Social media platforms should post warning labels, similar to those now used on cigarette packs, for teenagers who are increasingly suffering from mental health issues that are partly tied to the apps, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Monday in an opinion piece in the New York Times.
“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents,” Murthy wrote.
The push would be similar to the warnings printed on cigarette packages, which Murthy noted have shown to “increase awareness and change behavior.” However, adding warning labels to social media platforms would require Congress to pass legislation, he noted.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Murthy has previously stressed the potential harms that teenagers encounter from social media platforms, pushing last year for stronger guidelines for children and teens amid growing research that indicates the apps pose what he described at the time as a “profound risk” to young people’s mental health. On Monday, Murthy noted that warning labels alone wouldn’t make the platforms safe for kids and said that creating safety measures “remain the priority.”
Congress also needs to implement legislation that will protect young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content, he wrote.
“The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use,” Murthy said.
The surgeon general is also recommending that companies be required to share all their data on health effects with independent scientists and the public — which they currently don’t do — and allow independent safety audits.
Murthy said schools and parents also need to participate in providing phone-free times and that doctors, nurses and other clinicians should help guide families toward safer practices.
Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.
There are currently six types of ads companies can buy on Instagram, according to Meta. They can buy ads that look like photo posts, ads that look like video posts, ads that look like slideshows, ads that look like Stories, and ads that look like Reels. Companies give Meta money, and Meta gives them the chance to slot their content in its users’ feeds. What happens then is up to you, the user. Sometimes you’ll tap through, or at least remember the product’s name; most of the time, you’ll tap or scroll them away.
You’re probably most familiar with unskippable ads from the world of video. YouTube, Hulu, and countless other streaming sites ask users to sit through ads before or in the middle of content. It’s a familiar bargain, a business practice carried forward from television and stretched to extremes online: Who among us hasn’t occasionally sat through a 30-second video ad to watch a 17-second clip on a news website? What Instagram is doing here, though, is different in a way that the few users who have encountered it seem to find extremely disruptive. The ads are not interrupting or delaying a video. They’re interrupting users’ scrolling, putting up an invisible barrier through which no thumb can pass, at least for a few seconds. Instagram users are accustomed to seeing a lot of ads, being aware of a lot of ads, and passively consuming or actively dismissing a lot of ads. Depending on how you use it, Instagram can feel like a platform entirely composed of ads, in which organic posts from brands hoping you’ll buy something are occasionally interrupted by paid posts from brands hoping you’ll buy something. What Instagram users are less accustomed to is taking orders from ads. It’s one thing to get held up for a few seconds before watching a 14-minute YouTube video. It’s quite another to be held up for a few seconds before scrolling down to see, basically, more ads.
This is the sort of obnoxious behavior you’d expect from an AI spam farm, a newspaper website in the process of being squeezed to death by a private equity firm, or a porn site. The ads are perhaps most reminiscent of free-to-play mobile games, which routinely stop their users at monetization checkpoints as frequently as they’ll tolerate. “This’ll be the last straw for me when it comes to Instagram,” wrote Reddit user notthatogwiththename, who posted screenshots of the feature in testing. “I could stand the plethora of ads sprinkled throughout the entire app already, but unskippable? Gtfo.”
A scroll-stopping ad is jarring, as Meta certainly knows. But at this point, they may not care much. They have long deprioritized Instagram’s feed in favor of video-heavy Stories and Reels, both of which created a lot of valuable ad space of their own. As users have started posting less on their main feeds, the original core of Instagram has begun to hollow out. The arrival of hostile ad units would be a pretty clear sign that the company sees its feed less as a product with a future than as a declining resource that needs to be harvested to the fullest extent possible. Users are already abandoning it. Why not toll them on the way out?
Instagram confirmed it’s testing unskippable ads after screenshots of the feature began circulating across social media. These new ad breaks will display a countdown timer that stops users from being able to browse through more content on the app until they view the ad, according to informational text displayed in the Instagram app.
The change would see the social network becoming more like the free version of YouTube, which requires users to view ads before and in the middle of watching videos. It makes sense that Instagram would consider going this route, too, given that it has also shifted over the years to become more of a video-sharing network, thanks to features like Stories and Reels, rather than a place to only share still photos.
“We’re always testing formats that can drive value for advertisers,” a Meta company spokesperson told TechCrunch. “As we test and learn, we will provide updates should this test result in any formal product changes,” they noted.
The new “ad break” feature was spotted initially by Instagram app user Dan Levy, who posted a screenshot of the test to his account on X. The app stopped Levy from scrolling past the ad when it appeared, he said — something he thought was a “bonkers move.”
Holy moly! Meta seemingly is now forcing us to watch ads in our feeds on Instagram!
The app legit stopped me from scrolling past this ad which is just a bonkers move to me. pic.twitter.com/740EXjGyl2
A follow-up post on Reddit clarified that if you click the info icon next to the ad break to learn more, you’ll see a message that reads: “You’re seeing an ad break. Ad breaks are a new way of seeing ads on Instagram. Sometimes you may need to view an ad before you keep browsing.”
Other commenters confirmed that they had also seen the feature at times. As you might imagine, the majority of the reactions were negative. Some people threatened to close Instagram if they came across “ad breaks” like this, while others said they would stop using the app entirely. In addition, commenters questioned whether this decision was driven by a need to increase engagement on ads, at the expense of the consumer experience.
Levy’s post has since been recirculated by other accounts on X, like @howfxr and @Dexerto.
Instagram declined to say where in the Instagram app the ad breaks show and whether the company was testing the feature globally. The screenshots, however, show the ad breaks appearing in the app’s Feed while watching video posts. It’s not clear at this time if Instagram creators will have any control over these ads’ appearance.
For now, the feature is just a test, but it demonstrates to what extent Meta is willing to experiment with the app’s core user experience in favor of increased ad revenues.
Instagram launched Notes in December 2022 as a way for people to share statuses (not so dissimilar to Facebook) on the platform. Now, the Meta-owned app is taking inspiration from its sister site for more features, with the addition of Note Prompts.
