Twitter - SlashGear

Just a few Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube alternatives

Chris Burns | Jun 18, 2018

If you no longer want to be part of the connected world that's also the ad-supported world, there are alternatives. They aren't the same as the apps and social networks you use now, and it's not often that they get as big a celebrity following - but maybe that's not why you're on the internet in the first place. Today we're having a peek at a few alternatives to the major social networks as they roll right this minute.

Twitter puts major focus on news with latest updates

Eric Abent | Jun 13, 2018

Twitter, if you couldn't already tell, not only wants to be a place to keep in touch with your friends, but also a platform you can use to keep up with news and other matters that are important to you. We've seen Twitter roll out a number of features over the years to achieve these goals, including Moments and the Explore tab. Today, however, Twitter has detailed plans for a fairly massive expansion of this new initiative, and a number of improvements to existing features are coming along with it.

Galaxy Note 9: details closer to the truth

Chris Burns | May 18, 2018

Newest details leaked on the Galaxy Note 9 suggest we're already nearly on the money for Samsung's biggest phone of the year. This device isn't going to be more of a Silver Surfer than it is a Galactus. This is the herald of things to come. For some of the more hardcore buy-all-Samsung users, this might be an unwelcome revelation. For those that've been waiting for a couple years to upgrade - an upgrade'll probably be just fine, here and now.

Melania’s “Be Best” document was a copy, too

Chris Burns | May 8, 2018

Yesterday we told you about a document released by First Lady Melania Trump and the White House about Internet Bullying. Overnight it was revealed that this document wasn't just written in part by the FTC, as we mentioned, but it was almost a carbon copy of a document released by the FTC back in 2014. All that was changed were the icons and the title of the document.

Twitter saved your password as plain text: Now it says to change it

Chris Davies | May 3, 2018

Twitter is warning every user on its service to change their password, after discovering that it was inadvertently storing login credentials as plain text. The company announced it had 336m monthly active users only last month, and it turns out it was storing their passwords completely unmasked in an internal log.

Twitter is down, it’s not just you, April 2018

Chris Burns | Apr 17, 2018

This morning Twitter experienced some problems at its source. The servers that keep Twitter in business appeared to be having some issues at around 9AM Central Time, and the problem did not appear to be localized to any one country or region. Reports poured in from California to Poland, Utah to Romania. Hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, because there's no Twitter right now, and that's an issue.

Quit Facebook but keep your account: Here’s how

Chris Burns | Apr 16, 2018

Don't quit Facebook - just turn the right parts off. There's a switch in Facebook that'll turn down all the noise. There's a switch in Facebook that'll turn OFF your need to share all your private info. That switch is called "Unfollow" - and it's been there for a long, long time. It's just a little bit hidden - because Facebook doesn't really want you to use it.

Twitter’s pistol emoji replaced with squirt gun in new update

Brittany A. Roston | Apr 11, 2018

The Twitter emoji, more commonly called Twemoji, were updated to version 2.6 today, the latest update since the minor one introduced in late February. It's a pretty standard update, but there is one interesting aspect to it: the "Pistol" emoji (which is actually a cartoon revolver) has been replaced by an equally cartoony squirt gun.

Privacy settings: it’s time to check them and here’s how

JC Torres | Apr 11, 2018

Thanks to Facebook, online privacy has come under the spotlight once again. But if history repeats itself, the issue will blow over after a year or so and people, especially end users, will have forgotten the lessons they learned or should have learned from the fiasco. So while the topic is hot and the fear fresh in our minds, it’s best to take stock of the places where we leave our digital footprints and make sure that those are really the only things we leave behind.

Delete your apps, what’s left?

Chris Burns | Apr 6, 2018

If you deleted every one of your phone's apps, what would be left of your life? Would you still have a job? Would your friends still speak with you? How about your family - would you still be able to communicate? Could you find a way to show everyone what you're doing every day - or would you even want to?

California bill proposal wants social networks to disclose bots

Brittany A. Roston | Apr 4, 2018

California has proposed legislation that, if passed, would require Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms to disclose bots to users. The system would have to ID the bots, alerting users to the non-human behind the post and the potential propaganda it may be spreading. The proposal follows Facebook's discovery of Russia propaganda on its platform, one mirrored later on by Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr.

Twitter gears up to ban most cryptocurrency ads

Eric Abent | Mar 26, 2018

Earlier this month, Twitter announced its plans to begin cracking down on cryptocurrency spam accounts. If you're a regular Twitter user, you've likely encountered them before: accounts that exist for no other reason than to part gullible people from their cryptocurrency. As it turns out, that isn't the only thing Twitter is going to do to cut back on the amount of cryptocurrency spam on its platform, as it will soon be restricting certain ads as well.