In a recent Sindh High Court hearing, two lawyers representing the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) presented differing opinions on whether the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) is still banned.

Chief Justice Mohammad Shafi Siddiqui and Justice Omar Sial were reviewing petitions challenging both the suspension of mobile and internet services and the ban on X, which has been in place since February.

One PTA lawyer, Ahsan Imam Rizvi, informed the court that the ban on X had been lifted, suggesting access should be restored. However, the petitioners’ lawyer, Abdul Moiz Jaferii, argued that users still couldn’t access the platform. Saad Siddiqui, another lawyer for PTA, said he had no information about the ban being lifted.

The court expressed surprise at the confusion among PTA’s legal team and gave them two weeks to clarify the situation.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, the IT minister revealed that X was blocked on the interior ministry’s orders, and PTA’s web management system was used to enforce the ban under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. The platform was blocked after X’s management did not comply with Pakistan’s request to remove certain content deemed objectionable.

The case remains under review.

The post PTA Lawyers Offer Conflicting Views on X (Twitter) Ban in Court appeared first on Techlist.

As it prepares to introduce the commercial version of the functionality, Twitter will stop providing free access to the API after February 9.

The modification is a component of the platform’s revenue-generating strategy. As of right now, Twitter has not revealed the costs of the paid version.

The free API service has been utilised by millions of developers to build third-party solutions on the platform and monitor account changes on Twitter. As a result, it is assumed that Twitter bots will stop working after the free service is discontinued.

Researchers who studied internet abuse, hate speech, and the spread of disinformation are thought to be impacted by the loss of free access.

The post Twitter to End Free Access to its API in Elon Musk’s Latest Monetization Push appeared first on Techlist.

After getting an email on Thursday stating that they would receive word through email on Friday regarding their employment status, the employees filed the case.

According to the lawsuit, the corporation violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act by failing to notify the employees 60 days in advance of the expected job layoffs. The attorney for the Twitter layoff lawsuit, Shannon Liss-Riordan, was previously involved in a fight against Tesla Layoffs.

Even though the federal and state WARN Act requires 60 days of layoff pay when there is a big layoff, she claims that in the instance of Tesla, “workers were instantly asked to sign away all of their rights for a week or two of severance pay.”

Musk used a tactic known as “pay in place of notice” this time around, offering three months of severance in an effort to abide by the law. But the practise continues to be illegal.

The post Twitter Employees File Lawsuit to Prevent Mishaps of Tesla Layoffs appeared first on Techlist.

Twitter, Elon Musk’s most recent acquisition, is apparently going to start offering celebrities paid Direct Messaging (DM) as another way to generate income.

According to the New York Times, the company’s internal docs and two workers revealed the news of the DM function. Although Twitter hasn’t yet finalised the cost structure for DMs, the report estimates that it will be “as little as a few dollars per direct message.”

The messages would be categorised under a unique DM inbox, and Twitter would earn a percentage of the fees, the reporter claimed. For celebrities to receive messages from their fans, they would need to opt in.

The story sheds insight on the ongoing proposed/in-progress improvements that have been occurring swiftly since since Elon Musk took over the company, even though it is still unknown whether the feature will be implemented or not.

The post Twitter is Reportedly Working on Paid DMs to Celebrities appeared first on Techlist.

In an effort to reduce expenses, Elon Musk intends to eliminate 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half of the company’s employment, according to a report published on Wednesday by Bloomberg News, which cited people familiar with the situation. The impacted employees will be informed on Friday by Twitter’s new owner.

According to Bloomberg, Musk plans to overturn the social media company’s current “work from anywhere” policy and mandate that staff work from the office, with some possible exceptions. In a tweet, Musk refuted a New York Times report that said he planned to fire Twitter workers before November 1 in order to avoid stock grants that were due on that day.

A request for comment from Reuters did not receive a response right away from Twitter. According to reports cited by Reuters earlier this week, Musk intends to eliminate a quarter of Twitter’s personnel as part of the first round of layoffs at his freshly purchased business.