Instagram first experimented with Note Prompts earlier this year, and the feature allows users to share questions such as “What should I eat?” or “Who is going to be in X city this weekend?” Friends can then respond with tips, suggestions and random thoughts on the subject. It feels very Facebook circa 2012, as does another new feature, Mentions, in which users can tag a friend directly in their Notes. The example Instagram gives, “Hanging with @user later,” would be right out of the early 2010s with just adding “Text! :)” Instagram also announced Note Likes, which works similarly to how likes function everywhere else on Instagram — all users need to do is double tap a note or click the heart.
Notes have only emerged on Instagram in the past couple of years. They mirror stories in many ways, lasting only 24 hours and with controls as to who can see them (such as just mutual followers). Notes are visible in a user’s inbox and on profiles.
Earlier this month, a German court ruled that the country’s nationalist far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), was potentially “extremist” and could warrant surveillance by the country’s intelligence apparatus.
Campaign ads placed by AfD have been allowed to appear on Facebook and Instagram anyway, according to a new report from the nonprofit advocacy organization Ekō shared exclusively with WIRED. Researchers found 23 ads that accrued 472,000 views from the party on Facebook and Instagram that appear to violate Meta’s own policies around hate speech.
The ads push the narrative that immigrants are dangerous and a burden on the German state ahead of the European Union’s elections in June.
One ad placed by AfD politician Gereon Bollman asserts that Germany has seen “an explosion of sexual violence” since 2015, specifically blaming immigrants from Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The ad was seen by between 10,000 and 15,000 people in just four days, between March 16 and 20, 2024. Another ad, which had over 60,000 views, features a man of color lying in a hammock. Overlaid text reads, “AfD reveals: 686,000 illegal foreigners live at our expense!”
Ekō was also able to identify at least three ads that appear to have used generative AI to manipulate images, though only one was run after Meta put its manipulated media policy into place. One shows a white woman with visible injuries, with accompanying text saying “the connection between migration and crime has been denied for years.”
“Meta, and indeed other companies, have very limited ability to detect third party tools that generate AI imagery,” says Vicky Wyatt, senior campaign director at Ekō. “When extremist parties use those tools with their ads, they can create incredibly emotive imagery that can really move people. So it’s incredibly worrying.”
In its submission to the European Commission’s consultation on election guidelines, obtained by a freedom of information request made by Ekō, Meta says “it is not yet possible for providers to identify all AI-generated content, particularly when actors take steps to seek to avoid detection, including by removing invisible markers.”
Meta’s own policies prohibit ads that “claim people are threats to the safety, health, or survival of others based on their personal characteristics” and ads that “include generalizations that state inferiority, other statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt, expressions of dismissal, expressions of disgust, or cursing based on immigration status.”
“We do not allow hate speech on our platforms and have Community Standards that apply to all content – including ads,” says Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts. “Our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live, and this system is one of many we have in place to protect European elections.” Roberts told WIRED the company plans to review the ads flagged by Ekō but didn’t respond to questions about whether the German court’s designation of the AfD as potentially extremist would invite further scrutiny from Meta.
Targeted ads, says Wyatt, can be powerful because extremist groups can more effectively target people that might sympathize with their views and “use Meta’s ads library to reach them.” Wyatt also says this allows the group to test which messages are more likely to resonate with voters.
A majority of US TikTok creators don’t believe the platform will be banned within a year, and most haven’t seen brands they work for shift their marketing budgets away from the app, according to a new survey of people who earn money from posting content on TikTok shared exclusively with WIRED.
The findings suggest that TikTok’s influencer economy largely isn’t experiencing existential dread after Congress passed a law last month that put the future of the app’s US operations in jeopardy. The bill demands that TikTok separate from its Chinese parent company within a year or face a nationwide ban; TikTok is challenging the constitutionality of the measure in court.
Fohr, an influencer marketing platform that connects creators with clients for sponsored content, polled US-based TikTok creators on its platform with at least 10,000 followers. It got 200 responses, half from people who rely on influencing as their sole source of income. Out of the respondents, 62 percent said they didn’t think TikTok would be banned by 2025, while the remaining 38 percent said they believed it would be.
Some creators may be skeptical that a ban will really happen after they watched the Trump White House and Congress try and fail several times to crack down on TikTok over the past few years. The platform has so far only continued to grow more popular in the US, sparking alarm in Silicon Valley over the threat its competition poses. There’s also the possibility TikTok will be sold to a group of American investors—several interested bidders have emerged—though TikTok has made it clear that such an acquisition would be practically impossible.
Some creators are simply struggling to believe the bizarre situation their favorite app has landed in. “I’m in denial, because I think the TikTok ban is ridiculous,” one anonymous creator told Fohr through its survey. “I think our government has bigger things to worry about than banning a platform where people are allowed to express their views and opinions.”
Most creators said they haven’t lost business from brands that pay for marketing content on TikTok since the new law was signed: 83 percent of the influencers who responded said their sponsorships have been unaffected. But the rest had seen signs of brands pulling back from the app or at least diversifying their marketing. Some 7 percent said a brand had paused or canceled a campaign they worked on, and 8 percent said a brand had asked to shift a deliverable to another social media platform or at least inquired about such a change.
Companies may be reluctant to walk away from TikTok because it’s become one of the most popular avenues for consumers to discover new products, particularly from small businesses. Over the past year, TikTok has tried to leverage that influence into a new revenue stream through an ecommerce feature called TikTok Shop. Over 11 percent of US households have made a purchase through TikTok Shop since September 2023, according to credit card transaction data published in April by the research firm Earnest Analytics.
It doesn’t look as though the passage of the divestiture bill last month prompted people to spend significantly less time on TikTok or avoid the app altogether. The popularity of the platform in US app stores has remained largely consistent over the past month, according to the market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower. And Fohr found that 60 percent of creators said their video views have remained the same, 28 percent said they had seen them fall, and 10 percent reported their engagement increased. These shifts could simply be caused by routine changes TikTok makes to its algorithm, variability of the content that influencers are sharing, or the whims of users consuming videos.
