Twitter has been widely criticized for trying to charge transit agencies, third-party app developers and academics for data access to its platform, a move opponents say has forced independent apps to shut down and threatened research on misinformation and hate speech.

Twitter has received an unlikely endorsement from a Taliban leader amid woes as the number of users of the Elon Musk-owned platform is “tanking” following the release of Meta’s rival app Threads. Taliban leader Anas Haqqani tweeted his approval of Twitter over other social media platforms, highlighting what he thought were some advantages of the Musk-owned site. “Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms,” Mr Haqqani tweeted. “The first privilege is the freedom of speech. The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it,” he said. Twitter has been facing major hurdles since the Tesla and SpaceX chief took over the company last year with further hardship after Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg launched the Threads app. It appears that the number of Twitter users may also be “tanking” following the release of Threads, according to Cloudflare’s chief executive Matthew Prince. Mr Prince showed a graph last week highlighting an apparent decline in Twitter’s popularity since Mr Musk’s takeover of the company, along with a steep drop after the launch of Threads. A record number of users have flocked to Mr Zuckerberg’s Twitter-clone with the app gaining over 100 million sign ups within days of its launch. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. Can’t believe it’s only been five days!” the Meta boss said. While Twitter appears to have fallen out of favour with many users, The Taliban, however, still seems to prefer it over Threads. After “free-speech absolutist” Mr Musk took over Twitter and fired over three-fourths of the company’s workforce, including entire teams behind content moderation, social media experts expressed dissatisfaction over the rise of hate speech on the platform and advertisers as well as regular users have exited the site. But according to Mr Haqqani, a Taliban thought-leader, the biggest draw of Twitter – where the militant group continues to post updates – is the site’s flexible moderation policy. This is in contrast to Meta’s Facebook which views the Taliban as a terrorist organisation and disallows it from posting on the platform. Read More Who are the key members of the Taliban’s new all-male government? It’s wishful thinking to believe in a more moderate Taliban Taliban rename women’s ministry as office for group’s moral police $44 billion and eight months later. It’s finally all over for Elon Musk Instagram Threads hits 100 million users, becoming easily the fastest growing app ever Twitter traffic ‘tanking’ after record-breaking Threads launch

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Many of us look to the stars for answers to life’s most complex questions. But actually, some of the greatest mysteries lie beneath our very feet. One might think we’d know the Earth pretty well by now but, in fact, our planet’s core remains shrouded in enigma. Indeed, there are two gigantic blobs located beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean that occupy around six per cent of the world’s entire volume. And yet, we’re still not entirely sure what they’re made of or where they came from. There are a number of hypotheses, including that they are piles of oceanic crust that have accumulated over billions of years. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But a more interesting theory is that they are huge chunks of an ancient planet that hit the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. To give an indication of just how massive these things are, the structure under Africa – an area known as Tuzo – is thought to be around 800km (497 miles) tall – the equivalent of some 90 Mount Everests stacked on top of one another, as IFLScience notes. The problem with determining the origin of these monster formations is that there are no direct ways of observing the Earth’s core. The deepest hole humans have ever dug – branded the "entrance to hell" – reached a pretty staggering 12,263m (40,230ft), but that doesn’t even come close to breaking through the crust to the layers beneath. Our most effective tool for analysing what lies beneath the ground is a technique called seismic tomography, which looks at how waves of energy travel when earthquakes occur. Since rocks and liquids have different densities, the waves move through them at different speeds. By measuring the tremors from different points on the surface, geologists can determine what kind of material the waves are travelling through and, in so doing, map out the Earth’s interior. It was by using this technique that the two unusual structures – known as large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) – were found. Waves travel more slowly in these areas – fondly known as “blobs” – than through the surrounding lower mantle, indicating that they’re made of something different. We can’t tell what this material is based on seismic tomography data alone, but some scientists like to believe that they are the remnants of an ancient planet called Theia – an idea known as the “giant impact hypothesis”. According to this hypothesis, around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth. This impact not only created the planet we call home today, but also threw off enough rock to form the moon that lights up our night skies. Some scientists suggest that some of Theia’s leftovers also sunk to the bottom of the planet, probably settling somewhere above the core – thereby forming at least one of the two LLSVPs. More Updates About Strange Blob Structures Inside Planet Earth youtu.be Experts have been investigating the area for decades but there’s still no way of knowing for sure just what these two giant blobs are. Still, studies into Theia have offered important insights into how the possible collision might have kickstarted key plate tectonic and mantle motion inside our planet – crucial processes for establishing the world on which we live. It’s also a useful reminder that we still have so much to learn about our planet and where we came from. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 1, 2023--

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