Everything you need to know about Twitter
Twitter (and now with the “X” logo) is one of the most popular social media platforms today. Launched in 2006, it is a microblogging platform that has 100 million active users and 500 tweets daily. The platform can be used to share short messages, read the latest news, follow celebrities and keep up with what’s happening on Twitter.
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, came up with the idea in 2006 to create an SMS-based communication platform where people could stay up to date by simply posting statuses. In its early days, the platform was more like regular text messaging.
However, it began to evolve rapidly over time. Dorsey, along with his co-founder Evan Williams, brainstormed various ideas to make the platform more interesting for users. Previously, Twitter only allowed 140 characters for status updates, but now the limit has been increased to 280 characters. What started out as an SMS-based platform has now evolved into a mix of social networking, blogging, and text messaging.
Over the past 10 years, the platform has grown exponentially. The goal of Twitter is to spread information very quickly. However, this information may not always be serious.
The main purpose of Twitter is to connect different people and allow them to share their thoughts and ideas with a wide audience. However, different people may use this platform in different ways, depending on their field of work or use.
- Twitter for marketers
Twitter is most often used by marketers. They use the platform to provide their audience with valuable information about their products before they become customers. In addition, the character limit plays an important role in creating short, quick, and catchy headlines that can grab attention instantly.
- Twitter for the PR team
Twitter is a great weapon for a PR team. If you work in a PR team, you can use Twitter to make announcements about your clients, share the release date of a client’s product, or even announce the date of an upcoming event.
Twitter for journalists
Twitter is mostly used to quickly disseminate news or information, so it can help journalists grab the attention of a huge audience by posting short descriptions about daily events or any news. In addition, many celebrities, political leaders, and famous people use this platform to communicate directly with their fans, so Twitter is a great place for insider news. However, the news spread through the platform may not always be true, and that’s why you should verify every story before sharing it.
- Twitter for individuals
Finally, the general public uses Twitter for entertainment and fun. It helps them stay up to date with the latest news and trending topics. You can see what other people are sharing or doing, learn more about your favorite celebrity, or share your thoughts with your audience.
The era of Elon Musk
The richest man on the planet, SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk closed a deal to acquire the social network Twitter for $44 billion and took over the company at the end of October 2022. After a series of scandalous management decisions, on December 19, he launched a poll on whether he should remain as the company’s CEO.
The majority of users voted “no” because whatever Musk does now only causes outrage. So, on December 21, 2022, he wrote that he would resign as soon as he found someone “reckless enough to take over.”
The billionaire, who a few years ago shared the secrets of success and productivity, once in the position of CEO, cut half of the staff, including senior management, canceled monthly days off for employees and remote work – this led to massive layoffs, but Musk had his own arguments for this – most of those fired were just wiping their pants in their positions.
Musk justified his purchase of the social network by his desire for freedom of speech. But in practice, it turned out that saying whatever you want and freedom of speech are not the same thing. Thus, based on his vision of freedom of speech, Musk returned to the platform the accounts of the 45th President of the United States Donald Trump, rapper Kanye West and psychologist Jordan Peterson, which had been permanently blocked for violating the rules. The new owner of the social network also returned a number of accounts that had been blocked for insults and hate speech.
At the beginning of his tenure as Twitter CEO, Elon Musk stunned with the announcement that verified users of the network would have to pay $20 for this privilege, and other users would be able to verify for $20. Employees working on this update were told that they had to complete it within a week or be fired. Subsequently, the blue tick price dropped to $8 and then rose to $11. Musk’s pricing has caused a lot of discussion, and even Stephen King has not avoided this issue.
The most recent, controversial, but undeniable innovation from Musk was the change of the logo to the Latin letter “X”, which took place on July 24, 2023. The new logo was displayed in the social network’s interface and account. Elon Musk, the owner of the social network, also set the new logo as his profile picture. Earlier, he posted a photo with a projection of the symbol on a building with the caption “our office tonight.”
Music publishers against Elon Musk
After implementing all of his drastic changes to Twitter, it would not be surprising to see Elon Musk, who considers copyright law a plague on humanity, involved in a new $250 million copyright infringement scandal.
17 music publishers have joined forces to sue Twitter. The subject of the dispute is copyright infringement of approximately 1,700 songs. The lawsuit states that Twitter’s management has systematically ignored any claims of infringement since December 2021. During this time, about 300,000 user posts were challenged. David Israelite, president of the National Association of Music Publishers, noted that Twitter is the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license millions of songs on its service.
How did Elon Musk react to this? Judging by his tweets, he does not believe that there are any violations. In his opinion, the current copyright law goes absurdly far beyond the protection of the original creator and is a “plague on humanity.” It’s strange to hear this from a man who has made millions on intellectual property rights.
In fact, before Musk bought the company, in 2021, Twitter was negotiating licensing rights with three major music labels – Universal, Sony, and Warner. But then all talk of this stopped. One of the reasons is the high cost of such deals – more than $100 million per year.
In a lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Nashville, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) claims that Twitter “permits and encourages infringement” for profit. The situation has not improved since Elon Musk bought the company.
The NMPA, which represents firms including Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management, and Universal Music Publishing Group, claims that Twitter continues to “profit enormously from the availability of unlicensed music without paying the required license fees.” The violations have given Twitter an “unfair advantage” over competitors including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, which all pay for music licenses.
Of course, Elon Musk’s tweets – and his enhanced Twitter Blue package with the ability to upload longer videos – are also mentioned in the lawsuit. It does not mention the stream of movies uploaded to Twitter over the past few months, such as copies of the Mario Brothers Super Family and Avatar: The Way of the Water, which stayed there for several hours before being removed. Instead, the article provides examples of some of Musk’s tweets.
One user complained that their account could be suspended after five reports of copyright infringement, to which Musk responded that he was “looking into it” and advised them to “consider turning on a subscription,” which the lawsuit alleges induced them to pay Twitter to hide copyright infringing material so that it could not be flagged.
Most of the infringements that Twitter has been notified of involve music videos, videos of live music performances, or other videos synchronized with copyrighted music, and the NMPA accuses Twitter of using these videos to increase its value by increasing the time people spend on its website. The NMPA claims that Twitter failed to remove the infringing content after it was reported and “continued to assist known repeat infringers” without risking the loss of their accounts.
The lawsuit also pointed to specific tweets in which music was used without permission, including a post about Rihanna’s song “Umbrella” that included, as the lawsuit alleged, two minutes of the song’s video. The post received 221,000 views and 15,000 likes, according to the lawsuit, but did not have permission from the song’s publishers.
The social network’s response
Twitter asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit for “improperly formulated allegations”, arguing that the complaint did not contain any allegations of intentional copyright infringement behavior by Twitter: “The law requires that the infringement arises from the defendant’s active, deliberate, non-automated behavior, not from passive, automated website operations.”
In addition, the social network’s lawyers noted that the NMPA plaintiffs did not provide evidence that Twitter receives “direct financial benefit from the alleged copyright infringement.” Their statement says that the fact that Twitter has not signed license agreements with music rights holders “is not evidence of an intent to facilitate copyright infringement.”
How about that, Elon Musk?)) A phrase that has become a well-known meme in the Ukrainian media space. However, everyone needs to learn how to protect intellectual property rights. And we, as lawyers in this field, will be able to tell you how to do it effectively. So write to us, fill out the form on the website, and we will definitely respond to each request.
copyright / Elon Musk / intellectual property / NMPA / Twitter