TikTok’s rise has spurred US tech giants to mimic many of its features, with Google’s YouTube pushing its Shorts format and Meta’s Instagram launching Reels. Fohr’s survey suggests that if creators start leaving TikTok because of uncertainty about the app’s future or a ban, Instagram stands to benefit the most. A clear majority of creators—67 percent—said they saw it as the best alternative for growing their audience, while 22 percent cited YouTube. Only a small fraction pointed to Snapchat, Pinterest, and other platforms.
Several of the creators, however, said that it’s harder to gain traction on Instagram compared to TikTok, and one noted that Meta’s platform doesn’t offer anything equivalent to TikTok’s Creativity Program, which pays users based on how many views and other engagement metrics their videos receive.
Across social platforms, the most common way for creators to get paid is by signing deals with brands to make posts featuring their products. But Fohr’s survey also showed the growth of a novel monetization scheme called the TikTok Creative Challenge, which the app launched last year. It allows companies to post requests for creators to make marketing videos that brands can then use on their own channels. Influencers are compensated based on how well their video performs in terms of views and engagement.
In Fohr’s survey, that type of content, known as UGC, represented the largest TikTok revenue stream for 18 percent of creators. Whatever happens to TikTok in the US, history suggests that it may not be long before its American competitors begin rolling out their own user-generated content initiatives.
Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to their Instagram Story without needing to take out their phone.
After you take a photo with the smart glasses, you can say, “Hey Meta, share my last photo to Instagram.” Or you can say, “Hey Meta, post a photo to Instagram” to take a new photo in the moment.
The launch of the new feature is reminiscent of the Snap Spectacles, which debuted in 2016 and allowed users to capture photos and videos with their smart glasses to share them directly to their Snapchat Stories.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are also getting hands-free integrations with Amazon Music and meditation app Calm.
Users can now stream music from Amazon Music without having to take out their phone by saying “Hey Meta, play Amazon Music.” You can also control your audio playback with touch or voice controls while your phone stays in your pocket.
To access the new hands-free Calm integration, users can say “Hey Meta, play the Daily Calm” to have mindfulness exercises and self-care content accessible directly through their smart glasses.
In addition, Meta is expanding the number of styles available in 15 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia and parts Europe. The expansion includes the style Skyler in Shiny Chalky Gray with Gradient Cinnamon Pink Lenses; Skyler in Shiny Black with Transitions Cerulean Blue Lenses; and Headliner Low Bridge Fit in Shiny Black with Polar G15 Lenses. The glasses are available on both Meta’s and Ray-Ban’s websites.
The launch of the new features comes a month after the smart glasses got an AI upgrade. Meta rolled out multimodal AI to the smart glasses to enable users to ask questions about what they see. For instance, if you’re seeing a menu in French, the smart glasses could use their built-in camera and Meta AI to translate the text for you.
The idea behind the launch is to allow the smart glasses to act as a personal AI assistant outside of your smartphone, in a way that’s similar to Humane’s Ai pin.
One simple process achieves all three objectives. Today I’ll show you how!
A musician’s guide to Musixmatch
Here’s how to get your lyrics delivered to streaming and social platforms so the words are synchronized to the music:
1. Distribute your music
Before you can synch your lyrics with a track on Spotify or Instagram, you need to make that music available on those same social and streaming platforms!
Musixmatch can get your lyrics onto Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google, TIDAL, Instagram, Facebook, and more.
It’s an app where you enter, format, sync, approve, and deliver your lyrics, along with collaborator credits and song formatting tags.
But first you need to get verified with Musixmatch.
NOTE: You may need to upload a photo of a valid ID before you can submit lyrics.
3. Choose the song
Once you have access to your Musixmatch dashboard, go to your “Roster” of songs.
You may immediately see songs in your “To Do” list that are missing lyrics. Otherwise, hit the “Music” tab.
Select the song and hit “Edit Lyrics.”
4. Enter the lyrics
You can paste the lyrics into the lyric field.
Or listen along to the song and transcribe the lyrics in real-time.
For convenience, a player below the lyrics field will source audio from Spotify or Apple Music.
5. Format the lyrics
After typing or pasting the lyrics, be sure to follow Musixmatch’s formatting guidelines.
For instance: Every line should begin with a capital letter.
If your entry doesn’t meet the formatting guidelines, you’ll see a helpful window with suggestions.
A virtual assistant can automatically fix these errors.
6. Add section tags
This is where you’ll categorize stanzas as verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, etc.
If you have a longer instrumental section or solo between sections, you can mark that as #INSTRUMENTAL.
7. Sync the words to the music
The Musixmatch app makes it easy for you to toggle through the lyrics while the track plays.
This process time-stamps the lyrics so they’ll automatically sync when someone streams the track on Spotify. Or when someone creates an Instagram Reel using your song.
8. List credits
Who wrote the words and music?
Did someone else mix, master, and produce the track? Were there session players?
You can credit everyone accordingly during this step.
9. Submit the lyrics
Hit the “Send” button when you’re ready.
Then Musixmatch will deliver the words to their affiliated platforms.
If there are any issues, you’ll see a warning appear and have a chance to fix it.
10. Share your lyrics!
Now the fun part.
It’s time to post creative content that showcases your words on Instagram and Facebook.
Conclusion
One of the happy outcomes of the Social-Video Age is that people are accustomed to seeing captions now. They expect text on-screen. And they’re willing to READ IT to dive deeper into the content.
And guess what? That means people will engage with your lyrics. Great news for songwriters who want their social content to be an extension of their artistry!
Thanks to Musixmatch, getting your lyrics synched-up with your tracks on major social and streaming platforms is easy. This is a process you should revisit every time you launch new music, and it’ll take you barely more time than it takes to listen to the song.
Release your songs on Spotify, Instagram, and more.
ReverbNation is the best-kept secret in music distribution.
With real support. Industry access. And you keep 100% of your royalties.
