Elon Musk finally owns Twitter, but is the social media giant circling the drain or about to become something entirely new? Should Medibank pay the ransom to keep customers’ sensitive medical data safe? I was on this week’s Vertical Hold: Behind The Tech News and this is an updated version.
“Australian technology news podcast Vertical Hold dives into the big stories of the week. Joined by Australia’s leading tech journalists every Friday, co-hosts @adam_turner and @alexkidman channel-surf through the headlines in search of the big picture,” they write.
“A week is a long time in politics, they say… and it turns out it’s a long time when you’re the new owner of Twitter, having spent $44 billion dollars to own it. Elon Musk has been on an absolute tear this week, but what will his changes mean for Twitter? Will anyone pay $8/month for a verified tick, and what are they worth if anyone can just do that anyway?
“Meanwhile the breaches are coming thick and fast as we dive into the details (such as they are) behind the Medibank data breach, and Sony reveals its PSVR2 pricing!”
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Episode Links
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[4 November 2022] Elon Musk finally owns Twitter, but is the social media giant circling the drain or about to become something entirely new? Should Medibank pay the ransom to keep customers’ sensitive medical data safe? Special guest Stilgherrian!
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[3 November 2022] With its advanced VR and impressive controllers the questions around PlayStation VR2 availability and pricing have been answered. With PlayStation Australia confirming a PS VR2 launch date of February 22, 2023, and a price-point of $879.95 AUD ($549.99 USD).
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[1 November 2022] The credit company lowered its rating two notches to B1. Social media giant’s ratings remain on review for downgrade.
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[4 November 2022] Open source, decentralized social network Mastodon has been benefiting from the chaotic Twitter takeover by Elon Musk. In addition to seeing a record number of downloads for the Mastodon mobile app this past weekend, the nonprofit company today announced a new milestone. In a post on Twitter — where Mastodon has been successfully marketing its app to those now considering leaving the service — it noted that 230,000 people have joined Mastodon in the last week alone. Thanks to these new sign-ups as well as people returning to old accounts they had set up previously, the network now has 655,000 active users, the post noted.
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[2 November 2022] People like Jason Calacanis and David Sacks could play a huge role in charting the social media platform’s future—for better or worse.
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[1 November 2022] The new owner justified the measure saying ‘we need to pay the bills somehow’
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[31 October 2022] And if the employees building it don’t meet their deadline, they’ll be fired by Elon Musk.
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[3 November 2022] Twitter employees are sleeping on the office floor to meet Elon Musk’s deadlines.Esther Crawford, a Twitter product director who is leading the development of Musk’s paid verification system, retweeted a photo of her in a sleeping bag in a conference room and said: “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork.”
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[31 October 2022] After flip-flopping on his support of Elon Musk’s bid for the social media company, the royal confirmed he followed through with his $1.9 billion equity commitment to the social media company’s new owner.
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[30 October 2022] Platform says 300 accounts carried out 50,000-plus tweets in ‘organised effort to make users think firm has changed content policy’
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[1 November 2022] This marks the largest group of advertisers calling for a halt in business with Twitter since Musk took over last Thursday.
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Advertisers should support:
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[31 October 2022] Donald Trump was fiercely critical of Twitter when he was banned, supposedly for life... However that "permanent" suspension now looks a lot less certain.
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[31 October 2022] Musk himself inflamed those concerns on Sunday when he tweeted a link to unfounded, homophobic allegations about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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[2 November 2022] Elon Musk says setting up process over those barred, including Donald Trump, will take ‘at least a few more weeks’
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The Oversight Board is a body that makes consequential precedent-setting content moderation decisions (see Table of decisions below) on the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. Meta (then Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the creation of the board in November 2018, shortly after a meeting with Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, who had proposed the creation of a quasi-judiciary on Facebook. Zuckerberg originally described it as a kind of "Supreme Court", given its role in settlement, negotiation, and mediation, including the power to override the company's decisions.
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[28 October 2022] ? @elonmusk In Europe, the bird will fly by our ?? rules. #DSA
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[2 November 2022] Musk’s acquisition has created an opportunity for China to influence the discourse on the social media platform.
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[25 October 2022] Medibank says it is in communication with the hacker, but declined to say whether it would pay any demands made
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[31 October 2022] The Australian Federal Police has warned Medibank and Australian citizens against paying ransoms to cyber criminals, after it emerged that Medibank has been taking legal advice on whether to buy off the thieves threatening to leak the private medical information of millions of Australians.
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[27 October 2022] Speculation is rife about whether the insurer will pay a hacker who claims to have extracted 200GB of files.
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[20 October 2022] Company says criminal claiming to have 200GB of data shared sample for verification.
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[27 October 2022] Chief financial officer Mark Rogers said the company hadn’t taken out cyber insurance because it was too expensive.
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[2 November 2022] Ben Walker worked in cybersecurity in the private health insurance industry for six years, and says hackers will now "see Australia as a soft target".
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[7 October 2022] It’s now obvious to everyone that businesses routinely retain too much personal information, and that the true cost of a data breach is far higher than expected. We all see how criminals exploit stolen data, what makes data valuable to them, and what motivates criminal hacking. But the systemic problem no one is talking about is the way we use identifying information to begin with. If we don’t fix that properly, then the next big breach will be just as devastating.
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[2 August 2021] We should be able to “tap-and-prove” any important facts and figures about ourselves — as easily as we tap and pay with a smartphone at any one of hundreds of millions of terminals globally.
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[4 November 2022] "Those type of provocations are not helping to calm the waters."
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It’s hard to understate how tech billionaires are actively intervening to make the world a worse place. Elon Musk is reshaping Twitter with the help of David Sacks, who is part of an effort by Peter Thiel to push US politics to the right. I dig into it all with @SilvermanJacob!
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[3 November 2022] The billionaire and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages, fees to watch videos and other features to the service.
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[1 November 2022] Twitter’s new owner faces a difficult regulatory landscape around the world.
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It’s kind of a rite of passage for any new social media network. They show up, insist that they’re the “platform for free speech” without quite understanding what that actually means, and then they quickly discover a whole bunch of fairly fundamental ideas, institute a bunch of rapid (often sloppy) changes… and in the end, they basically all end up in the same general vicinity, with just a few small differences on the margin. Look, I went through it myself. In the early days I insisted that sites shouldn’t do any moderation at all, including my own. But I learned. As did Parler, Gettr, Truth Social and lots of others.
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Evelyn and Alex talk about, what else, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. He says he’s freed the bird, but there’s a whole bunch of restraints he clearly hasn’t thought about. He’s got some not-so-fun meetings and phone calls coming up.
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