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  • Teachers are on the front lines of a battle to change how teens use social media | CNN Business

    Teachers are on the front lines of a battle to change how teens use social media | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A high school English class may not sound like the typical forum for educating kids on the risks of social media, but that hasn’t stopped Jennifer Rosenzweig.

    Each school year, the 10th graders in her class at Scarsdale High School in New York watch “The Social Dilemma,” a 2020 documentary about the harms of social media. She also teaches her students about how companies can manipulate algorithms to make platforms addictive and is part of the school’s leadership team that hosts related social media training sessions for teachers and parents.

    Rosenzweig argues the subject is so important that it should be discussed in all courses.

    “It’s really important to give students lots of opportunities to talk about, think about, write about how social media affects their lives,” she said. “They just happened to be born in a really complicated, overstimulating and demanding time – and we handed them these devices without knowing what effect they would have.”

    Rosenzweig is one of a growing number of educators who find themselves on the front lines of a fight to change how students use social media, both in schools and at home, after rising concerns about the impact these services can have on the mental health of teens. And recently, there has been a push for more schools to effectively follow their example and develop programs to help educate students on the dangers of social media.

    As part of US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s watershed report last month on the “profound risks” of social media for teens, he recommended policymakers push for “digital and media literacy curricula in schools” that help students “recognize, manage, and recover from online risks” such as harassment, abuse and “excessive social media use.”

    Other politicians have suggested the same. Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an education bill that prohibits students from accessing certain social media platforms on school Wi-Fi and requires instruction on the negative impacts of social media.

    These efforts come amid heightened bipartisan pressure from lawmakers for social media companies to do more to protect their youngest users. But in the absence of any new federal legislation, the burden falls on parents and schools, the latter of which faces significant challenges to address the issue.

    Schools must grapple with limited resources, students who develop online habits at a very young age and staff who may not be well versed to discuss the ins and outs of algorithmic rabbit holes and cyberbullying.

    At the Roycemore School in Evanston, Illinois, conversations around the impact of social media are happening in the classroom on a daily basis, according to Chris English, the head of school.

    Teachers openly remind students how their social media history lives on and how it can be perceived among colleges and employers, English said. Teachers also discuss how dopamine plays a role in why teens feel the need to keep checking platforms as well as general best practices.

    “We are always thinking about the social-emotional learning component … and how it applies to social media use,” said English, referring to teaching kids skills to manage their feelings and relationships.

    Chris English, head of school at The Roycemore School in Evanston, Illinois, said the school has seen success from participating in the

    As with other education efforts, however, he believes social media literacy campaigns are much easier to do when class sizes in school are lower, allowing teachers to put more significant time and energy into each student.

    The Roycemore school is one of hundreds of schools across the US leaning on programs such as The Organization for Social Media Safety to provide digital literacy assemblies to students. The organization offers practical steps to address the varying dangers they may encounter on social media, from bullying and hate to trafficking and pressured sexting, as well as how algorithms can push problematic content to young users. The program is part of the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) curriculum.

    “Many students don’t even understand most of these dangers,” said Marc Berkman, director of The Organization for Social Media Safety. “They can’t protect themselves from the dangers if they don’t know what they are.”

    Devorah Heitner, author of “Screenwise, Speaker: Raising Kids in the Digital Age,” previously told CNN that schools of all sizes should embrace digital literacy because teens need to learn how to properly function in online communities, as that is the expectation both going into college and in their professional lives.

    “Literacy should not just be ‘don’t look at pornography’ or ‘stay off bad sites’ or ‘don’t cyberbully;’ that’s so limited,” she said. “It should also be understanding how algorithms work, how teens can respond or what to do when feeling excluded, or if they’re feeling insecure. We need to help kids with all these things.”

    The Organization for Social Media Safety provides parent workshops and community guidelines for guardians to reference as issues surface. Although Berkman said he’s encouraged by more teachers talking to students about the dangers of social media, he advises them to undergo formal training on the subject because it’s “not a check the box exercise” and requires “up to date knowledge on the rich landscape of how teens are using” these platforms.

    Digital literacy is not only playing out in high schools. Gillian Feldman, principal of Brawerman Elementary School in Los Angeles, said the school works with the Organization of Social Media Safety to provide educational sessions for parents of pre-teen and younger students to help them navigate social platforms.

    “Our kids are 12 when they leave our school, but they’re already using Fortnite and Roblox and other platforms which have social media components, with the ability to chat, post and Like things on these games,” Feldman said. “The [sessions] have been eye opening for parents and help them set better parameters for kids.”

    Feldman said the school is also taking a social-emotional approach to teaching its young students about social platforms, such as how they shouldn’t rely on “someone else’s approval to fill up your own [emotional] bucket.”

    While trying to teach students to develop a better relationship with technology, some schools are also pushing for them to ditch their devices entirely — at least during school hours.

    In September, Rosenzweig and her colleagues at Scarsdale High School introduced “Off and Away for the Day,” an effort that encourages students to keep smartphones in their book bags during the day.

    During free periods, the students are allowed to listen to music, podcasts or meditation apps but phones must be out of sight during class. Students can “briefly check phones if needed” during homeroom or lunch but not scroll social media or play games.

    A poster for Scarsdale High School's

    The decision came after teachers at Scarsdale High School observed a correlation between screen time and declining reading abilities and focus among its students. The school is currently working to develop consequences and formal guidelines, she said.

    “I would never claim that everyone is supportive of this initiative, and yes, students do roll their eyes about it for sure,” Rosenzweig said. “But what I do strongly claim is that when you speak to students for more than five minutes about this topic, they appreciate that we are talking about it and really do want the help.”

    English’s school has also embraced the “Away for the Day” policy, where students put smartphones out of sight while on campus. It’s part of a bigger grassroots movement of the same name developed by the co-producers of the 2016 documentary “Screenagers,” which looks at the lives of teens growing up in the digital age.

    Students are told to keep phones out of sight during the school day at The Roycemore School.

    Sabine Polack, who spoke to CNN in 2021 about how her 14-year-old daughter was struggling with depression and had contemplated suicide stemming from pressures around social media, is now an advocate of the “Away for the Day” movement to create phone free schools.

    “It’s especially relevant now that we have the Surgeon General issuing advisories which includes calling for ‘tech free spaces’ as a tool to help mitigate the mental health crisis our children are facing,” said Polack, who is on the board of nonprofit Fairplay, which aims to protect kids from harmful marketing and excessive screentime.

    Rosenzweig said she aims to expand “Off and Away” to other schools in the Scarsdale School District and is hopeful it can be a leading force making a change in their community and beyond.

    “Schools have so much power,” Rosenzweig said. “We are with these kids five days of the week and we can make those days look like whatever we can look like.”

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  • Charged rhetoric swirls online and off as Trump’s Miami court date looms | CNN Politics

    Charged rhetoric swirls online and off as Trump’s Miami court date looms | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    From the halls of Congress to the dark corners of the internet, charged and violent rhetoric is echoing among some Donald Trump sympathizers ahead of the former president’s appearance in a Miami court on Tuesday

    FBI special agents across the country assigned to domestic terrorism squads are actively working to identify any possible threats, four law enforcement sources told CNN, following Trump’s second indictment.

    So far, the FBI is aware of various groups like the Proud Boys discussing traveling to south Florida to publicly show support for Trump, sources said, but there is currently no indication of any specific and credible threat.

    “We have now reached a war phase,” Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican and prominent supporter of Trump’s election denialism, tweeted Friday. “Eye for an eye.” Biggs’ office later said his comment was a call for the GOP to “step up and use their procedural tools” to counter “the Left’s weaponization of our federal law enforcement apparatus.”

    Speaking at a Republican event in Georgia on Friday night, Kari Lake, who unsuccessfully ran for governor of Arizona last year and is still spreading falsehoods about that election, said: “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and 75 million Americans just like me.”

    “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” she said to applause, adding, “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”

    On some pro-Trump forums, anonymous users were less circumspect. “MAGA will make Waco look like a tea party!” one user posted Friday in an apparent reference to the April 1993 Waco, Texas siege that left 76 people dead.

    On Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, one anonymous user posted Thursday, “This is a Declaration of War against the American People. It is time We The People exercise our 2nd Amendment rights and burn the corruption out of DC.”

    The former president himself has been posting frequently on Truth Social throughout the weekend. “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” he posted Friday.

    Still, at least on public social media forums, there doesn’t appear to be a mass online mobilization effort for people to gather people in Miami this week like there was in the lead-up to the events in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.

    However some prominent right-wing figures are calling for Trump supporters to protest in Miami on Tuesday.

    One influential right-wing activist in Florida who has almost half a million followers on Twitter is promoting a flag-waving event outside Trump’s golf course in Doral on Monday and a protest the following day against the “weaponization of government” outside the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Courthouse, where the former president is set to appear.

    Some Trump supporters online have stressed the need for protests to remain peaceful and some have said they will not demonstrate in Miami on Tuesday, fearing it could be a trap. This is an extension of the false belief held by some that the January 6 attack on the US Capitol was a set-up designed to incriminate supporters of the former president.

    But at least one person who has served prison time for his role in the January 6 riot said he will be in Miami to protest on Tuesday.

