Tag: Social Media

In Hundreds of TikTok Videos, Its Users Defend the App

The latest viral trend on TikTok is defending TikTok. “Now is the time to fight the ban on TikTok,” read a caption of a TikTok video that was posted on Thursday about the app’s future. “#savetiktok #keeptiktok” “Do I believe TikTok should be banned? No,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said on Friday […]

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A Campaign Aide Didn’t Write That Email. A.I. Did.

The Democratic Party has begun testing the use of artificial intelligence to write first drafts of some fund-raising messages, appeals that often perform better than those written entirely by human beings. Fake A.I. images of Donald J. Trump getting arrested in New York spread faster than they could be fact-checked last week. And voice-cloning tools are producing […]

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A Sweeping Plan to Protect Kids From Social Media

Natasha Singer contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, […]

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Trump Would Like a Word

Gail Collins: Bret, I have to admit that when the subject of Donald Trump comes up these days, I tend to start telling sex-scandal stories. My bad. Bret Stephens: Don’t let me stand in your way. Gail: Right now, that very old Stormy Daniels mess seems to have produced some very scary stuff. Our former […]

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Twitter Says Parts of Its Source Code Were Leaked Online

Parts of Twitter’s source code, the underlying computer code on which the social network runs, were leaked online, according to a legal filing, a rare and major exposure of intellectual property as the company struggles to reduce technical issues and reverse its business fortunes under Elon Musk. Twitter moved on Friday to have the leaked […]

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Elon Musk Values Twitter at $20 Billion

SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk said Twitter is now worth about $20 billion, according to an email he sent the company’s employees on Friday, a significant drop from the $44 billion that he paid to buy the social network in October. The email, which was viewed by The New York Times, was sent to employees […]

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TikTok Is a Problem—but Not Our Biggest Social Media Problem

Members of Congress accused TikTok of collecting user data, failing to moderate content, putting minors at risk, and providing the Chinese government with access to private user information. All social media platforms, from Meta to Google and Twitter, collect user data. Alben explained to The New Republic that certain categories of data are protected, such […]

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Yuval Harari on Threats to Humanity Posed by A.I.

The “Terminator” franchise depicted robots running in the streets and shooting people. “The Matrix” assumed that to gain total control of human society, A.I. would have to first gain physical control of our brains, and hook our brains directly to a computer network. In fact, however, simply by gaining mastery of language, A.I. would have […]

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China Denies Pressuring Companies Like TikTok to Spy on Users

China on Friday denied pressuring companies to collect information abroad on behalf of the government, rebuffing claims made by American lawmakers about the viral video app TikTok, which is at the center of an escalating dispute between Washington and Beijing over politics, technology and economics. At a news conference, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao […]

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TikTok’s C.E.O. Struggles to Make his Case in Washington

TikTok’s tough day in Congress The C.E.O. of TikTok was grilled for nearly five hours in Congress on Thursday about his company’s ties to China, and his testimony did little to suggest the video platform’s problems are over. The aggressive questioning of Shou Chew has only added fuel to fiery U.S.-China relations and highlighted TikTok’s […]

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Free Speech (or Not) at Stanford

Stuart Kyle Duncan — a federal appeals court judge appointed by Donald Trump — visited Stanford Law School this month to give a talk. It didn’t go well. Students frequently interrupted him with heckling. One protester called for his daughters to be raped, Duncan said. When he asked Stanford administrators to calm the crowd, the […]

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There’s a Problem With Banning TikTok. It’s Called the First Amendment.

The First Amendment has so far played only a bit part in the debate about banning TikTok. This may change. If the U.S. government actually tries to shut down this major communications platform, the First Amendment will certainly have something to say about it. Perhaps the reason First Amendment rights haven’t received more attention in […]

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Biden’s Options on TikTok Narrow After Beijing Pushes Back

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration recently told TikTok that it wanted the app’s Chinese owners to sell the app or face a possible ban in the United States. But that plan hit a roadblock on Thursday, when Beijing said it would oppose a sale. The announcement scrambled the debate over the future of the app, […]

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The Wildest Things Members of Congress Said During The TikTok Hearing

Meanwhile, Republican Representative Matt Rosendale has been lobbying the FWS to delist the grizzly bear from the endangered species list, too—something the FWS is now doing. Similar to the gray wolf, the grizzly bear has only recently begun to spring back, and certainly not to the same extent as before human-caused over-hunting and habitat loss. […]

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Utah Law Could Curb Use of TikTok and Instagram by Children and Teens

Gov. Spencer J. Cox of Utah signed a sweeping social media bill on Thursday afternoon that could dramatically limit youth access to apps like TikTok and Instagram, potentially upending how many minors in the state use the internet. The Utah Legislature passed the measure this month, despite opposition from tech industry groups and civil liberties […]

