Social media

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. Court Denies TikTok’s Request to Freeze Sale-or-Ban Law

      by

      TikTok had sought to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent to sell the app or face a U.S. ban next month. The case may now head to the Supreme Court.A federal court on Friday denied TikTok’s request to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a ban in the United States as of Jan. 19, a decision that puts the fate of the app in the Supreme Court’s hands.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a filing late on Friday that an injunction was “unwarranted,” and that it had expedited its decision so that TikTok and its users could seek an emergency freeze from the Supreme Court.A week ago, three judges in the same court unanimously denied petitions from the company and its users to overturn the law. TikTok then asked the court on Monday to temporarily block the law until the Supreme Court decided on TikTok’s planned appeal of that decision, and sought a decision by Dec. 16.The court said on Friday that TikTok and its users “have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court.”It isn’t clear whether the Supreme Court will agree to temporarily freeze the law and hear the case, though experts say that is likely.Michael Hughes, a spokesman for TikTok, said, “As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech.” He said that American users’ voices would be “silenced” if the law were not stopped.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Reaction to C.E.O. Killing Exposes Frustrations With Health System

      by

      The killing of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson has mesmerized a deeply polarized nation that shares a collective frustration over dealings with health insurance companies.On social media, some people have cheered for the gunman and expressed little remorse over the death of Mr. Thompson, 50, a father of two boys from Maple Grove, Minn., with some painting him as the villain in a national health care crisis.And now that the identity of the suspect, Luigi Mangione, 26, has been revealed and more photos of him have emerged, he is being defended or even applauded in some circles. That adulation reflects public anger over health care, said Nsikan Akpan, managing editor for Think Global Health, a publication that explores health issues at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The UHC killing and the social media response stem from people feeling helpless over health coverage and income inequality,” he said. The topic is so often ignored by American public officials, he said, that voters have stopped listing it as a top priority.“A targeted killing won’t solve those problems, and neither will condoning it,” he added.Experts who reviewed the flood of social media posts expressing support for Mr. Mangione said that while it can be difficult to assess the provenance of posts, none have the telltale signs of an “influence campaign” by a foreign entity.“People are legitimately actually pissed off at the health care industry, and there is some kind of support for vigilante justice,” said Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at Notre Dame and expert in social media and artificial intelligence. “It’s organic.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Teens Are Getting Botox. I’m Going Full Crone in 2025.

      by

      Whenever I can, I try to deprogram my daughters from the overwhelming cultural imperative to look conventionally hot forever. Sometimes this involves showing my eldest daughter videos of women older than me who I admire. This is my way of pushing back against the idea that we should do everything in our power to look younger.A recent standout of the genre is a TikTok I found of Shirley Manson, the lead singer of the band Garbage, talking about being in her 50s. “I understand why women are scared to admit what age they are, but my feeling is that will never change until women change it,” she says, with her trademark blazing red hair pulled into a high, off-center ponytail, revealing a shaved undercut.My older daughter, who is in middle school, sat silently through the two-minute video. I thought she was deeply and mindfully considering Manson’s message, until she turned to me when it was over and said: “I hate her eye shadow.”Honestly, I get it. My older girl has always been able to sniff out a Very Important Maternal Lecture from 100 paces away, and because she’s inherited her mother’s innate skepticism, she rejects any of my overt attempts to indoctrinate her. I remember being in the middle school Thunderdome in the 1990s. If my mother had tried to talk to me then about beauty by showing me Joni Mitchell or whoever I would have laughed her off the face of the planet. Her entreaties would have been so irrelevant to my daily experience among tween insult comics — I was dishing it out as well as taking it, and an earnest call to hippie values would have been ridiculous to me.Normal preadolescent dismissal won’t deter me, because the pressure to look good in a hyper-conventional way is only getting worse and feels more overwhelming than it did when I was growing up. Women’s magazines don’t even seem to bother being mildly critical of plastic surgery or injections anymore, the wonky logic being that it’s anti-woman to be judgmental of anything a woman does. A recent article in The Cut about the “best” age to inject your face with the same toxin that causes botulism quotes a dermatologist who says, “I’m conservative by nature, so for Botox, I usually say late twenties at the earliest.”And the sad thing is that dermatologist is being conservative. In The Atlantic in September, Yasmin Tayag explained that “baby Botox” really is a thing: “The number of Americans ages 19 and under who got injections of Botox or similar products rose 75 percent from 2019 and 2022 — and then rose again in 2023.” Tayag then quotes another dermatologist who says, “There’s no age that’s too early,” before clarifying that it wouldn’t be appropriate to treat a teenager. Though as she also points out, when England banned fillers for the under-18 set, they simply traveled to Wales for treatment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Bluesky Is Different From X. For Now.