    Anthime Gionet, a prominent online streamer better known by his moniker “Baked Alaska,” plead guilty to unlawfully protesting after he livestreamed himself breaching the Capitol in a nearly 30-minute video that showed him encouraging others in the mob to enter the building.

    Gionet served a two month sentence and was released at the end of March, according to federal records.

    On Friday, he lamented Trump’s latest indictment in a livestream outside Mar-a-Lago. During the livestream, Gionet said he and another person who was with him outside Mar-a-Lago would both be in Miami on Tuesday. The other person is heard on the stream responding, “we weren’t supposed to talk about that.” Gionet replied, “I know but it leaked so f*** it.”

    The exchange may be illustrative of the shifting ways people use the internet to organize – something that has proven to be a challenge for law enforcement.

    While much of the planning for January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was done on public forums that could be read by anyone, a lot of that communication has since shifted to private channels, experts say.

    The secretive nature of many private forums has caused federal agents working domestic terrorism matters to place greater emphasis on recruiting informants who can report on potential threats discussed online among extremists, law enforcement sources told CNN.

    But even messages posted publicly cannot be accessed by investigators without lawful investigative purposes. The FBI’s own investigative guidelines limit what material can be accessed by agents and analysts, even when it is in the public domain. These policies prevent FBI employees from trawling the internet looking for concerning material, unless a formal assessment or investigation has been authorized and opened.

    The FBI’s investigative efforts to identify possible threats include querying existing confidential human informants reporting on domestic terrorism issues for any indication of potential threats, sources said.

    In addition to working their informant networks, FBI agents and analysts are reviewing publicly available online platforms frequented by domestic extremists for any indication of plans for violence.

    Ben Decker, CEO of Memetica, a threat intelligence company, told CNN on Sunday, “Given the robust and successful grassroots architecture of right-wing culture war campaigns and anti-Pride protests this month, there are concerns that many of these in-person rally groups could pivot directly into more Trump-themed protests around the country over the coming days.”

    But, at this point, Daniel J. Jones, the president of Advance Democracy, a non-profit that conducts public interest research, told CNN that his group had not identified “what we would assess to be specific and credible plans for violence yet.”

    “However,” he added ,”as we saw during the events of January 6, it’s Trump’s statements that drive the online rhetoric and real-world violence. As such, much depends on what Trump says of his perceived opponents, as well as what he asks of his supporters, in the days ahead.”

    Juliette Kayyem, a CNN national security analyst and a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, echoed this concern. “We know how incitement to violence works. It is nurtured from the top and given license to spread by leaders. They don’t have to direct it to one place or time. They can simply unleash it, knowing full well that someone may become emboldened to act,” she said.

    Last month, the Department of Homeland Security issued a nationwide bulletin indicating the country “remains in a heightened threat environment,” warning that individuals “motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the homeland.”

    DHS analysts indicated the motivating factors that could incite extremists to violence include perception about the integrity of the 2024 election cycle, and, while not specifically citing Trump’s legal woes, also pointed to “judicial decisions” in their list of grievances among extremist groups.

    Ahead of Trump’s Tuesday court appearance, law enforcement will continue to remain on alert.

    “We do not want a repeat of [the January 6] violence,” one senior FBI source said.

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  • Biden kicks off reelection bid with union rally in Philadelphia | CNN Politics

    Biden kicks off reelection bid with union rally in Philadelphia | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign Saturday at a union rally in his frequent haunt of Pennsylvania, the state that remains an intersection of his personal and political identities that he hopes can propel him to a second term.

    The first official rally of his final political campaign was a moment for Biden to underscore recent economic wins that undergird his argument for another four years in the White House.

    “Just think back. Remember what it was like when I came to office, we came into office. Remember the mess we inherited,” Biden told the audience in Philadelphia. “Now look at where we are today.”

    To a roaring crowd, who repeatedly cheered “four more years,” the president touted several accomplishments, including the bipartisan infrastructure law, a coronavirus relief package, a bipartisan semiconductor chip manufacturing law and the recently negotiated debt ceiling deal that helped avert a US default.

    Biden also criticized recent Republican tax proposals while describing what he called his middle-class vision for the American economy, referring to it several times as “Biden-omics.”

    Biden made only brief mention of Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, steering clear of the former president’s recent federal indictment and arraignment but hitting him on infrastructure.

    “Under my predecessor, infrastructure week became a punchline,” Biden said. “On my watch, we’re making infrastructure a decade headline.”

    First lady Jill Biden, who spoke shortly before her husband, highlighted the president’s optimism. Wearing a corsage to mark their 46th wedding anniversary Saturday, the first lady recalled how she met Biden following the death of his first wife and baby daughter in a tragic car accident that also injured his two sons.

    “What I love about Joe is that even though he has faced unimaginable tragedies, his optimism is undaunted,” Jill Biden said. “His strength is unshakeable.”

    She added that the president was “not done.”

    “He’s ready to finish the job,” she said. “He’s ready to win, and with your help, he will.”

    Though his economic wins were the centerpiece of Biden’s opening campaign event, polls show many voters give him poor marks for his handling of the economy, particularly as prices have soared post-pandemic. Recent figures have shown inflation easing, however, and fears of an imminent recession have faded.

    Biden has said more Americans will come to reward him for his economic stewardship once the benefits of some of his signature legislative achievements, including a new infrastructure law, begin taking hold.

    Labor groups that threw their backing behind Biden ahead of his speech include the AFL-CIO, which said it was the earliest point in a presidential election cycle it had ever endorsed a candidate.

    “There’s absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “From bringing manufacturing jobs home to America to protecting our pensions and making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy and education, we’ve never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out.”

    Supporters cheer before Biden speaks at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

    Biden, who made his first stop after announcing his reelection bid a legislative conference for North America’s Building Trades Unions in Washington, has long relied on union support for his political ambitions.

    “I’m more honored by your endorsement than you can imagine – coming this early, it’s going to make a gigantic difference in this campaign,” Biden said during Saturday’s event in Philadelphia, where he called himself “the most pro-union president in American history.”

    Not all unions have thrown their support behind Biden’s reelection bid. The powerful United Auto Workers said last month it was holding off on endorsing Biden, citing concerns over his policies that would encourage a transition to electric vehicles, according to a memo from the union.

    The UAW has more than 400,000 members, and Biden has touted its support in the past. Last year he called American autoworkers “the most skilled autoworkers in the world.” The group’s membership is mostly concentrated in Michigan, a presidential election battleground.

    Biden also rankled union members last year when he signed legislation that averted a nationwide rail strike – a step he said was necessary to prevent a stoppage of important freight movement.

    Biden’s campaign has leaned into his economic record, including releasing a 60-second ad titled “Backbone” last month. The spot struck a populist tone, mixing audio of the president speaking about “investing in places and people that have been forgotten” and a narrator ticking through the administration’s work to boost infrastructure and manufacturing in the country.

    “Joe Biden’s building an economy that leaves no city, no town, no American behind,” the narrator says.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Here’s how much each state will get in the $42.5 billion broadband infrastructure plan | CNN Business

    Here’s how much each state will get in the $42.5 billion broadband infrastructure plan | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration on Monday outlined how states across the country will be receiving billions of dollars in federal funding for high-speed internet access, highlighting the US government’s push to bring connectivity to more Americans and to close the digital divide.

    More than $42 billion from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law will be distributed to US states and territories for building internet access, the White House said — with Texas eligible for the largest award of more than $3.3 billion, followed by California, which could receive more than $1.8 billion.

    “We’re talking today about a major investment that we’re making in affordable, high-speed internet, all across the country,” Biden said in a speech Monday, describing internet access as a critical economic resource allowing children to do their homework, for workers to find jobs and for patients to access health care.

    “I’ve gotten letters and emails from across the country from people who are thrilled that after so many years of waiting, they are finally going to get high-speed internet,” Biden said, citing one message he received from an Iowa woman who described the development as “the best thing that’s happened in rural America since the Rural Electrification Act,” referring to the push under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to bring electricity to farms and ranches nationwide.

    All US states and territories have been awarded at least some funding, starting with the US Virgin Islands, which is eligible for $27 million under the initiative known as the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

    The BEAD program marks one of the largest-ever infusions of federal money for bringing disconnected households and businesses online. And it reflects months of work by the US government to design new and updated broadband maps showing which areas of the country remain unserved or under-served.

    Finalized by the Federal Communications Commission last month, the new maps show that 7% of US households and businesses, representing 8.5 million physical locations and tens of millions of individual Americans, do not have broadband internet access, which is defined as internet download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second. The new maps provide information about internet connectivity at a granular level, whereas previous maps assessed connectivity only at a census-block level. The older maps also considered a census block to be served if just one household in that block had broadband access, even if many of its surrounding neighbors did not — leaving many Americans to report that they had no high-speed internet even when the official maps claimed that they did.

    The updated maps allowed the US government to calculate which states had the greatest need for broadband funding and to distribute the infrastructure law’s resources accordingly. States and territories may begin applying for the funds as soon as July 1, the White House said. After the applications are approved by the Commerce Department, state officials will gain access to at least 20% of their eligible awards.

    Under the infrastructure law, US states had been guaranteed at least $100 million in BEAD funding, while US territories were promised at least $25 million.

