Social Media
Toxic lies are surging in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton
Members of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force search a flood-damaged area along the Swannanoa River in Asheville, North Carolina, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on October 4, 2024. | Mario Tama/Getty Images Hurricanes Milton and Helene have absolutely devastated large swaths of the United States. But residents who are cleaning out waterlogged homes and businesses have another challenge to their recovery, one that hasn’t let up — viral disinformation. There’s the rumor that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is limiting payouts to disaster survivors to $750. False, according to a fact-checking page the agency has set up. What about the one that says FEMA is…
New York’s governor wants to “liberate” kids — by taking their phones
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul waves during the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 19, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images There’s a hot new trend this back-to-school season: cellphone bans. At least eight states have enacted regulations limiting cellphone use in schools so far this year, and many more individual districts and schools have implemented similar policies on their own. The changes are driven by bipartisan concern that teenagers are unable to break away from their phones and concentrate in class, or even just talk to people in real life, as well as growing concern about the pervasive mental health…
What if the panic over teens and tech is totally wrong?
As a growing number of schools ban phones to protect kids online, Congress is considering the most significant internet regulations in decades. | Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images Rich Johnston, a father of two school-aged children in Atlanta, thought AOL Instant Messenger was bad enough. Johnston recently told me that “away messages screwed with people’s brains,” stressed them out. The self-identified elder millennial also loves the fire hose of information that is X, formerly Twitter, and yes, he knows that’s weird. “Now we’ve got Snapchat and TikTok and Instagram, and that’s got to be worse in 10 years,” he said. “That’s the terrifying part of bringing a kid up in this environment.”…
Instagram’s Teen Accounts aren’t really for teens
Jason Citron, CEO of Discord; Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap; Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok; Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X; and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta are sworn in as they testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced Tuesday that it would begin rolling out measures that restrict what kind of content young people can access, who they can talk to, and how much time they spend on special media. The new measures will begin with an Instagram rollout that began September 17 in the US, but will eventually…
The perfect escape from our online world
Miscellaneous second hand vinyl LPs of rock and pop music from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s in record shop, London, UK. | Alex Segre/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Earlier this year, Justin Murphy, the founder of the media and education company Other Life, wanted to offer a premium product to his newsletter subscribers. But for months, he’d been grappling with a problem familiar to anyone who writes online: an attention deficit. “Words on the internet are undervalued,” he said. “There are too many of them, and it’s too easy to generate them.” Aware that many people who subscribe to his online newsletter don’t actually get around to reading it,…
That Chase “money glitch” hack was just fraud
Chase called the TikTok trend “fraud, plain and simple.” Who doesn’t want free money? In the world of video games, it’s possible with a simple cheat code — type “motherlode” in The Sims, watch a flood of money roll in, redecorate your whole mansion. For a brief, wild moment, a viral TikTok trend suggested that such a shortcut could exist in real life, too. The money “hack” worked like this: Over the weekend, news of a “glitch” spread on TikTok claiming that Chase bank was allowing people to withdraw funds from a deposited check right away. People took advantage by writing themselves massive checks, depositing them, and then withdrawing stacks…
Why Telegram’s CEO was detained in France
Pavel Durov, CEO and co-founder of Telegram, speaks onstage during day one of TechCrunch Disrupt on September 21, 2015, in San Francisco, California. | Steve Jennings/Getty Images for Tech Crunch Pavel Durov, the CEO and founder of messaging app Telegram, was charged in France on Wednesday with a number of crimes, including complicity in drug trafficking and facilitating the spread of child sexual abuse material on the platform he created. Durov was previously arrested in Paris on Saturday, and details about that arrest had been limited until Wednesday. Now, however, it is clear that the charges against Durov are part of a larger French investigation. The Washington Post has reported…
Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook censorship is not what it seems
Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan that he regretted Facebook’s reaction when the Biden administration pressured it to remove Covid-19 misinformation. | Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images This week Mark Zuckerberg sent Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) a letter outlining how the Biden administration pressured his company to “censor” free speech on Facebook — specifically misinformation about Covid-19. The letter also made reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Zuckerberg’s lack of plans to spend money on the election. This sounds bad. But none of this information is new. It’s interesting that Zuckerberg decided to dive into the free speech snake pit this week. It’s also not surprising…
Why Musk and Trump are on the same side
Donald Trump and Elon Musk spoke for nearly two hours in an audio livestream hosted on X. | Michael Ciaglo/Marc Piasecki via Getty Images Last night, former President Donald Trump returned to X, the social media site once known as Twitter in as bombastic a form as possible: a livestream with the site’s now-owner Elon Musk. The interview on Spaces, X’s platform for live audio conversations, covered everything from illegal immigration to union busting. At one point, Trump and Musk underscored the need for an American leader who would inspire fear in other countries. Over the course of two hours, the richest man in the world and the former president…
Advertisers aren’t buying what X is selling. Is that a crime?
Since Musk’s takeover in late 2022, X’s ad revenue has plunged. Fellas, is it illegal for brands to refuse to advertise on my social media site? If you’re Elon Musk, the answer is yes. This week, Musk’s social media company X (formerly Twitter) filed an eyebrow-raising lawsuit against an advertising industry group and several major brands, including Unilever (maker of Dove soap), Mars Inc. (maker of lots of candy), and CVS. It argues that the companies coordinated an advertising boycott against X that not only led to “massive economic harm,” but even violated antitrust law because they colluded to specifically target X, making it less competitive in selling digital ads.…