      by

      Liberals moving away from X are giving up on the 20th-century ideal of a public sphere, best described by Hannah Arendt as a place that “gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other.”Bluesky, the destination of the moment, is experiencing a post-election surge of new users as millions of mostly liberal users of X (nee Twitter) have moved over to the Twitter-like platform, which opened to the public last year. The platform had 13 million users by early November; 10 million more joined over the next month.Now that social media is ubiquitous, growth in one platform often means lost users for another. The Bluesky migration suggests that the broader the “us” gathered together, the harder it is to prevent our falling on another. (Owners of giant social media platforms often imagine they can get good moderation for many users with little effort, when that is a distinctly “pick two” choice.)On social media, the political is personal; migrating Bluesky users are signaling political separation from an increasingly conservative X and giving up on the idea of a town square that holds all voices simultaneously.It’s obvious why liberal users might want to leave X. Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 (and renamed it in 2023), he has reshaped the platform to be more welcoming to racism, misogyny and anti-immigrant and antitrans sentiment than even the old freewheeling Twitter. Abandoning early promises to not reinstate barred users without the judgment of a review board, Mr. Musk reversed previous suspensions and bans for Nick Fuentes, an admirer of Hitler; James Lindsay, an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. activist; and, of course, Donald Trump, who was barred after the Jan. 6 insurrection.Mr. Musk hasn’t just made X more conservative; he has also made it harder for users to ignore far-right and MAGA content, dismantling tools they had relied on to filter out those voices. X was originally a rebranding of Twitter, but over time, the service has become, in internet parlance, a Nazi bar.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      What to Know About Australia’s Social Media Ban for Children Under 16

      by

      Critics say big questions remain not only about how the new law will be enforced, but also about whether the ban will really protect young people.Australia has passed a law to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms.The bill, which the government calls a “world leading” move to protect young people online, was approved in the Senate on Thursday with support from both of the country’s major parties. The lower house of Parliament had passed it earlier in the week.“This is about protecting young people — not punishing or isolating them,” said Michelle Rowland, Australia’s communications minister. She cited exposure to content about drug abuse, eating disorders and violence as some of the harms children can encounter online.The legislation has broad support among Australians, and some parental groups have been vocal advocates. But it has faced backlash from an unlikely alliance of tech giants, human rights groups and social media experts. Critics say there are major unanswered questions about how the law will be enforced, how users’ privacy will be protected and, fundamentally, whether the ban will actually protect children.What’s in the law?The law requires social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to verify the age of users and prohibit those under 16 from opening accounts. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Australia Bans Social Media for Everyone Under 16

      by

      The law sets a minimum age for users of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X. How the restriction will be enforced online remains an open question.Australia has imposed a sweeping ban on social media for children under 16, one of the world’s most comprehensive measures aimed at safeguarding young people from potential hazards online. But many details were still unclear, such as how it will be enforced and what platforms will be covered.After sailing through Parliament’s lower house on Wednesday, the bill passed the Senate on Thursday with bipartisan support. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that it puts Australia at the vanguard of efforts to protect the mental health and well-being of children from detrimental effects of social media, such as online hate or bullying.The law, he has said, puts the onus on social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent anyone under 16 from having an account. Corporations could be fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (about $32 million) for “systemic” failures to implement age requirements.Neither underage users nor their parents will face punishment for violations. And whether children find ways to get past the restrictions is beside the point, Mr. Albanese said.“We know some kids will find workarounds, but we’re sending a message to social media companies to clean up their act,” he said in a statement this month.As with many countries’ regulations on alcohol or tobacco, the law will create a new category of “age-restricted social media platforms” accessible only to those 16 and older. How that digital carding will happen, though, is a tricky question.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Bodhi, the ‘Menswear Dog,’ Dies at 15

      by

      A Shiba Inu of uncommon sartorial panache, Bodhi modeled for Coach and was the subject of his own fashion lookbook.Bodhi, a Shiba Inu whose smartly tailored sport coats and luxurious knitwear helped make him the rare canine men’s wear influencer, died last Monday. He was 15.To hundreds of thousands of fashion enthusiasts who followed him on social media, Bodhi was known simply as the Menswear Dog. His owner, Yena Kim, announced his death Monday on Instagram, alongside an image of Bodhi wearing an arresting striped turtleneck.Bodhi was seldom underdressed. For more than a decade, he modeled herringbone overcoats and pageboy caps, buttery cashmere vests and tortoiseshell glasses. In each image, his dignified snout poked out from beneath caramel-colored fur; it was more typical to see him photographed in a bow tie rather than a dog collar.“Listen, he wore it well,” said Lawrence Schlossman, the co-host of the fashion podcast “Throwing Fits.” “It was always the right Oxford, the right knit tie, a beautiful raincoat with the collar popped.”Mr. Schlossman became familiar with the Menswear Dog account on Tumblr in the early 2010s, as the preppy look modeled by Bodhi gained traction in mainstream fashion. He once layered a raglan-sleeve coat over a white button-up and realized that he was inadvertently channeling the dapper Shiba Inu.“I can only imagine that wherever he is, he’s still getting ’fits off,” Mr. Schlossman said.

      View this post on Instagram A post shared by Menswear Dog (@mensweardog)
      We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Has Social Media Advice Affected Your Finances? We Want to Hear From You.

      by

      If you have come across misleading personal finance advice online, tell us. We may include your experiences in an article.Social media and other platforms have helped make information on financial literacy, investing and trading more accessible than ever. Many accounts share information that can help people manage their money. But others are sharing advice that regulators say can be misleading.Some content creators might promote financial products like credit cards along with goods like vitamin supplements and electronics. Others — whether or not they have expertise — might lift the veil on their own financial journeys or share investment strategies. But sorting through the helpful from the deceptive can be a challenging task, especially when it comes to the vast landscape of social media. Financial regulators have warned people to be wary of advice from so-called fin-fluencers.I’m a New York Times reporter who writes about a broad range of topics, including the impact of digital trends on everyday life. I’ve written about sailors trading tips online over orca attacks and how savvy TikTok marketing revived a restaurant’s business. I’d like to hear from people who have lost money after following financial advice from someone online, whether that’s investing in a risky asset, signing up for a service or something else.I will read each submission and may use your contact information to follow up if I’m interested in learning more. I will not publish any details you share without contacting you and verifying your information. More