MELBOURNE, Australia — Australian authorities said Tuesday that social media platforms should not demand age verification for all account holders starting from December, when a ban on children under 16 having accounts goes into effect in the country.
The government released guidelines on how platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram should apply the world’s first ban on children using social media from Dec. 10. It says verifying the ages of all account holders would be unreasonable.
“We think it would be unreasonable if platforms reverified everyone’s age,” said Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who drafted the guidelines. Her use of the word “reverified” suggested the platforms usually already had sufficient data to verify a user was older than 16.
She said the platforms have “targeting technology” to focus on those under 16.
“They can target us with deadly precision when it comes to advertising. Certainly they can do this around the age of a child,” she added.
Australia’s Parliament enacted the ban last year, giving the platforms a year to work out its implementation. The platforms face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts.
Critics of the legislation fear that banning young children from social media will impact the privacy of all users who must establish they are older than 16.
Inman Grant said claims the ban would see every Australian account holder subjected to age verification as a “scare tactic.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the government seeks to keep platform users’ data as private as possible.
“These social media platforms know an awful lot about us” already, Wells said. “If you have been on, for example, Facebook since 2009, then they know you are over 16. There is no need to verify.”
Wells and Inman Grant will travel to the United States next week to discuss the guidelines with the platforms’ owners.
Inman Grant said the platforms would need to demonstrate to her agency that they were taking “reasonable steps” to exclude children younger than 16.
“We don’t expect that every under-16 account is magically going to disappear on Dec. 10,” Inman Grant said. “What we will be looking at is systemic failures to apply the technologies, policies and processes.”
Melbourne’s RMIT University expert on information sciences Lisa Given told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the government’s approach acknowledges that age verification technologies make errors.
“It’s going to be up to each of the platforms to determine how they’re going to comply and it will be interesting to see if they test the limits of the definition of ‘reasonable steps,’” Given said.
Senator Ashley Moody is calling for federal laws to safeguard children online, expressing worries about social media’s effect on their mental health.
Moody, as a new co-sponsor of the bill, highlights that social media platforms employ algorithms and features aimed at increasing the amount of time minors spend on these apps, which could significantly harm their mental health.
“Right now, there is stranger danger in our kids’ bedrooms,” said Senator Ashley Moody, R-Florida. “That is because of social media and the ability of perpetrators to get to your children. There is dangerous, explicit material available online that they can easily access.”
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In 2024, Florida enacted similar legislation, but it is now under court litigation.
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Toward the end of his remarks about the killing of Charlie Kirk last Friday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox warned about the ills of America’s increasingly vitriolic online culture.
“Social media is a cancer on our society right now,” he said, imploring citizens to “log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member and go out and do good in your community.” Standing next to him was a stony-faced FBI Director Kash Patel, a heavy social media user who posts far more frequently than his predecessors in the job, Christopher Wray and James Comey.
The juxtaposition did not go unnoticed by bureau veterans.
“You can be a social media influencer, or you can be FBI director,” one recently retired special agent told CBS News. “But you can’t be both.”
But Patel is both, upending the agency’s cautious communication culture with a steady flow of online observations and updates.
That clash in cultures has never been more clear than it was last week, when the FBI chief faced intense scrutiny for his handling of the high-profile case. Repeatedly, he turned to social media to tout major developments in the case — in some cases prematurely. Hours after the shooting, he posted to his nearly 2 million followers on X at 6:21 p.m. ET, “The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.” Then, less than two hours later, at 7:59 p.m., he had to backtrack, posting, “The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.” Patel sought to address the quick — and misleading — initial post during a Fox News interview Monday.
“I was being transparent with working with the public on our findings, as I had them,” he said on “Fox and Friends.”
“I stated in that message that we had a subject and that we were going to interview him, and we did and he was released,” Patel told Fox News. “Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not.”
Asked for comment, the FBI referred CBS News to Patel’s interview on Fox News.
