“Democracy dies in darkness.” The Washington Post’s creed, proudly displayed on its masthead, was intended to refer to the necessity of honest, ethical journalism in the post-truth age – ostensibly in response to the “fake news” so prevalent during the Trump era. Recently, though, the publication’s reporters have opted to …
Read More »Influencer says White House used TikTok stars as ‘pawns’
TikTok celebrity and self-described “Gen Z Historian” Khalil Greene has criticized his fellow influencers for telling their fans “verbatim” what the Biden administration wanted them to say on the Ukraine conflict. Greene said that he understands why conservatives said that the young influencers were “used as pawns by the White …
Read More »Washington turns to TikTok influencers to promote its narrative on Ukraine
Since the onset of the conflict in Ukraine, social media has been bombarded with one-sided hero worship, amplified and drawn into users’ timelines through the magic of the infamously mysterious algorithms that govern these platforms, whose functioning regulators worldwide have had trouble grasping. There’s the fictitious tale of the Ukrainian …
Read More »Israeli soldier jailed for Gaza TikTok video
On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a serviceman who shared a video of himself firing rounds into Gaza had been sentenced to 10 days in military prison. “The soldier’s behavior in the video does not conform with the norms expected of soldiers and commanders,” the IDF said in …
Read More »Russian TikTok star denied entry by Ukraine
One of Russia’s most famous bloggers has claimed that he has been dubbed “the enemy” by Ukraine after being turned away from entering the country at Boryspil Airport, in the capital Kiev. In a video recorded from the terminal, TikToker and singer Danya Milokhin told his followers than he was …
Read More »TikTok content moderator sues over ‘mental health’ damage
Candie Frazier – who allegedly worked 12 hours a day monitoring TikTok videos for the contracting company Telus International – filed a lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance claiming she now “has trouble sleeping” and that “when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares” due to the disturbing …
Read More »TikTok, YouTube & Snapchat ‘drive kids down algorithmic rabbit holes’ – US senator after hearing on social media policies
Representatives of TikTok, YouTube and Snap, the developer of Snapchat, appeared before the Senate consumer protection subcommittee on Tuesday. They were summoned as Facebook faces intense scrutiny and renewed backlash following a whistleblower complaint. Former product manager Frances Haugen alleged earlier this month that Mark Zuckerberg’s company has been prioritizing …
Read More »New ultraviolent ‘slap a teacher’ craze exposes failings in TikTok’s efforts to ban traumatic videos among impressionable teens
In this age of quantum leaps in technology and seemingly endless possibilities about what we can do with our smartphones nothing is really that novel. So, while disturbing, it’s not surprising to see a new craze of violent assault videos being recklessly shared among TikTok’s one billion users. The latest …
Read More »Platforms like TikTok are full of ‘irrelevant content’ that is destroying human creativity, says Russian tech billionaire Durov
Writing on his personal channel on Saturday, Pavel Durov claimed that the consumption of both food and information work in a similar way. “If we nourish our brain with real-life data that allows it to solve fundamental problems, it will process this data in the background and come up with …
Read More »White House seeking TikTok stars for ‘intimate’ calls with Fauci to promote Covid-19 vaccines to kids as young as 12 – reports
Joe Biden’s administration has relied on celebrity influence to help in its promotion of Covid-19 vaccines to the public, and according to an email making the rounds on social media, the White House is seeking to target kids as young as 12 with the celebrity-led content. In a screenshot shared …
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