Social

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is getting closer to becoming a law, which would make social platforms significantly more responsible for protecting children who use their products. With 62 senators backing the bill, KOSA seems poised to clear the Senate and progress to the House. KOSA creates a

People on Bluesky and Mastodon are fighting over how to bridge the two decentralized social networks, and whether there should even be a bridge at all. Behind the snarky GitHub comments, these coding conflicts aren't frivolous — in fact, they could shape the future of the internet. Mastod

President Joe Biden's reelection campaign has finally set up shop on TikTok. Despite controversy in Congress over the app, TikTok is an indispensable tool for presidential candidates to reach young voters, experts say. “I wasn't surprised at all to see that the campaign la

A user on the Twitter/X alternative Spoutible claims the company deleted their posts after they pushed Spoutible CEO Christopher Bouzy to be more honest about the nature of its recent security issue. The claims, which the company denies, are the latest bizarre twist in the security incident saga ta

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), technewss’s regular newsletter that recaps the last few days in tech. This week, social network Bluesky opened for anyone to join — which feels appropriate here in NYC, given the sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures we’ve been e

Meta doesn’t want its new app Threads to become another Twitter, full of heated political debates and the resulting toxicity that entails. In an announcement today, the company detailed how it will approach the recommendation of political content across both Instagram and its sister app, Thre

Bluesky opened to the public yesterday after launching in an invite-only beta last year. Getting on Bluesky might not be as exciting as it was when people were selling invites on eBay for $400 a pop, but there’s still a lot of curiosity around the decentralized, open source social app. In the

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says that her job is like being a substitute teacher. It's not what you'd expect from the head of an experimental, up-and-coming social platform, but it makes sense: there's a lot of pressure, and a mischievous audience is eager to poke and prod at any crack in yo

Meta is introducing a few new updates and efforts to help teens on its platforms combat sextortion, the company announced on Tuesday. Most notably, Meta announced expanded availability of Take It Down, which is an online tool that it helps finance and is run by the National Center for Missing and E

The Oversight Board, the external advisory group that Meta created to review its moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram, issued a decision on Monday concerning a doctored seven-second video of President Biden that made the rounds on social media last year. The original video showed the pres

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), technewss’s regular newsletter that recaps the week in tech that was. And, boy, was it a week. Lots happened — let’s dig in. As layoffs in tech picked up, the Vision Pro, Apple’s attempt at an AR headset, launched with hundreds o

Social media apps can rise quickly and burn out just as fast, but taking a step back and looking at those trends on a longer timeline offers a better glimpse at the big picture. The Pew Research Center's latest report on Americans' social media habits is out, rounding up social media usage

During today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on kids' online safety, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel shared that 20 million teenagers use Snapchat in the United States and that around 200,000 parents use its Family Center supervision controls. He also shared that approximately 400,000 teen accou

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta, commented in today’s Senate hearing on children’s online safety that teenagers should be able to be creators and share their content widely. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) questioned Zuckerberg about Meta’s privacy controls for teenagers. On