An analysis of tweets revealed that almost seven out of ten tweets spread negative opinions about overweight and obesity. These are the findings of a study published on Wednesday by the Geneva University Hospitals HUG and the University of Geneva Unige,

The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Liverpool and the NHS Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation. It examined the feelings of the general public, politicians, celebrities and organizations on the subject of obesity based on 53,414 tweets. These were published in English between April 2019 and December 2022, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The analysis showed that they were predominantly negative (69 percent) and increasing, while neutral (21 percent) and positive (10 percent) tweets remained stable. Tweets related to obesity were also very frequently associated with racism, other life choices and social phenomena such as the use of illegal substances and alcohol.

The study shows that the negative portrayal of obesity by politicians and celebrities contributes to negative public feelings and the perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudices against overweight and obese people. This stigmatization can have consequences for the mental health and well-being of these people, but also negative effects on public health, the HUG announced on Wednesday.

The role of celebrities

The spikes in criticism correlated with political events and comments from celebrities in the US and UK. For example, many negative messages were spread when overweight celebrities were hospitalized due to Covid-19, when the US president announced his intention to lose weight, or when the UK government launched a campaign against obesity.

When well-known people post negative comments or opinions about obesity, subscribers are more likely to engage in similar conversations, perpetuating the negativity. These results could be useful in the development of health policies, prevention strategies and treatment approaches, the HUG wrote.

The science team used an artificial intelligence-based platform to refine text classification of around 198 million tweets for various applications, including analyzing sentiment in eight different languages. The work was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research published. (SDA/swi)

Until then, there seemed to be hardly any restrictions in terms of content. Other offers for generating images from text specifications, such as Dall-E from ChatGPT inventor OpenAI or Imagen from Google, have guard rails that are designed to prevent this.

Musk, on the other hand, is known for his aversion to restrictions, which he describes as censorship. People should be able to have "a bit of fun" with the software, he wrote on Thursday. There have been no further comments from xAI so far.

Technology from German start-up

The actual technology used to generate the images does not come from xAI, but from the German start-up Black Forrest Labs. Musk's company relies on its "Flux.1" AI model. Musk wrote that his own software for generating images is being developed and will take a few more months.

The images generated by Grok sometimes have a photorealistic quality, but are often exaggerated like caricatures. Particularly ahead of the presidential election in the USA in November, there is great fear of AI forgeries that could influence public opinion. Many programs therefore avoid generating images with real people.

Companies fear for their reputation on X

The same applies to copyrighted characters such as Disney's Mickey Mouse, whose appearance in AI-generated images could have legal consequences. This could also increase the skepticism of major advertising customers towards the platform. Many of them already fear for the reputation of their brands and have withdrawn ads from X.

Musk recently sued several companies and an industry organization over this. He accuses them of a coordinated campaign to keep advertising dollars away from his platform. (SDA/swi)

The "Trust and Safety Center of Excellence" will hire 100 moderators to remove such content from the platform, operations director Joe Benarroch told AFP news agency on Saturday (local time). X does not have a child-focused line of business, but it is important that the company makes these investments "to deter offenders from using our platform for any distribution or engagement with child sexual exploitation content," Benarroch wrote in an email.

Measure comes before major hearing

According to him, children under the age of 13 cannot even register on the platform, while accounts of young users aged 13 to 17 are subject to strict data protection regulations and cannot be targeted by advertisers. The announcement of the offensive against child sexual abuse content was made ahead of an upcoming hearing of major internet platforms on this topic before the US Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition to representatives from Meta, Tiktok, Discord and Snap, X CEO Linda Yaccarino will testify there.

US technology entrepreneur Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for 44 billion dollars. In the course of a chaotic restructuring of the company, Musk not only gave the short message service a new name, X, he also drastically reduced the moderation of content and allowed users who had been banned for breaking the rules - the most famous of whom was former US President Donald Trump - back onto the platform. Observers denounce a significant increase in hate messages and false information on X. (SDA)

It is also about so-called dark patterns. These are practices aimed at significantly distorting or impairing the user's ability to make an autonomous and informed choice or decision.

Misinformation and hate speech

X has long been criticized for not taking decisive enough action against misinformation and hate speech on the platform. The EU Commission had already sent an official request to the social network following numerous reports of illegal and misleading posts about the Gaza war. Online platforms are obliged by a new EU law on digital services (DSA) to take strict action against illegal content such as hate speech and incitement to hatred online.

According to the EU Commission, this is the first case to be brought against an online platform under the new law. Such proceedings could result in a heavy fine.

