New Delhi:

Elon Musk-run X Corp has banned 2,29,925 accounts in India between April 26 and May 25, mostly for promoting child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity.

The microblogging platform, going through churning under Elon Musk, also took down 967 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform in the country.

In total, X banned 230,892 accounts in the reporting period.

The microblogging platform, in its monthly report in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, said that it received 17,580 complaints from users in India in the same time frame through its grievance redressal mechanisms.

In addition, the company processed 76 grievances which were appealing account suspensions.

“We overturned 0 of these account suspensions after reviewing the specifics of the situation. The remaining reported accounts remain suspended,” said the company.

“We received 31 requests related to general questions about accounts during this reporting period,” it added.

Most complaints from India were about ban evasion (6,881), followed by hateful conduct (3,763), sensitive adult content (3,205), and abuse/harassment (2,815).

Between March 26 and April 25, X banned 1,84,241 accounts in the country.

The microblogging platform also took down 1,303 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk made a lot of noise when he bought Twitter (now X) for $44 billion in 2022. The social media platform has seen quite a few changes since then. 

Now, as per a report by The Telegraph, Elon Musk has fired 6,000 (80 per cent) of the staff. 

The report added that half of the workers were fired within months of the acquisition. It also revealed that Mr Musk had sent his cousin James Musk, and Steve Davis to talk to the employees and justify their roles in the company. People were also asked to share their thoughts on the other employees in the team.

Reportedly, the major lay-offs happened in the diversity and inclusion teams and product development and design. 

The report added, “It was clearly pretty bloated. You had to right-size the organisation. However, Musk went further than anyone predicted. When he cuts a team, he cuts the whole team, and that creates significant chaos.”

A source told The Telegraph, “Musk had been hoping to rebuild the business with a challenger mindset and a clean slate. But lopping off whole divisions without a clear strategy left too many gaps to plug, and talent had plenty of opportunities at fast-growing start-ups like OpenAI rather than struggling Twitter.”

Meanwhile, in his first address after taking over, Elon Musk had warned his employees that “bankruptcy was a possibility if it doesn’t start generating more cash, according to people familiar with the matter.”

He has also asked people employees to brace for 80-hour work weeks, fewer office perks like free food and less work-from-home flexibility. 

New Delhi:

Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk has advised against the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs), citing concerns about their potential vulnerabilities to hacking. His remarks come amidst growing debates over the security of EVMs worldwide, especially following allegations of irregularities in Puerto Rico’s recent primary elections.

“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk posted on X.

We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high. https://t.co/PHzJsoXpLh

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2024

The spotlight on EVM security has intensified due to recent controversies in Puerto Rico. The primary elections there were plagued by numerous irregularities linked to EVMs. However, a paper trail allowed election officials to identify and correct vote tallies.

Musk’s remark was in response to, Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of former US President John F Kennedy and an independent hopeful for the 2024 US Elections, who wrote, “Puerto Rico’s primary elections just experienced hundreds of voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines, according to the Associated Press. Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected. What happens in jurisdictions where there is no paper trail?”

Kennedy Jr advocated for a return to paper ballots to prevent electronic interference in elections, ensuring that every vote is counted and elections remain secure.

While concerns over EVMs are gaining traction in the United States, the scenario in India presents a contrasting picture. India uses the third generation of EVMs, known as M3 EVMs, which are designed to be tamper-proof. These machines enter a ‘Safety Mode’ and become inoperable if any tampering attempts are detected.

A dedicated team of professors from three prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has been instrumental in the latest upgrades of Indian EVMs. The Election Commission of India (ECI) is supported by an eminent Technical Expert Committee (TEC) on EVMs, ensuring that the devices are robust and secure.

READ | Top Experts From IIT Who Helped Design India’s Most Tamper-Proof EVMs

Professor Dinesh K Sharma, a specialist in microelectronics and solid-state electronics from IIT Bombay, told NDTV, “Indian EVMs are different from other EVMs in the world. The M3 EVMs have no connection to any other device, not even mains power supply.”

The Supreme Court this year addressed the issue of cross-verification of votes cast on EVMs through paper slips generated by Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines. A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta rejected petitions seeking 100 per cent cross-verification, maintaining the current practice of verifying five randomly selected EVMs per Assembly constituency.

READ | “Blindly Doubting System…”: Big Supreme Court Order On VVPAT Verification

However, the court issued two directives to the Election Commission. Firstly, after symbols are loaded into an EVM, the symbol loading unit must be sealed and secured in containers signed by the candidates and their representatives. Secondly, these sealed containers, along with the EVMs, should be kept in storerooms for at least 45 days after the declaration of results.

Sydney:

An Australian court on Monday rejected a bid by the country’s cyber safety regulator to extend a temporary order for Elon Musk-owned X to block videos of the stabbing of an Assyrian church bishop, which authorities had called a terrorist attack.

Federal Court judge Geoffrey Kennett said the application to extend the injunction granted last month had been refused. The reasons for the judgement will be released later, the judge said during a brief hearing.

