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X plans to collect biometric data, job and school history
- bastardoperator 3y agoWho wants to get doxxed?
- sschueller 3y ago"Assassination coordinates"...
- morkalork 3y agoEmployment history? What's the plan, a corporate owned social credit score?
- nerdponx 3y agoOr they want to compete with Linkedin.
- ryanSrich 3y agoMusk has been open about this being the goal. "Musk wants X to become more like Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s WeChat, a messaging service turned super-app that offers everything from social media and video games to fintech. X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino has said X will include features such as payments and banking." If that doesn't scream social credit score then you're intentionally ignoring it.
- robg 3y agoSo like authoritarian governments? Seems like the exact opposite of free speech absolutist…
- ryanSrich 3y agoMusk is a staunch free speech opponent. You need not listen to what he says, just observe what he does. There may not be a single thing on this earth Musk hates more than free speech.
- rsynnott 3y agoSee, the mistake you're making is reading "free speech absolutist" literally. Read it like you're Winston in 1984, instead.
- hooverd 3y agoI thought I recalled there becoming some sort of "anti-woke" LLM service in the mix too.
- pier25 3y agoHow can X become a super app when it can't even be a social media and chat app right?
- rsynnott 3y agoIt can't; it's pure fantasy.
- gonzo41 3y agoYou nailed the killer question. That leads to all sorts of thinking about brand management and the skills of the person at the top. Twitter had the same level of brand recognition that google has. Musk threw that away for a bad rebrand. He just wrecked a company out of spite, or ignorance. It's surprising he didn't do his own social media to try and outflank them on features from the ground up. It would have been cheaper too.
- realce 3y agoAggressive lock-in and positioning their conglomerate's holdings to be blocks to conducting normal activity in society via any competitor. How about I flood your whole city with robotaxi cars and make it cost a nickel a mile, but you must be an X account holder, must use the X app, must pay in X-coin, and must submit to whatever other perverse encapsulation Lord Musk decides to implement. How about I only carry X-related data over my global net of satellites, forcing most connected people to buy from my ISP, must pay in X-coin but it also only costs 20 bucks a month. On and on, it seems pretty transparent to me. It's all a furious and cynical land-grab in preparation for a very dystopian future.
- ericmay 3y agoYea but competitors (Apple, Meta, Google, etc.) are better across the board and they would be able to provide alternatives or prevent these activities. > How about I only carry X-related data over my global net of satellites Just cherry-picking this one but, but it would get regulated and competitors would come on to the market, and you can also obtain service from traditional providers (ISPs, and mobile providers) like you do today. Also you can see how well these items work now ala Apple (maybe Google too?). Apple Card, iCloud, iPhone, Car Play, etc. good luck competing with that when people actively hate your products lol. I'm not super worried about this. I'm much more concerned about something like disinformation campaigns on social media or something along those lines than I am any sort of competence with Twitter turning into a dystopian nightmare machine.
- dehrmann 3y agoThe problem is Twitter doesn't have a critical mass of users or government support to make these invasive requirements actually happen.
- re-thc 3y ago> The problem is Twitter doesn't have a critical mass of users Twitter might have had. X no.
- googlryas 3y agoI've seen estimates that 65M Americans have twitter. 65M/330M is definitely enough of a critical mass to start something big. Effectively, Musk paid $675 per (American) user to bootstrap his everything app. Probably easier to incrementally add features to the-app-formerly-known-as-Twitter than to build something brand new, even if you can get a ton of sign ups when it is first announced. Take threads as an example, people got excited for approximately 1 minute, then forgot about it.
- numpad0 3y agoThreads died because the content trends was consistent with that of Facebook, highly monetized and therefore unappealing to Twitter users. Totally irrespective of Threads, Facebook is a superior replacement to Twitter in terms of its systems, and the value of Twitter is its violent flow of unmonetizable content generated by explicitly anonymous users, and so the whole thing is where capitalism goes to die and financially there's just no way out. That billionaire man paying generous amount to users would have been a fortunate event to users collectively, but that's it.
- rchaud 3y agoGoogle has probably had 100% of every American adult and child in the past 20 years, and they haven't made a dent in payments, even with their own phone ecosystem. This 65m/330m back of the envelope stuff is pure fantasy. Unless people have no option but to use it, it won't work. For example, the onl reason I use Paypal is that 20 years ago, Ebay didn't offer an alternative. Today, I use it because I can unsubscribe from stuff with one click. I'd never use it otherwise.
