Mastodon’s structure WAS and still IS too complicated for anyone who isn’t more tech or systems savvy.. it wasn’t built to be a mainstream social media platform. There are several alternate fast following companies that are moving to fill that void with a better solution. some of which have gained tremendous traction in the past couple months.
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Elon & Twitter
- Thread starter Buckminster
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
People can also jack your SIM and use it to receive your SMS messages.Remove SMS verification altogether. Done.
Nothing new. Tesla’s 2FA is also app based.
Why Using SMS Authentication for 2FA Is Not Secure
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is now a part of daily life, and most of us have had first-hand experience with SMS authentication. You enter your password, then you get a prompt to enter a code or pin that’s sent to your phone number. After you type in the code, you’re in. Simple, right? We all...securityboulevard.com
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Except they are keeping it for paid accounts, which shows it likely was more a financially motivated move than security motivated. As someone pointed out in the thread, Elon probably never seen the toll fraud details (even if true), just that they are getting a significant bill for the text messages being sent, which they can easily cut by disabling this feature.Remove SMS verification altogether. Done.
Nothing new. Tesla’s 2FA is also app based.
Why Using SMS Authentication for 2FA Is Not Secure
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is now a part of daily life, and most of us have had first-hand experience with SMS authentication. You enter your password, then you get a prompt to enter a code or pin that’s sent to your phone number. After you type in the code, you’re in. Simple, right? We all...
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
I'm sure it's VERY financially motivated. I have clients that use SMS for 2FA and it's a VERY expensive validation mechanism for them.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
For a sense of scale, it was already reported last year that Elon mentioned:
"During a live Spaces session early on Wednesday, Musk said that the microblogging site was being scammed "$60 million per year for SMS texts," not counting North America."
Twitter Was Being Scammed $60M Every Year, Tesla Freezes Hiring, Netflix On Microsoft's Acquisition Radar: Today's Top Stories
Benzinga 'Twitter Was Being Scammed $60M Per Year:' Elon Musk On Why 2FA Is Not Working For Some Users Are you a Twitter user wondering why you are having problems logging into your accounts or changing passwords because of disruptions in two-factor authentication codes? Twitter chief Elon Musk...
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
For a sense of scale, it was already reported last year that Elon mentioned:
"During a live Spaces session early on Wednesday, Musk said that the microblogging site was being scammed "$60 million per year for SMS texts," not counting North America."
Twitter Was Being Scammed $60M Every Year, Tesla Freezes Hiring, Netflix On Microsoft's Acquisition Radar: Today's Top Stories
Benzinga 'Twitter Was Being Scammed $60M Per Year:' Elon Musk On Why 2FA Is Not Working For Some Users Are you a Twitter user wondering why you are having problems logging into your accounts or changing passwords because of disruptions in two-factor authentication codes? Twitter chief Elon Musk...finance.yahoo.com
Thanks for that, falls about in line with what I have seen on smaller clients.
We build some websites for clients, and at their request (and our strong recommendation against) added SMS 2FA to their systems. In the first week these small businesses racked up $10k bills for SMS each because of abuse of the SMS system (tons of account sign-ups). We quickly moved them to something more secure, but it was a hard lesson for them.
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italian bread
Member
Nice to know that money is more important than cybersecurity. 
Twitter’s two-factor authentication change “doesn’t make sense”
“On the surface, this sounds like a good degree of concern for users’ safety, but if you pay for Twitter Blue—and are, therefore, a customer who is serious about your Twitter usage and who Twitter should care about the most—you can continue to use that less secure method of authentication. Huh?” says Jim Fenton, an independent identity privacy and security consultant. “And if you aren't a Twitter Blue subscriber, and they downgrade you to just password-based authentication, now they've fully taken something that's purported to improve users’ security and done exactly the opposite.”
Twitter’s two-factor authentication change “doesn’t make sense”
“On the surface, this sounds like a good degree of concern for users’ safety, but if you pay for Twitter Blue—and are, therefore, a customer who is serious about your Twitter usage and who Twitter should care about the most—you can continue to use that less secure method of authentication. Huh?” says Jim Fenton, an independent identity privacy and security consultant. “And if you aren't a Twitter Blue subscriber, and they downgrade you to just password-based authentication, now they've fully taken something that's purported to improve users’ security and done exactly the opposite.”
