Tausi Insider

Twitter Blue will probably “come back end of next week,” billionaire owner Elon Musk said in a tweet on Saturday. Twitter on Friday paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service on Friday as fake accounts mushroomed. The coveted blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures. But a subscription option, open to anyone prepared to pay, was rolled out earlier this week to help Twitter grow revenue as Musk fights to retain advertisers. Several users reported on Friday that the new subscription option for the blue verification check mark had disappeared, while a source told Reuters the offering has been dropped. “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts,” Twitter’s support account - which has the “official” tag - tweeted on Friday. The label was originally introduced on Wednesday - but “killed” by Musk just hours later. On Thursday, in his first com...

Twitter’s billionaire owner Elon Musk on Sunday said that Twitter will soon enable organizations to identify twitter accounts associated with them as the new Twitter owner continues to find ways to limit fake accounts on the platform. “Rolling out soon,” Musk in a tweet on Sunday said. “Twitter will enable organizations to identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them.” He did not elaborate. The social media platform paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service on Friday as fake accounts mushroomed, and new owner Elon Musk brought back the “official” badge to some users of the social media platform. Fake accounts purporting to be big brands have popped up with the blue check since the new roll-out, including Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, as well as Roblox, Nestle and Lockheed Martin . Musk in a tweet yesterday said that Twitter Blue will probably “come back end of next week”. Twitter Inc’s new owner Elon Musk on Thursday raised the possibility...

Elon Musk said on Monday that Apple Inc AAPL-Q has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter, the most high-profile company to pull ads from the social media platform over concerns about content moderation policies under its new owner. The move aligns the iPhone maker with a rising list of firms from General Mills Inc to luxury automaker Audi of America that have stopped or paused advertising on Twitter since the billionaire’s $44-billion buyout last month. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?,” Musk said in a tweet. He later tagged Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s Twitter account in another tweet, asking “what’s going on here?” Musk said “yes” in response to a user question on whether Apple was threatening Twitter’s presence in the App Store or making moderation demands. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The world’s most valuable firm spent an estimated $131,600 on Twitter ads between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16...

Elon Musk on Wednesday tweeted that the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from Apple Inc’s AAPL-Q App Store was resolved following his meeting with the iPhone maker’s Chief Executive Tim Cook. “Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so,” the billionaire CEO of Twitter and Tesla Inc said in a tweet. On Monday, Musk had accused Apple of threatening to block Twitter from its app store without saying why in a series of tweets that also said it had stopped advertising on the social media platform. He had later tagged Cook’s Twitter account in another tweet, asking “what’s going on here?” Twitter and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Musk’s latest tweet. Apple has not responded publicly to Musk’s earlier tweets. Among the list of grievances tweeted by Musk on Monday was the up to 30 per cent fee Apple charges software developers for in-app purchases, with Musk posting a meme suggesting he was willing to “go to war” with Apple rathe...

A promotion for an appearance via video stream by Sam Bankman-Fried at the New York Times Dealbook Conference in New York on Nov. 30. WINNIE AU /The New York Times News Service FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried is willing to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Dec. 13, the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder said in a tweet on Friday, as regulators investigate his role in the wake of its collapse. A day earlier House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters told Reuters that she is prepared to subpoena Bankman-Fried if he does not agree to appear before the panel next week. “I still do not have access to much of my data – professional or personal. So there is a limit to what I will be able to say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like,” Bankman-Fried said on Friday. “But as the committee still thinks it would be useful, I am willing to testify on the 13th,” he added. It was not clear if he plans to be at the hearing in person or through a video feed. FTX...

The logo on a Tesla electric car in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, on Jan. 8. DAVID GANNON/AFP/Getty Images The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Monday said it was in contact with Tesla about a tweet Chief Executive Elon Musk wrote about a driver monitoring function. A Dec. 31 tweet suggested drivers with more than 10,000 miles using Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software system should be able to disable the “steering wheel nag,” an alert that instructs drivers to hold the wheel to confirm they are paying attention. Musk responded: “Agreed, update coming in Jan.” NHTSA Monday said it “is in contact with Tesla TSLA-Q to gather additional information.” The Associated Press reported NHTSA’s statement earlier. Tesla did not immediately comment. The auto safety agency confirmed the questions about Musk’s tweet are in connection with its ongoing defect probe into 830,000 Tesla vehicles with driver assistance system Autopilot and involving crashes with parked eme...

Elon Musk is set to become the rare CEO to fight a securities class action at trial next week, where he will defend his 2018 tweet announcing he had “funding secured” to take Tesla Inc TSLA-Q private. Musk is essentially doubling down after suffering an initial setback last year, when the judge in San Francisco federal court ruled that his tweet was “false” and “reckless.” As a result, the jury will need to determine only if the statements impacted Tesla’s share prices, if Musk acted knowingly, and the amount of any damages. “Everything is lined up for a plaintiffs’ win here,” said Minor Myers, who teaches corporate law at the University of Connecticut. Judge Edward Chen’s ruling in May means that shareholders are “starting with runners on base,” he said. An attorney for Musk, as well as Tesla and several directors who are also defendants, declined to comment. They have denied that Musk’s statements violated the law. They will argue at trial that the stock price rose because Musk rev...

Elon Musk took the witness stand Friday to defend a 2018 tweet claiming he had lined up the financing to take Tesla private in a deal that never came close to happening. The tweet resulted in a $40-million settlement with securities regulators. It also led to a class-action lawsuit alleging he misled investors, pulling him into court for about a half hour Friday to deliver sworn testimony in front of a nine-person jury and a full room of media and other spectators. The trial was then adjourned for the weekend and Musk was told to return Monday to answer more questions. In his initial appearance on the stand, Musk defended his prolific tweeting as “the most democratic way” to distribute information even while acknowledging constraints of Twitter’s 280-character limit can make it difficult to make everything as clear as possible. “I think you can absolutely be truthful [on Twitter],” Musk asserted on the stand. “But can you be comprehensive? Of course not,” Musk’s latest headache stems...

Elon Musk speaks during a news conference at SpaceX's Starbase facility, near Boca Chica Village, Texas, on Feb. 10, 2022. JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images Tesla Inc TSLA-Q Chief Executive Elon Musk testified on Tuesday that he expected strong financial support when he tweeted that he would take the electric car maker private in 2018, but admitted he lacked specific commitments from potential backers. Musk ended three days on the stand defending against claims that he defrauded investors by tweeting on Aug. 7, 2018, that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. The trial in San Francisco federal court is testing whether the world’s second-richest person can be held liable for his sometimes impulsive use of Twitter. Musk told a jury that he could have drawn upon several sources of financing to take Tesla private, from existing shareholders like Oracle Corp co-founder Larry Ellison to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund or his own fortune. “Funding was absolutely not an issue,” ...

Tesla TSLA-Q CEO Elon Musk’s impulsive and sometimes inflammatory usage of Twitter took centre stage Wednesday in a trial focused on whether he misled investors with his 2018 tweets indicating he had lined up financing to take the electric auto maker private, a proposal that rapidly unravelled. The spotlight on Musk’s tweeting habits came a day after the 51-year-old billionaire completed three days of defiant testimony during which he told the nine-member jury why he believed he could have pulled off a Tesla buyout that could have cost anywhere from $30 billion to more than $70 billion at the time. Musk, who now owns the Twitter service that’s central to the trial about his management of Tesla, raised the prospect of a buyout in an Aug. 7, 2018 tweet stating he had the “funding secured " for the deal. Musk followed up a few hours later with another tweet suggesting a deal was imminent. After it became apparent that the money wasn’t in place to take Tesla private, Musk and the co...