Tag Archives: social media

NBC News reports: The Supreme Court on Friday waded into the divisive issue of online censorship by agreeing to decide the constitutionality of laws in Florida and Texas that seek to prevent social media companies from banning users for contentious rhetoric. The laws, backed by Republicans, have been characterized by their supporters as hitting back at alleged censorship of conservative …

USA Today reports: GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy defended his decision at Wednesday’s debate to join TikTok earlier this month, saying he was making a bid for youth voters. Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney asked the entrepreneur why he decided to join the Chinese-owned platform that has been banned on federal government devices. “I have a radical idea for …

The Guardian reports: Since 2021, users on X in countries including the US, Australia and South Korea had been able to flag tweets that they believed contained misleading information for review by staff at the company – separate to other processes the company has in place to report abuse or hate speech. The feature had been available in the US, …

Politico reports: The Biden campaign is entering the chat. And then reentering it again and again. The president’s reelection team is formally launching its campaign war room on social media Wednesday. With the handle Biden HQ, it will serve as a rapid response operation aimed at reaching voters by pumping out content — lots of content. Aides involved in it …

Mediaite reports: Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter/X, is floating an idea that he’s had before, but never mentioned publicly, to remedy the problem of social media bots: charging people to use social media. It’s not the first time Musk has proposed making people pay to use X, which has, according to multiple reports, descended into a chaotic haven for …

The Guardian reports: TikTok has been fined €345m (£296m) for breaking EU data law in its handling of children’s accounts, including failing to shield underage users’ content from public view. The Irish data watchdog, which regulates TikTok across the EU, said the Chinese-owned video app had committed multiple breaches of GDPR rules. It found TikTok had contravened GDPR by placing …

The Center On Countering Digital Hate reports: New research by CCDH shows that X (formerly Twitter) continues to host nearly 86% of a set of 300 hateful posts after a week since we reported them. As of September 7th 2023, tweets promoting and glorifying antisemitism, anti-Black racism, neo-Nazism, white supremacy and/or other racism were still up. CCDH also found dozens …

The New York Times reports: When wildfires swept across Maui last month with destructive fury, China’s increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced. The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread across the internet, but was the result of a secret “weather weapon” being tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts …

Semafor reports: X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times. Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected …

The New York Times reports: At various moments in “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the world’s richest person, the author tries to make sense of the billionaire entrepreneur he has shadowed for two years — sitting in on meetings, getting a peek at emails and texts, engaging in “scores of interviews and late-night conversations.” Musk is a mercurial …

Ars Technica reports: When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, a fairly ordinary tech company was transformed into a most unusual private corporation. Many strange things have happened at the Musk-owned social network, but this article will focus on just one puzzling aspect of Musk’s leadership: His apparent refusal to pay bills. Over two dozen lawsuits alleged that Twitter—which …

Mashable reports: Multiple users on X have recently reported advertisements showing up on their feed without any disclosure or labeling. The paid ads being served to users appear as organic posts (aka tweets) and show up like non-paid content, right in a user’s feed. Users have reported seeing these unlabeled ads in both the “For You” feed, which includes algorithmically …

Bloomberg News reports: Elon Musk is blaming the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for a slump in US advertising revenue on X Corp., the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Ad sales are still down 60% “primarily due to pressure on advertisers” mounted by the ADL, Musk said in a series of posts Monday. The ADL has said that reports of …

The Washington Post reports: When former president Donald Trump’s media start-up announced in October 2021 that it planned to merge with a Miami-based company called Digital World Acquisition, the deal was an instant stock-market hit. Now, almost two years later, the deal faces what could be a catastrophic threat. With the merger stalled for months, Digital World is fast approaching …

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Arkansas from enforcing a new law that would have required parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts, preventing the state from becoming the first to impose such a restriction. U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks granted a preliminary injunction that NetChoice — a tech industry trade …

CBS News reports: Starting next month, X’s updated privacy policy will entitle it to collect some users’ biometric data and other personal information. Under the revised policy, which takes effect September 29, X (formerly known as Twitter) “may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security and identification purposes” so long as the user provides consent. The biometric data …

Bloomberg News reports: Users of X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, will be able to make video and audio calls through the platform without having to share their phone number, owner Elon Musk said in a post Thursday, in the latest expansion of services as he seeks to create an “everything app.” Musk wants X to become more …

CNN reports: X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is hiring for its safety and elections teams ahead of the 2024 US presidential election and will again allow political ads for the first time since 2019. “We’re currently expanding our safety and elections teams to focus on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats,” …

The Messenger reports: The social media company founded by Donald Trump advisor Jason Miller stiffed a tech outfit they hired for IT services out of more than $3 million, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York. The tech company, TierPoint LLC, claims it entered into a contract with social media company Gettr in February 2022 to perform “various …

The Insider reports: Elon Musk confirmed on Monday night that he’d ordered work on removing news headlines from X posts, so links only display an article’s lead image. “This is coming from me directly,” Musk wrote on X, responding to an earlier Fortune report that broke the news. “Will greatly improve the esthetics,” he added. “It’s something Elon wants,” an …