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino also defended Patel’s and his own efforts to publish FBI developments as soon as something new to share.
“We are clinging to transparency,” Bongino said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” Monday. “The era of Cronkite and Jennings generation is over. New media now is media and we want to be sure we can do everything in our power to share what we can when we can while still balancing the needs of the investigation.”
Dribbling out information in real time about a highly complex, sensitive and fast-moving investigation is a startling departure from past FBI directors, whose public messaging traditionally has been spare and buttoned-up.
J. Edgar Hoover’s vaunted publicity machine occupied a whole wing of the bureau dedicated to writing articles, issuing press releases, tending to Hollywood directors and TV producers — all in an effort to buff the reputation of the FBI and its legendary G-man. But according to Yale historian Beverly Gage, Hoover was particularly cautious about publicizing active investigations.
“Hoover himself was contained and buttoned-down,” said Gage, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.” “He did everything through elaborate bureaucratic procedure, so it’s very hard to imagine him being unfiltered enough to be on social media in quite this way.”
Patel is a departure from previous FBI directors. He eschews the standard-issue uniform of past FBI chiefs — conservative suits and spit-polished shoes — in favor of bold ties and European-cut suits. A close friend says he sees himself as a “disruptor” intent on radically changing enforcement priorities — “let cops be cops” is one of his favorite slogans — while shaking up the bureau’s staid culture.
A former colleague who worked with Patel during the first Trump term says he has a “bias for action,” which may explain his exuberance on social media. “He wants to get s*** done,” this source said.
Those harboring a less charitable view argue that Patel is an attention seeker who thrives on the spotlight. One former FBI agent pointed to an earlier episode that he said echoes Patel’s rush to post details of the Kirk investigation on social media.
During his confirmation hearing to be FBI director, a whistleblower told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that when Patel was working for the National Security Council in 2020, he violated government protocols by leaking to a newspaper the details of a hostage deal involving American citizens being held in Yemen. FBI officials were furious at the time, accusing Patel of jeopardizing the lives of the hostages so he could claim credit with the media. At the time, the White House and a source close to Patel denied the allegation.
Last week, Patel’s social media activity renewed similar concerns.
“In a sensitive investigation you don’t want to tip your hand to things the public doesn’t already know so that active evidence that is vital to the court process not get or disclosed unnecessarily to hinder the investigation,” said Stephen Laycock, a former executive assistant director at the FBI who retired in 2021.
Or as a former special agent said, “Being the first to get ‘likes’ or clicks is not beneficial to the investigative process.”
The eventual arrest of a suspect in the Kirk shooting has staunched some of the initial chatter about Patel’s comments. Still, on Tuesday he is expected to face a grilling from the Senate Judiciary Committee. A Senate source told CBS News that Democrats are preparing to go on the attack. And they believe they’ll have plenty to work with.
Even before Kirk’s killing, the FBI was reeling from an unprecedented purge of some of the most experienced FBI executives and line agents, depleting the agency of decades of experience, critics say. Mehtab Syed, the highly regarded head of the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office, was among the agents forced out at the end of July. Robert Bohls, the new head of the office that was on the front lines of the shooting investigation, started his job on Sept. 2, days before the Kirk shooting, a source familiar with the Salt Lake City FBI office confirmed.
Three elite former agents filed a lawsuit last week accusing Patel of summarily firing them at the direction of the White House. The lawsuit highlighted Patel’s focus on social media, arguing the agents’ dismissals came in response to criticism on social media from right-wing influencers. At the same time, according to the complaint, Patel has urged FBI field agents to be more active on social media to tout “FBI wins.”
One of the fired agents, former Washington field office Assistant Director Steven Jensen, expressed concern about Bongino’s “intense focus on increasing online engagement.” Jensen alleged that the “emphasis Bongino was placing on creating content for his social media feed could risk outweighing more deliberate analyses of investigations.”
It’s a concern that has been circulating quietly among longtime bureau veterans.
