Hasta La Gadget!

Twitter has prompted user confusion by implementing a new copyright policy that censors contentious tweets rather than deleting them altogether, a shift that the microblogging service argues is more transparent. According to Twitter’s legal policy chief, Jeremy Kessel, the change offers “more transparency by processing copyright reports by withholding Tweets, not removing,” though some users have still criticized the approach for  potentially censoring first and investigating second.

According to Twitter’s official DMCA policy, the company reserves the right to restrict access to a contentious tweet before a final decision on whether copyright infringement has actually taken place:

“Twitter’s response to notices of alleged copyright infringement may include the removal or restriction of access to allegedly infringing material. If we remove or restrict access to user content in response to a notice of alleged infringement, Twitter will make a good faith effort to contact the affected account holder with information concerning the removal or restriction of access, including a copy of the takedown notice, along with instructions for filing a counter-notification” Twitter

While in the past, however, such tweets were deleted, they now read “This Twitter from @Username has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder,” together with a link to the appropriate policy. A similar message can be shown for media subject to a copyright take-down report.

A Twitter spokesperson claims that the blocking system is preferable to the old approach, which saw the company manually recreating tweets that had been deleted but then deemed not to infringe:

“[W]hen we get a valid DMCA request, we withhold the tweet until such time as we get (if we ever do) a valid counter-response from the user. In this case, if someone with the permalink tries to navigate to the tweet, they’ll see that it is being withheld for copyright reasons. We also send the requests to Chilling Effects for publication. Our prior policy was to delete the Tweet without any language explaining the takedown, then manually repost the Tweet if/when we got a valid counter response” Twitter spokesperson

The increased transparency of the process is being welcomed by many, but the extra visibility of how Twitter reacts to copyright claims is also prompting some confusion from users.

[via GigaOm]

Twitter copyright policy change promises “transparency” through censorship is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Click to viewThe first argument you hear against posting political views on social media is that you’ll only end up alienating your [OTHER PARTY] friends, or crowding the echo chamber your [SAME PARTY] friends have been smugly simmering in for months. But there’s something else you should seriously consider: you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. More »

Instagram, apart from its photo-centric aesthetic qualities, also features an astute photo filtering service. This makes the photo-sharing platform very very enticing. In fact, it was so enticing that Twitter once considered acquiring the company behind it. But after losing to Facebook, it was rumored that Twitter was planning to buy an Instagram-like company to even it out. So when we heard today that Twitter is planning to launch a range photo filters that its users can add to pictures, we weren’t at all surprised.

That seems to suggest that Twitter is taking on the “if you can’t buy it, then build it” approach. According to the New York Times, Twitter is planning to update its mobile platform by introducing filters for photos that will allow people to share images on Twitter while bypassing Instagram. “The filters on Instagram make photos look like they were shot with 1960s Kodachrome or with 1890s sepia tone film,” reports the NYT. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Instagram will translate Instagram mentions to Twitter mentions automatically, makes life a little easier, Instagram drops ‘Find Twitter Friends’ feature,

In this age of digital photography, a picture can be transformed a thousand ways, made to look like a Polaroid snapshot or an antique image, given a moody or artistic or saturated look. Instagram, the social photography app, allows smartphone users to take a picture, apply a filter, and then send it off into the social networking sphere. Now, according to sources, Twitter is poised to take on the popular photography service by adding photo filters to its own mobile app.

The changes to Twitter’s mobile app are supposed to happen “in the coming months,” and will allow users to apply effects to photos directly without needing Instagram as a middle man. In addition, the sources claim that Twitter is also looking into adding other features to its app, including the ability to directly edit and upload videos. Presently, users must go through YouTube, Vimeo, or other video sharing websites.

According to the New York Times, the sources are Twitter employees who do not want to be named because they’re supposed to be staying mum on the project. Says one employee, Twitter’s “Very Important Tweeters,” namely big name celebs, would be “especially happy” for the addition of photo filters to Twitter’s mobile app due to their frequent use of Instagram to send pictures to their Twitter accounts. A Twitter spokesperson declined commenting on the claim.

This claim comes shortly after Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $715 million. The acquisition prompted Twitter to consider the purchase of its own photo service, with sources saying that both Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey and executive chairman Dick Costolo were involved in the process. Ultimately, the company elected to build its own filters instead.

[via The New York Times]

Twitter to compete with Instagram by adding photo filters, says sources is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In case you didn’t know, Twitter actually has an updated list of trending topics in its home page. These trending topics are based on a proprietary algorithm that factors in both the number of tweets and recent increases in that number. But a group of researchers from MIT were able to create an algorithm for Twitter than can reportedly predict the trending topics better. The researchers, led by Associate Professor Devavrat Shah, claims that the newly created algorithm is 95 percent accurate and around 90 minutes faster than Twitter’s existing service.

Essentially, the algorithm will scan a number of tweets and will compare the gathered data with the latest information available to detect the patterns. If an older tweet will continue to have matching tweets, then there’s a high chance that the topic is trending. The researchers say that the algorithm works like the stock market and that it can be applied to almost anything. Twitter could benefit from the new algorithm and the social platform could even charge a premium for ads linked to popular topics. “But it also represents a new approach to statistical analysis that could, in theory, apply to any quantity that varies over time: the duration of a bus ride, ticket sales for films, maybe even stock prices,” says Larry Hardesty from the MIT News Office.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Twitter planning to add photo filters, says report, Skydrive images posted natively on Twitter timeline,