Watch out, Twitter. A new competition is in town. As the bird app continues in what seems to be a downhill spiral, a new app called Spill is prepared to serve Black and other marginalized communities. Following the implementation of usage limitations on the number of tweets a user can view each day, users have been criticizing Elon Musk and the app.
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day
Since the tech CEO acquired control of the site in a $44 billion purchase on October 27, 2022, users have seen a string of significant outages, with this one being the most recent. Since then, Spill has seen an increase in the number of Black users.
What’s the tea about the Spill App?…
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Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and DeVaris Brown, two ex-Twitter workers, developed the social media application. The two developers were among the thousands of staff who were abruptly laid off weeks into the Tesla founder’s tenure at the helm. In January, Spill released a beta version of their app, which is invite-only. The waitlist is also open to those who are interested in participating. It has a similar feature set to Twitter, but instead of tweets, it posts spills and extensively incorporates meme culture. However, Spill focuses on removing hate speech, particularly messaging targeted at Black users, which makes a big difference in the user experience compared to the rival apps.
When you first launch the app, you are presented with a feed that contains recent posts from users you are following (or, in the app’s lingo, “sipping”) as well as those that have been selected by an algorithm. From there, you may access a top menu that displays popular posts and hashtags that have all become early identifiers for app users. Users can publish text, gifs, videos, photographs, links, and polls using the bottom menu.
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Like the bird app, Spill offers a live news feed where users may keep up with breaking news on politics and pop culture. The platform’s moniker, “spill the tea,” is a phrase that is frequently used in the Black community, according to the founders. The app tracks how many posts go viral using blockchain technology. In contrast to other platforms where viral content frequently goes ignored, much alone awarded, users will also receive compensation for any “spill” that goes viral. The platform will also promote “tea parties,” or similar gatherings, both online and offline, making it easier for users to meet and engage with their online friends.
The developers are primarily concerned with employing an AI system that moderates language and content that is shared on the app. Social media sites have previously struggled to limit the quantity of hate speech or racist rhetoric on their platform. Additionally, a recent study revealed that the algorithm was more likely to flag tweets from well-known Black users. AAVE (African American vernacular English)-using tweets was twice as likely to be flagged because the AI system couldn’t recognize the community’s shared language.
Spill is still very much in its beta stage, but the app has some ambitious plans for the future.
Featured image: @spillmob/Instagram
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