Meta has finally launched the Threads API to developers, meaning third party businesses will be able to build their own integrations into the app. Announced Tuesday morning in a blog post by Threads director of engineering Jesse Chen, the API (Application Programming Interface) will allow external devs to build their …
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In 2004, a month before Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room, another social media site landed on the internet with a splash of hot pink. If you were online in the mid-2000s, you might remember Orkut, with its lurid logo, fingernail-sized profile pictures, and text-heavy, pastel-blue feeds. …
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“I was about to go to bed and then realized we had this interview,” Jingna Zhang tells me. It’s 9 am in Seattle, where she’s currently living. The photographer and art director has been pulling all-nighters trying to keep up with demand for her social platform for artists, Cara, which …
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On the evening of May 12, Keith Gill posted an image to his X account, depicting a man sitting forward in his chair. It’s a popular meme, used to say something like It’s time to get serious. Shortly after the New York Stock Exchange opened for trading the following morning, …
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In his polarizing “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” last year, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen listed a number of enemies to technological progress. Among them were “tech ethics” and “trust and safety,” a term used for work on online content moderation, which he said had been used to subject humanity to “a mass demoralization …
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Jonathan’s actions were irrefutable: Over the course of nearly a decade, while working at a video game developer, he sexually assaulted industry colleagues. One victim came forward, posting their story to social media; others followed with stories of their own. The consequences were swift. Colleagues, friends, and peers disavowed him. …
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When European Commission vice president Věra Jourová met with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in California last week, they fell to talking about the long-running conspiracy theory that the moon landings were fake. YouTube has faced calls from some users and advocacy groups to remove videos that question the historic missions. …
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On March 9, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African president Jacob Zuma, tweeted a video that purported to show former US president Donald Trump encouraging “all South Africans to vote for uMkhonto WeSizwe,” her father’s party, in the country’s May 29 elections. In another post, just days before the …
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In a couple of short years, the Integrity Institute, a think tank founded by former Facebook employees, has become an influential voice on how to make social media safer. Its research on issues like election misinformation and online bullying have influenced European Union regulators and US lawmakers, and have become …
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Earlier this month, a German court ruled that the country’s nationalist far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), was potentially “extremist” and could warrant surveillance by the country’s intelligence apparatus. Campaign ads placed by AfD have been allowed to appear on Facebook and Instagram anyway, according to a new report from …
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