The matter has been listed for a hearing on Wednesday.

The legal tussle has sparked heated exchanges between Musk and senior Australian officials including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who called Musk “an arrogant billionaire” for his objections to take down the video. Musk has posted memes criticising the regulatory order, describing it as censorship.

Other platforms, such as Meta, took down the content quickly when asked.

The Federal Court, Australia’s second-highest court, last month upheld an order by the eSafety Commissioner asking X, formerly Twitter, to take down 65 posts containing footage of the bishop being knifed mid-sermon in Sydney on April 15, saying it showed explicit violence. A 16-year-old boy has been charged with a terrorism offence for the alleged attack.

Australian users have been blocked from viewing the posts but X has refused to remove them globally on the grounds that one country’s rules should not control the internet.

The regulator told the court last week that geo-blocking Australians, the solution X offered, was ineffective because a quarter of the population used virtual private networks that disguised their locations.

Last week, Albanese’s centre-left government announced it would hold a parliamentary inquiry to look into the negative impacts of social media, saying it has significant control over what Australians see online, with almost no scrutiny.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A US judge dismissed a lawsuit in which Elon Musk’s X Corp accused an Israeli data-scraping company of illegally copying and selling content, and selling tools that let others copy and sell content, from the social media platform.

US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled on Thursday that X, formerly Twitter, failed to plausibly allege that Bright Data Ltd violated its user agreement by allowing the scraping and evading X’s own anti-scraping technology.

William Alsup said using scraping tools is not inherently fraudulent, and giving social media companies free rein to decide how public data are used “risks the possible creation of information monopolies that would disserve the public interest.”

The judge also said X was not entitled to “de facto copyright ownership” in copyrighted content that X’s users made available to the public.

Lawyers for X did not immediately respond on Friday to requests for comment.

Or Lenchner, Bright Data’s chief executive, said in a statement: “Bright Data’s victory over X makes it clear to the world that public information on the web belongs to all of us, and any attempt to deny the public access will fail.”

William Alsup said X can try to amend its complaint, which sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for breach of contract, trespass and misappropriation. The San Francisco-based company sued Bright Data last July.

In January, another San Francisco judge ruled that Bright Data had not violated Meta Platforms’ terms of service by scraping data from Facebook and Instagram. Meta ended its lawsuit against Bright Data a month later.

Then in March, another San Francisco judge dismissed X’s lawsuit against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which published articles based on scraped data that faulted a rise in hate speech on the platform.

X claimed that the articles were scaring away advertisers, costing it millions of dollars, and has appealed the decision.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022. His other businesses include electric car company Tesla.

The case is X Corp v Bright Data Ltd, US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-03698.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

San Francisco:

A federal judge on Thursday indicated a willingness to compel Elon Musk to testify again in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into his $44 billion takeover of Twitter.

Lawyers for the billionaire appeared in a San Francisco courtroom on Thursday to urge U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley to decide against the SEC, which is seeking to force Musk to testify as part of its probe into his 2022 purchase of social media giant Twitter. Another judge previously ruled in favor of the agency.

The SEC sued Musk in October to compel the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to testify after he refused to attend a September interview for the investigation, saying the SEC was trying to “harass” him with a number of subpoenas.

The judge did not issue a decision on Thursday.

“I don’t think that the deposition subpoena is unreasonable. What I don’t know is why does the deposition have to be at an SEC office?” Corley said at a hearing at the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

The investigation concerns whether Musk broke federal securities laws in 2022 when he bought stock in Twitter, which he later renamed X. It is also reviewing statements and SEC filings he made in relation to the deal, the agency has previously said.

In 2022, Musk supplied the SEC with documents for its probe and also testified via videoconference for two half-day sessions in July of that year, the SEC has said in court documents. Agency lawyers have said they have more questions for Musk after receiving new documents, and had sought additional testimony.

Musk’s lawyer, Rachel Frank, an associate with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, on Thursday told the judge the additional testimony would be a “burden” for Musk and take him away from obligations to shareholders.

The judge asked whether Musk should be exempt from securities laws and further investigations just because he is a “very busy person” who is running multiple companies.

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Thursday’s face-off is the latest dispute in a years-long feud between Musk and the top U.S. markets regulator, dating back to 2018 when he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

San Francisco:

Elon Musk’s X appealed the dismissal of its lawsuit against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which faulted him for letting hate speech spread on the social media platform once known as Twitter.

X filed a notice of appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco dismissed X’s case on March 25, calling it “evident” that X sued CCDH to silence critics and punish them for their speech.

Though Musk has long styled himself as a free-speech champion, X said CCDH’s research was scaring advertisers away, costing it tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. He is the world’s third-richest person according to Forbes magazine, and also runs the electric car maker Tesla. The appeal could take several months or longer.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Sydney:

Elon Musk’s X said Saturday it will fight an Australian watchdog’s order to take down content related to the brutal stabbing of a priest during a live-streamed Sydney church service.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was allegedly slashed in the head and chest by a 16-year-old suspect on Monday, sparking a riot by followers of the Assyrian Christian church in western Sydney.

