Social Media

Mostly because I find it hilarious to watch people say out-of-pocket shit to under their own government names to people they are going to see at the farmer’s market and everywhere else. (The problem of people being mean online is not, it turns out, anonymity.) Here’s one woman’s story of the local consequences of a post.

The Senate Commerce Committee passed a version of the Kids Online Safety Act that includes the hallmark duty of care, which the House stripped from the version its committee passed. It’s a significant — but limited — step, since the bill got stuck in the House last time it passed the Senate.

OpenAI’s glossy influencer trip prompted more backlash than the company might have expected, but we’re as shocked as anyone to see so many social media stars on board.

Only 3,300 more lawsuits to go, all filed by minors claiming that TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat were designed to be addictive, resulting in harm to their mental health. The plaintiffs’ claims against Meta, Google, and Snap are still on track for a bellwether trial in October. The first case to reach trial resulted in a $4.2 million verdict against Meta and $1.8 million against Google.

Trump Media announced the plan earlier this month for paid, real-time access to its most influential accounts. Today the API went live, with subscriptions as high as $100,000 per month. Other platforms offer similar API services, but none of those count the sitting US president as its most influential user and its largest shareholder.

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on five kids safety bills including KOSA, which passed the chamber last Congress but didn’t get a vote in the House. This year, the House has pushed its own version of the bill that stripped the key duty of care, setting up a fight.

Scott Carney and Taylor Lorenz posted on Substack about downward subscriber trends they’re seeing. Carney pins it on subscription fatigue and feeling like “The only way to grow is to pillage the paid subscribers from other creators.” Lorenz questions Substack’s direction, saying “more and more like this app is becoming another social media feed.”

Starting next week, Meta’s Family Center will have options for parents to adjust their teens’ Threads account privacy and content settings, similar to parental controls on Meta’s other apps.

X says the new version of the app, rolling out starting today, is “faster, smoother, and more reliable,” with better scrolling, loading, and notifications. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, called it “one of the largest engineering projects in the company’s history,” but warned users that “There are still some rough edges.”

Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked a State Department policy restricting visas to foreign officials who “demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies.” Boasberg wrote that a group representing tech researchers could likely prove it violates the First Amendment by categorizing research as “foreign censorship” based on viewpoint.

Toni Schneider took over on an interim basis in March, but said in a blog post that “the interim part of the title is gone” now. He also said that the platform is working on “the ability to create smaller spaces and more private communities” in the AT Protocol ecosystem, aka the Atmosphere — something Bluesky has been talking about for a little while.

According to a Pew Research poll, 56 percent of American adults support banning social media for anyone under 16. A majority support it across almost every demographic — Democrats, Republicans, parents, non-parents — except among those over 65, where 49 percent of respondents agreed, but just 19 percent opposed a ban.

Any “champions” in a Threads community can now make and host live chats, and live chats can have up to three co-hosts. If you want to share a post in a live chat to your main Threads feed, you’ll be able to do that, too.

The maximum penalty for social media providers that fail to keep under-16’s off their platforms is now 99 million AUD (about $68.2 million), double the original. It follows a study suggesting more than 80 percent of under-16s are still using social media in Australia. In a statement, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said:

While on his “The World’s First World Tour” with plans to play on all seven continents, the vocalist, producer, filmmaker, and professional scooter rider was one of six people killed after two helicopters collided over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. O Globo reports that after the crash on Sunday, one of the helicopters fell into an electric car dealership’s parking lot, sparking a fire that burned dozens of cars.

The feature is rolling out now and supports groups of up to 50 people, but you still can’t send pictures or videos in Bluesky’s DMs. Yesterday, Bluesky also announced a “communities” feature it’s planning to add later this year that will offer smaller public or private spaces with their own feeds, like a subreddit.

Kids aged 13 to 15 will only be able to create, save, and post Spotlight videos and Stories “on a dedicated profile that is visible only to their mutually accepted friends,” Snap announced on Wednesday. These more private profiles also won’t show metrics like favorite counts.

The National Gallery of Art’s social videos are outrageously Gen Z — and excellent. (They even won a Webby.)