Social Media

Axios reports: Meta donated $1 million to President-elect Trump’s inaugural fund, the social media giant confirmed to Axios late Wednesday. Big Tech CEOs have been working to gain access and influence with Trump since he won the election last month, “Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta donated to Trump’s inaugural fund in 2017 or to President Biden’s fund in 2021,” per the …

CBS News reports: A federal appeals court upheld a law that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest or face a ban in the U.S., dealing another setback to the widely popular video-sharing app in its battle with the federal government. A panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided …

Courthouse News reports: The Washington state Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Meta intentionally violated the state’s campaign finance law a whopping 822 times, affirming a lower court’s $35 million judgment against the company. “This significant penalty is appropriate for a multinational corporation that intentionally violated our law and, instead of accepting responsibility, sought to gut our best-in-the-nation campaign finance …

The Hill reports: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is the first person to hit a million followers on the social platform Bluesky, according to the platform. Other than Bluesky’s own account, Ocasio-Cortez’s follower landmark is a first for a user, the platform told The Hill on Monday. Democrats and those on the American left have migrated to Bluesky from the similar …

The London Economic reports: The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has announced that it will stop publishing content on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, from January 20th, 2025, when Donald Trump will officially become the 47th president of the United States. The organisation stated that it can “no longer ethically participate in a social network that its owner has …

Politico Europe reports: Social media giant X “strives to be the town square of the internet by promoting and protecting freedom of expression,” the Elon Musk-owned company told the European Commission in a legally mandated risk assessment made public on Wednesday. Under the Digital Services Act, very large online platforms (VLOPs) must evaluate and report on how they crack down …

The New York Times reports: Australia has passed a law to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms. The bill, which the government calls a “world leading” move to protect young people online, was approved in the Senate on Thursday with support from both of the country’s major parties. The lower house of Parliament had passed …

404 Media reports: On Monday, X filed an objection in The Onion’s bid to buy InfoWars out of bankruptcy. In the objection, Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that X has “superior ownership” of all accounts on X, that it objects to the inclusion of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts in the bankruptcy auction, and that the court should therefore prevent the …

The Guardian reports: “We’re all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit,” author Cory Doctorow said earlier this year. In 2022, Doctorow coined the word “enshittification”, which has just been crowned Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year. The dictionary defined the …

Mediaite reports: Elon Musk confirmed that posts containing links in their main text are deprioritized on X in a revelation that renews criticism that the platform is restricting the visibility of and access to external sources of information. User Paul Graham, who has nearly two million followers, blasted “Twitter’s biggest flaw” was the “deprioritization of tweets with links in them” …

NBC News reports: Some major tech companies including Meta are taking steps to combat “pig butchering” scams, which trick Americans out of billions of dollars each year through fake online friendships and romances. Pig butchering scams are elaborate and often take months to unfold. Scammers will patiently strike up an online friendship or romantic relationship with a victim, eventually guiding …

The New York Times reports: In the week since the United States presidential election, Elon Musk has used X, the social media platform he owns, to reiterate his support for President-elect Donald J. Trump. Some of the platform’s users have decided that they would rather post elsewhere. Among the largest beneficiaries of that desire is Bluesky, a rival service that …

Business Insider reports: Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is already verified on X as an official government entity, and could be in violation of the platform’s rules on verification. After less than two days, the DOGE account on X has the platform’s gray verified checkmark, which is used to identify government or multilateral organization accounts. According to X’s rules …

Axios reports: Meta will extend its ban on new election ads for the week leading up to the election until several days after the polls close, Axios has learned. The tech giant informed advertising partners about the shift on Monday. The ban on new political ads was initially supposed to expire at 11:59 p.m. PT on Election Day, but Meta …

The Wall Street Journal reports: New X users with interests in topics such as crafts, sports and cooking are being blanketed with political content and fed a steady diet of posts that lean toward Donald Trump and that sow doubt about the integrity of the Nov. 5 election, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. The Journal created accounts on the …

Reuters reports: An Alabama man was arrested on Thursday over criminal charges that he hacked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account earlier this year, in an action that caused bitcoin’s value to spike, federal prosecutors announced. In January, a hacker posted false news about a widely anticipated announcement the SEC was expected to make about bitcoin, shocking the …

Ars Technica reports: Former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, are urging a court to open discovery in a dispute over severance and other benefits they allege they were wrongfully denied after Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022. According to the former executives, they’ve been blocked for seven months from accessing key documents proving they’re owed roughly $200 …

Bloomberg News reports: Brazil’s Supreme Court authorized the return of X after Elon Musk complied with its demands, including taking down some user accounts and appointing a legal representative for the platform in the country. The company has met “all the requirements necessary for the immediate return of activities” in Brazil, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes wrote in an …

Reuters reports: TikTok faces new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people. The lawsuits filed separately in New York, California, the District of Columbia and 11 other states, expand Chinese-owned TikTok’s legal fight with U.S. regulators, and seek new financial …

Law & Crime reports: Months after Elon Musk’s X Corp. urged the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to find that special counsel Jack Smith unlawfully forced Twitter to hand over evidence of Trump’s “private communications” without the former president’s knowledge of the Jan. 6 probe-related action, the high court on Monday refused to take up the case and offered …