The bishop has since issued a message from hospital saying he is recovering from his wounds and has forgiven his assailant.

Video of the bloody attack, which spread widely on social media platforms, has been blamed by Australian authorities for feeding tensions in the community.

X’s government affairs department said it had complied with an initial eSafety directive, “pending a legal challenge”, to remove “certain posts in Australia that commented on the recent attack”.

But the social media platform said it later received a demand from Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant to “globally withhold the posts”.

X said it had been warned it faced a daily fine of Aus$785,000 (US$500,000) for failure to comply.

“The Australian censorship commissar is demanding *global* content bans!” Musk wrote as he reshared the company’s response.

“The eSafety Commissioner does not have the authority to dictate what content X’s users can see globally. We will robustly challenge this unlawful and dangerous approach in court,” X said.

‘Shocked’

X said the posts did not violate its own rules on violent speech.

The eSafety watchdog said Friday it was working to ensure X’s “full and complete compliance” with Australian law.

“We are considering whether further regulatory action is required,” it said.

The authority said it was “disappointed that process has been unnecessarily prolonged rather than prioritising the safety of Australians and the Australian community”.

eSafety said it was also working with major social media platforms over the reposting and sharing of content that shows or encourages terrorism or other extreme violence.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has been scathing of the role played by some platforms in making violent images of the attack available.

“I’m shocked but I’m not surprised,” he said Saturday when asked about X’s statement.

“That is exactly what I would expect from X or Twitter or whatever you want to call it: a disregard for the information that they have pumped into our communities, lies and rumours spreading like wildfire,” Minns said.

“And when things go wrong, throwing their hands up in the air to say they’re not prepared to do anything about it.”

Minns called for a strengthening of the rules governing social media companies.

“We have had enough. Sydney has had enough.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Billionaire Elon Musk’s platform X, which was formerly known as Twitter, is now valued at less than half of what he purchased it for, a year ago. Mr Musk has earlier acknowledged that he had overpaid for Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion, including $33.5 billion in equity. Now, the current value of the company is at $19 billion, almost 55 per cent less than half of what he spent on the social media platform, as per the New York Times. 

The documentation pertaining to the recent stock awards said that X would be providing the equity at a price of $45 per share, with employees able to accumulate restricted stock units over time. According to the company, employees who were issued shares under the previous management would still receive cash payments totalling $54.20 for those shares. However, it is unclear why the share price has not decreased by the same percentage as the company’s worth.

In March this year, Mr Musk told the employees at the company that he believed the company was worth $20 billion and labelled it “an inverse start-up.”

Since taking over Twitter a year ago, Mr Musk has completely redesigned both the business and the social media network. He laid off around 7,500 employees across the globe. Later, modified the content-moderation guidelines and introduced the paid verification procedure. Moreover, advertising, which is a major source of revenue for the company, saw a major drop which caused the cash flow to remain negative in August 2023 with a heavy debt load.

However, the billionaire remains optimistic towards the company’s growth strategy and transforming it into an “everything app”. In a meeting organised on the first anniversary of the acquisition, Mr Musk said, “We’re rapidly transforming the company from sort of what it was, Twitter 1.0, to the everything app with an all-inclusive feature app where you can basically do anything you want on our system. He also spoke about including new features to the microblogging site including dating service.

Although the new owner and CEO Linda Yaccarino were physically absent from the company headquarters, both showered praise on the employees for aiding with the rebranding of the company and launching new features including a revenue share program for the creators, video calls in direct messages and improved live streaming quality.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s X, the social media formerly known as Twitter, is facing 2,200 arbitration claims from ex-employees since Mr. Musk took over the company and fired most of its workforce. The filing fees alone for that volume of cases could amount to $3.5 million.

The lawsuit was filed in a Delaware district court, according to CNBC. The case is Chris Woodfield v. Twitter, X Corp. and Elon Musk (No. 1:23-cv-780-CFC).

A former employee, Woodfield, a former senior staff network engineer who had worked at Twitter’s Seattle office in his suit said that Twitter had promised then failed to pay his severance, and later delayed alternative dispute resolution by failing to pay the necessary fees required for him to move ahead in the JAMS arbitration system, CNBC reported.

According to the website for JAMS, “For two-party matters, the Filing Fee is $2,000,” and “For matters based on a clause or agreement that is required as a condition of employment, the employee is only required to pay $400.”

Since JAMS decided that this basic fee applies across the board to X’s 2,200 arbitration cases, that would amount to around $3.5 million, with other fees possibly to follow.

However, the company’s lawyers have argued that it did not mandate its employees to resolve any issues in arbitration, so it should not be on the hook for the larger portion of the filing fees.

Meanwhile, Mr. Woodfield and others in a similar situation are trying to get out of arbitration and move their cases to trial.