The investigation will now examine compliance with the regulations regarding the distribution of illegal content in the EU. The investigation will also focus on the question of how effective the measures against information manipulation and for more transparency on the platform are. In particular, the blue tick for accounts linked to subscriptions is to be put to the test. (sda)

Twitter's successor accuses the organization Media Matters for America of deliberately manipulating ads from well-known companies to appear alongside Nazi posts and anti-Semitic statements. Media Matters CEO Angelo Carusone replied that his organization continues to stand by the report and looks forward to winning in court.

In the lawsuit, X claims that Media Matters artificially created a situation in which the ads appeared alongside posts with extremist content - for example, through a targeted selection of profiles and frequent updating of the ad. However, the organization had concealed this and thus created the impression that it had discovered the pairings. In previous similar allegations by Media Matters, ads from well-known companies could also be found next to extremist content for other users without manipulation.

Advertising next to hate speech content

Companies and organizations have only limited influence over which posts their ads are placed next to. The ads are displayed with reference to target age groups, specific areas or user interests. In order to avoid a negative environment for their brands, advertisers are particularly reliant on X consistently keeping hate speech off the platform - or at least not placing ads next to it. Otherwise, a user may scroll through an extremist account and be shown ads based on their usual interests.

Other online services have also had similar problems with their advertising customers in the past, for example Google's video platform YouTube. At the time, it tightened its content supervision in order to win back advertising customers. X is headquartered in San Francisco and officially based in Nevada - but Musk filed the lawsuit in Texas, a state in which the government and large sections of the population hold very conservative views. At the same time, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a well-known advocate of right-wing political views, launched an investigation into Media Matters.

Not only is Musk's aerospace company SpaceX active in Texas, he also had the headquarters of the electric car manufacturer Tesla, which he runs, moved there from California. (sda)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk also wants to compete with YouTube and the career network LinkedIn with his online platform X, according to a media report. Musk and the X boss Linda Yaccarino, who was appointed by him. had highlighted the two services as future rivals in a meeting with staff, financial service Bloomberg wrote Friday night. The occasion for the meeting was the anniversary of the acquisition of Twitter by Musk, who has since renamed the platform X.

Musk and Yaccarino had also talked about plans to give corporate information dissemination services, such as PR Newswire, competition with their own offering called XWire, according to an informed person.

Musk already announced at the time of the takeover that he wanted to build Platform X as an "app for everything" based on Twitter. This is to include money transactions, among other things. Shortly before the anniversary, X unlocked video and voice calls for some users.

After acquisition, Twitter lost advertising customers

Musk had bought Twitter a year ago for $44 billion. Afterwards, some advertisers left the platform because they feared a more negative environment for their brands. Musk said several times that ad revenues had halved. He is trying to bring in more money with subscriptions - and limited the ability to use the service for free. Web analytics firms estimate that X has fewer users under Musk than Twitter did before the acquisition. There are no official comparative figures.

However, Yaccarino wrote in a blog post about the acquisition that X is accessed by more than 500 million people each month. Prior to the acquisition, Twitter had only provided data on the number of users the service reached with its advertising products. It also wrote that an average user spends 32 minutes a day on the platform - adding up to a total of 7.8 billion minutes of active time per day. Yaccarino joined X from media giant NBCUniversal, where she was responsible for contacts with advertisers. (SDA)

It's been tweeted out. With the master plan in mind to turn Twitter into the "Everything App" of the Western hemisphere along the lines of WeChat, Elon Musk has unceremoniously disposed of one of the world's best-known brands. Twitter is now called X. He bought Twitter a good year ago for 44 billion, about half of which - according to experts - was the value of the brand, its symbols and the word "twitter" that has become part of everyday language. At the time, the media outcry erupted like a tsunami across all channels in our communications industry, and it is still omnipresent. I deliberately waited for this tsunami to pass before writing my (preliminary) conclusion on the Twitter case - and it is a positive one.

Musk was right for two reasons

There are two reasons why Musk's move was exactly right: First, Twitter was limited in its business model and could not scale as an investor paying such a high price must expect. The name Twitter alone only describes a certain activity - namely "tweeting", but not payment services, eCommerce, travel and everything else that an "everything app" does. So here the brand was not optimal.

Elon Musk is the richest man in the world and anything but stupid - and here comes the second aspect: I don't know him personally, but I know people who have worked with him. That's how I know he hates marketing. That's why the crowbar-like manner of this rebranding is not only very typical of Musk - it's simply genius. While other brands spend an insane amount of money on strategies, rebranding programs and campaigns, and spend millions on media to change their brand, he simply pays for it... nothing.