This might come as a shock to you but the things people put on social media aren’t always truthful — really blew your mind there, right? Due to this, it can be challenging for people to know what’s real without context or expertise in a specific area. That’s part of why many platforms use a fact-checking team to keep an eye (often more so look like they’re keeping an eye) on what’s getting shared. Now, Threads is getting its own fact-checking program, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram and de-facto person in charge at Threads, announced. He first shared the company’s plans to do so in December.
Mosseri stated that Threads “recently” made it so that Meta’s third-party fact-checkers could review and rate any inaccurate content on the platform. Before the shift, Meta was having fact-checks conducted on Facebook and Instagram and then matching “near-identical false content” that users shared on Threads. However, there’s no indication of exactly when the program started or if it’s global.
Then there’s the matter of seeing how effective it really can be. Facebook and Instagram already had these dedicated fact-checkers, yet misinformation has run rampant across the platforms. Ahead of the 2024 Presidential election — and as ongoing elections and conflicts happen worldwide — is it too much to ask for some hardcore fact-checking from social media companies?
Instagram head Adam Mosseri noted that the company “recently” rolled out the ability for fact-checkers to rate and mark false content on Threads. However, Mosseri didn’t share any details about when exactly the program was rolled out and if it was limited to certain geographies.
It is also not clear which organizations are Meta’s fact-check partners for Threads. We have asked the company for more details, and will update the story if we hear back.
The move seems to be largely targeting preparation for the upcoming U.S. elections. India is in the middle of its general elections as well, but it is unlikely that a social network rolls out a fact-checking program during an election cycle instead of commencing the project before it the elections.
“We currently match fact-check ratings from Facebook or Instagram to Threads, but our goal is for fact-checking partners to have the ability to review and rate misinformation on the app,” Mosseri had said in a post at that time.
Paul O’Grady fans have been reassured by his team on Instagram following a new photo of his adorable dogs.
The TV favourite died last March at the age of 67 from sudden cardiac arrhythmia. Since his death, Paul‘s management team have looked after his social media accounts and have kept his fans updated on his five dogs.
In a recent photo, the dogs enjoyed a “weekend getaway” which fans adored seeing.
Paul O’Grady dogs
The photo showed Paul’s five dogs buckled into the back of a car. They were sat on blankets with harnesses and leads attached to the seats to keep them safe.
The post read: “Buckled up and ready for a trip to the big city! Exciting day for the O’GRADY’s gang #doglife #weekendgetaway.”
However, within minutes, some people expressed concern for the dogs’ safety in the car. One person wrote: “Sorry to be a party pooper but dogs shouldn’t be attached by their collar in a car – they need harnesses.”
Another wrote: “My exact first thoughts! They’d be choked in an accident. Other than that, lovely to see them.”
Paul O’Grady died last March, leaving behind his five dogs (Credit: John Rainford/Cover Images)
Paul’s team were quick to reassure fans, writing back: “For all those worried about safety. Please rest assured the dogs do travel on a harness and are being looked after well. Thank you for your concern.”
Paul’s fans loved seeing the update on his pooches. One person gushed in the comments: “Such beautiful dogs lovely to see them all.”
Another wrote: “Bless them. They are just beautiful.”
Someone else added: “Bless them, I bet they miss Paul as much as you do. He was very much loved.”
Andre opened up about losing Paul on Loose Women this week (Credit: ITV)
Paul O’Grady husband
Earlier this week, Paul’s husband Andre Portasio appeared on Loose Women in his first TV interview to open up about the loss of the star.
During the chat, Andre shared the moment he took Paul’s dogs to his casket following his death. He said: “It was funny because there were so many letters, and many people didn’t know the address. He would receive the letter and it would be like Paul O’Grady, home, Kent.
“Anyway, I opened this letter and it was this old lady, she was 85, and she was very worried about the dogs. She said the dogs had to say goodbye and that stayed in the back of my mind. And I thought, I must attend to what she’s asking me to do.”
He continued: “So, just before he was buried, I took the dogs to say goodbye. It was really interesting to see that some of them engaged with Paul but others just ‘sweeped’ out, as if he wasn’t there.”
Threads is giving users more control over who can quote their posts (as in, reposting with commentary). If you don’t want just anyone to be able to quote your posts, you now have the option to allow only people you follow to do so. Or, you can make it so no one can quote your posts at all. Head of Instagram announced the update this weekend, saying he hopes it will “help keep Threads a more positive place.” The platform tested the feature among a group of Threads users last month, but it’s now rolling out to everyone.
Threads, which , has been slowly adding more features to improve safety and the overall user experience, borrowing some tools from Instagram. Last month, it , so users can designate certain terms that they want to be filtered out of their feeds. Threads also recently started testing options for archiving posts, either manually or automatically after a chosen expiration date.
There was a time when the experience of being online didn’t have the feeling of live theater. Today, everyone’s got a part to play—and the main character is Delulu.
Once again, delusion has gone radioactive. Just look around. Climate denial is trending on YouTube. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee doesn’t think he should be on trial, and even with a court-mandated gag order he refuses to shut up about it on social media. On college campuses across the US, peaceful anti-war student protests are given a nasty PR spin: They’re vilified as antisemitic despite many of the protesters being Jewish.
On TikTok, delulu has reached peak zeitgeist (the hashtag has over 2 billion views on the app, and more than 130 million posts). Still, I prefer my delusion spoon-fed via Instagram, the metropolis of millennial escape. Scrolling through the app, it’s easy to trick myself into believing things are better than they actually are—that maybe the state of the world, already somewhere far beyond the realm of the absurd, isn’t all that bad. It’s a lie, of course, but lies have their use.
I went public on Instagram in March because I wanted to promote a documentary I produced. It’s my first TV project, and I’m insanely proud of what we made. Selfishly, I also wanted as many people as possible to see it. But promoting the documentary required that I give up the thrill of anonymity that my finsta provided for a more public-facing persona. I knew I didn’t want to start over entirely, or dissolve the relationships I’d quietly made, and this seemed like a happy medium, even though I had no indication of what fruit it would bear.
