FEATURE (THE CONVERSATION) — The U.S. government moved closer to banning the video social media app TikTok on Apr. 23 after the Senate approved a $95 billion foreign aid bill. The bill includes a provision to force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to either sell its American holdings to a U.S. company or […]
Iraqi authorities are investigating the killing of a well-known social media influencer who was shot by an armed motorcyclist in front of her home in central Baghdad
By ABDULRAHMAN ZEYAD AND QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi authorities are investigating the killing of a well-known social media influencer who was shot by an armed motorcyclist in front of her home in central Baghdad. Ghufran Mahdi Sawadi who is also known as Um Fahad was popular on the social media sites
Anyone who regularly watches news or sports has likely noticed the steady creep of content competing for screen space, whether it be stock market prices, social media posts, game scores or some other graphic display. Previous studies have indicated that high-intensity visuals that employ vibrant displays of information tend to hamper both long- and short-term memory.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi authorities on Saturday were investigating the killing of a well-known social media influencer, who was shot in front of her home in central Baghdad. Ghufran Mahdi Sawadi, known as “Um Fahad,” was popular on the social media sites TikTok and Instagram, where she posted videos of herself dancing to music and was followed by tens of thousands of users. The killing took place in Zayoona, the same neighborhood where a prominent Iraqi researcher and security expert Hisham al-Hashimi...
When President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid bill into law on April 24, it started the clock on a nine-month window for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app. The president can extend the deadline by three months, and TikTok has indicated that it plans to challenge the law in court. If the law stands and the company fails to sell the app, TikTok will be blocked from any U.S. app store or web-hosting service. This would affect TikTok’s more than 170...
As the TikTok ban threatens the social media ecosystem, agency execs debate investing in the fediverse.
I’m a longtime social media critic, and I’m pretty indiscriminate in my criticism. I don’t trust any algorithm-based platforms or the executives who run them, be that X, Facebook or TikTok. And yet, while I’ve spent months deriding U.S. lawmakers’ laser focus on restricting access to TikTok, I’m starting to find the widespread fawning over the app — now that it might be banned in the U.S. — pretty disturbing. Last week, President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that included money for...
An excerpt from ‘The Deception Industry: The Art, Craft and Science of Hacking the Electorate’, by Herjinder.
It didn’t take Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book The Anxious Generation to alert us to social media’s pernicious effects on children and teenagers. And it turns out that TikTok, a digital application owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, goes viral in the minds of young people significantly more than Instagram, Facebook, X, and Snapchat — and Chinese divestment from TikTok would enhance free speech.
While four Ontario school boards recently announced a $4.5-billion lawsuit against the social media giants behind Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, Brock University experts are calling for additional actions to address the influence popular online platforms have on teens.
While Swift's label, Universal Music Group, continues to battle TikTok, the pop star made her own deal with the platform ahead of her newest album drop.