And yet, in one fell swoop, the whole world knows it. No matter how unique this X logo may be now, whether it is protectable or what twitter is now called - in a few hours, this X has burned itself into everyone's brain - without a cent of paid media. Musk has used his persona and the power of the platform for which he paid so much money. And lo and behold, his investment was the right one. Now he can move on to the next chapter. And again, everyone will be waiting in suspense to see what his next move will be. We'll find out on X.

* Heinrich Paravicini is founder and creative director of Mutabor.

You won't have to provide a phone number to use the new feature, he said. X is like a "global address book," Musk wrote on Thursday.

The announcement fits with his plan to turn Twitter, which he bought for around $44 billion, into X, an "app for everything." Such universal apps are especially popular in China, where people use WeChat, for example, to perform everything from tasks to money transactions.

Great competition

With voice and video calls, Musk would be entering a market where there are many competitors and established user preferences. For example, there are audio and video calls on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and on all Apple devices via the company's own Facetime service.

Musk did not initially provide any details on how quickly the function will be available and whether there will be additional costs associated with it. Since the takeover in October, advertising revenues have been only half as high. Musk is therefore focusing more on the subscription business.

It is also unclear how protection against spam calls, for example, will be regulated. On X, people generally follow many people, companies, and organizations that they do not know personally - and recently, attempts by online criminals to contact users with fake profiles under the guise of well-known brands such as airlines were once again reported. (SDA)

Since last Friday, August 25, certain rules have been legally enforceable for 19 very large online platforms and search engines in the EU. For example, the companies must remove child pornography or terrorist propaganda more quickly than before.

In turn, it will be easier for users to report such content. Online marketplaces such as Amazon are now obliged to remove counterfeit products or dangerous toys as best they can and to warn buyers. In addition, the companies must regularly report to the EU Commission on the extent to which their platforms pose a threat to mental health or freedom of expression, for example.

EU sees risk to society in platforms

The background is the new EU Digital Service Act (DSA). It lays down very strict requirements for very large platforms and search engines with more than 45 million active users per month. In the EU's view, they pose a particularly high risk to society. If the companies fail to comply with the requirements, they could face a fine of up to six percent of their annual global revenue.

The 19 platforms and search engines initially affected include Zalando, Wikipedia, Booking.com, Amazon Marketplace and Apple's Appstore, as well as Alibaba Aliexpress, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, and the search engines of Google and Bing. In a few months, the rules will also apply to smaller companies covered by the law.

This was said by company CEO Linda Yaccarino to US broadcaster CNBC on Thursday. In the interview, she announced the hiring of new employees.

After twelve years as advertising chief at media conglomerate NBCUniversal, Yaccarino had taken the helm of the short messaging service two months ago, replacing Elon Musk at its helm (Werbewoche.ch reported). The multi-billionaire, who bought the company last year, remained CEO.

Musk is focused on product design and working on the future of the platform, and she is running the rest of the company and "taking it to market," Yaccarino said. In doing so, she is autonomous, the X boss stressed when asked by the CNBC journalist.

Technology billionaire Musk took over the platform last year for 44 billion dollars and initiated a radical restructuring. He dismissed the top management and more than two-thirds of the approximately 8,000 employees. As a result, advertising revenues collapsed. Musk also made far-reaching changes for users, including the introduction of a payment subscription for account verification.

Most recently, Musk renamed Twitter X at the end of July and gave the platform a new logo. His vision is to transform the platform into a super app based on the Chinese model WeChat, which can also be used to make online purchases and payments. (SDA)

The name Twitter was appropriate when the main purpose was to publish 140-character short messages. In view of the planned new functions, however, it would have to give way. Musk had said several times that he wanted to build an "app for everything" with the name X based on Twitter. However, there have been hardly any concrete steps in this direction so far. The best-known example of a super app that can run almost the entire digital life is WeChat in China.

Musk had announced the name change over the weekend, and on Monday the familiar Twitter logo with the blue bird was replaced by a new one with the letter X, at least on the web version of the platform. However, the web address is still Twitter.com - and there are many remnants of Twitter elsewhere on the website and in the smartphone apps.

Musk had bought Twitter in October for around $44 billion. He recently admitted that advertising revenues were only half of what they were before. Given the broad app ecosystem that has grown over the years, Musk's plans for X would pit him against established rivals in communications and financial apps.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time he's swum against the tide. As Tesla CEO, for example, he backed electric cars, while the rest of the industry didn't think the vehicles were economical. And his space company SpaceX changed the industry with reusable rockets. (SDA)