissez-faire approach to moderation.

Last week, the mogul hinted that he would release information about Twitter’s role in suppressing the New York Post’s reports, tweeting,…

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Elon joins Twitter’s board, Apple’s subscriptions pilot, WWDC stays online – TechCrunch


Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year over year to reach $295 billion.

Today’s consumers now spend more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue. This was up 20% from 2020, when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Apple pilot tests a commerce feature for subscription apps 

Apple app store iOS

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Apple may be changing how iOS subscriptions operate when price increases are involved. Recently, some developers noticed that the streaming service Disney+ was seemingly only informing users of upcoming price changes, then automatically opting them in. This is different from how subscription price increases would typically be handled. In most other cases, a customer is presented with options to either agree…

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