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Devumi
Devumi was an American company founded in 2010 which sold fake influence on social media. In October 2019, Devumi settled with the Federal Trade Commission, in the agency's first-ever complaint regarding the sale of fake followers, views, and likes on social media, for $2.5 million. Overview While Devumi operated, it sold more than 200 million fake followers. Even at its peak the company was tiny with their main office located above a restaurant in Florida. The firm primarily sold Twitter bots sourced from operations like Peakerr, SkillPatron, JAP, Cheap Panel and YTbot at a markup to celebrity and commercial clients. The company also operated on YouTube, SoundCloud, and LinkedIn. History In 2018, ''The New York Times'' published an expose about Devumi and its role in social media fraud, including supplying fake video views and social media account followers to customers. The revelations in the story spurred action from regulators. Devumi was forced to shut down soon after the ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Twitter Bot
A Twitter bot or an X bot is a type of software bot that controls a Twitter/X account via the Twitter API. The social bot software may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other accounts. The automation of Twitter accounts is governed by a set of automation rules that outline proper and improper uses of automation. Proper usage includes broadcasting helpful information, automatically generating interesting or creative content, and automatically replying to users via direct message. Improper usage includes circumventing API rate limits, violating user privacy, spamming, and sockpuppeting. Twitter bots may be part of a larger botnet. They can be used to influence elections and in misinformation campaigns. Twitter's policies do allow non-abusive bots, such as those created as a benign hobby or for artistic purposes, or posting helpful information, although price changes introduced to the previously free API ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rantic
Rantic.com (formerly ''SocialVEVO'' and ''Swenzy'') is a social media marketing website that sells fake likes, followers, views and web traffic. Background Rantic.com was registered in 2014 by a group of internet marketers. The group also has used the names ''SocialVEVO'' and ''Swenzy''. During an interview with Vocativ, one of five people claiming to be founders said the online business was created by "Jacob, Jerry, Juice, Alexander and Kamaruzaman". The CEO is listed as Simon Z and consumers are said to include musicians, teens, celebrities, politicians and governments, according to a ''New York Times'' and Forbes report. The website sells "fake account" services for social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, a potential violation of these sites' terms of service. In 2014, an online threat to release nude photos of actor Emma Watson turned out to be a hoax orchestrated by Rantic. Following Watson's launch of a UN gender equality campaign, a w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) United States antitrust law, antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. It shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC. The FTC was established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, Federal Trade Commission Act, which was passed in response to the 19th-century monopolistic trust crisis. Since its inception, the FTC has enforced the provisions of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, Clayton Act, a key U.S. antitrust statute, as well as the provisions of the FTC Act, et seq. Over time, the FTC has been delegated with the enforcement of additional business regulation statutes and has promul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straits Times
''The Straits Times'' (also known informally by its abbreviation ''ST'') is a Singaporean daily English-language newspaper owned by the SPH Media Trust. Established on 15 July 1845, it is the most-widely circulated newspaper in the country and has a significant regional audience. The newspaper is published in the broadsheet format and online, the latter of which was launched in 1994. It is regarded as the newspaper of record for Singapore. Print and digital editions of ''The Straits Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' had a daily average circulation of 364,134 and 364,849 respectively in 2017, as audited by Audit Bureau of Circulations Singapore. In 2014, country-specific editions were published for residents in Brunei and Myanmar, with newsprint circulations of 2,500 and 5,000 respectively. History Early years The original conception for ''The Straits Times'' has been debated by historians of Singapore. Prior to 1845, the only English-language newspaper in Singapore was ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google Search. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day. , videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and , there were approximately 14.8billion videos in total. On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ). Google expanded YouTube's business model of generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by and for YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming services in the world and is available in 190 countries and territories. The service has more than 76 million active monthly users and over 200 million audio tracks as of November 2021. SoundCloud offers both free and paid memberships on the platform, available for mobile, desktop and Xbox devices. SoundCloud has evolved from a traditional online streaming platform to an entertainment company. History SoundCloud was established in Berlin on August 27, 2007, by Swedish sound designer Alexander Ljung and Swedish electronic musician Eric Wahlforss; SoundCloud's website was launched on October 17, 2008. It was originally intended to allow musicians to collaborate by facilitating the sharing and discussion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LinkedIn
LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. The platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows jobseekers to post their Curriculum vitae, CVs and employers to post jobs. From 2015, most of the company's revenue came from Information broker, selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals and has also introduced their own ad portal named LinkedIn Ads to let companies advertise in their platform. LinkedIn has more than 1 billion registered members from over 200 countries and territories. LinkedIn allows members (both employees and employers) to create profiles and connect with each other in an online social network which may represent real-world professional relationships. Members can invite anyone (whet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Irish Times
''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It was launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is Ireland's leading newspaper. It is considered a newspaper of record for Ireland. Though formed as a Protestant Irish nationalist paper, within two decades and under new owners, it became a supporter of unionism in Ireland. In the 21st century, it presents itself politically as "liberal and progressive", as well as being centre-right on economic issues. The editorship of the newspaper from 1859 until 1986 was controlled by the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority, only gaining its first nominal Irish Catholic editor 127 years into its existence. The paper's notable columnists have included writer and arts commentator Fintan O'Toole and satirist Miriam Lord. The late Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was once a columnist. Michael O'Regan was the Leinster Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Verge
''The Verge'' is an American Technology journalism, technology news website headquarters, headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City and operated by Vox Media. The website publishes news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts. The website was launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media's proprietary multimedia publishing platform Chorus. In 2014, Nilay Patel was named editor-in-chief and Dieter Bohn executive editor; Helen Havlak was named editorial director in 2017. ''The Verge'' won five Webby Awards for the year 2012 including awards for Best Writing (Editorial), Best Podcast for ''The Vergecast'', Best Visual Design, Best Consumer Electronics Site, and Best Mobile News App. History Origins Between March and April 2011, up to nine of ''Engadget''s writers, editors, and product developers, including editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, left AOL, the company behind that website, to start a new gadget site. The other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $25 million. Following the 2015 Verizon Communications#Acquisition of AOL and Yahoo, acquisition of AOL and Yahoo! by Verizon, the site was owned by Verizon Media from 2015 through 2021. In 2021, Verizon sold its media assets, including AOL, Yahoo!, and TechCrunch, to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Apollo integrated them into a new entity called Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo! Inc. In addition to its news reporting, TechCrunch is also known for its annual Disrupt conference, a technology event hosted in several cities across the United States, Europe, and China. History TechCrunch was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikkei, Inc., Nikkei, with core editorial offices across Britain, the United States and continental Europe. In July 2015, Pearson plc, Pearson sold the publication to Nikkei for Pound sterling, £844 million (US$1.32 billion) after owning it since 1957. In 2019, it reported one million paying subscriptions, three-quarters of which were digital subscriptions. In 2023, it was reported to have 1.3 million subscribers of which 1.2 million were digital. The newspaper has a prominent focus on Business journalism, financial journalism and economic analysis rather than News media, generalist reporting, drawing both criticism and acclaim. It sponsors an Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, annual book ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