The article from Babylon Bee is satire, but the poll result is very much real:
Alarming new study finds half of Americans believe news organizations intend to mislead and misinform with their reporting
America's Frankenstein-like information environment has shattered trust.
www.cnn.com
American Views 2022: Part 2 Trust, Media and Democracy
The past five years of Gallup/Knight studies on this topic have focused mostly on the practices of news organizations linked to trust. The focus of the American Views 2022: Part 2 report is to expand understanding of the emotional factors that drive attitudes about the news.
knightfoundation.org
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stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
CNN article goes into reasons why. People increasingly want the news to match their political biases rather than be a reporting of the truth. So it's obvious when the truth does not align with biases, they become less favorable of media that report on it. It then becomes a challenge for media if they stay truthful and factual or do they change their reporting to try not to offend one side. Basically the false balance problem:The article from Babylon Bee is satire, but the poll result is very much real:
Alarming new study finds half of Americans believe news organizations intend to mislead and misinform with their reporting
America's Frankenstein-like information environment has shattered trust.
American Views 2022: Part 2 Trust, Media and Democracy
The past five years of Gallup/Knight studies on this topic have focused mostly on the practices of news organizations linked to trust. The focus of the American Views 2022: Part 2 report is to expand understanding of the emotional factors that drive attitudes about the news.
False balance - Wikipedia
Norbert
TSLA will win
Maybe there are two different things. Target groups wanting the media on their own side to be even more one sided, and the media on the other side to be more balanced. It's like climate change deniers asking the idealistic media to report on "both sides", all the while trying to discredit the scientific consensus.
A good model for how to do things right is the media organization that tried to bring balance -- to uh, its bank accounts at least -- by reporting things that none of its staff actually believed true or accurate. That’s bending over backwards for us! Sad to think it likely will result in a damaging legal settlement.
Twitter’s management, meanwhile, seems to actually believe the various nutty fantasies, which is more admirable. At least to climate deniers, election deniers, vaccine deniers and white nationalists.
italian bread
Member
I guess advertising is important to twitter, after all.
Elon Musk keeps laying off Twitter employees after saying cuts were done
Dozens of Twitter employees across sales and engineering departments were laid off last week, including one of Musk’s direct reports who was managing engineering for Twitter’s ads business, according to company sources and social media posts from affected employees seen by The Verge. This means Musk has done at least three rounds of layoffs since his promise to stop doing them in November. Meanwhile, he has given a directive internally to revamp how ads are targeted in Twitter’s main feed within a week — part of his plan to fix what he has publically called “the worst ad relevance on Earth.” (The Information first reported that fresh cuts hit the sales team last week.)
Musk’s plan is to change Twitter’s ad targeting to work like Google’s search ads, which target primarily by keywords that are searched for, rather than a user’s activity and profile data. It’s an approach that works well for a search engine — where people go to express specific intent for finding something — and has helped Google build one of the most profitable businesses of all time. But it hasn’t worked for a social media business to date.
Elon Musk keeps laying off Twitter employees after saying cuts were done
Dozens of Twitter employees across sales and engineering departments were laid off last week, including one of Musk’s direct reports who was managing engineering for Twitter’s ads business, according to company sources and social media posts from affected employees seen by The Verge. This means Musk has done at least three rounds of layoffs since his promise to stop doing them in November. Meanwhile, he has given a directive internally to revamp how ads are targeted in Twitter’s main feed within a week — part of his plan to fix what he has publically called “the worst ad relevance on Earth.” (The Information first reported that fresh cuts hit the sales team last week.)
Musk’s plan is to change Twitter’s ad targeting to work like Google’s search ads, which target primarily by keywords that are searched for, rather than a user’s activity and profile data. It’s an approach that works well for a search engine — where people go to express specific intent for finding something — and has helped Google build one of the most profitable businesses of all time. But it hasn’t worked for a social media business to date.
It’s the start finally of MICROPAYMENTS for the internets.. technically would be the next big thing.
Unless Twitter provides an API to integrate their payment system with third parties to pay for things, I don't think it's the next big thing, but just checking another feature off the list of things that other platforms already have. Calling it merely "coins" I suspect it's more a "tipping" system like Twitch (bits) and YouTube (super chat/super etc) have.
If this was PayPal 2.0 I think that it wouldn't be so boringly called "coins".
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