    Nineteen states received more than $1 billion in the final allocation, the White House said, adding that the 10 states receiving the most funding were Alabama, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

    And it complements another $23 billion across five separate broadband access programs included in the legislation, such as a program specifically aimed at Tribal connectivity and another for low-income households. And it follows a $25 billion investment under the American Rescue Plan, the 2021 Covid-19 stimulus package.

    Monday’s announcement marked the launch of a three-week nationwide tour by President Joe Biden and other White House officials to tout the administration’s economic plan.

    Here’s how much each state received:

    • Alabama: $1,401,221,901.77
    • Alaska: $1,017,139,672.42
    • Arizona: $993,112,231.37
    • Arkansas: $1,024,303,993.86
    • California: $1,864,136,508.93
    • Colorado: $826,522,650.41
    • Connecticut: $144,180,792.71
    • Delaware: $107,748,384.66
    • District of Columbia: $100,694,786.93
    • Florida: $1,169,947,392.70
    • Georgia: $1,307,214,371.30
    • Hawaii: $149,484,493.57
    • Idaho: $583,256,249.88
    • Illinois: $1,040,420,751.50
    • Indiana: $868,109,929.79
    • Iowa: $415,331,313.00
    • Kansas: $451,725,998.15
    • Kentucky: $1,086,172,536.86
    • Louisiana: $1,355,554,552.94
    • Maine: $271,977,723.07
    • Maryland: $267,738,400.71
    • Massachusetts: $147,422,464.39
    • Michigan: $1,559,362,479.29
    • Minnesota: $651,839,368.20
    • Mississippi: $1,203,561,563.05
    • Missouri: $1,736,302,708.39
    • Montana: $628,973,798.59
    • Nebraska: $405,281,070.41
    • Nevada: $416,666,229.74
    • New Hampshire: $196,560,278.97
    • New Jersey: $263,689,548.65
    • New Mexico: $675,372,311.86
    • New York: $664,618,251.49
    • North Carolina: $1,532,999,481.15
    • North Dakota: $130,162,815.12
    • Ohio: $793,688,107.63
    • Oklahoma: $797,435,691.25
    • Oregon: $688,914,932.17
    • Pennsylvania: $1,161,778,272.41
    • Rhode Island: $108,718,820.75
    • South Carolina: $551,535,983.05
    • South Dakota: $207,227,523.92
    • Tennessee: $813,319,680.22
    • Texas: $3,312,616,455.45
    • Utah: $317,399,741.54
    • Vermont: $228,913,019.08
    • Virginia: $1,481,489,572.87
    • Washington: $1,227,742,066.30
    • West Virginia: $1,210,800,969.85
    • Wisconsin: $1,055,823,573.71
    • Wyoming: $347,877,921.27
    • American Samoa: $37,564,827.53
    • Guam: $156,831,733.59
    • Northern Mariana Islands: $80,796,709.02
    • Puerto Rico: $334,614,151.70
    • U.S. Virgin Islands: $27,103,240.86

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  • What is Threads? Here’s what you need to know about the potential ‘Twitter Killer’ | CNN Business

    What is Threads? Here’s what you need to know about the potential ‘Twitter Killer’ | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday officially launched its Twitter competitor, Threads, after first confirming its plans for the app just three months ago.

    Threads is already off to a strong start: the app received 30 million sign-ups as of Thursday morning, according to the company, including a large number of brands, celebrities, journalists and many other prominent accounts.

    The mood on Threads Wednesday night felt a bit like the first day of school, with early adopters rushing to try out the app and write their first posts — and some questioning whether the app could end up being the “Twitter killer.” As of Thursday morning, Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store and a top trending topic on Twitter.

    Threads could pose a serious threat to Twitter, which has faced backlash since Elon Musk took over the platform in October 2022 and has run it with a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach. But Twitter has become particularly vulnerable in recent days, angering users over a temporary limit on how much content users can view each day. And for Meta, Threads could further expand its empire of popular apps and provide a new platform on which to sell ads.

    Here is everything we know so far about Meta’s Threads:

    Threads is a new app from the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The platform looks a lot like Twitter, with a feed of largely text-based posts — although users can also post photos and videos — where people can have real-time conversations.

    Meta said messages posted to Threads will have a 500-character limit. Similar to Twitter, users can reply to, repost and quote others’ Threads posts. But the app also blends Instagram’s existing aesthetic and navigation system, and offers the ability to share posts from Threads directly to Instagram Stories.

    Thread accounts can also be listed as public or private. Verified Instagram accounts are automatically verified on Threads.

    “The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post following the launch. “We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.”

    Some users did experience occasional glitches and issues getting content to load in the early hours after Threads launched, but that is to be expected when millions of users are joining and using an app at once.

    Users sign up through their Instagram accounts and keep the same username, password and account name, although they can edit their bio to be unique to Threads. Users can also import the list of accounts they follow directly from Instagram, making it super easy to get up and running on the app.

    But it’s not quite so easy to leave Threads. While users can temporarily deactivate their profiles via the settings section on the app, the company says in its privacy policy that “your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.” Some users have also raised concerns about the amount of data that the Threads, like Instagram, can collect about users, including location, contacts, search history, browsing history, contact info and more, according to the Apple App Store.

    Threads is available in 100 countries and more than 30 languages via Apple’s iOS and Android, according to the company.

    Threads is just the latest platform launched in recent months in hopes of unseating Twitter as the go-to app for real-time, public conversations. But it may have the greatest chance at success.

    Many Twitter users have expressed desire for an alternative since Musk took over the platform late last year. Frequent technical issues and policy changes have sent some noteworthy Twitter users heading for the exits.

    Meta has at least one significant leg up on Twitter: the size of its existing user base. Meta is hoping to capture at least some of its more than 2 billion global active Instagram users with the new app. That’s compared to Twitter’s active user base, which is somewhere around 250 million.

    “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it,” Zuckerberg said in a Threads post. “Twitter has had the opportunity do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

    In a tweet on Thursday, Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared to acknowledge the rival app’s launch, calling Twitter “irreplaceable.”

    “We’re often imitated – but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” she said.

    Meta’s existing scale and infrastructure could play to its advantage. Whereas many of the other Twitter competitors rolled out in recent months have required users to join waitlists or receive invitations to sign up, only to have to work to recreate their network on the new site, Threads makes it remarkably easy for users to get started.

    But Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri noted in a video posted to the platform that the challenge for new social media platforms often is not getting users to sign up, but rather keeping them engaged long-term.

    In particular, Meta will have to work to prevent spam, harassment, conspiracy theories and false claims on Threads, issues that have caused many users to sour on Twitter. The new platform’s launch comes after Meta laid off more than 20,000 workers starting last November, including user experience, well-being, policy and risk analytics employees. It also comes as campaign season for the 2024 US Presidential election ramps up, with some experts warning of an incoming wave of misinformation. Meta says its Community Guidelines will apply to Threads, just like its other apps.

    For Meta, Threads could be a way of eking additional engagement time out of its massive existing user base.

    Although there are no ads on the platform just yet, Threads could also ultimately supplement Meta’s core advertising business. Meta’s ad business could use a boost after facing challenges from a broad decline in the online ad market and changes to Apple’s app privacy practices, although, if Twitter’s history is any guide, the format is unlikely to attract as many ad dollars as Meta’s other platforms.

    For Zuckerberg, though, the real draw may be in attempting to best his rival, Musk, with whom he has in recent weeks been making plans to engage in a cage fight. Perhaps winning in the battle of social networks is even better.

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  • Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

    Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

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    Nairobi, Kenya
    CNN
     — 

    Former employees of Twitter Africa who were laid off as part of a global cost-cutting measure after Elon Musk’s acquisition have not received any severance pay more than seven months since leaving the company, several sources told CNN.

    In late May, the former employees, who were based in the Ghanaian capital Accra, accepted Twitter’s

    (TWTR)     offer to pay them three months worth of severance, the cost of repatriating foreign staff and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with the company, but they have not received the money or any further communication, the sources said.

    “They literally ghosted us,” one former Twitter Africa employee told CNN.

    “Although Twitter has eventually settled former staff in other locations, Africa staff have still been left in the lurch despite us eventually agreeing to specific negotiated terms.”

    The former employees say they reluctantly agreed to the severance package without benefits, even though it was less than what colleagues elsewhere received.

    “Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle,” another former employee told CNN.

    The former employees spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because they said they were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of their exit terms.

    According to Carla Olympio, an attorney who is representing the former employees, the last communication from Twitter or its lawyers was in May, shortly after settlement was agreed.

    CNN reached out to Twitter for comment on the status of the severance package for the former employees in the Ghana office but received an automated response – a poop emoji. It’s unclear whether Twitter still has a media relations department.

    In March, Musk tweeted that Twitter would respond to all press inquiries with the poop emoji. He completed a deal to buy the social media platform in October.

    CNN also asked Ghana’s Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations for comment. A spokesperson said they are investigating the claims.

    Whether Ghanaian authorities can compel Twitter to comply with the settlement is uncertain. The former employees and their attorney say the offer was never finalized.

    The dozen or so team members were laid off just four days after the social network opened a physical office in Accra last November.

    Some of them said they had moved to Ghana from other African nations, and depended on their jobs at Twitter to support their legal status in the country.

    “Unfortunately, it appears that after having unethically implemented their terminations in violation of their own promises and Ghana’s laws, dragging the negotiation process out for over half a year, now that we have come to the point of almost settlement, there has been complete silence from them for several weeks,” Olympio said.