- bozhark 3y agoSo he’s a chinussian puppet. Got it.
- gorwell 3y agoYou have to assume they would want to limit their audience, which why would they? They would prefer everyone using their app and not artifically limiting to a subset. That's only something governments or captured corporations do and Twitter/X is neither. Although that could change and worth raising the possibility. Is there any way they could institute a hard constitution-like policy that could prevent it from ever sliding down that slope?
- pelorat 3y agoThe only reason it works in China because it disallows the competition and also lets the government spy on everyone through a single app. In China the Internet might as well be WeChat. Twitter, sorry "X", is in for a rude awakening unless Elon pulls the app from the EU.
- xNeil 3y agoBut WeChat does have competition in China.
- jimlongton 3y agoAre there major micro/restaurant payment apps in China other than WeChat? I imagine it's difficult to compete with an app that's preinstalled on every phone, integrated with every bank and used by every restaurant and street vendor. And that's ignoring the social network effect of the 900+ million daily users.
- whycombagator 3y agoWhat are the competitors and what is their market share/active user base like by comparison?
- bee_rider 3y agoAlso disliking popular things is just a fundamental part of American society. You’d think Musk would get this, given that his whole vibe is “king of the misanthropes.” There’s no way “everything under one brand” works here for long enough to escape the fate of us turning on that brand.
- tempodox 3y agoMany an American is green in the face with jealousy about the total control that China has.
- __derek__ 3y ago> X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino has said X will include features such as payments and banking. With an ad exec at the helm?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway20222 3y agoI am no longer a Twitter user, but if I remember correctly, a recent musk tweet was talking about how bad LinkedIn was and that the new X app should go after that market. Maybe that?
- bastardoperator 3y agoHe just assumes X will disrupt everything, and it won't. It's already on life support, dude can't even pay his bills for office space he still occupies.
- Yizahi 3y agoIt's like buying a car seat from the repair shop and then saying "well, I'll just build the rest of the car around it, easy".
- numpad0 3y agomore like dragster around it. You know how it goes.
- ejb999 3y agoThat would be a decent analogy, if only it wasn't said by someone who managed to do almost exactly that a hundred times over. Who is more believable, a person who has built/built-up and runs several multi-billion dollar companies and accomplished more in his life than 99.999% of people that have ever lived?, or the random person on the internet who likes to anonymously criticize successful people? Sounds a bit like jealousy to me.
- rsynnott 3y agoShouldn't you be off building an imaginary tunnel, Mr Musk?
- worrycue 3y agoHe bought into those companies willingly and on his terms though. Twitter he was force to buy. Now he is flailing around for some kind of exit strategy from his 1 billion a year interest payments. Also today's Musk isn't the same as yesteryear's Musk. Back then people still gave him the benefit of the doubt and allowing him to hype things to the moon. Today he is disliked by a hell of a lot of people making everything he touches toxic to those people.
- somenameforme 3y agoIt's says on the page: "Job Applications / Recommendations. We may collect and use your personal information (such as your employment history, educational history, employment preferences, skills and abilities, job search activity and engagement, and so on) to recommend potential jobs for you, to share with potential employers when you apply for a job, to enable employers to find potential candidates, and to show you more relevant advertising." Basically, LinkedIn.
- mtmail 3y agoJob matching probably "This strategic move comes after Twitter’s acquisition of Laskie, a job-matching tech startup, in May." From the article "Twitter is testing a job board feature on profiles of verified organisations" https://thetechportal.com/2023/07/21/twitter-job-listings/ https://thetechportal.com/2023/07/21/twitter-job-listings/
- cratermoon 3y agoWhere did 𝕏 get the money to buy a startup? The stories I've found said it was acquired for cash and equity, and Laskie had been funded to the tune of $6 million. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/05/16/twitter-reportedly-acquires-job-platform-laskie-in-first-major-deal-under-musk/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/05/16/twitter...
- redox99 3y agoYou can't imagine where X, owned by saudis and the world's richest man, got $6 million from?
- cratermoon 3y agoLet me put it another way. If 𝕏 has $6 million to buy another company, why is the company delinquent on hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in debts, including office space rent, google cloud expenses, Oracle services, AWS, and so on?
