TikTok

Despite multiple Ukrainian strikes hitting Yandex servers in Russia, a thread by antibot4navalny, which has long tracked state-sponsored social media campaigns and troll farms, explains that the Cloudflare “Bot Traffic” chart many people have cited is really about automated web crawlers operated by Yandex accessing the web.

Users will soon be able to shop from other retailers without leaving TikTok, as well as use an AI chatbot to find and purchase products.

You’ll be able to return stuff you bought on TikTok by dropping it off at one of UPS’s Happy Returns locations, without a box or printed shipping label, similar to Amazon’s label-free returns. Reuters reports UPS is offering the no-box, no-label returns through a new deal with TikTok.

A 2025 lawsuit claiming TikTok violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act will now go to trial after Judge Cory Liu granted the state’s request for a partial summary judgment on Thursday.

A new feature rolling out “over the next month” lets you leave comments by recording a 60-second voice memo. TikTok is also bringing polls, Live Photos, and photo carousels with up to nine images to the comments section.

It’s planning to run full-page ads in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times on Thursday, according to NYT reporter Mike Isaac, on the heels of Meta’s $17 billion settlement with state AGs. Meta is using the settlement to urge its top competitors to take on similar restrictions.

It would have been the next bellwether in the group of cases tried in a Los Angeles state court. In the first, Meta and YouTube were ordered to pay $6 million total. After settling with TikTok, the teen’s lawyer told The New York Times, she wanted to “resume her life.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal filed by the tech companies, allowing more than 3,000 child safety lawsuits to proceed, according to Reuters.

250 employees have been laid off, The New York Times reports, including members of the social network’s content moderation team. The closure was made “to streamline our operations and better align our teams for long-term growth,” a press officer for TikTok’s US joint venture told The Times.

Only 3,300 more lawsuits to go, all filed by minors claiming that TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat were designed to be addictive, resulting in harm to their mental health. The plaintiffs’ claims against Meta, Google, and Snap are still on track for a bellwether trial in October. The first case to reach trial resulted in a $4.2 million verdict against Meta and $1.8 million against Google.

Executive agencies including the Department of Labor and Department of Transportation are joining the app once declared a national security threat. Following the close of the deal to bring TikTok US under a US entity, the Justice Department said government employees are free to download it.

According to Reuters, the DOJ has issued a memo stating that “​employees of Executive Branch agencies may download TikTok onto their official devices, subject ​to the agency’s discretion,” now that the deal limiting ByteDance’s ownership is in place and US user data is secured in American data centers.

UK communications regulator Ofcom has opened an investigation to assess whether TikTok is complying with Online Safety Act duties to prevent children from seeing harmful content. The probe will also examine the effectiveness of TikTok’s age assurance systems. An update is expected in October 2026.

The platform is testing improvements to its spam detection system to help identify accounts posting AI-generated spam related to politics, current events, financial advice, medical information, and other topics that could “pose a risk to public trust or well-being.”

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how course-peddling hustlebros manage to convince their followers that they’re selling enough subscriptions to galavant around the world in private jets, you need to check out this excellent 404 piece that highlights one of the trade’s shadiest tricks: fake dashboards.

Internal documents, which were disclosed as part of a wave of child safety lawsuits filed by school districts across the US, showed:

Randomized trial results of the experimental GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon drug shows that it may be too effective, while causing a whopping 11% of participants at the highest dose to drop out because of the severity of the side effects. In Optimizer, Victoria Song covered TikTok influencers pushing grey market knockoffs of “Ratatouille” and attempted to find out what was actually in them. (Please don’t buy shady “Retatrutide” from the internet.)

Starting today, US users will be able to book hotels, tours, and ticketed experiences directly in the app. Travel content is a major category on the platform, so it makes sense for TikTok to want a hand in the actual booking process, not just discovery. Content creators will also be able to earn commissions from reservations made through their content.