The post Musk Plans to Eliminate Half of Twitter Jobs to Cut Costs appeared first on Techlist.

Short format videos have been popular for more than two years. People are willing to watch videos on Twitter and Facebook in order to be entertained or gain new information. As a result, you might want to download part of the information to preserve it on your device.

You enjoy viewing it over and over until you’ve had enough of it, whether it’s cute dog videos or a serious discourse on a sensitive topic. The application platform, however, does not allow you to download a video. The platform’s copyright policies are largely to blame for this. But what if there was a quick and easy way to get these videos?

Facebook Videos

• Although Facebook has the option to Save videos, you should not use it to download a Facebook video. There are a variety of free Facebook video downloads available that can help you achieve the same goal: saving Facebook videos to your computer, phone, or tablet.
• To download Facebook videos, use a third-party app.
• After pasting the link into the app’s text field, tap DOWNLOAD.
• Select a method for downloading.
• The Facebook video can be downloaded in HD or normal definition, or converted to MP3.

Twitter Videos

• A Twitter video can also be downloaded using an Android application.
• You must first download the Download Twitter Videos application on your smartphone in order to download Twitter videos. This programme makes downloading videos from Twitter and Instagram a breeze. The following is what you must do next:
• Open the Twitter app on your smartphone and go to the Tweet with the video you wish to save.
• Select After tapping the Share button, copy the link to Tweet.
• Now paste the link into the Twitter Video Downloader software. Then click the download icon in the lower right corner of the page.

The post How to Download Videos from Facebook and Twitter? appeared first on Techlist.

In a recent SEC filing, Twitter published a letter from Elon Musk’s legal team this morning. It expresses unhappiness with the information provided by the corporation about the amount of “spam and bogus accounts” on its service. This is the same concern that the internet mogul has stated numerous times since his Twitter agreement was made public.

Musk sees Twitter’s “latest offer to simply provide extra information concerning the company’s testing methods, either through verbal explanations or written materials, [as] tantamount to refusing [his] data requests,” which the SpaceX and Tesla CEO claims will help “facilitate his evaluation of spam and fake accounts on the company’s platform.”

More data (rather than just an explanation of how the current data was gathered) on Twitter’s non-human users — both spam and natural — is vital to reaching a financial agreement. According to the letter, “as Twitter’s possible owner, Mr. Musk has a clear right to the sought data to prepare for the transfer of Twitter’s business to his possession and facilitate his transaction finance.”

Following his many attempts to first dominate the social network and then buy it altogether, Musk has made several assertions about how Twitter counts non-human members. Musk went so far as to tweet excrement-themed emoticons at Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, after he wrote a thread about how the company deals with spam and bots.

Musk’s staff has made it plain that if he doesn’t get further information, he will go. We’ll let you judge whether Musk’s requests are realistic or not. The situation, on the other hand, presents a fascinating conundrum. If Twitter wants Musk to pay the agreed-upon amount, it may cave and reveal more information.

The post Musk Warns of Killing Twitter Deal over Lack of User Data Transparency appeared first on Techlist.

Elon Musk, a well-known internet tycoon, just purchased the social media giant Twitter. With 93 million followers, he has a sizable following on the platform. However, according to a recent audit, about a quarter of those followers (23.42 percent) are false or spam accounts.

The audit was carried out by the companies SparkToro and Followerwonk. They claimed that their interpretations of the terms “spam” and “fake” may differ from Twitter’s. According to the company, an algorithm that ran 35,000 fake Twitter accounts bought by SparkToro identified 50,000 accounts as non-spam using a system of 17 warning flags.

If a billionaire’s follower received multiple spam signals, they were labelled as low-quality or false. According to the analysis, 70.23 percent of Musk’s followers are inactive users who haven’t tweeted in 90 days. According to the survey, 73 percent of Musk’s Twitter followers had spam-related keywords on their profiles, and 71 percent used locations that didn’t match any region.

