X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has gone through many changes since it was acquired by Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk in late 2022. One of his first moves was to lay off substantial numbers of staff, which helped lead to reduced moderation of bad behavior by users.
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Musk’s X doesn’t just have lax moderation. His team has also reinstated accounts for previously-suspended Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists. X has also officially allowed adult content to flood its service. Some major sponsors have responded by fleeing the platform, leaving space for ads from less scrupulous companies.
Besides videos of Japanese mascot Chiitan, some of the most common ads seen on X these days feature all sorts of “IPTV” sticks that can be plugged into your TV’s HDMI port while promising thousands of free channels. Exactly how do those work, though? What is IPTV in the first place? Is the programming on them legitimate, bootlegged, or somewhere in between? And if it’s bootlegged, can you get in trouble for buying these HDMI “IPTV” sticks? Read on to learn more.
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[Featured image by nokia_fan via Flickr | Cropped | CC BY-NC 2.0]