    Twitter and Musk face multiple lawsuits where plaintiffs are claiming the company has failed to pay former staffers what they are owed.

    Last week, a former US employee filed a proposed class action lawsuit claiming the company didn’t pay the full amount of severance benefits it promised last November prior to mass layoffs.

    The plaintiff said Twitter promised senior employees severance of six months of base pay plus one week for every year of service, in addition to other benefits. Instead, the plaintiff said they received a total of three months of pay, according to the lawsuit. In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, Twitter sent CNN an automated poop emoji.

    In April, Musk told the BBC more than 6,000 people had been laid off since he completed his acquisition of the company in late October.

    “We’re exploring our options with respect to causes of action against Twitter in various jurisdictions including Ghana,” Olympio told CNN.

    Twitter did not open negotiations with the African team until after CNN reported in November that they had been offered separation terms that differed from those offered to departing staff in Europe and North America.

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  • Meta’s Threads app rolls out first big batch of updates | CNN Business

    Meta’s Threads app rolls out first big batch of updates | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Meta’s Twitter rival app Threads on Tuesday rolled out its first major batch of updates since its launch two weeks ago as it works to maintain momentum.

    The new features include a translation button and a tab on users’ activity feed dedicated to showing who’s followed them, according to a post from Cameron Roth, a software engineer working on Threads.

    All new features should be available to iOS Threads users by the end of Tuesday, Roth said.

    Threads users have been clamoring for updates since its launch. The new app attracted over 100 million user sign-ups in less than a week, but it still lacks many of the features popular on Twitter and other platforms, including direct messaging and a robust search function.

    User engagement on Threads has dipped since its first week, according to web traffic analysis firm Similarweb. And Meta executives have teased plans to improve the app in hopes of getting users to keep coming back.

    “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily … The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post Monday.

    Tuesday’s updates also include the ability to subscribe and receive notifications from accounts a user doesn’t follow and a “+” button that lets users follow new accounts from the replies on a post, as well as bug fixes and other improvements.

    Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who is overseeing Threads, has also hinted at plans to introduce a desktop version of the app as well as a feed of only accounts a user follows and an edit button.

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  • TikTok brings in text posts to rival Elon Musk’s X | CNN Business

    TikTok brings in text posts to rival Elon Musk’s X | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    TikTok will now allow users to post text-only content for the first time in a challenge to Elon Musk’s beleaguered X, formerly known as Twitter.

    Announcing the new post format Monday, the video streaming platform said it would broaden “options for creators to share their ideas and express their creativity.”

    “With text posts, we’re expanding the boundaries of content creation for everyone on TikTok, giving the written creativity we’ve seen in comments, captions, and videos a dedicated space to shine,” the company said in a statement.

    Users are now able to share “stories, poems, recipes, and other written content,” which can be customized by adding sound, stickers and background colors, among other features.

    In perhaps the most direct challenge to the X platform, text posts on TikTok will allow users to tag other accounts and add hashtags that relate to trending topics.

    The latest move by TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, may prove to be another knock for Musk, whose takeover of X in October has resulted in mass layoffs, a huge drop in advertising revenue and controversial changes to the platform’s verification policy.

    Earlier this month, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, launched Threads, a rival social media site. Threads surpassed 100 million user sign-ups in its first week.

    Musk re-branded Twitter to X Monday, giving the platform a new website domain and logo.

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  • Former Twitter executives sue company to recover over $1 million in legal fees | CNN Business

    Former Twitter executives sue company to recover over $1 million in legal fees | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former senior executives of Twitter have sued the company in an attempt to recover more than $1 million in legal expenses incurred by responding to shareholder lawsuits, federal investigations and a congressional hearing, according to a complaint filed Monday in Delaware Chancery Court.

    The lawsuit by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and former chief financial officer Ned Segal alleges that Twitter has failed to reimburse them for lawyers’ fees in accordance with prior agreements with the company. Elon Musk fired the executives immediately after completing his acquisition of the company.

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations team last year, did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. The complaint was first reported by The New York Times.

    According to exhibits filed with the complaint, Gadde alone spent more than $1 million preparing for her testimony in February before the House Oversight Committee, when the panel held a hearing focused on allegations that Twitter censored conservative speech.

    The complaint also describes legal fees linked to probes by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, though without disclosing many specifics of the investigations. The references to federal investigations underscore the continuing legal risk for Twitter under Musk, who is simultaneously struggling to shore up company finances while pushing a skeleton crew to make significant changes to the product.

    The SEC has previously probed Musk’s investment in and deal to buy Twitter, including his apparent delay in disclosing his large ownership stake in the social media company. And last month, the Federal Trade Commission acknowledged a wide-ranging investigation into Twitter’s privacy practices. The Justice Department has not previously confirmed any investigation into the company.

    The lawsuit outlines some details about the DOJ and SEC probes. It claims that Agrawal and Segal first began receiving requests from US officials around July of last year. Agrawal continued to field requests through the fall and after he stepped down from Twitter, according to the complaint. And late last year, it said, the Justice Department contacted Agrawal and Segal’s attorneys about multiple investigations into Twitter.

    Letters to Twitter seeking reimbursement for the legal expenses were ignored for months, according to the complaint. In March, the company allegedly responded by acknowledging the requests for reimbursement, but took no action to pay. As of Monday, the executives still have not recovered the fees, the complaint said.

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  • Inside the furious week-long scramble to hunt down a massive Pentagon leak | CNN Politics

    Inside the furious week-long scramble to hunt down a massive Pentagon leak | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Jack Teixeira, wearing a green t-shirt and bright red gym shorts with his hands above his head, walked slowly backward toward the armed federal agents outside his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, who took him into custody on charges of leaking classified documents.

    The carefully choreographed arrest of the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman stood in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s scramble one week earlier to deal with the fallout from the revelation that highly classified documents had been sitting publicly on the internet for weeks.

    Those leaked documents, which appeared to catch the Biden administration flat-footed, disclosed a blunt US intelligence assessment of the war in Ukraine, as well as details revealing US intelligence collection on allies.

    The Biden administration raced to determine the identity of the leaker who had posted pictures of folded-up documents online, to understand the full scope of what had been leaked and to soothe allies who were varying degrees of angry that their secrets had spilled out for the world to see.

    While the suspected leaker has been arrested, the administration’s damage assessment is still ongoing. It remains unclear whether the full extent of the impact of the leaks is known, as details from additional classified documents continued to be published throughout the week – even on Friday morning, the day after his arrest.

    Inside the Pentagon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was “pissed” at the leak and “deeply concerned” about its national security implications, a US official told CNN. The Defense Department has been holding daily meetings on the leak since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was first briefed last Thursday.

    The episode represents the most egregious disclosure of classified documents in years. The leaked documents have exposed what officials say are lingering vulnerabilities in the management of government secrets, even after agencies overhauled their computer systems following the 2013 Edward Snowden leak, which revealed the scope of the National Security Agency’s intelligence gathering apparatus.

    It is unlikely, however, that those safeguards would have prevented the most recent leak, sources said. “All classified systems have multiple levels of risk controls, but a determined insider will find the weak points over time,” said a former US official.

    The Pentagon has already taken steps to clamp down on who can access sensitive classified material, while Austin has ordered a review over access to classified documents. And Congress is vowing to investigate exactly what happened and why the US intelligence community failed to discover its secrets were sitting on a public internet forum for weeks.

    In a statement acknowledging the extent of the problem that the leaks exposed, President Joe Biden said Friday that he had directed both the military and intelligence community to “take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information.”

    “This is a breakdown,” Chris Krebs, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, told CNN. “There’s no question that there will be a lot of introspection inside the intelligence community and across the government of where were those breakdowns? How do we ensure that we tighten that system of military discipline that that was referred to earlier to ensure that these things do not happen?”

    According to charging documents unsealed on Friday, Teixeira allegedly began posting classified information on the Discord server in December 2022.

    Teixeira is believed to be the head of obscure invite-only Discord chatroom called “Thug Shaker Central,” multiple US officials told CNN, where information from the classified documents was first posted.

    One of the users on the Discord server told FBI investigators that Teixeira began posting photographs of documents that appeared to be classified in January 2023, according to the affidavit unsealed Friday after Teixeira was arraigned.

    Investigators wrote in the affidavit that at least one of the documents that described the status of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including troop movements, was classified at the TS-SCI level, meaning it contains top-secret, sensitive compartmentalized information.

    “The Government Document is based on sensitive U.S. intelligence, gathered through classified sources and methods, and contains national defense information,” the affidavit states.

    Teixeira, an airman first class stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base, was assigned to the 102nd Intelligence Wing, which is a “24/7 operational mission” that takes in intelligence from various sources and packages it into a product for some of the most senior military leaders around the globe, a defense official said.

    His job was not to be the one packaging the intelligence for those senior commanders, but rather to work on the network on which that highly classified intelligence lived. For that purpose, the official said Teixeira would be required to have a TS/SCI clearance, in the instance that he was exposed to that level of intelligence.

    “It’s not like your regular IT guy where you call a help desk and they come fix your computer,” the official said. “They’re working on a very highly classified system, so they require that clearance.”