- mrguyorama 3y agoThat's just because Musk thinks "just don't pay your bills" is a negotiation tactic. He's just trying to abuse his debtors into agreeing to smaller amounts. Musk and twitter has cash, precisely because they are choosing not to pay anything. That tends to do wonders for your cash flow. That doesn't mean they are profitable, or sustainable.
- rchaud 3y ago
- delfinom 3y agoKinda exists already. Google TheWorkNumber owned by Equifax. They most likely have your data too as every single major HR payroll processor sends your data to them without permission.
- tomxor 3y agoIf the web was your kitchen... It's like some mornings you wake up and your toaster decides it's going to try and be a washing machine, which is kind of annoying when you just wanted some toast. But it's not about what you want, it's about what the toaster wants. It's easier if you remember it's not your kitchen, lower your expectations, or just stop easting toast, breakfast is overrated anyway.
- croes 3y agoDidn't he say he want to make X to a better LinkedIn?
- bl4kers 3y agoGood luck with that
- tux3 3y agoTwitter needs its Wayland.
- Zambyte 3y agohttps://wayland.social https://wayland.social ?
- avarun 3y ago> These posts from this and other servers in the decentralized network are gaining traction on this server right now. > Nothing is trending right now. Check back later! Incredibly popular server.
- Zambyte 3y agoIt's a joke server, specifically in response to x.com.
- lutoma 3y agoTrending posts in Mastodon need to be reviewed by the admin. That message generally means the admin just never bothered to do that (common on single-user instances). But yes, the server is also not very popular (Because it was just set up as a joke after twitter was renamed).
- SkyMarshal 3y agoYou mean a modern rework that doesn't quite take off and takes a decade or more to achieve broad usage and acceptance, while a large part of community still sticks with the old version for specific reasons not supported by the new one? Honestly it seems like it already has that with all the other half-baked microblogging services.
- rrdharan 3y agoX is X and Wayland is Mastodon ?
- rgbrenner 3y agoOne possibility for using biometric data is enabling passwordless sign-ins. No, in both android and ios biometric data is never given to the app for touchid/faceid. It just notifies the app if the authentication passed/failed. So they would never need biometric data to enable biometric authentication.
- hef19898 3y agoWell, Twitter doesn't need it, but they clearly want it! I do see synergies so in case Tesla goes 100% key-less...
- polski-g 3y agoIs it going to end up like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjnLYuezGm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjnLYuezGm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6STtU4vEA4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6STtU4vEA4
- pilsetnieks 3y agoEnd up? If you listen to the podcast, you'll know that the episode was inspired by actual already happened real life events. In fact the real story was even more infuriating. https://jalopnik.com/dennis-from-always-sunny-got-his-tesla-stuck-in-a-parki-1849682811 https://jalopnik.com/dennis-from-always-sunny-got-his-tesla-...
- hef19898 3y agoNeeding the cloud to connect your keys, keyless entry or not, to ypur car (which idealy is an embedded system anyway than works fine without any server connection) is just stupid...
- 40yearoldman 3y agoI really dislike how you jumped some conclusions on implementation. Nobody has any clue how they will gather this data or even if it is for android or iOS. It could be part of the X phone. X could use the camera and implement their own face unlock for X. X could use voice.
- robg 3y agoCan’t be an everything app without knowing everything about you.
- robg 3y agoHow many hours have gone into developing technologies for better ad targeting and yet still the same playbook for social media revenues? Has the approach of sucking up more data about you changed in 10 years? I get it’s been very profitable…
- willvarfar 3y agoThe article links to a lawsuit alleging that X does facial recognition on uploaded photos. Isn't that what FB had to give up doing? And the employment history? Perhaps X want's to be the next Linkedin too?
- neom 3y agohttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1695681276265845189 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1695681276265845189 "People send me LinkedIn links sometimes, but the cringe level is so high that I just can’t bring myself to use it, so I ask for the resume or bio to be emailed. We will make sure that the X competitor to LinkedIn is cool."
- philipwhiuk 3y ago> cool From the guy posting 'memes' and far-right talking points.
- mrguyorama 3y agoAnd yet millions buy it hook line and sinker
- hooverd 3y agoWeird, the new crop of Blue Checks exude the same smarmy cringe as LinkedIn thinkfluencers.
- projectazorian 3y agoIt's the same niche of content; people who repeat what the wealthy and powerful want to hear in the hope that a few crumbs will be thrown their way, eventually.
