Elon Musk has only owned Twitter for a few days, but he’s already causing a lot of trouble. On Sunday afternoon, news reports said the business mogul was deciding whether to charge verified users $20 a month to keep using their blue ticks.
A few hours after this news broke, Elon Musk publicly hinted that one of Twitter’s biggest purchases might be back. On Sunday night, Musk tweeted a poll asking his followers if he should bring back Vine, the popular app that came before TikTok and is often said to have changed the way an entire generation creates content.
At the time of writing, nearly 72 percent of the 630,000 votes cast are selected for the “Yes” option. The poll will run for one day and end on Halloween night. It’s unclear if Musk really wants to return the favor or if he’s just trying to get more people interested in his latest purchase.
Return Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
When it went live in 2013, Vine quickly became one of the most popular apps for phones. This continued until 2016, when Twitter stopped allowing people to upload new videos and turned the app into an archive of videos that were already on the site. This archive remained online until April 2019, when the app was removed for good.
After Twitter’s shutdown, one of its original founders, Dom Hoffman, said he was working on a spiritual replacement. In 2018, he made Byte, which was later bought by another short-form video service. The service, now called “Huddles,” isn’t as popular as Vine, especially when you consider how popular TikTok has become since the pandemic.
Elon Musk is actually thinking about bringing back Vine, simpler times… ? pic.twitter.com/xveTM5agan
— Adam (@FGRADam) October 31, 2022
Even then, TikTok was embroiled in a lot of trouble. Even as recently as June, FCC commissioners said that the app had very large security gaps. This summer, Commissioner Brendan Carr sent a letter to Apple and Google asking them to remove the TikTok app from their app stores.
“TikTok collects everything from search and browsing history to keystroke patterns and biometric identifiers, including faceprints — which researchers say could be used in unrelated facial recognition technology — and voiceprints,” Carr wrote at the time.
Elon Musk talks about bringing Vine back… thoughts? pic.twitter.com/UGjJumQyJ8
— KEEM ? (@KEEMSTAR) October 31, 2022
“It collects location data as well as message drafts and metadata, plus it has collected the text, images and videos that are stored on the device’s clipboard.” TikTok is still available in almost all mobile app stores.
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