X tests charging new users $1 per year to tweet

It's Wednesday, October 18, 2023.

After weeks of speculation, X has confirmed it will charge new users for the service previously known as Twitter. The company shared details about a new subscription called Not a Bot, which it’s currently testing in New Zealand and the Philippines. The subscription requires new users to pay the equivalent of $1 USD per year to post. “As of October 17, 2023, we’ve started testing Not A Bot, a new subscription method for new users in two countries,” X explained.

X

X also announced major changes to its crowd-sourced fact-checking tool, to stem the flow of misinformation. The company now requires volunteer contributors to include sources on every community note they write. X announced the change after Wired reported that some community notes contributors are worried the tool is being manipulated by bad actors, worsening X’s misinformation problems amid the ongoing Israel–Hamas war. European Union officials have already raised concerns, pointing to the viral spread of video game footage and other unrelated content falsely claiming to depict scenes from the conflict.

Following Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X, the company cut the teams responsible for curating reputable information about breaking news events, removed misinformation-reporting tools and slashed safety team staffing. Requiring a linked source may be X’s attempt to increase the quality of its notes, but there are still no guidelines about the types of sources that can be cited.

— Mat Smith

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Netflix’s first live sports event is a golf tournament

The Netflix Cup will pair up the stars of Formula 1: Drive to Survive and Full Swing.

Netflix is getting into live sports streaming, but it’s not shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars on NFL games, Formula 1 races or the English Premier League quite yet. It’s cheaping out on hosting a pro-am golf tournament with athletes from its Formula 1: Drive to Survive and Full Swing docuseries. You can watch the event starting at 6PM ET on Tuesday, November 14 — just a few days before F1’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Netflix’s first livestreamed event was a Chris Rock standup special, which it edited lightly after the live broadcast. The company ran into technical problems with its second planned livestream, a Love is Blind cast reunion, instead filming the reunion then uploading it.

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The new $79 Apple Pencil has a USB-C charging port

And that’s about it.

Apple

Apple has unveiled a new Apple Pencil for $79 and will be available in early November. It pairs and charges with a USB-C cable and is compatible with every iPad that has USB-C. While it’s the company’s most budget-friendly Apple Pencil yet ($20 less than the original model and $40 cheaper than the second-gen Pencil), there’s no pressure sensitivity this time, so it’s aimed at early-stage artists and sketchers. This is Apple’s latest step in its transition away from the Lightning port, which was largely prompted by European Union rules. What’s next, the Magic Trackpad?

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WhatsApp debuts passkey logins on Android

It didn’t say when the login solution will be available for other devices.

WhatsApp just made logging in a much simpler and faster process, at least on Android devices. The Meta-owned app has launched passkey support for Android, which means users no longer have to use OTPs from two-factor authentication to log into their account. Passkeys are a relatively new login technology designed to be resistant to phishing attacks and password leaks. They’re made up of cryptographic pairs comprising one public key and one private key, which lives on the user’s device. The services that support passkeys don’t have access to that private key, and it also can’t be written down or given away.

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