Like many people of my generation, I grew up on the internet. Twenty years in, I’m still here. Only I long for a new kind of connection. As age has a tendency to readjust one’s perspective, my needs changed. I no longer instinctively crave to broadcast my every last thought, or engage with the masses every morning right as I wake up. It’s why my finsta was a perfect compromise. I couldn’t fully unplug, try as I might, but I could find comfort in a smaller audience.
The world is more connected than it’s ever been. But in opening up, we have lost intimacy. We perform it, but how true is it to our lived experiences? Twitter was especially predictive in that regard: more voices did not equate to more understanding, even as the platform revolutionized how, and how quickly, we connect. The alchemy of unforced connection was what the adolescence of social media embodied best. Keeping my Instagram private let me hang onto a little bit of that feeling.
I knew it couldn’t last forever. I make a living in a profession that requires endless self-promotion. What the influencer economy made real was the business of personhood. It completely revised the mechanics of engagement. Even if you’re not a “content creator” you are still mostly beholden to their rules of play. Maybe I’m overly sentimental about what we’ve lost, but there used to be a real romance to social media that was discarded for connection built around attention-seeking and brand deals. Social media has upended our relationship with real life: Rather than reality happening to us, we happen to it.
Meta is offering some creators thousands of dollars if they go viral on Threads. The payouts are part of a new invitation-only bonus program that rewards creators who use Meta’s newest app.
An Instagram support page offers some details about the bonus program, which Meta hasn’t formally announced. It states that creators can earn money “based on the performance of your Threads posts” or “the number of posts you create.” It appears that specific terms of the bonuses are individualized to each creator. “Details of the bonus program may vary by participant,” the company notes.
The program seems to be a small-scale effort for now — the company refers to it as being in “testing” — but it offers a preview of how Meta may look to ramp up its efforts to use creators to boost engagement on the service. Meta has previously offered bonuses for posting Reels on Facebook and Instagram, but it’s the first time the company has paid for posts on Threads. The Threads bonus program was first reported by Business Insider earlier this month.
Some creators are already being offered thousands of dollars for high-performing posts. According to one screenshot making the rounds on Threads, at least one creator was offered “up to $5,000” for Threads posts or replies with 10,000 views or more. That’s not nearly as high as the $10,000 bonuses Reels creators could once earn on Instagram, but is still quite generous considering posting on Threads requires far less effort than shooting and editing a compelling video.
Meta isn’t the only platform trying to lure creators with promises of potential payouts. X also offers creators direct payments based on their engagement, but that program is a revenue sharing arrangement for users who pay for premium subscriptions.
Threads has been growing steadily since its launch last year, and has more than 150 million monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg revealed last week. The Facebook founder has speculated that the app could one day be the company’s next billion-user platform, though it would likely take several years to reach that milestone. Either way, onboarding popular creators from Instagram would be an important step to boost engagement on Threads. The company also recently partnered with Taylor Swift’s team to get the pop star on the app to promote her latest album. Meta hasn’t shared what, if any, terms were associated with that arrangement, but the effort involved custom animations and other “Easter eggs” for Swift fans.
Have a tip about Meta’s bonus program for Threads? Contact the author at karissa.bell@engadget.com or message securely on Signal at +1 628.231.0063.
Are you searching for the best flower quotes and flower captions? This list has over one hundred beautiful flower sayings and inspirational floral quotes to lift your mood and put a smile on your face.
The power of flowers
Flowers just make life better, don’t they?
We use them to convey messages of love and support, we enjoy the beauty of flowers and their fragrance, and growing them in our gardens helps us to embrace nature and can even improve ourmental health. Flowers are also an absolutely vital part of our food chain, and contribute to the welfare of pretty much every species on our planet.
When you think about all of these ways that flowers impact on our lives, it’s no wonder that so many people have been inspired to write about them.
The very best flower quotes
I’ve created this bumper collection of flower quotes and captions about flowers to make it easy for you to find the perfect words.
I’ve included beautiful flower quotes, inspiring quotes about a flower, happy flower quotes, flower love quotes, and short flower quotes for when you want to keep it simple. There are also flower proverbs to enjoy, and funny flower quotes to make you giggle.
Make sure you bookmark this post, so you can come back to it whenever you need a floral quote for a photo or social media post – or simply a bit of a flower fix!
Aesthetic flower captions for instagram and flowers quotes for instagram photos
Looking for instagram captions about flowers, or a selection of flower quotes for instagram? You’ll be spoilt for choice with this selection of aesthetic flower quotes to use with your flower pictures. As well as being great captions for flowers photos, they’re also perfect for adding to floral greeting cards, school nature projects, and texts.
Make sure you check out my nature hashtags copy and paste lists too. As well as a list of popular hashtags for flower photos, there are lots of other nature-themed lists that will save you loads of time and help your instagram posts reach a wider audience.
Beautiful flower quotes
Here’s a selection of beautiful quotes about flowers to get you started.
“Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.” – Gerard de Nerval
“Flowers are the music of the ground. From earth’s lips spoken without sound.” – Edwin Curran
“Earth laughs in flowers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes.” – Arundhati Roy
“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change.” – Buddha
“Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers. Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.” – Luther Burbank
“Flowers whisper ‘Beauty!’ to the world, even as they fade, wilt, fall.” – Dr. SunWolf
“How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.” – William Wordsworth
“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower and draws all good things towards you.” – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Joyful and happy flower quotes
If you need an uplifting caption for flowers, there are plenty here to choose from.
“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.” – Luther Burbank
“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.” – Okakura Kakuzo
“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” – Iris Murdoch
“Flowers are like friends; they bring colour to your world.”– Unknown
“Joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.” – John Harrigan
Inspiring flower quotes
These inspirational flower quotes work brilliantly as captions for flower photos, but they’re also a lovely pick-me-up in their own right.
