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Category: Social media

Elon Musk told ex-girlfriend he needed ‘a legion of children before the civil war’

Elon Musk told ex-girlfriend he needed ‘a legion of children before the civil war’

The Guardian reports: Elon Musk is sowing “deliberate division” via his social media platform X that will be catastrophic unless regulated, the mother of one of the 14 confirmed children fathered by the world’s richest man has warned. In Musk, a new documentary by veteran film-maker Alex Gibney, former Maga influencer Ashley St Clair says Musk told her in a text message he wanted to have a child with her because he needed to have “a legion of children before…

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Study outlines the five-stage pipeline Clavicular used to spread ‘diagnostic masculinity’ and looksmaxxing

Study outlines the five-stage pipeline Clavicular used to spread ‘diagnostic masculinity’ and looksmaxxing

PsyPost reports: A recent study explores how an extreme male self-improvement trend known as looksmaxxing moved from obscure internet forums into mainstream public awareness. The research suggests that this spread relies not just on social media algorithms, but on a coordinated system of controversy, short-form video clips, and mainstream media coverage. The findings were published in Journal. Media. Looksmaxxing revolves around the intense, systematic attempt to maximize a person’s physical attractiveness. Participants often scrutinize their own facial features, such as…

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Meta has accepted, for the first time, that much of its business model is unacceptable for children

Meta has accepted, for the first time, that much of its business model is unacceptable for children

Nathaniel Lubin writes: For almost two decades, social-media companies have avoided legal consequences for the negative effects of exposure to their products. Damage to users’ mental health, the facilitation of crimes including sexual abuse—outcomes like these have been the subject of public protest, but were never successfully challenged through legal action. Then, about four years ago, prosecutors across America began to focus on companies’ business and design decisions, rather than, as they had in the past, on companies’ promotion of…

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Meta’s $18 billion child-safety deal hinges on age-verification tech that doesn’t work well

Meta’s $18 billion child-safety deal hinges on age-verification tech that doesn’t work well

TechCrunch reports: Meta reached an $18 billion settlement on Wednesday over a lawsuit brought by 29 U.S. states concerning children’s safety. The settlement is historic in scale as Meta agrees with a group of 52 attorneys general to implement sweeping changes to how minors use Instagram and Facebook. The settlement “gives the AGs what they want, which is the political story that they’ve extracted a huge amount of benefit for the public from this settlement, including the platform changes,” Jessica…

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How a false nuclear claim about Iran ricocheted from India to Washington, bolstering Netanyahu

How a false nuclear claim about Iran ricocheted from India to Washington, bolstering Netanyahu

The New York Times reports: On the morning of Aug. 5, an anonymous account on X in India posted seemingly sensational news. The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had vowed that his country would never give up its nuclear weapon ambitions as long as Israel and the United States possessed those weapons, the account said. It was not true, and there’s no evidence that the commander made the remark or that Iran has developed nuclear weapons. The claim…

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SpaceX’s earnings show Elon wiped out two-thirds of Twitter’s ad business

SpaceX’s earnings show Elon wiped out two-thirds of Twitter’s ad business

Mike Masnick writes: When SpaceX filed for its IPO, we went through the S-1 to point out just how far off the mark Elon Musk’s predictions about his Twitter takeover turned out to be. Indeed, the failure of Twitter as a business was so catastrophic, Musk had to hide it by merging all his Xs together: he had xAI buy X (formerly Twitter), and then had SpaceX buy xAI. But when Musk was buying Twitter and needed investors, he made…

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Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

  Fortune reports: A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial. Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late Thursday that the bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next…

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ICE built a $258 million social media surveillance machine to monitor its online critics

ICE built a $258 million social media surveillance machine to monitor its online critics

Gadget Review reports: A critical Reddit comment about immigration enforcement can, four months later, bring plainclothes agents to a poster’s door carrying a printout of the post — a scenario no longer hypothetical. According to the Wall Street Journal, ICE has built a funded, contractor-powered surveillance operation that monitors social media around the clock — not just for credible violence, but for speech that challenges the agency’s mission. Since early 2025, DHS has fired off hundreds of administrative subpoenas to…

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From a Ukrainian bomb shelter, Laura Loomer explains her shift on Russia’s war

