Twitter

After months of speculation and secrecy, Mark Zuckerberg's long-rumored competitor app to Twitter is here.

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More than 10 million people have signed up to Threads, Meta's rival to Twitter, within the first few hours of its launch, the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday.

A new online communication app is now available in the United States, aiming to become a serious competitor to the social network Twitter. The application is called "Threads" and was developed by "Meta" - the company that manages Facebook.

Facebook owner Meta's new Threads app, meant to compete with Twitter, was available for pre-order on mobile app stores on iPhone and Android operating systems on July 3.

Listed as "Threads, an Instagram app," the new program should be available in the coming days, and is described on Apple's app store as "Instagram's text-based conversation app."

Elon Musk announced on July 1 that Twitter would temporarily restrict how many tweets users could read per day, in a move meant to tamp down on the use of the site's data by artificial intelligence companies.

A Twitter account purporting to belong to new Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis proved to be a hoax on Wednesday. The account seems to have been created by Italian hoaxer and journalist Tommasso Debenedetti.

Australia's internet safety watchdog on Thursday threatened to fine Twitter for failing to tackle online abuse, saying Elon Musk's takeover had coincided with a spike in "toxicity and hate".

E-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant - a former Twitter employee - said the platform was now responsible for one-in-three complaints about online hate speech reported in Australia.

Major music publishers on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit accusing Twitter of failing to stop "rampant" copyright infringement on the platform.

The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) and its members argued in the suit that the social media company should pay as much as $150,000 per work infringed, with the potential tab climbing into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

A phony social media account spread fake news on Wednesday that famous Greek singer Nana Mouskouri has passed away.

The gruesome news was announced in a fake Twitter account which carried the name and photo of the acting Minister of Culture and Sports Giorgos Koumendakis, who later posted that the fake account was created by Italian writer Tommaso Debenedetti.

A top Twitter executive responsible for safety and content moderation has left the company, her departure coming soon after owner Elon Musk publicly complained about the platform's handling of posts about transgender topics.

The departure pointed to a fresh wave of turmoil among key officials at Twitter since Musk took over last year.