“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.” – Lady Bird Johnson
“Even the tiniest of flowers can have the toughest roots.” – Shannon Mullen
“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.” – Zen Shin
“Flowers grow back, even after they are stepped on. So will I.” – Unknown
“The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days.” – Robert Leighton
“Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.” – Jeremy Bentham
“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” – Theodore Roethke
“I’d rather wear flowers in my hair, than diamonds around my neck.” – Unknown
“A rose can never be a sunflower, and a sunflower can never be a rose. All flowers are beautiful in their own way, and that’s like women too.” – Miranda Kerr
“By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.” – Rabindranath Tagore
“Flowers don’t tell; they show.” – Stephanie Skeem
“It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.” – George Eliot
“Don’t let the tall weeds cast a shadow on the beautiful flowers in your garden.” – Steve Maraboli
“Be honest, be nice, be a flower not a weed.” – Aaron Neville
Funny flower quotes
Keep things light-hearted with these funny flower blossom quotes and funny flower captions.
“If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.” -Doug Larson
“I named all my children after flowers. There’s Lillie and Rose and my son, Artificial.” – Bert Williams
“If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.” – Alan Bennett
“If you want to say it with flowers, remember that a single rose screams in your face: ‘I’m cheap!” – Delta Burke
“At my age flowers scare me.” – George Burns
“Money is a powerful aphrodisiac but flowers work almost as well.” – Robert A. Heinlein
“Don’t send me flowers when I’m dead. If you like me, send them while I’m alive.” – Brian Clough
Blooming flower quotes
These best quotes about blooming flowers are the perfect accompaniment to a stunning bouquet.
“A flower does not use words to announce its arrival to the world; it just blooms.” – Mashona Dhliwayo
“Flowers don’t worry about how they’re going to bloom. They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful.” – Jim Carrey
“Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colours, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
“Minds are like flowers; they open only when the time is right.” – Unknown
“A flower blooming in the desert proves to the world that adversity, no matter how great, can be overcome.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
“Every flower blooms in its own time.” – Ken Petti
“If you tend to a flower, it will bloom, no matter how many weeds surround it.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
Wild flower quotes
Like your flowers more natural? Check out these wildflower quotes.
“Like wildflowers, you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.” – E.V.
“Almost every person, from childhood, has been touched by the untamed beauty of wildflowers.” – Lady Bird Johnson
“She is like a wildflower; beautiful, fierce, and free.” – Unknown
“One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower.” – Susan Wittig Albert
“What a lonely place it would be to have a world without a wildflower!” – Roland R. Kemler
“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair.” – Susan Polis Schutz
Flower love quotes
Sometimes flowers can say a thousand words, but these love quotes about flowers can also help you get the message across.
“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.” – Max Muller
“If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden.” – Claudia AdrienneGrandi
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” – Victor Hugo
“Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The rose is the flower and handmaiden of love – the lily, her fair associate, is the emblem of beauty and purity.” – Dorothea Dix
“She sprouted love like flowers, grew a garden in her mind, and even on the darkest days, from her smile the sun still shined.” – Erin Hanson
“Love is like wildflowers; it’s often found in the most unlikely places.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“No matter how chaotic it is, wildflowers will still spring up in the middle of nowhere.” – Sheryl Crow
“My love for you blossoms every day.” – Unknown
“A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once if love gives a man eyes.” – James Russell Lowell
“Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.” – John Lennon
Short flower quotes
Keep it simple with these short quotes about flowers and short flower captions for instagram.
“A flower blossoms for its own joy.” – Oscar Wilde
“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.” – Sigmund Freud
“The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.” – William Wordsworth
“He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.” – Mary Howitt
“I must have flowers, always, and always.” – Claude Monet
“Butterflies are self-propelled flowers.” – Robert A. Heinlein
“Every flower must grow through dirt.” – Laurie Jean Sennott
“A weed is but an unloved flower.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“These stars of earth, these golden flowers.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” – Henri Matisse
“To me, flowers are happiness.” – Stefano Gabbana
“Flowers preach to us if we will hear.” – Christina Rossetti
Flower quotes about life
How about some quotes on flowers and life to inspire you?
“We don’t ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.” – Gwendolyn Brooks
“Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” – Hans Christian Andersen
“Flowers grow out of dark moments.” – Corita Kent
“I am in awe of flowers. Not because of their colours, but because even though they have dirt in their roots, they still grow. They still bloom.” – D. Antoinette Foy
“I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about.” – George Eliot
“Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“A world of grief and pain, flowers bloom – even then.” – Kobayashi Issa
Quotes about spring flowers
There’s an abundance of spring-themed flower quotes and blossom quotes to enjoy.
“The first blooms of spring always make my heart sing.” – S. Brown
“Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.” – Bishop Reginald Heber
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.” – Pablo Neruda
“If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.” – St Therese of Lisieux
“If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.” – Audra Foveo
“What a strange thing! To be alive, beneath cherry blossoms.” – Kobayashi Issa
“Never yet was a springtime, when the buds forgot to bloom.” – Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
“Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring?” – Neltje Blanchan
“Blossom by blossom the spring begins.” – Algernon Charles Swinburne
“When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” – William Wordsworth
“I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.” – Ruth Stout
Gardens and flowers go hand-in-hand, so you may need one of these garden-themed instagram flower quotes.
“Gardens and flowers have a way of bringing people together, drawing them from their homes.” – Clare Ansberry
“The very best relationship has a gardener and a flower. The gardener nurtures and the flower blooms.” – Carole Radziwill
“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” – A A Milne
“I appreciate the misunderstanding I have had with Nature over my perennial border. I think it is a flower garden; she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass, and tries to correct the error.” – Sara Stein
“If you’ve never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden.” – Robert Brault
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” – Audrey Hepburn
Smell the flowers quotes
These meaningful flower quotations will get you thinking.
“You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.” – Walter Hagen
“I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.” – Herbert Rappaport
“Take time to smell the roses.” – Proverb
“I love to smell flowers in the dark … You get hold of their soul then.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery
“As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.” – Ben Hogan
“The beauty of life is in each precious moment! Stop and smell the roses” – Unknown
Flower sayings & Flower proverbs
For a time-honoured saying about flowers, proverbs are always worth a look.
