Tausi Insider

Elon Musk’s Twitter Inc. TWTR-N on Friday brought back the “official” badge to some accounts, just days after doing away with it, while several users reported the new subscription option for the blue verification check mark had disappeared. The move follows a surge in fake accounts on the platform after new boss Elon Musk allowed users to pay US$8 for the coveted blue check mark that was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, actors and other major personalities. Fake accounts of several big brands have popped up with the blue check, including Mr. Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX as well as Roblox, Nestle and Lockheed Martin. “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts,” Twitter’s support account – which has the “official” tag – tweeted on Friday. Mr. Musk on Wednesday tweeted he had “killed” the new label, just hours after rolling it out. Drug maker Eli Lilly and Co. issued an apology after an imposter account tweeted that insulin would be fr...

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...

A sign at Twitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco, Nov. 18, 2022. Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump’s account on Twitter on Saturday, reversing a ban that has kept the former president off the social media site since a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory. Musk made the announcement in the evening after holding a poll that asked Twitter users to click “yes” or “no” on whether Trump’s account should be restored. The “yes” vote won, with 51.2 per cent. “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.” Shortly afterward Trump’s account, which earlier had appeared as suspended, reappeared on the platform along with his former tweets, more than 59,000 of them. His former followers were gone, but the account quickly picked up hundreds of thousands of them. It is...

U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks at a news conference where she introduced a resolution to investigate funding for Ukraine, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 17. AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES/The Associated Press Elon Musk’s Twitter TWTR-N has reinstated the personal account of far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which was banned in January for violating the platform’s COVID misinformation policies at the time. Greene’s reinstatement comes after Musk over the weekend reinstated the account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned in the aftermath of the deadly Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol in 2021. Twitter – at the time – feared there was a risk of further incitement to violence if Trump was allowed to remain on the platform. Trump himself has said he won’t return to Twitter and as of Monday had not yet tweeted since the reinstatement, although he also hasn’t deleted his account. Musk apparently based his decision to allow Trump back on the site on an unscienti...

In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic and other toxic speech say it’s been on the rise on the world’s de facto public square. Gregory Bull/The Associated Press New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he is granting “amnesty” for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation. The billionaire’s announcement came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The yes vote was 72%. “The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.” Musk used the same Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last last weekend before reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump, which Twitter had banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol in...

Social media platform Twitter Inc suspended a bot account tracking its owner Elon Musk’s private jet, the account’s operator Jack Sweeney said on Wednesday. The account tracked movements of Musk’s private jet using data in the public domain and puts out alerts. Musk said in a tweet in November that his commitment to free speech “extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.” Sweeney, a 20-year-old University of Central Florida student, tweeted on Saturday that Ella Irwin, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, requested the account be filtered and less visible to users. Twitter and Sweeney did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. In media interviews, Sweeney has said that he turned down a $5,000 offer from the Tesla Inc chief executive officer in 2021 to shut down his bot account. Sweeney also operates similar bot accounts tracking Musk’s jet on other platforms – Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook...

The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be banned from Twitter, following a wave of suspensions by CEO Elon Musk. Lorenz said she and another Post technology reporter, Drew Harwell, were researching an article concerning Musk. She had tried to communicate with the billionaire during the week but the attempts went unanswered, so she tried to contact him Saturday by posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview. The specific topic was not disclosed in the tweet. When she went back later Saturday to check whether there was a response on Twitter, Lorenz was met with a notification that her account was “permanently suspended.” “I won’t say I didn’t anticipate it,” Lorenz said in a phone interview early Sunday with The Associated Press. She said she wasn’t given a specific reason for the ban. Twitter last week suspended the accounts of journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, among them reporters working for The New York ...

Twitter users will no longer be able to link to certain rival social media websites, including what the company described Sunday as “prohibited platforms” Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon. It’s the latest move by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet. “We know that many of our users may be active on other social media platforms; however, going forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter,” the company said in a statement. The banned platforms include mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn. Twitter is also banning promotions of third-party social media link aggregators such as...

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October, many fast-paced changes have taken place at the social media company. DADO RUVIC/Reuters Elon Musk became Twitter Inc.’s new owner on Oct. 27, closing out the US$44-billion deal and a months-long takeover that included many twists and turns. Since then, the drama has only intensified. Within days of becoming chief executive officer, Mr. Musk went on a firing spree of executives, board members and employees. His overhaul of the social media platform has also sparked changes to its verification system, core policies, content moderation and advertising. In the latest news on Tuesday, Mr. Musk announced he will step down as CEO of Twitter “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.” He made the announcement after he posted a poll to his Twitter page, asking followers if he should step down as the head of the company. More than 17 million people replied, with 57.5 per cent saying yes. The roller-coaster decision-making has been ...

The logo of EQ Bank on a building in Toronto, on Dec. 16, 2017. CHRIS HELGREN/Reuters The hardest job in Canadian business is getting people to break away from the Big Six banks to try an alternative. In good times and bad, customers stick to the big banks like bugs on a windshield. Alternative banks now offer dramatically better rates on savings and guaranteed investment certificates in many cases, yet people have been flocking to the big banks. “In challenging times, there is a flow to quality,” said banking industry consultant David McVay. Looks like we need a broader definition of quality. What the big banks offer is size, stability, longevity and a national network of branches. For a quality alternative, consider the EQ Bank Card launched Wednesday. Think of it as what results when a high-interest savings account gets together with what we should now call a transactional account – the term “chequing account” seems dated. EQ is the online banking division of Equitable Bank, which...

Elizabeth McLean in Vancouver on Jan. 12. Jimmy Jeong/Tausi Insider When Elizabeth McLean asked her local Bank of Nova Scotia branch to open an account to hold funds she planned to raise to sponsor an Afghan refugee, she was shocked by the answer. Her bank of more than 50 years declined her application. More than five months after the initial rejection in March, 2020, and multiple complaints from Ms. McLean, Scotiabank said by e-mail that it would set up the account – but with a cap on deposits. Ms. McLean, an 80-year-old retired public servant in Vancouver, eventually opened the account at another bank and successfully sponsored the refugee, a young man whose father had been murdered by the Taliban. But nearly three years later, she still has no clarity on why Scotiabank initially denied and then imposed a funding limit on her application. When Ms. McLean escalated her grievance to the ADR Chambers Banking Ombuds Office, or ADRBO, a for-profit entity selected by the bank that review...