From a Ukrainian bomb shelter, Laura Loomer explains her shift on Russia’s war

The Associated Press reports: Laura Loomer became infamous for spreading conspiracy theories online. Now, as she travels across Ukraine to see the damage inflicted by Russia in its yearslong war, she wants to admit that she fell for some falsehoods of her own. A close ally of President Donald Trump, Loomer has completely reversed her longtime criticism of Ukraine and is urging fellow conservatives to be wary of Moscow’s propaganda, which she blames for duping large swaths of the American…

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War has turned Trump’s social media posts into nothing more than noise

War has turned Trump’s social media posts into nothing more than noise

Charlie Warzel writes: If President Trump has one true skill, it is conjuring up alternate realities and getting his supporters to accept them. The examples are everywhere: dismissing stories he doesn’t like as “fake news” from corrupt media, casting the January 6 rioters as victims, election denial. After he baselessly insisted that there had been rampant mail-in voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, 11 states made mail-voting access more restrictive. His repeated false claims in 2024 that Haitians in…

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France becomes first EU country to ban social media access for under-15s

France becomes first EU country to ban social media access for under-15s

The Guardian reports: France’s parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first EU country to bar children from apps such as TikTok. The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September. “France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers,” Macron said in a video posted on social…

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Trump’s ex-campaign manager is running an Israeli influence operation targeting the MAGA base

Trump’s ex-campaign manager is running an Israeli influence operation targeting the MAGA base

Time reports: After the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire deal on June 17, a senior U.S. official was monitoring the online reaction when they noticed something surprising. President Donald Trump’s aides had expected his supporters to celebrate the agreement. Instead, online influencers in Trump’s MAGA movement were excoriating it on social media. One shared an Israeli op-ed titled, “You Could Have Been the Greatest President of All—But You Failed.” Several posted the same video of Qatar’s prime minister…

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Trump blatantly tries to manipulate markets by selling fast access Truth Social to Wall Street firms

Trump blatantly tries to manipulate markets by selling fast access Truth Social to Wall Street firms

The New Republic reports: The thin veil that has historically clouded government corruption is in the trash—under the current Trump administration, blatant ethical misconduct is in. Truth Social executives announced Thursday that the company would sell Wall Street firms premier access to Donald Trump’s market-rattling online posts, granting traders an advantage over the general public with regard to anticipating stock market fluctuations due to the president’s social media habits. The product, marketed as “Truth API,” apparently aims to make fast…

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The Democratic influencer who helped bring down Graham Platner and former Rep. Eric Swalwell

The Democratic influencer who helped bring down Graham Platner and former Rep. Eric Swalwell

The Wall Street Journal reports: Behind the stunning downfall of two Democratic politicians this midterm cycle is a 29-year-old lawyer and progressive social media influencer. Cheyenne Hunt played a key role in surfacing serious accusations of assault and sexual misconduct against Maine Democrat Graham Platner and former Rep. Eric Swalwell, the California Democrat who was also a leading candidate for governor. Both men have denied the allegations. Platner ended his Senate campaign on Wednesday and Swalwell suspended his gubernatorial campaign…

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Experiments reveal the psychological cost of insulting political rhetoric

Experiments reveal the psychological cost of insulting political rhetoric

PsyPost reports: Politicians frequently use aggressive, blaming language to mobilize voters and attack opponents. Recent psychological experiments reveal that exposure to this specific style of communication causes people to feel their core values are under attack, regardless of their own political affiliation. The findings, published in Current Psychology, show that polarizing rhetoric can directly degrade a person’s willingness to grant freedom of speech to political rivals. Political communication has increasingly fractured into hostile territory over the last several years. Across…

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Zuckerberg looks for new way to profit from addiction: a prediction markets app

Zuckerberg looks for new way to profit from addiction: a prediction markets app

The New York Times reports: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has urged his lieutenants to explore partnerships with the popular prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi as his company builds a similar app, three employees with knowledge of the matter said. The app that Meta is creating, called Arena, could allow people to make bets on practically anything, aiming to capitalize on how prediction markets have become an increasingly big business. Internally, Meta’s executives have said Arena is different from Polymarket…

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