Happiness is to hold flowers in both hands. – Japanese proverb
All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today. – Indian proverb
A person born to be a flower pot will not go beyond the porch. – Mexican Proverb
April showers bring May flowers. – English proverb
The flowers in your garden don’t smell as sweet as those in the wild, but they last much longer. – Chinese Proverb
To an optimist every weed is a flower; to a pessimist every flower is a weed. – Finnish proverb
A good bee will not go to a drooping flower. – Romanian Proverb
The most beautiful flowers flourish in the shade. – Japanese Proverb
The gardener who loves roses is slave to a thousand thorns. – Turkish proverb
Yesterday’s flowers are today’s dreams. – Japanese proverb
More lovely flower quotes
Still hungry for more quotations about flowers?
“Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” – Helen Keller
“Perfumes are the feelings of flowers” – Heinrich Heine
“All the stars are a-bloom with flowers” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“These flowers are like the pleasures of the world.” – William Shakespeare
“The Amen of nature is always a flower.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
“After women, flowers are the most lovely thing God has given the world.” – Christian Dior
“The butterfly is a flying flower, The flower a tethered butterfly.” – Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun
“Loveliest of lovely things are they on earth that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.” – William Cullen Bryant
“Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character.” – Lydia Maria Child
“Every flower blooms at a different pace.” – Suzy Kassem
“Politeness is the flower of humanity.” – Joseph Joubert
“Open the bloom of your heart and become a gift of beauty to the world.” – Bryant McGill
“Flowers are love’s truest language.” – Park Benjamin Sr.
“Live life in full bloom.” – Unknown
“No matter how chaotic it is, wildflowers will still spring up in the middle of nowhere.” – Sheryl Crow
Love exploring nature with the family? My book *A Year of Nature Craft and Play is full of 52 nature-based crafts, games and activities to keep kids busy all year round.
The city installed the “Hollywood-”style sign last week ahead of the NFL Draft in Detroit planned for April 25-27.
At first, the sign was mocked for falling short of expectations, especially considering its hefty price tag.
But that criticism — and there was a lot of it — gave way to admiration when the chunky, eight-foot-tall letters lit up along I-94 eastbound between Central Street and Cecil Avenue.
“See it’s cute yall,” one woman exclaimed on Instagram after a video of the illuminated sign was posted.
“That looks way better,” another user posted with a fire emoji.
One person added, “I know they was like wait until they see this bitch light up.”
“Perfect example for Detroit — people talk about you and don’t fuck with you until you shining,” one post read.
Another wrote, “It’s actually nice, yall horrible people.”
The city is adding landscaping to the sign this week.
“Once the landscaping is done its gonna be dope,” one person wrote.
The city spent an additional $135,900 on five smaller “Welcome to Detroit” signs that will be erected on M-39 at Eight Mile Road, M-39 at Ford Road, I-75 at Eight Mile Road, I-96 at Telegraph Road, and I-94 at Moross Road.
The signs were built by the Fairmont Sign Company, which for 50 years has been a Detroit-based, family-owned business.
DALLAS — Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice turned himself in Thursday evening.
Rice turned himself in to the Glen Heights Police. He is being processed at the Tri City Jail in DeSoto.
Rashee Rice mugshot
DeSoto Police Department
An arrest warrant was issued Wednesday for Rice in connection to a multi-car pile-up in Dallas on March 30. The Dallas Police Department issued arrest warrants for 23-year-old Rice and 21-year-old Theodore “Teddy” Knox, a student-athlete on Southern Methodist University’s Mustang football team, the school confirmed Thursday.
The DPD investigation found that Knox was driving a Corvette and Rice was in a Lamborghini. Both were speeding in the far-left lane of North Central Expressway near University Boulevard. The Lamborghini hit the center median wall, officials said, which caused four other vehicles to collide with each other.
DPD said the passengers in the Corvette and Lamborghini will not be charged.
On April 3, Rice issued a statement taking responsibility for his part in the crash, posting to his story on Instagram, “Today I met with Dallas PD investigators regarding Saturday’s accident. I take full responsibility for my part in this matter and will continue to cooperate with the necessary authorities. I sincerely apologize to everyone impacted in Saturday’s accident.”
Two people were treated at the scene for minor injuries, and two others were taken to the hospital for their minor injuries.
Rice faces one count of aggravated assault, one count of collision involving serious bodily injury, and six counts of collision involving injury. He was released on a $40,000 bond.
“I want to re-emphasis Mr. Rice’s continued cooperation with law enforcement,” Rice’s attorney, Royce West said in a statement to CBS News Texas. “Mr. Rice acknowledges his actions and feels deeply for those injured as a result of this accident. Our legal team is now tasked with reviewing all legal documents.”
Knox is charged with one count of aggravated assault, one count of collision involving serious bodily injury, and six counts of collision involving injury.
Knox is not in custody at this time.
SMU told CBS News Texas that Knox has been suspended from the team, adding, “SMU takes these allegations seriously. Federal student privacy laws prevent the University from discussing details involving student disciplinary proceedings.”
Knox’s attorney, Deandra Grant said, “We have fully cooperated with law enforcement. Other than that we have no further comment at this time.”
Rice, who also played his college football at SMU, just completed his rookie season with the Chiefs after the team selected him in the second round of the 2023 NFL Draft.
The NFL said it has been closely monitoring developments in the matter, per a league spokesman. The Athletic reports Rice is likely to face a multiple-game suspension from the NFL.
Not everyone is buying it. Despite the study’s findings, “I don’t believe hip-hop lyrics are more angry,” says Dame Aubrey, head of A&R for CMG Records and Management, a music label that represents rappers Moneybagg Yo, BlocBoy JB, and GloRilla. If anything, Aubrey says, what changes we do hear are a product of how music has expanded. It’s simple, Aubrey says: more people, more perspectives. The medium is more accessible now because of the technology available. “There’s just a lot more artists with opportunities to be heard because it basically became a trend to make music.”
One major adjustment in all of this is the mechanics of how a song gets popular, and what its popularity generates.
