All posts tagged: Twitter – X

The history of Vine, the short-form video platform that started it all

The history of Vine, the short-form video platform that started it all

Published by Webster

What are thooooose? Well, they’re my Vines, the six-second videos that helped mint a generation of famous comedians and also kicked off the era of endlessly looping vertical video that has consumed us all ever since. If you weren’t there at the time, most Vines might seem utterly nonsensical. But if you were on the internet when Vine burned brightest — a much briefer moment than you might remember — you probably still find yourself saying “look at all those chickens” more often than you should. For this episode of Version History, we tell the story of Vine from beginning to end. It takes longer than six seconds… but not that much longer. David Pierce, Sarah Jeong, Mia Sato, and Marina Galperina chart the app’s early rise, its acquisition by Twitter, the fights between platform and creators that ultimately cost Vine its most important performers, and the app’s all too early end. Ultimately, Vine’s story is mostly about its legacy. Not only did it help kickstart the careers of the Paul brothers, Shawn Mendes, Zach …

Shocker: Elon Musk spends a lot of time on X posting bad political takes

Shocker: Elon Musk spends a lot of time on X posting bad political takes

Published by Webster

NBC News’s David Ingram analyzed a month’s worth of Elon Musk’s X posts (our condolences). While what he was able to glean wasn’t too surprising, it was still interesting to see the numbers all laid out. Between September 17th and October 17th, he posted 1,716 times, averaging a little over 55 posts a day. 49 percent of those were about politics, usually fringe. He seems particularly hung up on the race of people on TV and in movies, including going after child actors. Other things Elon likes to talk about? Crime, Tesla — oh, and of course, himself. Over the 30 days, Elon posted about himself 109 times. He often even reposts his own stan accounts that exist only to fuel his ego. We already knew that Elon liked to post bad political takes and was into self-aggrandising, but now we have some hard data to back it up. Disclaimer: We do not own any of the content, ideas, images, or text presented here. All rights belong to their respective owners. For more information and …

A massive Cloudflare outage brought down X, ChatGPT, and even Downdetector

A massive Cloudflare outage brought down X, ChatGPT, and even Downdetector

Published by Webster

Cloudflare, a networking company that provides DDoS protection and internet content delivery services for many companies around the globe, is recovering after a major outage that took down sites across the web. Users weren’t able to access X, ChatGPT, and even the outage-tracking site DownDetector on Tuesday morning, with some sites displaying an error message that said, “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.” The disruption, which started at around 6:20AM ET, is linked to a “configuration file that is automatically generated to manage threat traffic,” Cloudflare spokesperson Jackie Dutton tells The Verge. “The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for a number of Cloudflare’s services.” Dutton added that “there is no evidence” of an attack or other malicious activity. Cloudflare posted an update to its status page at 9:42AM ET, saying: “A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.” Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht …

X launches Chat, its new encrypted DMs

X launches Chat, its new encrypted DMs

Published by Webster

X has revealed Chat, an encrypted upgrade to the platform’s direct messaging service. It also includes support for video and voice calls, disappearing messages, and file sharing. The company announced Chat on Friday, and it’s available now on iOS and the web, with an Android version coming “soon.” It replaces X’s existing messaging system, though your old messages should be carried across. X says that Chat supports end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for both messages and files, though a support page notes that this doesn’t cover message metadata — such as who received it, or when it was sent. There’s also no protection against man-in-the-middle attacks, the company admitting that if “a malicious insider or X itself” compromised an encrypted conversation, there would be no way for users to know, though ways to verify message authenticity and device identity are coming. Other privacy features include disappearing messages, which can be set to automatically delete after a set period of time, and the options to either receive a notification when a chat is screenshotted or block screenshots entirely. …

X is down | The Verge

X is down | The Verge

Published by Webster

Elon Musk’s X appears to be in the midst of a significant outage. Feeds aren’t loading, and reports indicate that neither are DMs. A quick check of Downdetector shows a spike in reports that appeared to start shortly after 8AM ET and rise sharply before beginning to fall. Elsewhere on social media, people have already been complaining about issues with the network for a couple of days, though — one of the top posts on the r/Twitter Reddit community is a screenshot of an error message on the X login screen, with many replies saying they’re unable to log in. Global internet monitor NetBlocks writes that X “has been experiencing international outages for some users for a second time in a week,” adding that the issue isn’t “related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.” The issue comes after a fire reportedly broke out in an Oregon data center owned by X on Thursday morning. Wired writes that multiple unnamed sources told it that the fire, which forced “an extended response from emergency crews,” involved batteries …

xAI posts Grok’s behind-the-scenes prompts

xAI posts Grok’s behind-the-scenes prompts

Published by Webster

A system prompt is a set of instructions served to a chatbot ahead of a user’s messages that developers use to direct its responses. xAI and Anthropic are two of the only major AI companies we checked that have made their system prompts public. In the past, people have used prompt injection attacks to expose system prompts, like instructions Microsoft gave the Bing AI bot (now Copilot) to keep its internal alias “Sydney” a secret, and avoid replying with content that violates copyrights. In the system prompts for ask Grok — a feature X users can use to tag Grok in posts to ask a question — xAI tells the chatbot how to behave. “You are extremely skeptical,” the instructions say. “You do not blindly defer to mainstream authority or media. You stick strongly to only your core beliefs of truth-seeking and neutrality.” It adds the results in the response “are NOT your beliefs.” xAI similarly instructs Grok to “provide truthful and based insights, challenging mainstream narratives if necessary” when users select the “Explain this …

Grok’s white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’

Grok’s white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’

Published by Webster

After xAI’s chatbot Grok spent a few hours on Wednesday telling every X user that would listen that the claim of white genocide in South Africa is highly contentious, the company has blamed the behavior on an “unauthorized modification” to Grok’s code. Wednesday’s hours-long outburst saw Grok insert discussion of alleged white genocide in South Africa into various responses on X, no matter the topic. Grok discussed white farmers’ deaths in reply to a video of a cat drinking water, related the song “Kill the Boer” to a question about Spongebob Squarepants, and broke down the issue in full patois. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman got in on the action, poking fun at the rival chatbot’s public breakdown. In a statement on X the company said that someone had modified the AI bot’s system prompt, “which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic.” That modification “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” and the company says it has “conducted a thorough investigation” and is implementing new measures to improve “transparency and …

X is down | The Verge

X notifications are broken | The Verge

Published by Webster

Some parts of X’s notification system have been down since Thursday afternoon, making it hard for users to see when accounts they follow have posted something. User reports can be seen across Reddit and X, and my colleagues at The Verge have noticed zero new notifications even with alerts enabled on accounts that have posted multiple times since yesterday. Outside of hindering updates from your favorite X users, the busted notifications may also disrupt essential alerts from accounts run by public transportation companies, emergency weather services, and other key service providers. While we confirmed some pings for user tags are working, users have also reported they haven’t received notifications for new likes and followers for almost a day. In some instances, users said notifications appeared several hours after they should have been received. It’s unclear what is causing the issues or how badly the X notifications system is affected. At 6:04AM ET on Friday, X owner Elon Musk posted that users “should be noticing some improvements to the quality of recommendations in your timeline.” The …