“You aren’t doing your job or leading an organization for the social media glory,” said Laycock.
Some officials who have interacted in person with Patel, say the director is misunderstood. As one law enforcement official described it to CBS News, Patel’s brash online personality stands in contrast to a low-key, friendly demeanor that he exhibits in meetings.
“He’s highly personable and even earnest,” one law enforcement official said of his multiple meetings with Patel.
Perhaps the most important person evaluating the director’s performance over the past week, however, appeared to approve of it. President Trump made clear he is backing his FBI director.
“I am very proud of the FBI,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital on Saturday. “Kash – and everyone else – they have done a great job.”
New York’s attorney general on Monday proposed regulations for its crackdown on addictive social media feeds for children, including rules for verifying a user’s age.
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, passed last year, prohibits social media companies from showing feeds personalized by algorithms to users under 18 unless they have a parent’s consent. Instead, feeds on apps like TikTok and Instagram would be limited to posts from accounts young users follow.
The law also bars companies from sending notifications to users under 18 between midnight and 6 a.m.
The proposed rules for implementing the provisions include standards for determining a user’s age and parental consent.
“Companies may confirm a user’s age using a number of existing methods, as long as the methods are shown to be effective and protect users’ data,” Attorney General Letitia James’ office said.
Options for confirming a user is at least 18, for example, include requesting an uploaded image or verifying a user’s email address or phone number to check against other information, the office said.
Users under 18 who want to receive algorithmic feeds and nighttime notifications would have to give the companies permission to request consent from a parent.
Supporters of the law said curated feeds built from user data are contributing to a youth mental health crisis by vastly increasing the hours young people spend on social media.
“Children and teenagers are struggling with high rates of anxiety and depression because of addictive features on social media platforms,” James said in releasing the rules, which are subject to a 60-day public comment period.
Online age check laws — on the rise in the U.S. — have garnered opposition from groups that advocate for digital privacy and free speech. More than 20 states have passed age verification laws, though many face legal challenges.
The New York attorney general’s office noted Instagram and other social media platforms themselves have been implementing various forms of age assurance in recent months.
“The incorporation of age assurance methods into the infrastructure of social media platforms is a positive development that demonstrates the technical and financial feasibility of age assurance methods for these platforms,” the office said. “Unfortunately, voluntary adoption of age assurance methods has not achieved the level of protection of minors required by the (SAFE) Act.”
After the rules are finalized, social media companies will have 180 days to implement the regulations.
This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch confront the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. They open with reflections about the history of political violence in the U.S. and whether reactions online are amplifying fear rather than clarity. The panel critiques early attempts to pin the blame on social media—highlighting Trump and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s calls for new restrictions—while contrasting them with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’s argument that responsibility rests with individuals, not platforms.
The panel also considers how quickly tragedies get folded into pre-existing narratives, and whether calls for broad regulation risk undermining civil liberties without addressing the real problem. The conversation then turns to attempts to punish speech, including proposals to fire public-university employees and revoke licenses for those who made offensive remarks about Kirk’s death. A listener question about the books on the panelists’ shelves offers a brief detour, with each host highlighting a few favorites in view of the camera.
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Last year, New York joined the wave of states passing legislation aimed at protecting minors using the Internet, particularly social media. Governor Kathy Hochul the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Data Protection Act in June 2024. Today, the state’s Attorney General Letitia James released more specifics about what the SAFE for Kids Act will entail in practice. Public comment is open until December 1 and the rules must be finalized within a year from that date.
In particular, the rule will require online platforms to confirm the ages of users before showing them algorithmically-curated feeds or sending them notifications at night. The Attorney General’s approach allows sites to choose their method of age verification, as long as the approach “are shown to be effective and protect users’ data.” New York will also require an age confirmation method that does not rely on having a government-issued ID.
