Cynically, because it's twitter, and it's trendy amongst a certain subset of the population to bash social media in general and twitter in particular. And I think your point is fair.
(FWIW, I think social media has if not caused, then certainly exacerbated, some major problems at individual, societal, and global levels, but by no means do I think twitter is the biggest contributor. I don't think we'd see the kind of unconstructive political polarisation we're seeing in the US and UK and perhaps, to a lesser extent, within the EU, without it.)
My reasoned mind says it's due to the recent disclosure in Twitter due to linking of phone numbers to people, while my other mind says it's Elon finding anything to make Twitter give up their case.
> in Twitter due to linking of phone numbers to people
Except like the linkedin "hack" which was just a scrape of peoples profiles, the twitter "hack" was someone running phone numbers through the "upload you contacts and find your friends account" feature.
They are both barely stories, except to remind people that posting stuff publicly is public.
>..the twitter "hack" was someone running phone numbers through the "upload you contacts and find your friends account" feature.
>They are both barely stories, except to remind people that posting stuff publicly is public.
The reoccurring issue is that Twitter and other companies are convincing (and often forcing) you to do something unsafe like linking your phone number, while telling you that your data will be kept private and at the same time opting you in by default, or aggressively marketing, an option that compromises your security.
I'm sure you may be smart enough to know this compromises your anonymity, allows stalkers to find your phone number, etc. but the 99% of users wont.
Linking everything to a phone number is a major dark pattern that benefits the corporations while compromising the user. So rightfully, these malicious and harmful practices should be called out.
Additionally, Twitter collected PII and then did a bad job protecting it. We don't see a phone-numbers-leaked story like this out of Google, which has had 2FA with phone number deployed for years.
Twitter has some 200+ million daily active users and should act like it.
Decide whether people who have your email address or phone number can find and connect with you on Twitter. If you select yes, then someone with l33t skills can "hack" twitter and type in your email / phone number and get your twitter handle (or just put it in their contacts and click a button in the twitter app aka l33t hax0r skills)
The reason there isnt "leak" from google is because they dont offer the functionality to look up your account by your phone number.
For sure, the phone numbers issue definitely won't have helped, but the whole Elon/Twitter situation is definitely up there. Plus, as I say, it's been sort of trendy to bash them for a while: they're either not doing enough to protect people from harmful content, or they're subverting freedom of speech by, for example, banning Trump, and applying permanent, temporary, or shadowbans to other accounts. I'm not that sympathetic, but they sort of can't win.
I think you are referring to corporate and state controlled social media. There is a big difference between those platforms and the fediverse instances I am running on a RPI sitting on my desk.
Cynically, because it's twitter, and it's trendy amongst a certain subset of the population to bash social media in general and twitter in particular. And I think your point is fair.
(FWIW, I think social media has if not caused, then certainly exacerbated, some major problems at individual, societal, and global levels, but by no means do I think twitter is the biggest contributor. I don't think we'd see the kind of unconstructive political polarisation we're seeing in the US and UK and perhaps, to a lesser extent, within the EU, without it.)