The Friday Five: Netflix Gets Serious about Sharing, Twitter’s Blue Tick Crisis, and Nearly Half of Businesses Embarrassed by Their Website

Welcome to the Friday Five! In this weekly newsletter, we bring you the latest technology news and updates that matter to you. This week, as ever, we have a bunch of cracking news stories for you to read. We explore Twitter's verification program, the data leak at Yandex, the embarrassment UK businesses face with their websites, as well as much more.

So grab a cuppa, sit back, and be the first to catch up on the hottest news in the tech world from the last 7 days.

1. "Twitter Verified: The AI Impersonation Game"

Twitter's "Verified" program has come under fire due to a proliferation of AI-generated faces being used as profile pictures by verified accounts.

The blue checkmark, which was once used to verify a user's identity, is now being taken advantage of by parties using AI technology. Some of these AI-generated accounts are pushing political agendas, while others are claiming to be real people, like Harvard graduates.

This development became news after a Twitter user spotted multiple accounts that were using AI profile pictures and pretending to be real people. As mentioned, the user, conspirator0, found many of these bot accounts, most of which have been deactivated, were amplifying extremely right-wing, racist views

It is unknown how many of these accounts are bots or anonymous individuals, but it is likely a mix of both. The issue is concerning because the "Legacy" verified accounts still maintain the same blue checkmark, which can lead to people mistaking these AI-generated profiles for real people.

AI face generators are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and this development is a confluence of AI's growing popularity, its potential for abuse, and Twitter's decision to let anyone brandish the blue checkmark.

For more on this alarming new development, head over to Futurism.

2. Yandex Gets a Code Red: Russian Search Engine Giant Suffers Data Leak

Yandex, the Russian search engine giant, experienced a data leak on January 27, 2023, revealing fragments of its program code online.

The company has launched a thorough investigation into the cause, content, and implications of the leak and has found no evidence that users' personal information was impacted, but the code contained contact details of some of its partners.

This is the second leak that Yandex has suffered in less than a decade. In 2015, a former employee tried to sell its search engine code on the black market for around $30,000. The initial leak contained 1,922 ranking factors and combined with other files, approximately 17,800 ranking factors were found. Yandex has been public with its algorithm updates and changes and has recently adopted machine learning.

Yandex is the largest search engine in Russia and the fourth largest in the world. The leak has raised concerns about the security of the company's data and the potential for sensitive information to be misused. The company has stated that it is taking the matter extremely seriously and is working to address any issues that have arisen from the leak.

For more insight into this story head over to Search Engine Journal.

3. 47% of UK Businesses Feel 'Embarrassed' by Their Own Website

UK companies are losing a significant amount of money each year due to poor website experiences, according to a recent survey by Storyblok, a leading content management system provider.

This is despite businesses investing an average of ￡336,500 over the past five years on marketing technology. The study surveyed 500 business leaders of mid-sized e-commerce companies in the US and Europe and found that 47% of UK businesses reported that their website recently embarrassed them in front of a key stakeholder or customer, yet 90% claimed that their website met their expectations. 92% of the businesses surveyed believe that their website's poor user experience is costing them sales, with 9% estimating that this cost exceeds ￡100,000 per year.

However, spending on marketing technology and satisfaction with the results remains high. The research also found that companies are spending a significant amount of time on website maintenance and fixing errors, losing an average of 3.5 hours each week.

For more on this, check out Marketing Tech News' piece.

4. Sharing is Caring, Unless You're Streaming, Says Netflix

Netflix plans to crack down on password sharing by requiring users to regularly connect via their home Wi-Fi.

Within a single household, logins will still be shareable but Netflix will implement measures to detect and intervene if users log in from outside their primary location.

Devices connected to home Wi-Fi will be treated as trusted while those from outside the household may require periodic verification. Netflix may limit how many devices can be used simultaneously depending on pricing tier, and may still act if they suspect password sharing.

This move by Netflix comes as the company looks to reverse a trend in subscriber numbers and increase revenue amid growing competition from Disney+ and Amazon Prime. The news has received mixed reactions, with some finding the new measures inconvenient, while others believe it is a necessary step to ensure proper compensation for the content.

The Intellectual Property Office has clarified that password sharing may break copyright law, but it is up to the streaming services to enforce it.

Head to Sky News for more reaction.

5. Articles Get the TikTok Treatment as Instagram Co-Founders Release a New Platform for the Written Word

Instagram co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have launched their latest app, Artifact, which is a personalised news feed that uses AI to understand users' interests and will soon let them discuss articles with friends.

The app has similarities to TikTok for text, Google Reader and Twitter, with a feed of popular articles chosen from a range of publishers.

The name represents the merging of articles, facts, and artificial intelligence. The app opens to a feed of popular articles chosen from a curated list of publishers ranging from news organizations like The New York Times to small-scale blogs.

Users will see only that central ranked feed, but beta users are testing two more features that Systrom expects to become core pillars of the app.

One is a feed showing articles posted by users that they have chosen to follow, along with their commentary on those posts, and the second is a direct message inbox so users can discuss the posts they read privately with friends.

The inspiration behind Artifact came from TikTok’s success and the duo’s hope that a decade of lessons learned, along with recent advances in AI, will help the app break through to a bigger audience.

The question remains whether personalized recommendations for news articles and blog posts can drive the same success for Artifact that video has for TikTok.

For more on this head to The Verge.

And that's a wrap folks! Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this week's Friday Five.

We hope you learned something new, or at the very least got a good laugh or two. Don't forget to tune in next week for another round of fun and informative topics. Until then, stay curious and have a fantastic weekend.