In a company blog post, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai says “Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models.”
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Davey Alba
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New: Google's ChatGPT rival is here. It's called Bard and it's available to "trusted testers" as of today
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She’s my new best friend
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100s of migrants had to move to BK Cruise Terminal in Red Hook, a neighborhood away from me, & face these conditions—inc no sleep from bright lights
Pls consider supporting this eye mask drive that hopes to help ppl get a good nights sleep amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls
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Sundar Pichai says Google will make LLMs like LaMDA available "in the coming weeks and months", and users will be able to use them "as a companion to search" ( / Bloomberg)
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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I have bad news about your raincoats. They likely have toxic PFAS chemicals in them.
Some companies are racing to ditch PFAS. Others, well, are dragging their feet. My deep dive w/ . Read for *free* here:
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Another Twitter t&s employee leaves 👇
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When we accept tough jobs as a challenge and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, great things happen. Working at @Twitter over the last four years has been nothing short of a dream come true.
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This will do serious harm to the research community, particularly if academic access is also restricted
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Tweeted at 1:05 AM last night… twitter.com/twitterdev/sta…
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Tweeted at 1:05 AM last night…
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Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 
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Ahead of Alphabet earnings tomorrow, I just want to say: I love MODL on . Just love it. Big fan. Huge.
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just knowing what it takes to delve into this kind of deep analysis... it's a lot of work! so much props to this team, and some very good insights in here
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I should’ve written this weeks ago, but early this month I started a 3-month internship at on the tech desk. I’m interested in military tech, climate tech, and in general any good story! Reach out with tips, ideas, and shouts: lpapachristo@bloomberg.net.
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Genesis II sold bleach as a cure to tens of thousands of scared, frustrated people just looking for answers to their medical woes. For some, this "cure" proved deadly.
Deadly Cure, a new podcast out TODAY hosted by me, is all about their rise and fall
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You have to listen to this podcast, hosted by the great
The series also features an all star cast of outstanding Bloomberg journalists including
And Kristen got to buy some bleach on the internet. bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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Maybe this bleach thing wasn't such a great idea podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dea
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New for : Spanish-speaking gamers are KILLING IT on Twitch. From 2019 to 2022, the audience increased 6x and Spanish shot up from the 7th to 2nd most-watched language. Interviews with , & more about their success:
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also suggestions for fighting boredom are welcome lol. adult coloring books? puzzles, tv shows, what else?
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anyone have sound advice for dodging Covid if your partner has it? he's staying quarantined in a specific room, we mask with N95s, and there are two air filters here. what else is there to do?
(still haven't gotten Covid since the pandemic started 😬)
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"Direct request from Elon Musk."
Leaked screenshot suggests #Musk personally directed suspension of left wing activist.
...and suspensions of journalists covering him were directed by his deputy.
Of course.
By &
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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HOWEVER I am not late to sharing the Big Take podcast on the story, which just came out today. If you're in need of a lovely story this Friday afternoon, this should be a candidate
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I'm a week late to sharing this gem of a story by , but it's worth the read. She tells the story of coyote Dennis Wilson w/ such care—pointing out that human smugglers are themselves often as vulnerable as the migrants they take over the border
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“Nearly all the people who know how to build safety systems at Twitter have left the company,and those who are still there appear to be unwilling or unable to tell their boss that the things he is asking them to do are dangerous” - or may break legal pacts
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We’re thrilled to announce @ESCochrane and @campbellnyt are taking on new roles on the National desk, covering the South and Mid-Atlantic respectively. nytco.com/press/new-role
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"Since Musk took the helm of Twitter, Irwin has helped him break conventions in how Twitter manages user account policy." Excellent look at the new head of Trust and Safety from
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“It’s like Musk is taking all of the content moderation best practice norms the trust and safety community has built up over the past decade and is trying to set them on fire,” told us.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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So what’s the end game here? A former company executive told us that Twitter’s founding principle was to act as a democratic platform that would uphold the rights of each user to free speech—like human rights advocates & activists around the world.
Now, it's no longer like that.
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We also touch on the CSAM claim by Musk that Irwin backed, when he said in Dec that Twitter "refused to take action on child exploitation for years."
A spokesperson of , which has worked with Twitter, told us that this claim was not true.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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Then there were the Twitter Files, an early test for Irwin. As told us, "Employees misusing internal access like this undermines the very trust that a head of trust and safety is supposed to be building."
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We also have details about a power struggle between Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of T&S, and Irwin. When they worked together, they butted heads over a "bot automations" pause—work that scanned the platform for spam & disinformation.
After Yoel left, Ella was suddenly back
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When she started in mid-2022, it was a tough time at Twitter. Musk was criticizing execs & its so-called bots problem.
Irwin stepped in & made broad changes. She sent her team a doc about how to best work with her, and created a kill list for projects.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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Really important detail that I hope doesn’t get lost in the story: Dozens of unpublished—but completed—reports detailing information operations on the platform will likely never become public, said four ex-employees who worked on the reports. Irwin said she is unaware of them.
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Twitter used to have a group called the Global Escalations Team, acting as a check on power at the top of the company. It could even overrule execs. But the group has folded; employees told us Irwin & Musk can no longer be challenged thru formal process
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Being the head of trust & safety at Twitter has long been a closely scrutinized job. Twitter has had to defend its content moderation moves publicly—even to Congress. Now, Twitter makes decisions on the unilateral directives issued by its new owner. bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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We spoke to more than a dozen current & former employees for this story. They told us that since Musk took the helm of Twitter, Irwin has helped him break conventions in how Twitter manages user account policy. Other experts agree, like .
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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NEW: Ella Irwin, Twitter’s current head of trust and safety, has become the chief executor of Musk’s whims—even when it goes against established protocols for social media content work that Twitter and its peers have refined for the past decade.
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Some news: I’m joining the Bloomberg team! I’ll be writing about social media companies including Twitter and Meta. I start next month and will be moving to SF for the role. Stayed tuned for more!
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Thrilled to welcome @Aishacounts to the Bloomberg @technology team! She crushed it at Protocol (RIP) and will join our stellar team (@sarahfrier, @KurtWagner8 @alexbarinka) reporting on all the social media companies.
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i feel like twitter's font has become slightly different. am i losing my mind?
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