{"id":1192397,"date":"2022-08-27T18:23:34","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T18:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/27\/whistleblowing-drama-instagrams-teen-safety-features-twitter-adds-podcasts\/"},"modified":"2022-08-27T18:23:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T18:23:34","slug":"whistleblowing-drama-instagrams-teen-safety-features-twitter-adds-podcasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/27\/whistleblowing-drama-instagrams-teen-safety-features-twitter-adds-podcasts\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblowing drama, Instagram\u2019s teen safety features, Twitter adds podcasts \u2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.<\/p>\n

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.<\/p>\n

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.<\/p>\n

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com\/newsletters<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter whistleblower\u2019s impact (or lack thereof!) on the Elon Musk lawsuit<\/h3>\n

The headlines this week were dominated by Twitter\u2019s former head of security, Peiter \u201cMudge\u201d Zatko\u2019s, explosive whistleblower complaint.<\/p>\n

The former Twitter employee accused the company of cybersecurity negligence that ranged from a lack of basic security controls to national security threats and foreign intelligence risks. But one more immediate question on everyone\u2019s minds is whether or not Zatko\u2019s statements about bots on the platform will help or hurt Elon Musk\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

To some, it may appear that Zatko has backed up Musk\u2019s claims when he notes that there are millions of active accounts on the platform which Twitter is not including in its mDAU metric \u2014 a metric Twitter itself invented to count only those users it could monetize by way of advertisements. (That is, mDAUs are mostly people, not spambots.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThese millions of non-mDAU accounts are part of the median user\u2019s experience on the platform,\u201d states the complaint. \u201cAnd for this vast set of non-mDAU active accounts, Musk is correct: Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately \u2018detect\u2019 or measure the prevalence of spam bots,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\n

The complaint then goes on to say that Twitter, when asked in 2021, couldn\u2019t identify the total number of spam bots on its platform, and couldn\u2019t provide an accurate upper bound on that figure.<\/p>\n

Ah ha!,<\/em> right? Even Twitter doesn\u2019t know how much spam it has!<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, maybe that\u2019s not the smoking gun you might think.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s legal argument is that Twitter has been misleading its users and investors about the number of bots on its platform, which the company has estimated to be less than 5%. (Because surely this all hasn\u2019t come about because Musk overpaid for the deal and now wants out!)<\/p>\n

However, Twitter has been reporting to the SEC that spam and bots are less than 5% of its mDAUs<\/em> \u2014 a figure that\u2019s essentially already scrubbed of bots so advertisers know how many real eyeballs they\u2019re able to reach. What\u2019s more, while Zatko may have a point that this sort of made-up, proprietary metric is ripe for manipulation, he also says in the complaint that Twitter execs are \u201cincentivized to avoid counting spam bots as mDAUs.\u201d<\/em> In other words, it seems likely that Twitter\u2019s statements to the SEC are<\/em> correct when Twitter says its mDAU figures are \u201cless than 5%\u201d spam.<\/p>\n

Plus, even if Twitter doesn\u2019t know how much total spam is on the platform at any given time, that doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t figure out how much spam is in its mDAU<\/em> figure \u2014 a figure Twitter has explained it calculates using private data. Twitter looks at things like IP addresses, phone numbers, geolocation, client\/browser signatures and more, CEO Parag Agrawal noted in a Twitter thread<\/a>. This helps it to come up with its mDAU figure, by classifying accounts that appear to belong to \u201creal\u201d users as such.<\/p>\n

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Now, we know we aren\u2019t perfect at catching spam. And so this is why, after all the spam removal I talked about above, we know some still slips through. We measure this internally. And every quarter, we have estimated that <5% of reported mDAU for the quarter are spam accounts.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s worth noting the total spam on Twitter\u2019s platform is always in flux \u2014 when Twitter does a big sweep for spam and bots, users have noticed their follower counts drop. However, Twitter wasn\u2019t monetizing based on those bots nor was it reporting inflated user metrics to the SEC by including spambots in its user figures \u2014 at least, not since its invention of the mDAU in 2019.<\/p>\n

And while it\u2019s true that mDAUs are not a representation of the spam-filled Twitter user experience today \u2014 an experience, remember, that Musk claimed he was buying Twitter to fix! \u2014 they are an indicator of how many real people are on the site. And that\u2019s what a new owner would want to know anyway, right?<\/p>\n

Whether or not mDAUs represent Twitter as it truly is<\/em> misses the point. Sure, mDAUs may be a non-standard metric. It might not be comparable to the metrics used by other social platforms. It may even be a bad metric! But that\u2019s not relevant to the case. The fact is, it\u2019s not a new metric. Twitter defined it years ago and was using mDAUs long before Musk committed to buying Twitter. It\u2019s what Twitter reports to the SEC.<\/p>\n

So good luck using this as proof of being lied to, Mr. Musk. Can\u2019t wait to see how that works in court!<\/p>\n

In other news, Twitter expands into podcasting<\/h3>\n

While the whistleblower news may have been the biggest news story of the week, Twitter dropped<\/a> some pretty significant product news as well. It\u2019s turning itself into a podcast app.<\/p>\n

The company announced an update to its Twitter Spaces tab that would see it integrating podcasts into a revamped experience where content is now organized into hubs called \u201cStations.\u201d These Stations group content by topics \u2014 like news, sports, music and more. The app will also make recommendations based on who you follow and how you engage with content. Twitter Spaces \u2014 including both live and prerecorded audio \u2014 will also continue to be available in the Spaces tab.<\/p>\n

had previously reported that Twitter was developing Stations and a personalized audio digest as part of a makeover coming to its Spaces tab, but we didn\u2019t know the extent of the podcast integrations at the time. The company tells us it\u2019s making over 2 million podcasts available at launch, which are programmatically recommended to users.<\/p>\n

Podcasts are ingested as RSS feeds, which means the 2 million figure is not a hard limit \u2014 Twitter could expand. Still, it\u2019s a notable out-of-the-gate start, as Spotify today has more than 4 million podcasts, many of which are produced in-house, exclusives or shows recorded in its Anchor app.<\/p>\n

Twitter, of course, is home to its own sort of exclusives, known as Twitter Spaces. These live audio programs can be recorded for later listening \u2014 similar to podcasts. If the creator doesn\u2019t download, edit and package the Space to send it out to other services on a podcast RSS feed, then these Spaces remain something you could only<\/em> find on Twitter. (Of note, Twitter says it would include both the recorded Twitter Space and the resulting podcast of that Space in its app \u2014 allowing it to count the same show twice.)<\/p>\n

Twitter will make recommendations of podcasts to individuals based on how they listen and engage with people and topics.<\/a> This could also be a competitive advantage of sorts.<\/p>\n

As to why it felt the need to do podcasts? That\u2019s less clear. Twitter told us it wants to be \u201cthe home for audio conversations.\u201d It also sees an overlap between podcast listeners and Twitter users. Based on its own internal research, 45% of U.S. Twitter users listen to podcasts monthly. More realistically, it likely sees the ability to monetize audio with ads \u2014 if this effort pays off.<\/p>\n

However, Twitter falls short in terms of key features that would make its app an alternative to your favorite podcast player. There\u2019s no offline listening, no download capability, no support for paid podcasts and no exclusive partnerships. So who, exactly, does the podcast feature serve \u2014 those so addicted to Twitter they can\u2019t even leave the app to stream a favorite program, we suppose.<\/p>\n

Platforms: Apple<\/h3>\n

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