Gizmodo

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he gave employees one week to turn verification into a paid service. To many, the idea that anyone would pay for a blue check on Twitter seemed absurd, and even undermined the very idea of verification. The joke may be on us, it turns out.

Gizmodo

With Elon Musk’s Twitter making an absolute mess with paid verification and Twitter Blue, rival Meta has stepped up to the plate with a similarly ludicrous plan to have users pay for the privilege of proving they are who they say they are on Facebook and Instagram. More than that, Meta is advertising those who pay…

Engadget

TikTok has launched its research API and has started giving more people access to its data as part of its "continued commitment to transparency and accountability," the ByteDance-owned service says. The short-form video hosting app has been beta testing its API since last year with help from members of its Content and Safety Advisory Councils.

Gizmodo

Phone numbers are a finite resource. So when one goes out of a service, there’s a good chance telecom companies will reuse it for a new phone plan. That can be a big problem on WhatsApp. In some cases, if you get your hands on a phone number that was tied to an existing WhatsApp account, you can hijack it and assume…

Gizmodo

The Supreme Court’s ruling on a pair of ISIS terrorism cases this week will rest on the nine justices’ interpretation of 26 words written in 1996 that collectively have come to define the nature and scope of modern online expression.

Engadget

Meta has begun rolling out a major iOS update for WhatsApp. Spotted this week by 9to5Mac, WhatsApp version 23.3.77 finally adds picture-in-picture support for video calls.

Gizmodo

India is down to one Twitter office after CEO Elon Musk surprised employees in two of the three offices when he told them to work from home. The New Delhi and Mumbai offices were affected while the Bengaluru office located in Southern India was permitted to remain open.

Engadget

Fitbit says it's working on enhancing the app experience to focus on providing its users with the best fitness tools, and its efforts to do so apparently include sunsetting a handful of features. Starting on March 27th, open groups, as well as all Fitbit challenges and adventures, will no longer be available on the Google-owned fitness company's app.

Engadget

Microsoft has formally approved a way to run Windows 11 on ARM-based Macs, if not in the way you might hope.