Pew Research Center shared a new study examining links shared by prominent Twitter accounts and how they differ from those shared on alternative social media platforms such as Parler and Truth Social.

The think tank compiled a list of 1,125 prominent accounts on Twitter and 200 apiece on seven alternative platforms—BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social—and analyzed all posts with links from those accounts last June, predating Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

Pew found that 66% of links shared by prominent Twitter accounts last June directed readers to media outlets including print publications, television and wire services, compared with just 5% of those shared by prominent accounts on alternative social media sites.

According to the research firm, the 10 most-shared sites by prominent Twitter accounts were the online sites of news organizations such as The New York Times, Reuters and The Washington Post, while the 10 most-shared sites by the other platforms in the study were primarily other social media channels and two digital-only outlets, The Gateway Pundit and Rebel News.

Pew director of data labs Aaron Smith and computational social scientist Regina Widjaya wrote in the study, “While these differences in linking practices between more established and alternative social media sites are notable, they may not come as a surprise to regular visitors of the alternative social media universe. In the center’s recent study, 52% of those who regularly get news on alternative social media sites say that they either extremely or fairly often see news on these sites that they would not have seen elsewhere.”

Meta continued to take actions against data scraping on its platforms, this time setting its sights on Voyager Labs.

The company filed a legal action against Voyager Labs in federal court in California, seeking to ban it from Facebook and Instagram for creating fake accounts and scraping user data.

Meta disabled Voyager Labs’ accounts and filed the court action with the aim of permanently banning it for violations of its terms of service.

Director of platform enforcement and litigation Jessica Romero explained in a Newsroom post Thursday, “Voyager developed and used proprietary software to launch scraping campaigns against Facebook and Instagram, and websites such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Telegram. Voyager designed its scraping software to use fake accounts to scrape data accessible to a user when logged into Facebook, including users’ profile information, posts, friends lists, photos and comments. Voyager used a diverse system of computers and networks in different countries to hide its activity, including when Meta subjected the fake accounts to verifications or checks. Voyager did not compromise Facebook—instead, it used fake accounts to scrape publicly viewable information.”

She added, “Companies like Voyager are part of an industry that provides scraping services to anyone regardless of the users they target and for what purpose, including as a way to profile people for criminal behavior. This industry covertly collects information that people share with their community, family and friends, without oversight or accountability, and in a way that may implicate people’s civil rights.”

Subscription option Twitter Blue is now available in Japan, joining Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.

The social network said on its Twitter Blue help page that the cost for users in Japan is 980 yen ($7.40) per month via the web and ¥1,380 ($10.43) via iOS—slightly lower than the U.S. fees of $8 and $11, respectively.

The original Twitter Blue subscription service debuted in Australia and Canada in June 2021, followed by New Zealand and the U.S. in November of that year, at $2.99 per month in the U.S., which rose to $4.99 last October.

New owner Elon Musk pushed a revamp of the service to include features such as verification checkmarks, and it relaunched last December at the current U.S. price.

In a move reminiscent of when Instagram shifted to an algorithm-based feed in June 2016, the “For You” feed became the default for Twitter on iOS this week.

The social network said in a Twitter Support tweet that the For You and “Following” tabs replace “Home” and “Latest,” and users can swipe between the two feeds.

Twitter attempted a similar shift in February 2016, only to restore its chronological timeline in September 2018.

With this week’s update, Twitter users can swipe left and right between the feeds, rather than having to change their settings under the sparkle icon in the top-right corner of the application.

Elon Musk said in a tweet last month, “Main timeline should allow for an easy sideways swipe between top, latest, trending and topics that you follow. Twitter search nav already sorta does this after you search.”

Now you have a full-time employment offer, until you don’t.

Engineer and writer Gergely Orsoz tweeted earlier this week that Meta began rescinding full-time job offers for positions in its London office, particularly for recent graduates who were due to start in February.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed the move, saying, “As we continue to reassess our hiring needs, we’ve made the difficult decision to withdraw offers to a small number of candidates. While this decision did not come lightly, it allows us to remain thoughtful as we readjust our hiring through 2023 to align with our highest-priority work.”

Orsoz reported that despite the first layoffs in Meta’s history, which impacted more than 11,000 jobs last November, recruiters assured candidates that full-time offers would be honored, and offers for non-full-time engineering positions were the ones being affected.

He added that he knew of at least 20 recent graduates who were impacted.

Meta will begin phasing out support for its original virtual reality headset, the Oculus Quest 1, which debuted in May 2019 but was no longer offered for sale once the Quest 2 debuted in October 2020.

The company said in a help post that people will still be able to use their Quest 1 headset and available applications, but new features will not be shipping for Quest 1, and users will no longer be able o create or join a party.

While Meta will continue to provide bug fixes and security patches for the Quest 1 system software until next year, users will lose access to the Meta Horizon Home social features March 9, at which point they will no longer be able to invite other users to their Home or visit other people’s Home.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last October that the Meta Quest 3 is expected to debut sometime in 2023.