Social Media Quiz 2023: Test Your Current Social Knowledge

In 2016, Mastodon was launched as a “free, open-source, decentralized social media platform” aimed at being a “viable alternative to Twitter.” Mastodon is a federated social network owned by different people and groups. A lot of Mastodon is crowdfunded. The servers it runs are funded through Patreon, a subscription platform used by content creators. More than 70,000 users joined Mastodon on the day after Elon Musk announced he bought Twitter.

Wasn’t Mastodon something else?

The Mastodon social platform was named after an extinct relative of elephants and mammoths.

Simply put, Metaverse is a collection of Virtual 3D meeting spaces. It’s been one of the most prominent tech buzz terms of 2021. Epic Games directed fundraising to build Fortnite into a metaverse; Microsoft presented Mesh, a mixed reality software enabling virtual presence through Microsoft devices. South Korea announced the creation of a national metaverse alliance to build a unified national VR and AR platform.

What’s Facebook’s Metaverse?

In 2021 Facebook announced it attempts to develop a Metaverse. On Oct. 18, Facebook announced plans to create 10,000 jobs in the European Union over the next five years to help build the virtual environment. US tech news website The Verge broke the news that Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, is preparing to change the name of the company at the company’s annual Connect conference on Oct. 28, 2021, to match its new ambitions. The new name chosen for the company is Meta.

As of mid-Sept. 2022, TikTok is the second most popular domain in the world, after Google, according to online performance and security company Cloudflare. As reported by NewsGuard on Sept. 14, 2022, nearly one in five videos that TikTok automatically suggests when searching for videos related to prominent news topics contained misinformation. TikTok’s official community guidelines prohibit harmful misinformation. Chinese company ByteDance owns the app.

Linda Yaccarino, previously the head of advertising and partnerships for NBCUniversal, was confirmed as the new CEO of Twitter on May 12, 2023. She was appointed by Elon Musk, who bought the platform last year for $44 billion. She will focus on business operations while Musk works on product design and technology. Yaccarino is one of the rare female chief executives in technology. She has often said she was the only woman at the table and faced bias incidents in her career.

Twitter Blue is the company’s subscription service, allowing paying subscribers to recall tweets, theme their Twitter app and app icon, and experience new features early.

Where and when is Twitter Blue available?

Twitter first launched the Twitter Blue service in June 2021 in Canada and Australia on iOS. On Nov. 9, 2021, Twitter Blue became available in the US and New Zealand and on Android and the web. After purchasing Twitter, Elon Musk said he was considering raising the subscription price and moving all verified users to the paid program. Starting Dec. 13, 2022, the relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for iPhone users. Subscribers see fewer ads, can post longer videos, and have their tweets emphasized.

On Feb. 19, 2023, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced Meta Verified as a premium subscription service. Users who pay a monthly fee get blue check marks, improved reach, extra impersonation protection against accounts “claiming to be you,” and direct access to customer service. Users must submit a government ID to prove their identity, use their legal names on their profile pages, and pay $11.99 (or $14.99 on iOS and Android) monthly to qualify for Meta Verified. Australia and New Zealand will get the service first.

Wasn’t that “Twitter Blue”?

Meta’s subscription move follows Twitter’s push to charge for blue check marks through Twitter Blue. Elon Musk’s company announced that starting on Mar. 20, SMS-based two-factor authentication will be limited to paid accounts.

xQc, whose real name is Félix Lengyel, is a popular Twitch streamer who plays video games and hosts shows for almost 12 million followers. Many consider him Twitch’s most popular streamer. On June 17, 2023, he announced his departure from Twitch for Kick, a rival streaming platform. He signed a two-year non-exclusive contract worth roughly $70 million, with incentives that could bump that to $100 million. Kick is backed by online gaming and gambling sites in Australia and offers streamer-friendly policies such as lower subscription fees, non-exclusive contracts, and more creative freedom. xQc plans to continue streaming on Twitch and appearing on YouTube and TikTok, but he aims to focus on Kick. His agent, Ryan Morrison, said his deal was “one of the highest deals in entertainment, period.“

By February 2023, TikTok had an average of 125 million active users in the EU. In October 2022, there were 65.9 million TikTok users in the US, with two-thirds of teens using it. The number of Canadians on TikTok is relatively small (26%), but 76% of people 18-24 have an account.

What is the TikTok ban?

The European Commission temporarily banned TikTok from staff phones over cybersecurity concerns on Feb. 23, 2023. The reason: The Chinese government could use TikTok to promote pro-Beijing views or sweep up users’ information. The White House on Feb. 27 gave government agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have the Chinese-owned app on federal devices. By Feb. 28, Canada announced its own ban on TikTok from all government-issued devices. China’s foreign ministry said that the US government has been “overstretching the concept of national security.” and “suppressing other countries’ companies.”

China’s commerce ministry declared it opposed a TikTok sale just hours before Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, testified before Congress about TikTok’s ties to China on March 23, 2023.

What was his testimony about?

During the five-hour testimony, Republican and Democratic lawmakers repeatedly asked Chew if TikTok was spying on Americans on behalf of the Chinese government, which he strongly denied. Chew also said that ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government – a notion undermined by China’s commerce ministry’s earlier statement.