There is also a component of parental consent in the SAFE for Kids Act. Minors must request a social media network to seek parental permission for accessing algorithmic feeds or receiving nighttime notifications. If parental consent is not granted, the platforms may not block minors from generally accessing their service or content. Both the minor and their parent may revoke their consent at any time.
“The proposed rules released by my office today will help us tackle the youth mental health crisis and make social media safer for kids and families,” James said in the announcement. “This is an issue that affects all of us, and I encourage parents, educators, young people, industry groups, and others to review the proposed rules and submit a comment during the public comment period.”
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a new cottage industry of rage has arisen. And while anger and horror at this act of violence are understandable, they’re also taking Americans to some dark places, where retribution must be had against anyone who said negative things about Kirk after his death and politicians posture about punishing people who (crassly, but nonviolently) celebrated Kirk’s death. A lot of this seems to hinge on the idea that hateful “rhetoric” is responsible for Kirk’s killing; one particularly prevalent strain of this specifically indicts online speech and social media.
It’s social media that led to Kirk’s assassination, the refrain goes, and it’s social media that’s driving all sorts of political violence.
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But social media platforms don’t kill people. People kill people.
That seems banal to point out, I know. Reductive, perhaps. But so much discourse right now attributes an almost supernatural influence to social media and to online speech and communities. And that’s reductive, too—in addition to being pretty unmoored from reality.
“I believe that social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Meet the Press yesterday. Social media companies “have figured out how to hack our brains” and “get us to hate each other,” Cox said.
It’s not just politicians spewing a mind-control theory of political violence. “I think the main problem here isn’t this killer’s ideology,” posted the pundit Noah Blum on Friday. “It’s that the internet radicalizes people to do increasingly greater violence on a scarily regular basis and nobody really knows what to do about it.”
We hear some version of this in the aftermath of many tragic or senseless events. It’s not enough for people to blame disturbed or immoral individuals who do bad things. It’s not even enough to blame the dubious influence of “right-wing extremism” or “left-wing extremism” or “political polarization.” People blame tech companies, sometimes even suggesting they’re directly responsible because they failed to stop hateful speech—or misinformation, or divisive rhetoric—on social media.
But the idea that people—especially young men—would not be radicalized if it weren’t for social media belies most of human history.
I’ve been listening recently to a podcast called A Twist of History. One episode details Adolf Hitler’s attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic in 1923. Another episode features a riot during a Shakespearean performance in New York City in 1849, fomented by Ned Buntline, a nativist newspaper pundit with ambitions of fame and notoriety. Both instances featured fringe political elements, violence, and deaths.
History is littered with examples like these: men driven to violence by people in close physical proximity, sometimes with the help of inflammatory political rhetoric printed in pamphlets and newspapers.
The type of violence that people engage in does seem somewhat era-dependent. Sometimes it was more likely to be large group violence, acting as part of political movements or criminal gangs. Sometimes it was more likely to be small group violence, committed by racist clubs, radical activist groups, and so on. (And, surely, many manically violent men throughout history have been killed in wars or bar fights before they had a chance to do other damage.)
Ours is an era of lone-wolf violence, though it is not the first one.
Because of our hyper-connected world, and because of the sensationalistic nature of public shootings, it can feel like things are worse than ever. In another time, we wouldn’t have have heard of every racist lynching, every street gang fight, and so on.
But even from what we can glean, looking back, it seems clear that we’re not living in some exceptionally violent time.
Is the internet capable of radicalizing people?
On some level, the answer is yes,of course. But this is simply because the internet, and social media, are such huge parts of our lives. They are where people spend time, spread ideas, and consume ideologies. They are locusts of just about everything good, and everything bad, about our offline world.
“The internet is culture now, the way television once was for our parents, our grandparents, maybe even us,” Katherine Dee wrote on her Substackthis week. “Every aspect of our lives flows through it. There’s no such thing as ‘very Online’ or ‘not Online.’ It’s all of us, all the time, always.”
