Amanda Mull at Bloomberg has a nice summary of how consumer culture might change if TikTok exits the US later this month. It’s not just influencers who’d feel the effects — brands pushing products, media covering trends, and businesses relying on the app’s roulette of virality are surely worried.
But would it be the worst thing if we all just slowed down a bit?
After user outrage, Meta is deleting its small army of AI bot profiles in order to fix a bug that removed the ability to block the accounts. As I reported earlier today, the bots have been around since 2023, but many users just discovered them in the last few days following news coverage and social media posts.
After being banned from India in 2020 along with other Chinese apps, Shein won a rare exception — but it comes with strict parameters.
Among them: the fast fashion giant must hand over customer data to its Indian partner Reliance Retail. Shein products will also be produced locally, with government security audits.
The Ashland Daily Tidings, a shuttered paper, rose from the dead in 2023 and once again began pumping out local stories. But all is not as it seems: the stories appear to rip off other articles, and the supposed authors have nothing to do with the operation.
Oregon Public Broadcasting untangled the parasite SEO scheme that took over a local newspaper.