Montana passed a bill that makes it illegal for app stores to offer TikTok in the state. The bill was motivated by concerns about potential Chinese spying through the app. It specifies that the ban would be lifted if TikTok is sold to a non-Chinese company or Congress passes a law banning TikTok nationwide. Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the unprecedented law on May 17, 2023, making Montana the first state to ban TikTok from app stores starting Jan. 2024. Nonetheless, it will face legal challenges from TikTok and other groups claiming it violates free speech rights.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, have agreed to fight each other in a cage match after exchanging challenges on social media. The feud started when Musk tweeted he was “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg responded with “Send me the location” on Instagram. Musk then suggested “Vegas Octagon” as the venue, referring to the fenced-in area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bouts. The fight date and time are not set. However, Musk said it “might actually happen” and admitted it could end badly for him, as he has not started training yet. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has trained in mixed martial arts (MMA) and recently won jiu-jitsu tournaments. The fight was eventually canceled, as Zuck felt Musk was not serious enough.

Meta (formerly known as Facebook) tossed another social media player into the ring on July 6, 2023. This contender, named ‘Threads,’ is a text-based conversation app. It’s like Twitter but with a Zuck instead of a Musk. Users can conveniently use their existing Instagram login details to sign up. Threads became an overnight sensation, attracting over 100 million users only days after its launch.

Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, and part-time digital drama king, pointed fingers at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for allegedly trying to “strangle” the platform. This is after ADL’s Director, Jonathan Greenblatt, tweeted on Aug. 31, 2023, about a “productive conversation” with X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, about addressing the platform’s hate speech. The post was met with backlash by white supremacists, leading to the trending hashtag #BanTheADL. And during this storm, Musk chose to voice his choked-up sentiments about the ADL with a lawsuit.

In a Sept. 18, 2023, live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Elon Musk spilled some beans about Twitter, now known as “X”. Among the tidbits, he mentioned that X has 550 million monthly users. Musk suggested introducing a “small monthly payment” for X users during the same chat. Why, you ask? To combat those pesky “vast armies of bots.”

Elon Musk values Twitter at $20 billion, according to an internal memo reported by the Information on March 25, 2023. Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter in October 2022, meaning Twitter lost more than half its value in just half a year. However, Musk acknowledged it as an overpayment at the time of the deal. The company’s value dropped throughout the year as advertisers pulled out of the platform.

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984. Elon Musk was born 13 years earlier, on June 28, 1971. Zuckerberg shared a photo of him training with UFC stars Israel Adesanya and Alex Volkanvski at his home in Northern California on July 11, 2023. Musk has been taunting Zuckerberg on social media and said he would donate $1 billion to charity if Zuckerberg wins a UFC-style cage fight against him.

In Apple’s ever-evolving world, where innovation meets “I didn’t know I needed that,” iOS 17 introduced the “Check In” feature. Released on Sept. 18, 2023, “Check In” allows users to share their location with selected contacts to let them know when the user made it back home safely or even give them a heads up if their friend takes a little longer than expected.

On July 1, 2023, Twitter implemented this revised policy to discourage “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation. Verified accounts were limited to reading 6,000 posts daily, while unverified accounts were restricted to 600 posts daily. This decision led to a digital uproar, with the hashtag #TwitterDown trending in some parts of the world. Not missing a beat, Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, saw this as an opportunity to announce their new Threads app.

Unpaid Reddit moderators on strike, blocking users and advertisers, chose to post only images of comedian John Oliver as a symbol of protest. The strike started on June 14, 2023, and affected over 9,000 subreddits. This is after Reddit announced that it would start charging fees to some third-party developers from July 1, 2023, as part of its plan to go public later in 2023. This angered many moderators who use third-party apps to access Reddit’s data and perform tasks unavailable on the official app (such as content moderation). Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman refused to negotiate with the protesters.

On June 2, 2023, YouTube announced that it was reversing its election integrity policy established in December 2020. The company said that leaving the policy in place may have the effect of “curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.” The updated policy doesn’t change YouTube’s other misinformation rules, such as those that disallow content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting. Media watchdog groups and experts criticize the policy change. They say it could spread more election misinformation and disinformation on the platform.

On March 17, 2023, YouTube allowed Former President Trump back on the platform. The announcement came after similar decisions by Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. It’s one of the first significant content decisions YouTube has taken under its recently appointed chief executive, Neal Mohan, who assumed the top job in February 2023. Ten days earlier, YouTube loosened its profanity rules so that creators who used swear words at the start of a video could still profit from the content.

A pre-bunking approach involves releasing short videos that show people how to spot false claims. It is considered a quick and easy method of limiting the impact of misinformation. In the fall of 2022, Google launched a prebunking video campaign in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia in the largest test of the method. The videos dissect different techniques used to make false claims about Ukrainian refugees. A new German prebunking campaign from Google will focus on photos and videos and the ease with which they can be posed as evidence of something false.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) is a regulatory framework within the European Union. It mandates digital platforms, like Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), to mitigate risks to public security and civic discourse, especially by tackling online illegal content. Three days after the Hamas terror attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton told Musk that his platform was “being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU.” Non-compliance with the act could result in a fine of 6% of X’s revenues or a total blackout in the EU. The UK technology secretary, Michelle Donelan, also echoed similar concerns, urging social media platforms to act against violent content.