People will point to algorithms and profit motives, epistemic closure and endless scroll—all sorts of things that supposedly make social media or the internet generally a unique breeder of polarization and radicalism and misinformation. But we have an ever-growing body of research suggesting that, for the average person, being on social media isn’t making things worse (and, in some ways, could be making it better).
We live in ideologically charged and politically polarized times. A lot of our media and our political debates and our discussions with each other reflect this. But the fact that so much of this comes seeping out on social media may simply be a symptom.
Online speech is the most visible manifestation of any rot in our system or culture. But it does not mean that Facebook, or TikTok, or X, or any of the countless niche forums out there are the cause of the rot.
Yes, the shooter was steeped in internet meme culture, as evidenced by messages printed on his bullets: “an internet-specific brand of trollish nihilism adopted by many recent shooters,” as my colleague C.J. Ciaramella put it. But I think it’s foolish—a combination of determined presentism, tech panic, and lack of imagination—to suggest that Kirk’s shooter pulled the trigger only because of ideas or attitudes that he encountered online.
For one thing, we can’t actually say what spawned the shooter’s idea that assassinating someone was a good idea, or his belief that Kirk was an appropriate symbolic target for his agenda. Maybe people around him offline encouraged it. Maybe voices in his head told him to. At this point, we don’t know.
But if he encountered bad ideas online, it’s because the internet is now where we encounter ideas. If he cloaked his violence in the language of internet memes, it’s because that’s where culture is these days.
In another era, he may have encountered bad ideas at a town hall and dressed up his horrific act in different slogans. But a man with a capacity for such premeditated and dramatic violence is a man with a capacity for such things in any era. And conversely, countless billions of people encounter the same online ecosystem without committing assassinations.
Reaching for modern technology as the explanation reeks of an ideological agenda of its own.
None of this is to say that particular vectors of online radicalization shouldn’t be identified. People can and should study such routes, and consider ways to combat them, just as their predecessors tried to stop people from being sucked into the Ku Klux Klan, the mob, and so on. But looking for particular pathways here (if such a thing can be done) is different from condemning social media and the internet universally. We might as well have blamed the buildings where extremists gathered, or the paper and ink that allowed them to communicate.
“Social media is simply the way we talk and communicate in this day and age, for better or worse,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said yesterday on ABC’s This Week. “What I would focus on is condemning the act of violence. It’s not the free speech that led to this. It’s not the fact that people can talk and communicate online. It’s the actions of an unhinged, evil individual.”
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Protesters in Nepal ousted the prime minister and set parliament ablaze over the government’s ban on social media and corruption allegations — but in neighbouring India, the violence is being misrepresented online as something else entirely: a religious uprising.
While some claim that the demonstrations are a demand for a “Hindu state”, others say the opposite — that they are an attack on the faith.
Fuelling the narrative are allegations from Indian broadcasters and politicians that rioters vandalised Nepal’s Pashupatinath temple, a revered Hindu site in the Himalayan nation.
Screenshot of a false X post, with a red X added by AFP
“Some rioters, hiding within the crowd of protesters, attempted to vandalise the temple, and it was only after this incident that the army was deployed,” an anchor for the right-wing Zee News television channel said in a report featuring a clip of people climbing onto the temple’s gate and violently shaking it.
Jivesh Mishra, a member of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in eastern Bihar state, which shares a border with Nepal, told reporters on Wednesday: “An attack on a temple is an attack on (the) Hindu faith.”
Right-wing influencers also amplified the claim to their thousands of followers.
But AFP fact-checkers traced the footage to a religious ritual called Naxal Bhagwati Jatra, filmed weeks before the violence.
KN Swami, a renowned monk in the temple, also posted clips on social media to refute claims it had been attacked (archived link).
“I am currently inside the temple, and everything is peaceful here,” he confirmed to AFP on Wednesday.
Nepal’s demonstrations began Monday in the capital Kathmandu, driven by angry young protesters who dubbed themselves the “Gen Z” movement.