- rchaud 3y agoHe's always thinking about the customer! /s
- 3y ago
- HumblyTossed 3y agoI can think of several reasons why Elon should never have that information.
- jacquesm 3y agoSo, how many people will fall for it? The very last thing you want to do is to put a guy like Elon Musk (or Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos for that matter) in charge of collecting this sort of data. Before you know it your now mandatory Twitter(sorry, X), Amazon or Facebook account is your life and these wealthy and empathy free people will be in charge of it. This is something you do at your peril.
- lincon127 3y agoWhy don't we give them a pair of calipers while they're at it; maybe while they're logging all this info, they can assess how how well I fit into Musk's dystopian nightmare world he's attempting to establish.
- pelorat 3y agoHow to get your app completely banned in the EU?
- account-5 3y agoElon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat, seems like he's forgetting WeChat is practically used universally in China because it's controlled by the government and forced on people. I see no way of twittex pulling this off.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoHe wants the power, veiled as tech innovation, as you mention by cribbing off of an authoritarian regime. Someone should let the CFPB know. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226812 (CFPB data broker citations)
- xNeil 3y agoWeChat isn't forced on the people by the CCP by any means.
- account-5 3y agoIs it easy to live without it? Can you go about your business without it?
- Conlectus 3y agoThose are separate questions. Is Google forced on people by the US Govt?
- theshrike79 3y agoDoes the US Government use services with Google accounts to conduct official business? You can fill out official government documents in WeChat.
- xNeil 3y agoYou can fill out official government documents in WeChat is entirely different from the government endorsing it. The US government can use AWS without endorsing everyone buy from Amazon.
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago"X now wants your biometric data, as well as your job and education history for 'safety, security, and identification purposes'" Also for advertising, monetization, tracking, selling services to government agencies, and training their machine learning bots. Not for your benefit, but for X's uses and benefits. You are the product and X wants to sell your info and attention so Elon can earn his money back.
- mymythisisthis 3y agoAnd when X goes bankrupt/sold that information will also be sold as an asset of the company.
- lost_tourist 3y agoExactly and can be sold many times over to various sources, including government sources.
- xNeil 3y ago>selling services to government agencies What in the world makes you think that? Musk is pretty clearly against this government, and openly so - if he wants to sell services to government agencies, he's definitely on the wrong path.
- celtoid 3y ago> "Musk is pretty clearly against this government" Musk is a military and intelligence contractor. He makes bank on the government. Look at his actions, not his words.
- netsharc 3y agoBut he can get the government he likes into power... and then, he's golden, baby. Hah, owning Twitter, if was competent, he could've gotten a Rupert Murdoch level of kingmaker powers. Too bad his shrewedness is as great as his level of wit: thinking that dragging in a kitchen sink into the offices is a clever pun.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoPeople who called "conspiracy theorist", as they flagged my comments, are now watching the story unfold
- rsynnott 3y ago> It doesn’t include any details on what kind of biometric information this includes — or how X plans to collect it — but it typically involves fingerprints, iris patterns, or facial features. To post to Twitter, simply look at one of Sam Altman's weird orb things.
- jdthedisciple 3y ago[flagged]
- rsynnott 3y ago[flagged]
- gemstones 3y agoElon’s product thinking really shines here, huh? /s He thinks LinkedIn is cringe (fair) but has a position where he can ignore lots of professional norms. LinkedIn is cringe because people are deliberately trying to respect professional norms and post weird, sanitized, work-appropriate content. Imagine you’re a recruiter. The selling point of X jobs is that they will give you access to people who found professional norms too hard to follow? And probably some specialists who would be hard to recruit, but maybe they get income that’s a multiple of several boutique recruiting agencies from that. This isn’t like stackoverflow jobs where the base is correlated with technical expertise - X jobs is correlated with people who are terminally online who think being polite in their work-facing lives is something that people don’t actually want. What hiring manager wants to draw from that pool?
- fhd2 3y agoIt's weird to admit, but ever since Twitter jumped the shark LinkedIn has become my main replacement. Closest thing to vaguely broad views and updates from people most of which I know to some degree. It _is_ cringe, but not the stuff my "network" writes, and not really based on writing style, for the most part. It's mostly just the sponsored and boosted stuff. That also wasn't my favourite content on Twitter. If X tries to become LinkedIn, it sounds like their major opportunity is to become the worst of both worlds. And what Elon thought was "cool" in the past was, at least in my opinion, mostly not.
