The US version of TikTok is once again experiencing issues due to an Oracle outage, just a month after coming back online from a similar outage in February. The service disruption, impacting Oracle’s Ashburn, Virginia data center, began early Tuesday afternoon, with Downdetector reports spiking around 1PM Eastern. TikTok USDS confirmed in a post on […]
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the contemporary attention economy, follow Mia Sato. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started “KING BASEBALL, monarch of the American sport world, is sick,” […]
Major League Baseball wants more of a footprint on TikTok. Just in time for spring training, the two companies announced Tuesday they were partnering to expand baseball content on TikTok, including creating an MLB hub in the app and, of course, bringing in more influencers. Baseball is coming back after a season that was especially […]
A set of bellwether cases alleging that social media platforms harmed teens’ safety and mental health is going to trial this year, putting executives like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the stand to answer questions about what they’ve done or not done to protect kids. Unlike many earlier legal challenges against social media companies, these […]
Two hours before one of the most important live events in Netflix’s history, LA’s sprawling CBS Radford Studio Center is abuzz with the strangest combination of things. As I walk through one cavernous soundstage on a Tuesday afternoon, I hear multiple people warming up their voices to sing. I pass a man carefully waving a […]
“where are you? Are you ok , I loved the torture video,” reads one email, allegedly sent by Jeffrey Epstein in 2009. The reply, from a redacted address, states: “I am in china I will be in the US 2nd week of may.” Her face hovering over a screenshot of the exchange, a TikTok creator […]
TikTok announced on Wednesday that it’s launching “Local Feeds,” an opt-in feature that uses precise GPS location data to create a feed of localized content, similar to the “Nearby Feeds” that launched in the UK and Europe in December. This is the first new feature introduced for US users since TikTok officially came under new […]
TikTok’s new Local Feed will show you nearby shopping, dining, events, news, and more.
The European Commission on Friday accused TikTok of purposefully designing its app for being “addictive,” calling out features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and its recommendation engine.
EU regulators have declared that TikTok’s “addictive design” may put it in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA), in the preliminary results of an ongoing investigation into the social media app. If those findings are confirmed, TikTok could face a major fine and be required to “change the basic design of its service” in […]