You know what they say about people in glass houses, right?

Twitter is considering legal action against Meta over its fast-growing rival app Threads. Threads, which was launched to millions on Wednesday, is similar to Twitter and has been pitched by Meta bosses as a "friendly" alternative.

Twitter's Elon Musk said "competition is fine, cheating is not" - but Meta denied claims in a legal letter that ex-Twitter staff helped create Threads. More than 30 million people have signed up for the new app, according to Meta.

The look and feel of Threads is similar to Twitter, BBC News technology reporter James Clayton noted. He said the news feed and the reposting were incredibly familiar.

In a move first reported by news outlet Semafor, Twitter attorney Alex Spiro sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday accusing Meta of "systematic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property" to create Threads.

Specifically, Mr Spiro alleged that Meta hired dozens of former Twitter employees who "

Officials have received more than 1,000 calls in recent weeks from beachgoers, tourists, and residents reporting sick, dying, and dead sea mammals washed ashore amid a growing toxic algal bloom in the waters off the Pacific coast. CNN's David Culver has more.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/927640

It’s possible that the enforcement of a rate limit isn’t because of AI scraping, but rather because they failed to migrate before the June 30th deadline.

If you’re not logged into your Twitter account and try to view a tweet, you’ll be presented with a sign-in screen. And if you don’t want to have an account on the bird app, too bad!

Twitter hasn’t commented on this change, and given how sloppy the platform has been since Elon Musk’s takeover, it might just be a glitch. However, in a time when Twitter is struggling to grow its user base, it’s possible that this is a tactic to force silent lurkers into creating an account.

Like many of Twitter’s recent changes, this could easily backfire. If tweets aren’t publicly accessible, search engine algorithms could rank the site’s content lower, meaning that fewer people would be directed to the site from Google. Also, it’s just kind of annoying.

Musk — who is no longer CEO of Twitter, but still deeply involved in operations — may also be motivated by a desire to prevent AI tools from searching Twitter. Musk has previously admonished Microsoft, which dropped Twitter from its advertising platfo

Wow! Good!

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news/t/79328

The collapse of the terraUSD stablecoin and the associated Luna token rocked cryptocurrency markets.

The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon on Wednesday, alleging that the e-commerce giant has tricked millions of consumers into signing up for its Amazon Prime subscription service through deceptive user interface designs.

The complaint filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington also takes aim at Amazon for allegedly trying to keep users subscribed who wished to cancel their memberships.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/806531

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/177673

Today, a bunch of new instances appeared in the top of the user count list. It appears that these instances are all being bombarded by bot sign-ups.

For now, it seems that the bots are especially targeting instances that have:

• Open sign-ups
• No captcha
• No e-mail verification

I have put together a spreadsheet of some of the most suspicious cases here.

If this is affecting you, I would highly recommend considering one of the following options:

1. Close sign-ups entirely
2. Only allow sign-ups with applications
3. Enable e-mail verification + captcha for sign-ups

Additionally, I would recommend pre-emptively banning as many bot accounts as possible, before they start posting

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has come out and said what legions of redditors feared – that a business plan to turn a profit by increasing the price of API access has been “reaffirmed” by a look at the Book of Musk.

A submersible used to take people to view the wreck of the Titanic has gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Boston Coastguard told BBC News that a search and rescue operation was under way off the coast of Newfoundland.

It is unclear how many people were on board when it went missing.

Small submersibles occasionally take paying tourists and experts to view the wreck of the Titanic, some 3,800m (12,500ft) beneath the ocean surface.

OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that organises deep sea expeditions, confirmed in a statement that it owned the missing submersible and people were on board.

"We are exploring and mobilising all options to bring the crew back safely," it said on Monday. "Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families."

"We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers," it added.

The company charges guests $250,000 (£195,270) for a place on its eight-day expedition to see the famous wreck.

It bills the trip on its carb