Social Media

The New York Times reports: For years, YouTube has removed videos with derogatory slurs, misinformation about Covid vaccines and election falsehoods, saying the content violated the platform’s rules. But since President Trump’s return to the White House, YouTube has encouraged its content moderators to leave up videos with content that may break the platform’s rules rather than remove them, as …

Courthouse News reports: A Colorado judge on Friday found a landlord properly evicted Twitter from its Boulder, Colorado, headquarters in 2023 months after Elon Musk purchased the business, granting the landlord $8.2 million in damages for past due rent, expenses and repairs. On Valentine’s Day in 2020, the social media company Twitter signed a 10-year lease with Colorado real estate …

NBC News reports: If enacted, Texas’ bill would put in place vast new restrictions that explicitly bar every Texas resident under 18 years old from signing up for and using “a social media platform.” The legislation would require all social media platforms to verify the age of all people setting up an account. It would allow parents to request that …

The Verge reports: Elon Musk’s X appears to be in the midst of a significant outage. Global internet monitor NetBlocks writes that X “has been experiencing international outages for users for a second time in a week,” adding that the issue isn’t “related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering. The issue comes after a fire reportedly broke out in an …

From YouTube’s corporate blog: Chart your way to the top …of YouTube’s new Weekly Podcast Shows chart! Today, we’re announcing a US-based, weekly chart to showcase the most popular podcasts on YouTube. On charts.youtube.com/podcasts, you can check out YouTube’s Top 100 podcast shows in the US to see where your favorite podcasts rank, or which podcasts you’re really missing out …

NBC News reports: Grok, the AI chatbot created by Elon Musk’s X.AI and integrated into the X social media platform, has in recent days begun responding to users with information about violence against white people in South Africa, doing so without any related prompts about that topic. On Wednesday, one X user asked, “@grok where is this?” responding to a …

The Associated Press reports: Major social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X have failed to protect LGBTQ+ users from hate and harassment, in part, because they intentionally rolled back previous safety practices, the advocacy group GLAAD said Tuesday in its annual Social Media Safety Index. The report said that recent “unprecedented hate speech policy rollbacks” from Instagram and …

Wired reports: Starting today, Bluesky is rolling out a new verification system, complete with the familiar blue check marks popularized by Twitter. The social platform, which has experienced rapid growth since it opened to the public in early 2024, formerly relied on an unconventional self-verification system where users could “authenticate” themselves by including custom domains in their web handles. Now …

Axios reports: The Federal Trade Commission and Meta will square off in a long-awaited antitrust trial on Monday over the tech giant’s past acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. The trial will be a major test of the FTC’s ability to take on tech behemoths for allegedly breaking antitrust law and comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries to cozy up …

The New York Post reports: Connecticut cops arrested a 22-year-old influencer this week for a risky and reckless motorcycle ride — at 192 mph — he took last year across two of the Nutmeg State’s busiest highways. Showboating YouTuber Brice Bennett would likely have gotten away with his death-defying joyride, had he not shared the frightening footage with his 220,000 …

The New York Times reports: Amazon has put in a last-minute bid to acquire all of TikTok, the popular video app, as it approaches an April deadline to be separated from its Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States, according to three people familiar with the bid. The bid came via an offer letter addressed to Vice …

Florida Politics reports: On Monday afternoon, the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee will hold a hearing to discuss Senate Bill 1438, introduced by Sen. Erin Grall [photo]. This bill requires app stores and operating systems to obtain parental consent before minors can download apps on their devices. Utah became the first state to pass such legislation in February. The Utah …

The New York Times reports: Meta won a legal victory on Wednesday against a former employee who published an explosive, tell-all memoir, as an arbitrator temporarily prohibited the author from promoting or further distributing copies. Sarah Wynn-Williams last week released “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” a book that describes a series of incendiary allegations …

The New York Times reports: The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, was experiencing intermittent outages on Monday, mostly on its app, according to Downdetector, which tracks reports of problems from users on websites. The first outages on X, which Elon Musk bought for $44 billion in 2022, were reported before 6 a.m. Eastern time, after which the site and …

The Washington Post reports: After years of working to undermine mainstream outlets and neutralize critical reporting, Trump’s allies are now pushing a parallel information universe of social media feeds and right-wing firebrands to sell the country on his expansionist approach to presidential power. The White House’s rapid-response account posted 207 times to X on Tuesday, the day of Trump’s speech …

Mac Rumors reports: Apple this month started advertising on X for the first time in more than a year. The company had stopped advertising on the social media platform in November 2023 following controversial remarks made by its owner Elon Musk. Apple is one of many major brands that have paused advertising on X at least once, with others including …

Axios reports: President Trump voluntarily dismissed his legal battle with X regarding the social media platform’s permanent suspension of the president’s account following the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. X, which Elon Musk primarily owns but was then the publicly-traded Twitter, banned Trump for what it described at the time as a “risk of further incitement of violence.” Each …

Politico Europe reports: A German court handed Elon Musk’s X a legal defeat, ruling that the platform must immediately provide researchers with access to data on politically related content ahead of the country’s Feb. 23 election. The court decision, seen by POLITICO, was issued Thursday and marks one of the first major judicial tests of the European Union’s Digital Services …

The New York Times reports: In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with Meta employees on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, defended recent changes he had made to loosening restrictions on online speech and ending diversity initiatives, and doubled down on embracing President Trump’s new administration. “I want to be clear, after the last several years, we now have an …

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump has signed settlement papers that are expected to require Meta Platforms to pay roughly $25 million to resolve a 2021 lawsuit Trump brought after the company suspended his accounts following the attacks on the U.S. Capitol that year, according to people familiar with the agreement. Of that, $22 million will go to a …