That’s the question posed by a new report from Forbes, which says that an internal security team at ByteDance — TikTok’s Beijing-based parent — ran investigations into a US-based security leader that may have contributed to his departure last month. This is the same team that Forbes reported on last week, saying they planned to monitor the location of specific American citizens.
Say you’d like to promote your brilliant tweet or painstakingly crafted Facebook meme, and you want to do it right from the main iPhone app. In the past, companies like Facebook have argued that Apple shouldn’t get a cut of these paid “boosts” on posts, since they’re a form of advertising. But today, Apple said “Nah, just give us 30 percent, it’s in our rules now.”
This all follows Apple’s app-tracking transparency changes doing a number on social media ad businesses. Apple did carve out a caveat, though: sole-purpose apps for ad buying don’t need to give Apple a cut.
Barilla is being sued in the US for allegedly misleading consumers into thinking its pasta is made in Italy, rather than New York and Iowa. Why go to court over a miscommunication around noodles? The Washington Post writes:
Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School, ... said consumers have been steadily filing false-advertising suits against companies selling products in grocery stores because it is one of the last forums in society that is not bogged down by legal forms or contracts in which consumers sign away their rights to sue.
I have a feeling pasta boxes are about to start looking like a Dr. Bronner’s bottle.
When you block someone, you can now block all accounts they currently have (or may make in the future). Meta says this should lead to just a bit less manual blocking... like, say, 4 million fewer manual blocks per week.
Instagram’s word blocking feature is also getting updated to catch more intentional m1ssp3llings of words meant to avoid filtering. Plus, they’ll catch story replies now, too.
He estimates the case costs about $14 to make and says it uses a “pretty good choice for leather.” Verdict: he’d buy it.
The masked YouTuber finally revealed what he looks like last night, putting a face to the biggest creator in the Minecraft world. Dream’s in-game exploits have been a sensation on YouTube in recent years. Here’s Julia Alexander writing last year about the server shared by Dream and his friends:
Together, they get into hijinxes, stage lengthy feuds, and pal around for a combined audience of tens of millions of people. Dream went from 1 million to 15 million subscribers in one year alone ... Like a television show or cinematic universe, Dream SMP found its audience through a series of never-ending epic battles.
Now that he has a face, Dream is talking about maybe taking some future adventures offline, too.
Some quick takeaways now that it’s available:
-Typing a weird description and getting back an accurate result of a cat in a suit is endlessly entertaining.
-A lot of results miss the mark. The incredible illustrations getting shared around are very much the standouts.
-Dall-E benefits a lot from specific style suggestions. A medium or artistic movement is helpful; a specific artist is even better. It’s a valid reason for artists to be concerned.
-Do not accidentally generate variations of a selfie of yourself, it is disturbing.
“Hundreds of Twitter employees have fled since June,” according to Insider’s sources. That’s just over a month after Twitter agreed to sell the company to Musk — or, about as long as it’d take a highly qualified engineer to find a new job.
The company is down about 700 employees, according to the report, with many citing Musk and the acquisition as the reason why.
The company is going to start giving creators a share of ad revenue when commercials play between YouTube Shorts. The platform’s relatively generous payments are a large part of its rich creator culture, and now we’ll find out if they’re enough to lure short-form creators away from TikTok.