    CNN has reviewed 53 documents that were posted on social media sites, which include US intelligence assessments of Ukrainian and Russian forces, as well as details about other countries providing weapons to Ukraine and other intelligence matters. The Washington Post has reported on an additional tranche of documents from the server.

    The photos showed crumpled documents laid on top of magazines and surrounded by other random objects, such as zip-close bags and Gorilla Glue, suggesting they had been hastily folded up and shoved into a pocket before being removed from a secure location.

    A Discord user told investigators that Teixeira had become concerned “he may be discovered making the transcriptions of text in the workplace, so he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” according to the affidavit.

    Four Discord users active in a different Discord chatroom where the documents later appeared told CNN they began circulating on Thug Shaker. Another user who was in the Thug Shaker chatroom told CNN they saw the original posts of classified documents but declined to speak further about them.

    While the documents were being shared on Discord, there’s no indication that the US intelligence community was aware they were on the internet. Discord servers are typically small, private online communities that require an invitation to join.

    On April 6, The New York Times first reported on the leaked documents and the Pentagon having launched an investigation into who may have been behind the leak.

    The investigation into finding the leaker quickly moved into the hands of the Justice Department, while the Pentagon investigation focused on a damage assessment of the leaks themselves.

    But the number of leaked documents continued to grow in the hours and days that followed the initial disclosure, revealing new intelligence assessments on everything from South Korea’s hesitance to provide the US weapons that might be sent to Ukraine to intelligence suggesting Egypt planned to supply rockets to Russia.

    US diplomats were forced to deal with the fallout. Seoul said it would hold “necessary discussions with the US” following the leak.

    The documents that were leaked appear to be part of a daily intelligence briefing deck prepared for the Pentagon’s senior leaders, including Milley, the top US military general. On any given day, the slides in that deck can be properly accessed by hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the government, officials said.

    Last Friday’s announcement of a Justice Department investigation underscored just how high a priority the leak was considered.

    By Monday, FBI agents from Washington to California to Boston were combing through evidence, conducting interviews and tracking volumes of computer data that within days pointed to Teixeira. They worked with Army CID investigators experienced in classified document probes.

    Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI agent, said that the “first few hours are critical” in a case like the Discord leaks as investigators rush to preserve digital evidence before it becomes harder to find online or vanishes altogether.

    FBI agents likely worked backward from the initial Discord posts to build a profile of the leaker, combing through his other online accounts to “put a human behind a keyboard,” Ferrante, who is now global head of cybersecurity at FTI Consulting, told CNN.

    Even though Teixeira emerged quickly as the most obvious suspect, counterintelligence agents trained in uncovering foreign spies looked through Teixeira’s background to try to find any sign that he could be working with a foreign intelligence service.

    The FBI agents’ work was made more urgent because the trove of documents had set off a media frenzy and reporters found ready interviews among members of Teixeira’s Internet social circle.

    On Monday, the FBI interviewed a user of the Discord chatroom where the classified information had been posted, according to the affidavit. That person told investigators that a user who went by “Jack” and said he was in the Air National Guard was the server’s administrator.

    A day earlier, the investigative news outlet Bellingcat posted an interview with a member of that same chatroom.

    On Wednesday, a day before Teixeira’s arrest, the FBI obtained records from Discord that included the subscriber information of the server’s administrator, which had Teixeira’s name and address, according to the affidavit.

    By day 5 of the FBI’s search, agents believed they had enough to charge Teixeira, and they began surveilling him.

    In a different scenario, without the intense public attention, agents might have watched him for weeks to see if he was meeting anyone suspicious or if he had accomplices.

    Instead, they moved to make an arrest Thursday, as news helicopters flew above.

    Teixeira was charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials. He will next appear on Wednesday in federal court in Massachusetts.

    For the Biden administration, the episode has already prompted the Pentagon to begin to limit who across the government receives its highly classified daily intelligence briefs, amid lingering questions over why a 21-year-old junior Air National Guardsman had access to such classified information – and why it wasn’t discovered more quickly.

    Austin and Milley spent time on the phone speaking with US allies and partners around the world regarding the sensitive intelligence and top-secret documents suddenly thrust into the public sphere. Those conversations were expected to continue through the end of the week, another US official said.

    Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was tapped to lead the diplomatic response to the leaked US intelligence documents, according to a US official familiar with the matter.

    Biden was continually briefed on the state of the investigation while abroad, as well as the efforts of his top officials to engage with allies over the leaked information, officials said. Behind the scenes, that effort was a reality that loomed over a deeply personal and important foreign trip for Biden, one official acknowledged. 

    Still, the leaks didn’t arise when Biden met Wednesday with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Five Eyes intelligence sharing ally.

    Biden publicly downplayed the significance of the leak when he made his first comments on the matter. “I’m concerned that it happened, but there is nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence,” Biden told reporters Thursday.

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  • Pentagon leak spotlights surprising interplay between gaming and military secrets | CNN Politics

    Pentagon leak spotlights surprising interplay between gaming and military secrets | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The recent leak of classified US documents on social media platform Discord seemingly caught many at the Pentagon by surprise. But it wasn’t the first time that a forum popular with online gamers had hosted military secrets, underlining a major challenge for the US national security establishment and platforms alike.

    As recently as January 2023, someone on a forum for fans of the video game War Thunder reportedly published confidential information on an F-16 fighter jet. That followed reports of at least three other occasions since 2021 when War Thunder fans posted documents on British, French and Chinese tanks. These cases – which Axios also reported on in the context of the Discord leaks – typically involved users boasting of their inside knowledge of military equipment and claiming to want to make the game more realistic.

    Gaijin Entertainment, the company that produces War Thunder, took the posts down after forum moderators flagged them.

    The recent leaks on Discord exposed a shortcoming in how the US government alerts platforms that they are hosting sensitive or classified information, according to Discord’s top lawyer.

    There is currently “no structured process,” for the government to communicate whether documents posted on social media are classified or even authentic, Clint Smith, Discord’s chief legal officer, said in an April 14 statement that described classified military documents as a “significant, complex challenge” for Discord and other platforms.

    The episodes point to vexing challenges for social media platforms like Discord – where 21-year Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira allegedly began posting classified information in December – and the US military, which has used Discord for recruiting.

    Discord and other platforms face a difficult balancing act in giving young gamers the space to be themselves while also detecting when they post illegal content.

    “A lot of these guys find their social circles in these online gaming spaces, and that can be great,” said Jennifer Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. “But if the culture of the platform shifts to rewarding things that you shouldn’t be doing, it can hard if you’re really invested in that that social group to give that up.”

    Teixeira allegedly posted the documents – which included sensitive US intelligence on the war in Ukraine – to a private Discord chat in an attempt to look after his online friends and keep them informed, one member of the chatroom has claimed.

    The Pentagon is trying to tap into online youth culture without it backfiring spectacularly, as it allegedly did with Teixeira.

    An Air Force Gaming program that allows service members to compete in video game leagues to, according to a Pentagon press release, “build morale and mental health resiliency,” has more than 28,000 members. The top of the Air Force Gaming website includes a link to join the program’s Discord channel.

    There were signs that Pentagon officials were growing wary of information young service members might share on Discord even before news of Teixeira’s alleged leak broke.

    “Don’t post anything in Discord that you wouldn’t want seen by the general public,” reads a pamphlet published by US Army Special Operations Command in March.

    That the warning came as classified documents allegedly shared by Teixeira sat on Discord appears to be entirely a coincidence; many US officials appeared unaware of the leak until news of it broke on April 6.

    “Past incidents show how hard it is to stop these leaks,” said Casey Brooks, an Army veteran and video game fan.

    “This is about maturity and how certain people seek value from interpersonal relationships and approval from peers and the competitive nature that gaming group members bond over,” Brooks told CNN.

    Classified or sensitive documents are also a unique problem for content moderators on social media sites.

    “With porn, you can at least have some kind of AI that will give a rough flag at the beginning that this looks vaguely like porn,” said Golbeck, the University of Maryland professor. “But what looks like a classified document? They’re just documents.”

    As social media platforms like Discord grapple with the challenges of detecting sensitive intelligence leaks online, current and former US officials worry that US adversaries like Russia may see an intelligence gathering opportunity.

    “If it’s not already happening, my guess would be the Russians have assessed that digging around in some of these obscure online forums … could bear fruit,” Holden Triplett, a former FBI official who worked at the US embassy in Moscow, told CNN.

    Though there is no evidence that Teixeira was approached by foreign agents, Triplett said a young generation of online gamers might be a ripe target for recruitment.

    “Ego and excitement have always been strong motivations to spy,” said Triplett, who is founder of security consultancy Trenchcoat Advisors. But the group of Discord users that included Teixeira “seemed particularly indifferent to national security concerns,” which is a vulnerability for the US government, Triplett said.

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  • A key safety executive at TikTok is leaving as lawmakers keep pressure on the app | CNN Business

    A key safety executive at TikTok is leaving as lawmakers keep pressure on the app | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    TikTok is about to lose a key safety executive as the app faces growing pressure from lawmakers and threats of a ban in the United States.

    TikTok’s Head of US Data Security Trust and Safety Eric Han is set to leave the company next week. His departure was confirmed to CNN by TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan. The news was first reported Tuesday by The Verge.

