It blows my mind how many people preach this conspiracy theory. Marques Brownlee, the one tech reviewer who loves tech without being a fanboy in either direction, explains it best.

With Elon Musk killing off third-party Twitter apps with zero grace period and zero class, one of the absolute staples of my techie lifestyle was abruptly taken away from me.

Ever since Tweetbot launched in April 2011, it has been on my iPhone home screen. For over a decade, it was the literally first app I'd open when I wake up. Whenever I had a few minutes to spare because I was waiting for files to transfer or I was waiting in line, I would open Tweetbot. When I was following some breaking news in real-time; Kobe's death, Lakers championships, good presidencies, one shitty presidency, many world-wide tragedies, but even more inspiring moments.

Tweetbot — specifically, it's iCloud timeline position syncing — was one of the two anchors that kept me happily committed to the Apple ecosystem.

Even though Tweetbot is no more, its legacy will carry on in the form of Ivory for Mastodon.

Long live, Tweetbot.

With Elon's hostile takeover of Twitter and massive layoffs — which includes key engineers who maintain the infrastructure — it's starting to sound like Twitter is one server crash away from losing everything…

Hello, Mastodon. You're lookin' kinda good today.

https://techhub.social/@mel

The next big thing in email is here! I haven't been this excited about email since Gmail.

My favorite features?

• ability to classify unimportant emails into The Feed
• ability to merge different email into your own threads
• ability to rename emails, threads
• permalinks for each email, email thread, and person
• enable/disable notifications on the per thread or per person basis
• ability to add stickies to emails and threads
• ability add Notes to Self in emails and threads

And as a web developer, this is by far my favorite web app ever. In a world where React and full-on javascript apps have taken over the internet, this is a refreshing take on static HTML with just the right amount of javascript to feel delightful and efficient.

Josh Constine:

Facebook promised Instagram autonomy, but reduced it over time leading to today’s bombshell revelation. Eight years after launching Instagram and six years after selling it to Facebook, Instagram co-founders CEO Kevin Systrom and CTO Mike Krieger are leaving the company, according to The New York Times. The founders apparently did not give a reason for their departure when they informed the company today that they’re resigning and that they’ll depart in the next few weeks.

But according to TechCrunch’s sources, tension had mounted this year between Instagram and Facebook’s leadership regarding Instagram’s autonomy. Facebook had agreed to let it run independently as part of the acquisition deal. But in May, Instagram’s beloved VP of Product Kevin Weil moved to Facebook’s new blockchain team and was replaced by former VP of Facebook News Feed Adam Mosseri — a member of Zuckerberg’s inner circle.

“Adam is a very strong-willed individual” said a source, and “Chris [Cox, Facebook’s Chief Product Officer] and Kevin never really got along.” Between the two, they could pressure Instagram to do more for Facebook — which was important given the impact of scandals and dwindling teen usage on Facebook’s brand. “When Chris started taking initiative and with Adam as more of the old-school in-crowd of Facebook, it was clear that it wasn’t going to be pleasant. I saw that this guy [Systrom] is gonna get squeezed.”

This makes me so so so sad. Kevin Systrom is one of my tech idols. He was a marketer at Google who had a cool idea, taught himself programming so he could build a prototype, and kept working on it until it gained traction. He's one of my favorite product guys who built my favorite social media community.

In a time when Facebook & Twitter have become nothing more than viral, political, and cyberbullying shit-shows, Instagram has been the one place for keeping tabs on friends and spreading happiness.

I'm gonna miss it.

Jonathan Kim:

I really wish I was exaggerating, but these seven reasons are the main ways Apple critics attempt to explain why someone would choose to buy products critics believe are both overpriced and inferior to their competition. Because if you’ve already come to the conclusion that Apple products are overpriced and inferior, but hundreds of millions of people still buy them, the only conclusion must be that there is something seriously wrong with the people who buy them.

Rene Chun, The Atlantic:

China is rife with face-scanning technology worthy of Black Mirror. Don’t even think about jaywalking in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. Last year, traffic-management authorities there started using facial recognition to crack down. When a camera mounted above one of 50 of the city’s busiest intersections detects a jaywalker, it snaps several photos and records a video of the violation. The photos appear on an overhead screen so the offender can see that he or she has been busted, then are cross-checked with the images in a regional police database. Within 20 minutes, snippets of the perp’s ID number and home address are displayed on the crosswalk screen. The offender can choose among three options: a 20-yuan fine (about $3), a half-hour course in traffic rules, or 20 minutes spent assisting police in controlling traffic. Police have also been known to post names and photos of jaywalkers on social media.

The system seems to be working: Since last May, the number of jaywalking violations at one of Jinan’s major intersections has plummeted from 200 a day to 20. Cities in the provinces of Fujian, Jiangsu, and Guangdong are also using facial-recognition software to catch and shame jaywalkers.