In addition, 41% of the accounts had display names that matched spam account patterns. A large percentage of the accounts (69%) have been dormant for more than 120 days. 83 percent of followers had “suspiciously few” followers, and 78 percent followed “an extraordinarily tiny number of accounts.” The teams analysed signs like the account’s age, the amount of tweets sent over time, and the use of Twitter’s default profile picture for a more in-depth investigation.

“Those that do not regularly have a human being personally composing the content of their tweets, consuming the activity on their timeline, or engaging in the Twitter ecosystem,” according to SparkToro. Those who do not have a human creating the content of their tweets, consuming the activity on their timeline, or participating in the Twitter ecosystem on a regular basis.

Because the fraudulent or spam accounts could be bots gathering news and tweeting images from throughout the world, the researchers decided that they were not generally harmful. Spam accounts were “guilty of peddling propaganda and disinformation, encouraging spam email or malware, manipulating stocks and cryptocurrencies, and harassing other users,” according to Business Insider.

The assessment comes after Musk announced last week that he would halt his $44 billion buyout of Twitter unless the company can prove that less than 5% of its followers are fake. In a tense exchange with Musk, Twitter CEO Prag Agarwal defended the company’s statistics, claiming that the company suspends half a million spam accounts every day.

The post More than 23% of Elon Musk’s Twitter Followers are Spam or Fake Accounts appeared first on Techlist.

The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk is not yet complete. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced the purchase of Twitter for $44 billion more than two weeks ago, but Musk has failed to complete the transaction.

Musk has recently stated that the Twitter purchase is “currently on hold,” needing “information supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do fact constitute less than 5% of users.” This is in response to a report published  earlier this month that said Twitter thinks spam and fake accounts make up fewer than 5% of its total user base. Elon Musk appears to dispute that only 5% of customers are affected.

If a bigger percentage of Twitter users are spam and bogus accounts, the company’s value will drop, making it less valuable to any buyer. Musk would have to offer less than $44 billion to acquire the social media platform. It’s unclear what’s going on behind the scenes, but Twitter’s stock has dropped as a result of the revelation.

Elon Musk has stated that he is still committed to the agreement, implying that this is only a last-minute negotiating strategy. In any event, we’ll keep this space updated when new information becomes available.

The post Elon Musk Says $44 Billion Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold appeared first on Techlist.

International news sites reported on Monday that Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, had officially accepted Twitter’s $44 billion acquisition deal.

Shortly after the announcement that Twitter trade had been ceased, the social media firm issued a press release indicating that it had accepted Musk’s offer to take the social network private.

“The Twitter Board went through a thorough and thoughtful process to evaluate Elon Musk’s proposal, focusing on value, certainty, and finance.” Twitter’s Independent Board Chair Bret Taylor told reporters, “The proposed acquisition will generate a considerable cash premium, and we believe it is the best path ahead for Twitter’s stockholders.”

According to the press announcement, the cash acquisition for $54.20 per share is worth approximately $44 billion. Twitter will become a private corporation once the transaction is completed. The announcement puts an end to a drama that began when Musk hinted at a large investment in the company. Soon after, Twitter declared that Tesla CEO Elon Musk would join the board of directors, only for Musk to retract his statement a few days later. Later, he made his “best and last” offer to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, valuing the company at about $43 billion.

“Free speech is the backbone of a functional democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where subjects crucial to humanity’s future are debated,” Musk stated in a statement included in Twitter’s news release. I also want to make Twitter better than it has ever been by adding new features, opening up the algorithms to increase trust, combating spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has enormous potential, and I’m excited to work with the company and the Twitter community to realise it.”

If the deal is finalised, Musk will own Twitter, making him the world’s wealthiest person and someone who has been a vociferous critic of the network while using it in legally problematic ways, most notably through sensitive tweets about his car firm, Tesla.

Though Musk has stated that his primary interest in Twitter stems from the company’s suppression of free speech, his critics are right to be concerned that the billionaire’s control over the platform could result in the silencing of their voices, as well as the voices of others with whom he allegedly picks an argument.

The post Elon Musk Just Bought Twitter for $44 Billion appeared first on Techlist.