    In the role, which he has held since 2019, Han led policy decisions such as those aimed at reducing the spread of dangerous challenges and cracking down on paid political posts by influencers. The position will be temporarily filled by Andy Bonillo, TikTok’s interim general manager of US data security, until a permanent replacement is found, Shanahan said.

    With the move, TikTok will lose a key safety leader at a difficult moment for the platform. US lawmakers in recent months have ramped up calls for a nationwide ban of the app over concerns that its parent company ByteDance’s connections to China could pose a national security risk to the United States.

    TikTok confirmed in March that federal officials have demanded that the app’s Chinese owners sell their stake in the social media platform, or risk facing a US ban of the app. And last month, Montana lawmakers approved legislation to ban TikTok on personal devices, which would make it the first state to do so, assuming the bill is signed by the state’s governor.

    TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified before Congress in March and attempted to reassure lawmakers about the safety of the app and the security of US users’ data.

    TikTok did not respond to a question about the reason for Han’s departure.

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  • OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to testify before Congress | CNN Business

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to testify before Congress | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will testify before Congress next Tuesday as lawmakers increasingly scrutinize the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence, according to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

    During Tuesday’s hearing, lawmakers will question Altman for the first time since OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, took the world by storm late last year.

    The groundbreaking generative AI tool has led to a wave of new investment in AI, prompting a scramble among US policymakers who have called for guardrails and regulation amid fears of AI’s misuse.

    Also testifying Tuesday will be Christina Montgomery, IBM’s vice president and chief privacy and trust officer, as well as Gary Marcus, a former New York University professor and a self-described critic of AI “hype.”

    “Artificial intelligence urgently needs rules and safeguards to address its immense promise and pitfalls,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate panel on privacy and technology. “This hearing begins our Subcommittee’s work in overseeing and illuminating AI’s advanced algorithms and powerful technology.”

    He added: “I look forward to working with my colleagues as we explore sensible standards and principles to help us navigate this uncharted territory.”

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  • How the CEO behind ChatGPT won over Congress | CNN Business

    How the CEO behind ChatGPT won over Congress | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seems to have achieved in a matter of hours what other tech execs have been struggling to do for years: He charmed the socks off Congress.

    Despite wide-ranging concerns that artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT could disrupt democracy, national security, and the economy, Altman’s appearance Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee went so smoothly that viewers could have been forgiven for thinking the year was closer to 2013 than 2023.

    It was a pivotal moment for the AI industry. Altman’s testimony on Tuesday alongside Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy officer, promised to set the tone for how Washington regulates a technology that many fear could eliminate jobs or destabilize elections.

    But where lawmakers could have followed a familiar pattern, blasting the tech industry with hostile questioning and leveling withering allegations of reckless innovation, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee instead heaped praise on the companies — and often, on Altman in particular.

    The difference seemed to come down to OpenAI calling for proactive government regulation — and persuading lawmakers it was serious. Unlike the long list of social media hearings in recent years, this AI hearing came earlier in OpenAI’s lifecycle and, crucially, before the company or its technology had suffered any high-profile mishaps.

    Altman, more than any other figure in tech, has emerged as the face of a new crop of powerful and disruptive AI tools that can generate compelling written work and images in response to user prompts. Much of the federal government is now racing to figure out how to regulate the cutting-edge technology.

    But after his performance on Tuesday, the CEO whose company helped spark the new AI arms race may have maneuvered himself into a privileged position of influence over the rules that may soon govern the tools he’s developing.

    Altman’s easy-going, plain-spoken demeanor helped disarm skeptical lawmakers and appeared to win over Democrats and Republicans alike. His approach contrasted with the wooden, lawyerly performances that have afflicted some other tech CEOs in the past during their time in the hotseat.

    “I sense there is a willingness to participate here that is genuine and authentic,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the committee’s technology panel.

    New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, adopting an unusual level of familiarity with a witness, found himself repeatedly addressing Altman as “Sam,” even as he referred to other panelists by their last names.

    Even Altman’s fellow witnesses couldn’t resist gushing about his style.

    “His sincerity in talking about those [AI] fears is very apparent, physically, in a way that just doesn’t communicate on the television screen,” Gary Marcus, a former New York University professor and a self-described critic of AI “hype,” told lawmakers.

    With a relaxed yet serious tone, Altman did not deflect or shy away from lawmakers’ concerns. He agreed that large-scale manipulation and deception using AI tools are among the technology’s biggest potential flaws. And he validated fears about AI’s impact on workers, acknowledging that it may “entirely automate away some jobs.”

    “If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong, and we want to be vocal about that,” Altman said. “We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”

    Altman’s candor and openness has captivated many in Washington.

    On Monday evening, Altman spoke to a dinner audience of roughly 60 House lawmakers from both parties. One person in the room, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting, described members of Congress as “riveted” by the conversation, which also saw Altman demonstrating ChatGPT’s capabilities “to much amusement” from the audience.

    Lawmakers have spent years railing against social media companies, attacking them for everything from their content moderation decisions to their economic dominance. On Tuesday, they seemed ready — or even relieved — to be dealing with another area of the technology industry.

    Whether this time is truly different remains unclear, though. The AI industry’s biggest players and aspirants include some of the same tech giants Congress has sharply criticized, including Google and Meta. OpenAI is receiving billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft in a multi-year partnership. And with his remarks on Tuesday, Altman appeared to draw from a familiar playbook for Silicon Valley: Referring to technology as merely a neutral tool, acknowledging his industry’s imperfections and inviting regulation.

    Some AI ethicists and experts questioned the value of asking a leading industry spokesperson how he would like to be regulated. Marcus, the New York University professor, cautioned that creating a new federal agency to police AI could lead to “regulatory capture” by the tech industry, but the warning could have applied just as easily to Congress itself.

    “It seems very very bad that ahead of a hearing meant to inform how this sector gets regulated, the CEO of one of the corporations that would be subject to that regulation gets to present a magic show to the regulators,” Emily Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, said of Altman’s dinner with House lawmakers.

    She added: “Politicians, like journalists, must resist the urge to be impressed.”

    After years of fidgety evasiveness from other tech CEOs, however, lawmakers this week seemed easily wowed by Altman and his seemingly straight-shooting answers.

    Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy, after expressing frustration with IBM’s Montgomery for providing a nuanced answer he couldn’t comprehend, visibly brightened when Altman quickly and smoothly outlined his regulatory proposals in a bulleted list. Kennedy began joking with Altman and even asked whether Altman might consider heading up a hypothetical federal agency charged with regulating the AI industry.

    “I love my current job,” Altman deadpanned, to audience laughter, before offering to send Kennedy’s office some potential candidates.

    Compounding lawmakers’ attraction to Altman is a belief on Capitol Hill that Congress erred in extending broad liability protections to online platforms at the dawn of the internet. That decision, which allowed for an explosion of blogs, e-commerce sites, streaming media and more, has become an object of regret for many lawmakers in the face of alleged mental health harms stemming from social media.

    “I don’t want to repeat that mistake again,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin.

    Here too, Altman deftly seized an opportunity to curry favor with lawmakers by emphasizing distinctions between his industry and the social media industry.

    “We try to design systems that do not maximize for engagement,” Altman said, alluding to the common criticism that social media algorithms tend to prioritize outrage and negativity to boost usage. “We’re not an advertising-based model; we’re not trying to get people to use it more and more, and I think that’s a different shape than ad-supported social media.”

    In providing simple-sounding solutions with a smile, Altman is doing much more than shaping policy: He is offering members of Congress a shot at redemption, one they seem grateful to accept. Despite the many pitfalls of AI they identified on Tuesday, lawmakers appeared to thoroughly welcome Altman as a partner, not a potential adversary needing oversight and scrutiny.

    “We need to be mindful,” Blumenthal said, “of ways that rules can enable the big guys to get bigger and exclude innovation, and competition, and responsible good guys such as our representative in this industry right now.”

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  • Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison | CNN Business

    Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison on Tuesday, capping off a stunning downfall for the disgraced founder of failed blood testing startup Theranos.

    Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison last November, after she was convicted months earlier on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running the now-defunct startup.

    Her request to remain free on bail while she fights to overturn her conviction was denied by an appellate court earlier this month. Judge Edward Davila, who presided over her trial, ordered Holmes to turn herself in to the Bureau of Prisons by May 30 to begin serving her sentence.

    Holmes arrived Tuesday at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in southern Texas, a minimum security federal prison camp that is approximately 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up before moving to California to attend Stanford.

    “We can confirm Elizabeth Holmes has arrived at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan in Bryan, Texas, and is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement provided to CNN.

    Her ex-boyfriend and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was also convicted of fraud, and reported to prison in California last month to begin serving out his sentence.

    Holmes was once an icon in the tech world, serving as a posterchild for the limitless ambitions and potential of Silicon Valley. Now, she and Balwani are the rare tech executives tried for, and convicted on, fraud charges.

    Holmes dropped out of Stanford at the age of 19 to focus full-time on Theranos, a startup that claimed to have invented technology that could accurately test for a range of conditions using just a few drops of blood. Theranos raised $945 million from an impressive list of investors and was valued at some $9 billion at its peak – making Holmes a paper billionaire. She graced magazine covers and engaged in public speaking events wearing a black turtleneck that invited comparisons to the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

    Her company began to unravel after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had only ever performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy. It also came to light that Theranos was relying on third-party manufactured devices from traditional blood testing companies rather than its own technology.