In the age of social media, that can often translate into more of the same kinds of sounds, although that is not always the case. So when Lamar throws punches at Drake—dubbing him one of the “goofies with a check” and following that with “Fore all your dogs gettin’ buried / That’s a K with all these nines, he gon’ see the pet cemetery”—the verses gain traction on X because they feed into the theatrics of online socializing, which is defined by joy and camaraderie between users as much as heated confrontation.
Rap has always gotten, well, a bad rap. Ego, anger, swagger—those emotions are part of the genre’s raucous identity. Since hip-hop’s founding 50 years ago, artists have wielded those sentiments to illustrate their realities. Rap is sport. It’s theater. It is the very kind of music that encourages the style of intense engagement that is increasingly common among fans online.
Are less positive song lyrics actually on the rise, or is the popularity of a certain kind of song simply a reflection of what we think the algorithm wants to hear?
Streaming transformed the music industry in every way possible. Crafting hit songs is somehow easier but just as difficult. The winds of virality can still be unpredictable. Although it is not an exact science, what is evident is how streaming playlists help deliver a song to large audiences in ways analog media couldn’t.
“While there are certainly trends in organic popularity, one unique thing about playlists is the significance and importance of context,” says JJ Italiano, head of global music curation and discovery at Spotify. “Even the most popular songs can vary wildly in how well they perform, depending on the playlist that they’re in and the other songs around them in that playlist.”
Dasha’s recent viral hit “Austin” had around 10,000 streams when Spotify editors began programming it for their playlists, Italiano says, and it did best when paired with similar on-theme pop songs that straddle country and pop, sequenced among summery, guitar-driven tunes (like Noah Kahan), narrative-rich country songs (like Zach Bryan), or similar heartbreak tracks from a different genre (like Mitski). “Eventually the song became so popular on Spotify that it made its way into our most popular playlist, Today’s Top Hits,” he says. But over time, Italiano notes, sequencing does become less crucial to a song’s lifespan as listeners develop a “deep familiarity” with the song.
Artists, then, find themselves making music in line with what’s trending, trying to achieve the same level of reach that songs like “Austin” or “Like That” did. In years past, everything from war to heartbreak influenced the music of the moment. That’s still true, but now TikTok, X, and other platforms drive the conversation as much as anything else. “Social media definitely plays a part in song writing just as the community, movies, and television once played a part,” Aubrey says of rap. Depending on the temperature of exchange among users, which swings from lukewarm to indignant depending on the artist, it prompts certain songs to dominate the conversation. Taylor Swift’s most popular online tracks are often the ones detailing scorn.
Even an artist like Milwaukee rapper Khal!l, who told WIRED in August that he wanted to “create an atmosphere where we can mosh-pit but then also cry and hold hands and shit,” finds himself beholden to the algorithm. He got famous thanks to TikTok, and the best way to sustain his presence on the app is to feed it the content that resonates: “We gotta ride this horse ’til the hooves fall off.”
Federal officials are searching for more potential victims of a Texas man who recently pled guilty to cyberstalking women for almost three years in Colorado, Texas and Arizona.
Hugo Iram Cardona Jr., 21, used a scheme involving two-factor authentication — an electronic authentication method — to hack into the Snapchat accounts of at least 15 young women, then steal their intimate photos and videos, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas reports.
The Odessa man reached out to his victims on social media platforms like Instagram and “demanded that they ‘apologize,’ or he would publicly release the content,” according to the federal government office. He also pressured most of the young women into video chatting with him “while engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
Cardona has pled guilty to three counts of cyberstalking and is scheduled for sentencing on June 3. Each count could result in up to 10 years in prison.
Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations and El Paso Police Department are trying to uncover any additional potential victims. The offenses likely took place between Aug. 15, 2020, and June 1, 2023.
Cardona used several phone numbers from the TextNow phone service to contact his victims, along with various Instagram accounts. His handles included: “idkprii85,” “designoiram,” “juniorrriram,” “urfavpapi,” “urdvddyjunie” and “juniorrhernandez.” He’s also linked to the following Snapchat accounts: “juniepri,” “asap_juniorrr” and “juniorrriram.”
Anyone who was in contact with Cardona using those accounts or phone numbers during the three-year period are asked to fill out a victim questionnaire. Officials say that victim identities will remain private and case-related information is kept confidential.
The memorial, a 279ft statue of a woman brandishing a sword, commemorates the “Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad” – one of World War 2’s most epic battles.
In the video, which is now officially banned in Russia, Alena appears to “tickle” the figure’s right breast.
She has also been banned from social media for two years – and will now have to pay 10 per cent of her future earnings as a fine to the state.
He said: “I am informing you that the investigative department for the Central District of Volgograd has a criminal case against you for the desecration of a symbol of military glory of Russia, an insult to the memory of defenders of the fatherland, committed with the use of the internet…”
The influencer appeared to cry in court hearings as she promised to not make the same mistake again.
She said: “I address all residents of Russia and Volgograd and ask everyone not to commit the acts I did last year because of my stupidity.
“I didn’t even think that I could insult someone’s feelings. I ask all Russian citizens for forgiveness.”
Separately, she offered “deep apologies” for her stunt.
Russian rapper Vacio who wore just a SOCK to Moscow elite’s ‘naked party’ is ‘conscripted to fight in Ukraine’
Alena was put on Russia’s wanted list after the incident – and was accused of “desecration of a burial site” and “cynical actions that disregard the norms of morality”.
She went into hiding in Sri Lanka to avoid an action by Putin’s brutal force.
However, she was detained as soon as she entered Russia – and was immediately transported to Volgograd for further action.
The Motherland Calls statue is among the most famous in Russia and commemorates those who fought and died in one of the bloodiest battles in the Second World War, resulting in a decisive Soviet victory against Adolf Hitler.
The USSR suffered more than one million casualties during the Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from August 1942 until February 1943.
Alena’s punishment shows the new morality in Russia under Putin amid the war with Ukraine.
While the despot is known for stripping down and showing off his impressive but steroid-infused physique, he has earned himself a “prudish” reputation for imposing an unprecedented new drive on traditional values.
His new morality hounds anyone who defies “traditional values”, imposing tough sentences on them.
