In the coming days, Congress may advance a bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to an American company. Politicians in both parties call the app a threat to national security. But its reach is felt most acutely in our culture. Since it first arrived in the United States in 2018 (after merging with […]
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Apple said it pulled the Meta-owned apps WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China on Friday on government orders, potentially escalating the war over technology between the United States and China. The House of Representatives was preparing to vote on a bill as soon as this weekend that would force the Chinese internet […]
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On a call with investors last spring, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said he believed that he had an opportunity to introduce artificially intelligent assistants “to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful.” A year later, he is making good on his statement. On Thursday, Meta will begin incorporating […]
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In 2009, long before Jeff Yass became a Republican megadonor, his firm, Susquehanna International Group, invested in a Chinese real estate start-up that boasted a sophisticated search algorithm. The company, 99Fang, promised to help buyers find their perfect homes. Behind the scenes, employees of a Chinese subsidiary of Mr. Yass’s firm were so deeply involved, […]
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After former President Donald J. Trump was kicked off Twitter in 2021, conservative entrepreneurs rushed to promote social media alternatives tailored to him and his supporters. There were Parler and Gab, Twitter-like sites popular among the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Then came Gettr, a social media app created by one […]
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Somehow, thousands of pages of sealed court documents relating to the birth of TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, were mistakenly released by a Pennsylvania court. Before they were made secret again, I read them. The documents — emails, chat transcripts and memos — are a fascinating window into ByteDance’s origins. They show that Susquehanna International Group, the […]
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Consumers have grown accustomed to the prospect that their personal data, such as email addresses, social contacts, browsing history and genetic ancestry, are being collected and often resold by the apps and the digital services they use. With the advent of consumer neurotechnologies, the data being collected is becoming ever more intimate. One headband serves […]
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In late 2021, OpenAI faced a supply problem. The artificial intelligence lab had exhausted every reservoir of reputable English-language text on the internet as it developed its latest A.I. system. It needed more data to train the next version of its technology — lots more. So OpenAI researchers created a speech recognition tool called Whisper. […]
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In a TV commercial, Sister Monica Clare, a nun in northern New Jersey, walks through a church that’s bathed in sunlight and sits in a pew, crossing herself. Her message: TikTok is a force for good. “Because of TikTok, I’ve created a community where people can feel safe asking questions about spirituality,” she says in […]
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