    Theranos ultimately dissolved in September 2018.

    Dawn breaks at the Federal Prison Camp where Elizabeth Holmes, the former founder and CEO of Theranos, is expected to arrive to begin her 11 year sentence for fraud relating to the defunct company Tuesday, May 30, 2023, in Bryan, Texas.

    Holmes and Balwani were first indicted together nearly five years ago on the same 12 criminal charges. Their trials were severed after Holmes indicated she intended to accuse Balwani of sexually, emotionally and psychologically abusing her throughout their decade-long relationship, which coincided with her time running the company. (Balwani’s attorneys have denied her claims.)

    This month, Davila ordered Holmes and Balwani to pay restitution of roughly $452 million to victims of their crimes.

    Before her sentencing was announced in November, a tearful Holmes spoke to the court in San Jose, California.

    “I loved Theranos. It was my life’s work,” she said. “The people I tried to get involved with Theranos were the people I loved and respected the most. I am devastated by my failings.”

    She went on to apologize to the employees, investors and patients of Theranos.

    “I’m so, so sorry. I gave everything I had to build our company and to save our company,” she said. “I regret my failings with every cell in my body.”

    – CNN’s Brad Parks contributed to this report.

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  • First on CNN: Pornhub asks users and Big Tech for help as states adopt age verification laws | CNN Business

    First on CNN: Pornhub asks users and Big Tech for help as states adopt age verification laws | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    In the two-minute video, adult performer Cherie Deville stares into the camera and intones soberly to viewers, for the second time in a month, that policymakers are coming for their porn.

    “Click the button below to contact your representatives before it is too late,” Deville pleads.

    The call-to-action video, launching Wednesday in multiple states, comes from Pornhub, which last month withdrew from Utah over a new law that requires adult sites to verify their users’ ages and holds them liable for serving their content to minors. Now, as similar legislation is set to take effect next month in Arkansas, Mississippi and Virginia, Pornhub is making a last-ditch effort to galvanize users there in opposition.

    It’s unclear how much Pornhub expects to achieve, as the laws have already been passed and signed. A company spokesperson told CNN it’s “certainly not our goal” to shut down the site in the three states as it did in Utah but hinted at the possibility, saying that “if necessary, we will share next steps in the coming weeks.”

    But the video campaign is only part of a broader unfolding strategy by one of the internet’s highest-profile distributors of adult material.

    The video’s release coincides with a previously unreported effort by Pornhub — and its private equity owners, Ethical Capital Partners (ECP) — to convince the world’s largest tech companies to intervene in the wider debate over age restrictions for digital porn and social media.

    In recent weeks, ECP has lobbied Apple, Google and Microsoft to jointly develop a technological standard that might turn a user’s electronic device into the proof of age necessary to access restricted online content, according to Solomon Friedman, a partner at ECP.

    One possible version of the idea, Friedman told CNN, would be for the tech companies to securely store a person’s age information on a device and for the operating system to provide websites requesting age verification with a yes-or-no answer on the owner’s behalf — allowing sites to block underage users without ever handling anyone’s personal information.

    “We are willing to commit whatever resources are required to work proactively with those companies, with other technical service providers and as well with government,” Friedman said.

    Pornhub’s simultaneous appeals to users and to Big Tech highlight the challenging position the company now finds itself in amid a wave of state legislation. Under many of these laws, adult sites are required to implement “reasonable age verification methods” that could include users submitting pictures of their photo ID, facial scans or other information, either to third-party companies or to the sites themselves.

    Minimum age requirements have emerged as a favored policy tool in statehouses across the country as lawmakers have increasingly become attuned to the potential mental health harms of unregulated social media use. But Pornhub, along with civil liberties and digital rights groups, have broadly warned of the potential pitfalls of age-verification rules.

    Those risks can include the infringement of Americans’ rights to access legal speech under the First Amendment; the leakage of personal information belonging to underage as well as overage internet users; or the loss of online anonymity that safety experts say is crucial for shielding vulnerable individuals.

    Pornhub’s outreach to Big Tech is intended to convince the companies whose operating systems power the world’s smartphones, tablets and computers that their technology is central to the future of online identity management and to draw their political might into a global policy battle that could reshape the internet for millions.

    But it is far from clear the effort is succeeding. Friedman declined to say how, or even if, the companies have responded to Pornhub’s communications. Microsoft declined to comment for this story; Apple and Google didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    Friedman characterized the discussions as being in “early stages,” though his other remarks implied the talks may be largely one-sided.

    “We are willing and ready to work with them proactively to determine best solutions and to lend any technical expertise that we possibly can, whether it be implementation or pilot projects or assistance in any way,” Friedman told CNN. “We are hoping that this dialogue bears fruit and age verification will be addressed once and for all.”

    The adult industry has famously led the charge on technological innovation before. Porn played a decisive role in the battle between the VHS and Betamax videotape platforms, facilitated the rise of online credit card transactions and helped promote streaming video technology writ large.

    Now, Pornhub’s fight could prove to be a bellwether for the growing push to enforce age verification for social media. As with the battle over adult material, debates over how to keep children and teens away from social media have raised substantial questions about user privacy and how effective age restrictions may be when determined kids inevitably try to circumvent the rules.

    The tech industry, for its part, has been making its own strides in digital identity services. In 2021, for example, Apple announced support for adding driver’s licenses from eight states to Apple Wallet. In December, Google announced it was beta testing a similar feature for Android.

    Those services, however, are designed for in-person ID checks such as at travel checkpoints or liquor stores, technology experts said, and are not set up to perform age or identity verification remotely or virtually.

    Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a consumer advocacy group focused on children’s technology use, described calls for device-based age verification as an “intriguing idea” that might ease burdens on websites and internet users. But, he argued, there are less invasive ways of determining a website visitor’s age.

    “It is our position that rather than requiring new, stringent forms of age verification, that we should start by having the platforms use the data they’re already collecting to do age estimation,” Golin said, pointing to how TikTok, for example, reportedly uses behavioral cues and activity algorithms to guess whether a user may be underage.

    Any device-based approach to age verification would immediately run into issues in most households with children, where no device is ever solely used by one person or exclusively by adults, said India McKinney, director of federal affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization.

    “You would have to assume that children and teens weren’t borrowing their parents’ phones,” McKinney said. “And that’s sharing on purpose. You don’t have to be too sophisticated to think about teens stealing their parent’s device to get around the age-gating.”

    Meanwhile, entrusting large tech companies to be the custodians of even more personal information, and enabling them to be the effective arbiters of what internet users can see online, brings its own challenges, said Udbhav Tiwari, head of global product policy at Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox web browser.

    Device-based age verification, Tiwari said, could have “very serious privacy connotations, because you now have the largest tech companies in the world having your government ID and all the information present in them linked to individual devices. We’ve seen Twitter use phone numbers they collected for account security for targeting ads in the past, which led to them being subjected to FTC fines.”

    Last year, Twitter agreed to pay $150 million to resolve those Federal Trade Commission allegations.

    But Pornhub argues that the alternative is a world that’s even less safe, where users seeking age-restricted content may simply go to sites without age-gates or other checks.

    “Giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution,” Deville says in Wednesday’s video. “In fact, it will put children and your privacy at risk.”

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  • EU officials accuse Google of antitrust violations in its ad tech business | CNN Business

    EU officials accuse Google of antitrust violations in its ad tech business | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Google’s advertising business should be broken up, European Union officials said Wednesday, alleging that the tech giant’s involvement in multiple parts of the digital advertising supply chain creates “inherent conflicts of interest” that risk harming competition.

    The formal accusations mark the latest antitrust challenge to Google over its sprawling ad tech business, following a lawsuit by the US Justice Department in January that also called for a breakup of the company.

    The EU Commission has submitted its allegations to Google in writing, officials said, kicking off a legal process that could potentially end in billions of dollars in fines in addition to a possible breakup that could impact part of its core advertising business.

    The commission alleges that since 2014, Google has unfairly boosted its own proprietary ad exchange — the online auction house known as AdX that matches advertisers and publishers — through its simultaneous ownership of some of the most popular ad tools for publishers and advertisers.

    For example, the commission claims, advertisers who used Google’s ad buying tools frequently had their purchases routed to AdX instead of to rival ad exchanges.

    Meanwhile, Google’s publisher-facing tools unfairly gave AdX a leg up over rival ad exchanges, the commission alleged, because Google’s publisher tools gave AdX competitive bidding information that the exchange could use to help advertisers win an auction.

    One proposed solution by the commission would spin off Google’s ad exchange and publisher tools from the ad-buying tools it provides to advertisers.

    “@Google controls both sides of the #adtech market: sell & buy,” tweeted Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s top competition official. “We are concerned that it may have abused its dominance to favour its own #AdX platform. If confirmed, this is illegal.”

    In a statement, Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, said the EU’s probe “focuses on a narrow aspect of our advertising business,” that the company opposes the commission’s preliminary conclusions and that Google plans to “respond accordingly.”

    “Our advertising technology tools help websites and apps fund their content, and enable businesses of all sizes to effectively reach new customers. Google remains committed to creating value for our publisher and advertiser partners in this highly competitive sector,” Taylor said.

