Congress’s online child safety bill, explained
In this photo illustration, the Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook apps are being displayed on a smartphone screen in Athens, Greece, on May 1, 2024. (Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images) It’s tough to feel urgency about something that progresses in slow motion. Bear with me, though, because it is time, once again, to care about the Kids’ Online Safety Act, otherwise known as KOSA, a federal bill that was designed to protect children from online harms. The bill has been hanging around in Congress in some form since 2022, when Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced their bipartisan response to a series of congressional hearings and…
Congress’s online child safety bill, explained
In this photo illustration, the Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook apps are being displayed on a smartphone screen in Athens, Greece, on May 1, 2024. (Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images) It’s tough to feel urgency about something that progresses in slow motion. Bear with me, though, because it is time, once again, to care about the Kids’ Online Safety Act, otherwise known as KOSA, a federal bill that was designed to protect children from online harms. The bill has been hanging around in Congress in some form since 2022, when Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced their bipartisan response to a series of congressional hearings and…
Why the uncanny “All eyes on Rafah” image went so viral
Displaced Palestinians in Rafah in January 2024. If you’ve scrolled through Instagram Stories this week, you were likely met with a single image over and over: a desert camp in front of a dramatic mountain range, filled with endless rows of colorful tents and white ones in the middle spelling out the words “All eyes on Rafah.” The image has now been shared on at least 40 million Instagram Stories, including those of Palestinian American models Gigi and Bella Hadid, actors Priyanka Chopra and Nicola Coughlan, and artist Kehlani. It’s certainly not the only image to go viral that attempts to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians during Israel’s…
The Biden administration is actually doing something about ludicrously expensive concert tickets
Buying concert tickets is a drag, as Taylor Swift fans know all too well. When tickets first went on sale for her highly anticipated Eras Tour in November 2022, fans agonized over hours-long queues and frozen screens before Ticketmaster’s website ultimately crashed. Many failed to procure tickets, which were ultimately sold on the secondary market for as much as $11,000. In the wake of that fiasco, the Department of Justice opened an investigation of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment. On Thursday, it filed a lawsuit seeking to break up Live Nation, accusing it of operating an illegal monopoly through anticompetitive behavior that has harmed everyone from consumers to venues…
Meme stocks like GameStop are soaring like it’s 2021
A roaring kitty, a legion of Redditors, and failing companies that are suddenly, inexplicably highly valued are making it feel like 2021 all over again. GameStop was one of the first meme stocks — stocks that go viral among retail investors, usually for reasons outside the inherent value of their businesses — and now the craze seems to have reignited because Keith Gill, an influential investor on X under the handle Roaring Kitty, posted on Sunday a drawing of a guy holding a game controller leaning forward in his seat. While cryptic to the casual internet-goer, it’s a meme familiar to gamers who know it means that things are about…
How TikTok Shop ads turned an obscure, inaccurate book into a bestseller
If you’ve spent enough time scrolling through TikTok, you might have seen a video from an account like @tybuggyreviews, a handle with half a million followers that exclusively posts videos selling products through the TikTok Shop. The creator, whose verified Instagram account identifies him as Tarik Garrett, used the @tybuggyreviews account to pitch viewers on supplements, water flossers, earbuds, workout machines, bible study guides, probiotics for women to help “that smell down there,” watch bands, inspirational hoodies, inspirational T-shirts, face massagers, foot massagers, rhinestone necklaces, oil pulling kits, and colon cleanses. In the TikTok Shop, creators earn a commission for each sale linked to their account. Garrett’s product videos got…
The misleading information in one of America’s most popular podcasts
Sometimes, misleading information is easy to spot, traveling in the same conspiracy-theory-slicked grooves it has for decades. The same ideas that undermined belief in the safety of Covid-19 vaccines have been around for more than a century, adapting the same message to suit new media formats, new epidemics, and new influential endorsements. In a way, George Bernard Shaw’s outspoken opposition to the smallpox vaccine in the first half of the 20th century is not unlike that of, say, Aaron Rodgers’s misleading statements about the Covid-19 vaccines. Such misleading information is relatively easy to see. But spotting other kinds of misleading information is more like identifying planets in other star systems.…