Retro Raunch Revisit

JUL 15, 2006: Microblogging social network platform Twitter is officially launched. First founded by tech entrepreneurs in Mar in San Francisco with the original proposed domain name twttr, the site's predominant purpose was created for the sharing of short text messages, pictures & videos in posts called "tweets" with user content also including direct messaging, video & audio calling, the creation of multiple-themed communities and job searching. Posts were initially limited to 140 characters but changed to 280 in 2017, and have been placed in 6 categories -- pointless babble, conversational, pass-along value, self-promotion, spam and news. As a project that was built on earlier separate templates such as MySpace then Facebook, and links to Flickr, Tumblr, Photobucket and Imgur, it would spawn growing competition in fellow rivals WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. The silhouette cartoon bird logo used rom 2012-23 was named "Larry the Bird" after the Boston Celtics player. Twitter began to shift its focus onto larger multimedia livestreaming programs in pro sports, politics extending into protests & civil dosobedience, music and celebrity entertainment. In May 2022, Twitter was fined $150 million by the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice for collecting users' contact details for use in targeted advertising. After Buisnessman Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in Oct 2022, he rebranded it 'X' in Mar 2023 and to date, its largest complaints remain that trending topic algorithms mishandles misinformation; spreads disinformation; intensifies trolling harassment, hate speech & antisemitism; fosters conspiracy theories; stifles journalists and allows for the proliferation of malicious fake accounts. As well, the company has been criticized for poor security and questionable privacy that enables hackers & phishing attacks, and is subject to ongoing debate about censorship in its allowance of pornographic content that has been blasted for ineffective flagging of child sexual exploitation and steerage to OnlyFans which caters to sex workers. In the courts, Twitter-X has been successful in winning lawsuits but has also had to pay settlements in the hundreds of millions for non-compliance with laws & regulations. In demographic ratios, X is used mostly by adults with users aged 12-17 making up just 2% of the traffic. Men dominate the platform by 61% compared to women at 39%. In racial breakdown statistics, whites are the largest group followed by black then hispanic/latino. Overall, the USA is the largest active country with Japan next then India. It is estimated that 15% of all Twitter accounts (approx. 48 million) are run by internet bots (automated software), and that atleast 500 million tweets are posted daily translating to roughly 6,000 tweets per second. Shared retweets & replies make up the vast majority of usage at 82%. After Facebook, Twitter is the highest used & most-visited electronic web-based platform in the world and is presently banned in China, Russia, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Myanmar, and Venezuela.