    A Google spokesperson told CNN Wednesday that the company has only just received the commission’s complaint and that it will take time to review the commission’s claims. Google also added that it will oppose calls for a breakup.

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  • First on CNN: Senators press Google, Meta and Twitter on whether their layoffs could imperil 2024 election | CNN Business

    First on CNN: Senators press Google, Meta and Twitter on whether their layoffs could imperil 2024 election | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Three US senators are pressing Facebook-parent Meta, Google-parent Alphabet and Twitter about whether their layoffs may have hindered the companies’ ability to fight the spread of misinformation ahead of the 2024 elections.

    In a letter to the companies dated Tuesday, the lawmakers warned that reported staff cuts to content moderation and other teams could make it harder for the companies to fulfill their commitments to election integrity.

    “This is particularly troubling given the emerging use of artificial intelligence to mislead voters,” wrote Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Democratic Sen. Peter Welch and Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by CNN.

    Since purchasing Twitter in October, Elon Musk has slashed headcount by more than 80%, in some cases eliminating entire teams.

    Alphabet announced plans to cut roughly 12,000 workers across product areas and regions earlier this year. And Meta has previously said it would eliminate about 21,000 jobs over two rounds of layoffs, hitting across teams devoted to policy, user experience and well-being, among others.

    “We remain focused on advancing our industry-leading integrity efforts and continue to invest in teams and technologies to protect our community – including our efforts to prepare for elections around the world,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, said in a statement to CNN about the letter.

    Alphabet and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The pullback at those companies has coincided with a broader industry retrenchment in the face of economic headwinds. Peers such as Microsoft and Amazon have also trimmed their workforces, while others have announced hiring freezes.

    But the social media companies are coming under greater scrutiny now in part due to their role facilitating the US electoral process.

    Tuesday’s letter asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino how each company is preparing for the 2024 elections and for mis- and disinformation surrounding the campaigns.

    To illustrate their concerns, the lawmakers pointed to recent changes at Alphabet-owned YouTube to allow the sharing of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, along with what they described as content moderation “challenges” at Twitter since the layoffs.

    The letter, which seeks responses by July 10, also asked whether the companies may hire more content moderation employees or contractors ahead of the election, and how the platforms may be specifically preparing for the rise of AI-generated deepfakes in politics.

    Already, candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appear to have used fake, AI-generated images to attack their opponents, raising questions about the risks that artificial intelligence could pose for democracy.

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  • Pokemon Go maker Niantic is laying off 230 employees | CNN Business

    Pokemon Go maker Niantic is laying off 230 employees | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Niantic, the creator of hit mobile game Pokemon Go, announced it is laying off 230 employees and reorganizing its business as it grapples with new macroeconomic uncertainty.

    In a letter to staff announcing the job cuts, Niantic CEO John Hanke said the company is taking other significant actions as well: shuttering its Los Angeles studio, sunsetting its NBA All-World game and halting production on Marvel: World of Heroes.

    The privately held company’s breakout hit, Pokemon Go, was among the first mobile games to embrace augmented reality when it launched in 2016.

    Hanke went on to state what has become a familiar refrain among tech CEOs announcing layoffs: The company grew too fast during the boom in demand for digital services seen in the early days of the pandemic, and now must adjust to a new environment.

    “In the wake of the revenue surge we saw during Covid, we grew our headcount and related expenses in order to pursue growth more aggressively, expanding existing game teams, our AR platform work, new game projects and roles that support our products and our employees,” Hanke wrote.

    Eventually, however, “our revenue returned to pre-Covid levels and new projects in games and platform have not delivered revenues commensurate with those investments,” he added.

    The reorganization, Hanke said, “will bring expenses and revenue back into line while preserving our core assets and long term upside.”

    In his memo to staff on Thursday, Hanke said that the company is now facing an augmented reality market “that is developing more slowly than anticipated, because of technology challenges and because larger players are slowing down their investments in light of the macro environment.”

    Still, Hanke emphasized that the company’s “top priority” going forward is to “keep Pokémon GO healthy and growing as a forever game.” He also said that remaining staffers should expect “a more direct and results-based culture.”

    Some 211,630 people in the tech industry have been laid off this year alone, according to data tracked by Layoffs.fyi, already surpassing the 164,709 figure recorded in full-year 2022.

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  • Tired of Elon Musk? Here are the Twitter alternatives you should know about | CNN Business

    Tired of Elon Musk? Here are the Twitter alternatives you should know about | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    When Elon Musk took over Twitter in October and began upending the platform, there weren’t many viable alternatives for frustrated users. Now, there may be too many.

    A growing number of services have launched or gained traction in recent months by appealing to users who are uncomfortable with Musk’s decisions to slash Twitter’s staff, overhaul the verification process, reinstate numerous incendiary accounts and most recently impose temporary read limits on tweets.

    Bluesky, Mastodon and Spill are among the many social apps vying for users over the last several months, with services that look and feel strikingly similar to Twitter. But now this increasingly crowded marketplace may be disrupted by the most dominant social media company: Meta.

    Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, launched Wednesday and amassed more than 70 million sign-ups as of Friday morning thanks to a decision to tie the app to Instagram. Its user base is already far more than newer rivals and puts Threads on pace to rapidly catch up to Twitter, which had 238 million active users last year before Musk took the company private.

    In interviews, some other Twitter competitors took jabs at Meta’s effort and expressed confidence in their ability to grow and maintain an audience, even if it ends up being much smaller than what Mark Zuckerberg’s company can attract.

    “Threads leans heavily on celebrities and people with large Instagram followings, and therefore risks being more of a megaphone for the established, rather than something for everyone,” Sarah Oh, a former Twitter employee and founder of rival app T2, told CNN in an email.

    Spill co-founder and CEO Alphonzo Terrell said the company is “thrilled to see so much innovation in the social space” and remains “confident in our roadmap.”

    Here’s what you should know about the current crop of services trying to take on Twitter.

    Threads is Meta’s long-anticipated answer to Twitter and the biggest threat to the social network Musk bought for $44 billion. Threads is intended to offer a space for real-time conversations online, a function that has long been Twitter’s core selling point, and it’s doing so in part by adoption many of Twitter’s most recognizable features.

    The app has already attracted a long list of celebrities, brands and other VIP users, as well as many who clearly appear to be frustrated with Musk’s Twitter. And Zuckerberg isn’t just looking to catch up to Twitter; he wants to build a service that’s far larger.

    “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads. “Hopefully we will.”

    Launched by former Twitter employees, Spill says it strives to be a “visual conversation at the speed of culture.”

    The site is visual heavy and pushes GIFs, memes and video, making it more of a destination for creative communities. Spill has also emerged as a haven for Black Twitter users and marginalized communities seeking a safe space online.

    While the traction for Threads was unique, Spill has gained recently, too. Last weekend, amid renewed chaos at Twitter over the read limits, Spill gained “hundreds of thousands of new users,” according to Terrell, the CEO.

    T2, another service created by former Twitter employees, offers a social feed of posts with 280-character limits. The key selling point that sets it apart from others is its focus on safety, according to Oh, the founder.

    “We really do want to create an experience that allows people to share what they want to share without fearing risk of things like abuse and harassment, and we feel like we’re really well positioned to deliver on that,” Oh told CNN in February.

    In a statement this week, Oh doubled down on safety as a possible differentiator with Threads as well, raising the question of whether Meta had “learned from their past mistakes” after years of scrutiny on its struggles to police its own platforms.

    Bluesky, a service backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, looks identical to Twitter, with one key difference. The app runs on a decentralized network, which provides users more control over how the service is run, the data is stored, and the content is moderated.

    Bluesky was formed independently of Twitter while Dorsey was serving as CEO but it was funded by the company until it became an independent organization in February 2022. In a tweet introducing the idea in 2019, Dorsey said it also plans to “build an open community around it, inclusive of companies & organizations, researchers, civil society leaders,” but warned “this isn’t going to happen overnight.”

    This week, Dorsey appeared to acknowledge that the market is now flooded with “Twitter clones.”

    Also built on decentralized networks, Mastodon launched before Musk took over Twitter but skyrocketed in popularity after the acquisition.

    Mastodon lets users join a slew of different servers run by various groups and individuals, rather than one central platform controlled by a single company like Twitter or Instagram. Mastodon is also free of ads. It’s developed by a nonprofit run by Eugen Rochko, who created Mastodon in 2016.

    After joining, users pick a server, with options from general-interest servers such as mastodon.world; regional servers like sfba.social, which is aimed at people in the San Francisco Bay Area; and ones aimed at various interests (many servers review new sign-ups before approving them.)

    Launched publicly in June 2022, Cohost offers a text-based social media feed with followers, reposts, likes and comments, similar to Twitter. However, the product is chronologically based with no ads, no trending topics and no displayed interactions (think hidden like counts and follower lists).

    Part of Cohost’s goal is to create a less hostile space for open dialogue, according to the website.

    “People who hear ‘Facebook has a Twitter replacement now!’ and don’t immediately run for the hills are unlikely to be interested in anything we’re doing,” said Jae Kaplan, co-founder of anti-software software club, the company that develops cohost. “We’re in separate market niches. I doubt they’re going to do anything to try and appeal to our users, and we’re not going to do anything to try and appeal to their users.”

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