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Lawmakers Blast TikTok’s CEO for App’s Ties to China, Escalating Tensions

Lawmakers lambasted TikTok’s chief executive about the platform’s ties to China in a roughly five-hour hearing on Thursday, punctuating how the viral video app has become a prime battleground as the United States and China compete for tech leadership. Shou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, was […]

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With Beijing Opposing a TikTok Sale, the Biden Administration’s Options Narrow

The Biden administration recently told TikTok it wanted the app’s Chinese owners to sell their stakes or face a possible ban in the United States. But that plan hit a new roadblock on Thursday when the Chinese government said it would oppose a sale. If the White House can’t force a sale, that would effectively […]

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Stop Treating Adolescent Girls as Emotionally Abnormal

Instead of using the C.D.C.’s report to confirm our prior suspicions, we need to get curious — about the results, about how to think differently about potential causes of mental health challenges and about what teenagers are really trying to tell us about the world when they say they’re stressed, anxious or depressed. The Limitations […]

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China Says It Will ‘Firmly Oppose’ Forced Sale of TikTok

China said it would oppose efforts by the United States to force a sale of TikTok, in a public rebuke of the Biden administration’s stance against the app’s Chinese ownership. The comments, made by China’s commerce ministry on Thursday, came hours before TikTok’s chief executive was scheduled to testify before Congress for the first time, […]

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The Threat of TikTok

The platforms are so powerful, their names are verbs: Google, Uber, Instagram, Netflix. For years, the dominance of American tech companies has brought economic benefits to the United States. It has also offered an advantage in a less obvious area — national security. Tech companies gather incredible amounts of data about their users. They know […]

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What to Know About Today’s Congressional Hearing on TikTok

Shou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, will testify before Congress for the first time on Thursday, in an appearance that is expected to reflect U.S. lawmakers’ escalating distrust of the short-form video app’s Chinese ownership. The hearing, which will begin at 10 a.m. before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will give lawmakers a […]

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TikTok Claims It’s Limiting Teen Screen Time. Teens Say It Isn’t.

At the end of 2021, Ruby McMahon and some of her high school classmates decided to go “TikTok sober.” Ms. McMahon had gotten hooked on TikTok during the Covid-19 pandemic and regularly spent five hours a day on the app. “For a long time, I would do one assignment and then I would reward myself […]

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Tiktok’s Lonely Progressive Defender: New York’s Jamaal Bowman

Of TikTok’s 150 million American users, there may be none more valuable to the embattled platform right now than Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York. A backbench Democrat, Mr. Bowman commands neither TikTok’s largest following (he has about 159,000 fans) nor exceptional legislative clout. But in recent days, he has gone where almost no one else […]

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Russian Faced Prison Time for Instagram Post About War in Ukraine

Sitting in a small courtroom flanked by her two lawyers last month, Olesya Krivtsova was facing a stiff penalty for her fondness for posting on social media. Barely 20 and until this year a university student in northern Russia, she was accused of “justifying terrorism” and “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” and was facing up […]

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Pulling the Plug on TikTok Will Be Harder Than It Looks

In the summer of 2020, in full re-election mode and looking for new ways to punish China, President Donald J. Trump threatened to cut off TikTok from the phones of millions of Americans unless its parent company agreed to sell all of its U.S. operations to American owners. The effort collapsed. Now, more than two […]

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What Is Elon Musk Building?

The biggest reason why Musk is unlikely to transform Twitter into something vastly different than what it is today, however, is that it would defeat the whole point of owning it in the first place. Twitter is—in its own skewed, imperfect way—still the closest thing we have to a digital town square. Given its disproportionate […]

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These New Yorkers Hate the New ‘We ❤️ NYC’ Logo

“It’s bad!” one person wrote. “If there’s going to be a riot in NYC, it’ll be over this.” wrote another. Someone else posted: “This is literally the worst design I’ve ever, ever seen.” Just a few hours after the new “We ❤️ NYC” logo was revealed on Monday, reaction on Twitter — and beyond — […]

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Authorities in New York Prepare for Unprecedented Arrest of a President

He would be fingerprinted. He would be photographed. He could even be handcuffed. And if Donald J. Trump is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in the days ahead for his role in a hush money payment to a porn star, the former president of the United States of America will be read the standard […]

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How to Fix the TikTok Problem. So Is the Rest of Big Tech.

Banning TikTok won’t keep us safe. As you may have heard, the United States government is in the midst of a full-on panic about TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app best known for its ability to inspire teens to try out new dance moves. Last week, the White House reportedly demanded that TikTok’s owners sell or […]

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Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech

The images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message “vote for Hillary” and the phrases “avoid the line” and “vote from home.” Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary […]

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