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7 things you can’t do anymore since Twitter became X
Elon Musk acquired Twitter in April 2022 and officially took over six months later. A lot has changed since Musk has been at the helm.
Gone are the days we used to sign into Twitter and share tweets. It’s now November 2023, more than a year since Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired the popular social media platform, and the cheery, avian blue-and-white icon got replaced with a dark insignia that simply says “X.”
Many users, including Mashable’s Chris Taylor, believe that Twitter — er, I mean “X” — has taken a turn for the worse. Others, on the other hand, find the rebrand to be refreshing. However, no matter where you stand, you can’t deny that there are some features stripped from the platform that we’ll all miss.
7 things you can no longer do on Twitter / X
In July, Musk called X an “everything app,” but for an app that lets you do “everything,” there’s quite a lot we can no longer do.
1. You can’t view X without logging in
Lurkers once had the luxury of sifting through Twitter without logging in or being a registered user.
Credit: Shutterstock
Now, if you want to browse the social media platform, you have no choice but to sign into a Twitter account.
2. ‘Quote tweets’ are no longer within easy reach
As Mashable’s Deputy UK Editor Sam Haysom mentioned in mid-September, quote tweets used to be easy to access during Twitter’s heyday.
Credit: Shutterstock
Unfortunately, due to an irksome redesign, you have to take a few extra steps to see quote tweets. You must now click on the three-dot icon and tap on “View post engagements” before clicking on “Quotes.” Plus, X no longer tells you how many quote tweets a post has.
3. You can’t tweet to a subgroup of followers
In late September, X announced that it’s sunsetting Circles, a feature that allowed users to pick and choose a subgroup of followers to receive specific posts.
In other words, with Twitter Circles, instead of tweeting to all of your followers, you could interact with a smaller crowd. Unfortunately, you can’t do that anymore.
4. Headlines are now stripped from your links
Now, when you input a link into your tweet (e.g., an article), the headline will not be displayed. The Verge has a pretty good “before and after” picture that illustrates this frustrating new feature.
Musk, demonstrating his aptitude for crushing it at spelling bees, tweeted that he made this change to “improve the esthetics [sic].”
5. You must wait longer to open links from competitors
An analysis from The Markup discovered that X is throttling traffic from competitors, including Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Substack.
Credit: Shutterstock
This report isn’t surprising considering the fact that Musk briefly banned links from Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and other rivals in December 2022.
6. PlayStation and Xbox gamers lose integration with Twitter
Access to Twitter’s API used to be free, but as we reported in March, Musk is putting a price on it now — its cheapest package is a whopping $42,000 per month.
Credit: Shutterstock
As a result, gaming platforms like Microsoft and Sony are terminating their integrations with X. In other words, gamers can no longer share their video game captures directly with Twitter / X.
7. The blue check is no longer earned
As CNN puts it, Musk transformed the blue check from a status symbol to a badge of shame.
Credit: Shutterstock
The blue check once authenticated influential accounts and high-profile figures, but now, Musk has eroded its value. Anyone can purchase a blue check by subscribing to X Premium. However, it’ll cost you $16 a month as of this writing.
Final thoughts
This list is far from exhaustive — and it will continue to climb. Elon Musk said he will kill the block feature on X. Plus, Musk suggested that he may put X behind a paywall, too.
We can’t wrap our minds around Musk’s endgame for X, but as Mashable’s Matt Binder discovered, it’s not looking good for the Tesla CEO so far. Daily active users appear to be dwindling as we speak.
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Sony is removing Twitter/X integration from PlayStation consoles
Sony is dropping X, formerly known as Twitter, integration from its PlayStation gaming consoles.
Yet another company has announced it will be removing X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, from its products. And this is a big one.
Sony has announced that it is terminating PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4’s X integrations this month. The removal of this feature will mean that PS4 and PS5 gamers will no longer be able to publish video game clips and other content directly from their consoles.
“As of November 13, 2023, integration with X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer function on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles,” reads Sony’s statement, which was posted on Monday. “This includes the ability to view any content published on X on PS5/PS4, and the ability to post and view content, trophies, and other gameplay-related activities on X directly from PS5/PS4 (or link an X account to do so).”
PlayStation users will still be able to manually clip gameplay moments, transfer the content to their computer or mobile device, and then post the content from the X app from there. This isn’t as intuitive, but that is the workaround that Sony is recommending.
Sony did not say exactly why it was removing PlayStation’s X integrations. However, the company is not the first to do so. Sony competitor Microsoft similarly removed the same integration from its Xbox video game console in April. Microsoft also announced the removal of its Twitter integration from its online advertising platform that same month as well.
Other companies, however, like the customer service live-chat company Intercom, did explain why it was removing Twitter integrations when they also made the change in April: Elon Musk’s changes to the Twitter API. Namely, the reason was the exorbitant fee Musk decided to charge for API access, which had previously been free.
Earlier this year, Musk depreciated Twitter’s API program and instituted a new model that charged exorbitant fees for access. At the time, many apps that utilized Twitter’s API needed to shut down as its founders discovered it would cost a minimum of $42,000 per month under the social media service’s new API model.
While we do not yet know for sure, Sony likely came to the same conclusion that many other companies also did: X’s API wasn’t worth the cost.
ChatGPT Plus users reporting issues since the DALL-E 3 upgrade
After an upgrade that integrated DALL-E 3 within ChatGPT, users are reporting issues.
ChatGPT users are struggling to generate images since OpenAI announced new updates.
An OpenAI spokesperson said all systems are fully operational, which matches up with its status monitoring site. Yet, reported problems spiked around 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to Down Detector (which is also owned by Mashable’s parent company Ziff Davis) and have continued to show high outage reports.
Mashable employees experienced errors in generating images around the same time. Users on the ChatGPT subreddit also reported issues. Several users pointed out that ChatGPT wouldn’t generate images despite the new integration with DALL-E 3.
Despite successfully generating images for Saira Mueller, a freelance editor who works with Mashable, last night, ChatGPT told her this afternoon that it didn’t have the capacity to generate images.
It then backpedaled after Mueller expressed her confusion and said it could, but didn’t actually generate anything. Instead, it mused about what to include in a prompt: “To create an image of a photorealistic landscape on another planet, please provide any specific details you’d like to include, such as the type of terrain, the presence of any celestial bodies in the sky, vegetation, or color scheme preferences.”
When Mueller followed up, it showed an error message.
Credit: Screenshot: Mashable / OpenAI
At OpenAI’s developer conference on Monday, CEO Sam Altman announced ChatGPT would be doing away with the model selection dropdown, which featured the DALL-E, internet browser, and plugins options. Instead these would all be integrated within the standard interface for ChatGPT Plus users.
Users with the updated integration are the ones experiencing the issues. It’s unconfirmed whether OpenAI has deployed the updates, causing the outages, but given the timeline announced by Altman yesterday, this would match up.
Mashable has reached out to OpenAI for more information and will update this story if it hears back.