Social Media

The Associated Press reports: A tech industry trade group sued Arkansas on Thursday challenging a new state law that requires parental permission for minors to create social media accounts. NetChoice, a group whose members include Facebook parent Meta, TikTok and Twitter, filed a federal lawsuit over the measure signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in April. The law requires …

Mediaite reports: The proposed fight between billionaire rivals Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg may take place in Rome’s Colosseum, according to both Musk and a new report. “Some chance fight happens in Colosseum,” Musk tweeted on Thursday. “Need to work on my endurance,” he added in a follow-up post, which included a clip of the Colosseum fight from Monty Python’s …

Reuters reports: Elon Musk said on Saturday he will start training if the mixed martial arts cage fight he has provoked with fellow billionaire media mogul Mark Zuckerberg takes shape. Twitter owner Musk tweeted on Tuesday he was up for a cage match in Las Vegas with Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook parent Meta, who has trained in jiu-jitsu. “I haven’t …

Bloomberg News reports: A British man was sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in a social media hack that included hijacking Twitter accounts of top US political and business leaders, and for cyberstalking and threatening several individuals. Joseph James O’Connor, 24, pleaded guilty in New York last month to taking part in numerous online schemes, including a …

CNBC reports: While a standard UFC pay-per-view costs $80, UFC president Dana White said he would charge $100 for the Musk-Zuckerberg bout. The previous biggest pay-per-view ever was Conor McGrergor-Floyd Mayweather in 2017,  White said, which brought in more than $600 million in revenue. The two executives, who have a history of bad blood, likely aren’t looking to add to …

Bloomberg News reports: Elon Musk’s Twitter needs to put more resources toward addressing sensitive content if it wants to comply with strict new European regulations ahead of a deadline in August, according to Thierry Breton, the bloc’s internal market commissioner. There are a few “critical” areas that Twitter needs to focus on immediately, especially around child abuse and controlling disinformation …

More news about bored billionaires. TMZ Sports reports: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are “absolutely deadly serious” about fighting each other in a UFC Octagon and it would be the biggest fight in the history of the world, so says UFC Prez Dana White. Dana told Harvey and Charles on “TMZ Live” Thursday he’s been talking and texting with Mark …

The Verge reports: After Elon Musk recently tweeted that he would be “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO shot back by posting a screenshot of Musk’s tweet with the caption “send me location.” I’ve confirmed that Zuckerberg’s post on his Instagram account is, in fact, not a joke, which means the ball is now in Musk’s …

The Insider reports: Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, has amped up his anti-transgender campaign and has rejected the use of specific terms on the platform that are important to transgender people. Musk has a tendency to make announcements about Twitter’s policies based on personal whims, but it’s unclear whether this is an official policy that will be upheld. …

The Denver Post reports: A Boulder landlord succeeded in obtaining an order to evict Twitter over unpaid rent, according to recent court documents. A judge for Boulder County’s district court permitted law enforcement to evict the tenant on May 31, directing the tech giant to evacuate its suites at 3401 Bluff St. in Boulder and return them to the owner …

Variety reports: The National Music Publishers Assn., acting on behalf of 17 major music publishers, is filing a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Twitter for its failure to license and pay for the music widely available on its platform. The complaint seeks more than $250 million in damages for hundreds of thousands of noticed infringements of approximately 1,700 works. “Twitter …

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk recently said Twitter’s advertising business was on the upswing. “Almost all advertisers have come back,” he asserted, adding that the social media company could soon become profitable. But Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a …

The Washington Post reports: Instagram on Sunday lifted its suspension against the account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken anti-vaccine activist and nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy, who is running for president as a long shot Democratic challenger to President Biden. The platform removed Kennedy’s account in 2021 for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus …

Axios reports: In a reversal of its election integrity policy, YouTube will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections, the company confirmed to Axios Friday. YouTube established the policy in December 2020. Now, the company said in a statement, leaving the policy in place may have the effect …

Mediaite reports: In yet another zag following shortly after a zig, Twitter owner Elon Musk urged “every parent” to watch the Daily Wire documentary What Is a Woman? the morning after his company suppressed it online. “Every parent should watch this,” argued Musk in a quote tweet of the film. “Our film has been posted for a couple of hours. …

Reuters reports: Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told Reuters on Thursday that she has resigned from the social media company, which has faced criticism for lax protections against harmful content since billionaire Elon Musk acquired it in October. Irwin, who joined Twitter in June 2022, took over as head of the trust and safety team in November …

Elon Musk has haters on all sides these days: Conservatives are piling on Elon Musk after Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing revealed that Musk’s Twitter had threatened to “throttle” a documentary over instances of misgendering in it. According to Boreing, Twitter had agreed to platform and even promote Matt Walsh’s What Is a Woman? before discovering the controversial moments in …

The Hill reports: Twitter has been overwhelmingly not removing hate speech posted on the platform from verified Twitter Blue accounts, according to a report from a nonprofit that opposes the spread of hate and disinformation online. The Center for Countering Digital Hate said on Thursday that its researchers collected tweets promoting hatred from 100 Twitter Blue accounts and reported them …

Yahoo Finance reports: Twitter is now worth just one-third of what Elon Musk paid for the social-media platform, according to Fidelity, which recently marked down the value of its equity stake in the company. Musk has acknowledged he overpaid for Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion, including $33.5 billion in equity. More recently, he said Twitter is worth less …

TechCrunch reports: Twitter has withdrawn from the European Union’s Code of Practice on online disinformation, per the bloc’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton. In a tweet last night — which confirmed earlier reports of Twitter’s impending exit from the EU Code — Breton issued the social media platform with a blunt warning: Telling Twitter it cannot hide from incoming legal …