- chewmieser 3y agoBloomberg wrote an article on this recently: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-22/instagram-twitter-and-tiktok-upheavals-are-helping-linkedin#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-22/instagram...
- Spooky23 3y agoI'm humbled to hear that you have announced the LinkedIn has replaced Twitter as your firehose of nonsense. That is a significant shift that realigns your media consumption with strategic goals.
- Lolaccount 3y agoOver my dead body.
- bilsbie 3y agoI’m starting to think they need a seamless way to give folks two accounts. They’re trying to be both LinkedIn and reddit. I don’t want my real name on reddit but I would for linked in. It’s an issue they need to solve.
- pohl 3y agoI'd say it's more a choice that you need to make: is what you don't want more important than being there?
- bilsbie 3y agoI mean from their perspective. How can they keep both types of users.
- pohl 3y agoI confess, it's difficult for me to think about the company as "they" (plural). It seems only "he" (narcissistic singular) since no one in his orbit can disagree with him and survive. Moreover, from watching what he does (rather than listening to what he says) it seems that keeping users & advertisers hasn't been a priority, so I'm not expecting that to change.
- SkyMarshal 3y agoHow are they going to collect employment data? Just ask their users, or harvest it from other sources?
- CamelCaseName 3y agoThey're using an Israeli company, AU10TIX, to collect that data. From the platform that launched the Arab Spring.
- rchaud 3y agoAt this point I'm surprised they haven't simply paid Pegasus to pull all that info remotely already. There's a certain gulf prince Musk is pals with that would have their number.
- pseudotrash 3y agoElon Musk would be the last person I trust with my employment history: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon... Or with biometric data for that matter.
- JohnFen 3y agoOr with literally anything else.
- mcpackieh 3y agoStop using it. They are powerless over you if you quit.
- laluneodyssee 3y agoHas anyone found a way to wipe your data from Twitter/X without deleting the account? I dont trust them to do it and they seem to be rate limiting anyone who attempts to themselves
- willcipriano 3y agoPretend to be the parent of the US based 11 year old who created the account and you want it closed and everything deleted. Fastest way to get any unwanted account removed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_...
- oska 3y agoThis may not work if your account is 10+ years old
- syllablehq 3y ago“X” can go F right off
- libraryatnight 3y ago[flagged]
- Tr4kt 3y ago[flagged]
- lost_tourist 3y agoIn the famous words of Bugs Bunny: No. The only reason I use things like HN, reddit, twitter is relative anonymity without a lot of effort. I've used the past few months to set up my own mastodon, password server, matrix server for my friends group. I'm just waiting for everyone to start demanding ID and that will be the final nail in the coffin for this stuff and end of an era for me. I don't need anyone telling me to "end it now!", that's impractical until they force my hand, I'm a pragmatist.
- rvz 3y agoNo different to Meta then. Yet also you should be complaining about LinkedIn or TikTok hoovering up your data as well. Otherwise just delete your accounts on all these social networks already rather than continuing to complain here.
- toss1 3y ago>>The new policy for the service formerly known as Twitter says it will use collected biometric data for ‘safety, security, and identification purposes.’ Clearly does NOT say safety and security of *WHOM". My first thought is the priority is the safety and security of X Corp. Identification, yup, we're the target.
- operatingthetan 3y agoHard pass!
- PappGaborSandor 3y agoX.com is deprecated, use Wayland.social
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ActualHacker 3y agoSounds like tweety is in the Xitter
- DesiLurker 3y agoYup, time to uninstall TwitX & scrub my account history. if this is not a clear indication of how pervasive this shit is going to be then IDK what is.
- Lamad123 3y agowhat is X?
- manuelabeledo 3y agoI guess this is another step towards Twitter/X as the "everything app". Honestly, I don't see this succeeding in any way or form. Perhaps Musk expects the US government to partially subsidize this venture too...
- brandonagr2 3y agoThis is because X will soon offer the optional ability to verify your account with government ID in addition to the current blue checkmark. _If you want to_, the process would be take a selfie and a picture of your government issued ID, and they will use AU10TIX to verify that they match.
- hendersoon 3y agoI know it's generally accepted that "the guy on the street" doesn't care about privacy, but honestly this seems a step too far even for such accepting souls. I guess Musk superfans may go for it, but everybody else? Just to use twitter? C'mon.
- archo 3y agohttps://archive.is/ASJpK https://archive.is/ASJpK