The protests escalated into an outpouring of rage nationwide, with government buildings set ablaze after a deadly crackdown. KP Sharma Oli quit as prime minister shortly after demonstrators set fire to his house.
‘Instigated and funded’
Hundreds of social media posts have claimed without evidence that the protests were “instigated and funded” by “anti-Hindu forces and Islamists” to attack religious sites.
Nepal, a secular republic since 2008, has witnessed frequent demonstrations by groups demanding a return to Hindu statehood.
Old visuals of the rallies resurfaced online this week, misleadingly presented as the current protests.
Footage of protesters calling for a Hindu monarchy in the past was falsely shared as evidence that Nepal’s “Gen Z” movement is more about religion than corruption.
Another image circulated with a claim that demonstrators wanted India’s firebrand Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath as Nepal’s new prime minister.
Screenshot of a Facebook post, with a red X added by AFP
Other posts viewed thousands of times on X, Instagram, Threads and Facebook have compared the unrest in Nepal with protests in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country where a student-led revolt ousted long-time leader Sheikh Hasina last year.
Meanwhile, hashtags in favour of a “Hindu Nation” — a popular catchphrase of the BJP — have trended across social media platforms in India.
The posts warn the country to “prepare for similar youth uprisings”.
“The urge to break news fast in India is higher, and that led to misinformation from their side,” said Prashant Das, a senior research fellow at South Asian University (archived link).
“What is rife now are speculations and rumours, which are natural responses of people in such situations.”
The mother of a 15-year-old California boy who took his own life is now suing Roblox and Discord over his death, alleging her son was allegedly groomed and coerced to send explicit images on the apps.
Rebecca Dallas filed the lawsuit Friday in San Francisco County Superior Court accusing the companies of “recklessly and deceptively operating their business in a way that led to the sexual exploitation and suicide” of Ethan Dallas.
Ethan was a “bright, imaginative boy who loved gaming, streaming and interacting with friends online,” the lawsuit states.
He started playing on the online gaming platform Roblox around the age of 9, with his parents’ approval and with parental controls in place. When he was 12, he was targeted by “an adult sex predator” who posed as a child on Roblox and befriended Ethan, attorneys for Rebecca Dallas said in a statement.
What started out as innocent conversation “gradually escalated to sexual topics and explicit exchanges,” the complaint says.
After a while, the man encouraged Ethan to turn off parental controls and move their conversations to Discord, the lawyers said.
On Discord, the man “increasingly demanded explicit photographs and videos” and threatened Ethan that he’d post or share the images. Ethan complied out of fear, the complaint says.
“Tragically, Ethan was permanently harmed and haunted by these experiences, and he died by suicide at the age of 15,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit accuses Roblox and Discord of wrongful death, fraudulent concealment and misrepresentations, negligent misrepresentation, and strict liability.
It argues that had Roblox and Discord taken steps to screen users before allowing them on apps, or implemented age and identity verification and other safety measures, “Ethan would have never interacted with this predator, never suffered he harm that he did, and never died by suicide.”
Apps not safe for kids, suit says
Dallas, of San Diego County, thought both platforms were safe for her son to use to communicate with friends while gaming, given how the apps marketed themselves and the parental controls she set, the suit contended.
Roblox is used daily by 111 million people, according to its website, offering a variety of games, obstacle courses, and the ability to chat with other users. It is free to make an account and there is no age minimum, nor required age verification.
Discord, launched in 2015, is a communications platform commonly used by gamers who want to chat or video chat while playing video games. The suit said that the app doesn’t verify age or identity.
The suit claims Roblox allowed Ethan to turn off the parental controls and Discord allowed him to create an account and communicate with adults without any parental oversight. It said that while Roblox states children must have parental permission to sign up, “nothing prevents them from creating their own accounts and playing on Roblox.”
The suit allegesthe two apps misrepresented safety on their platforms, saying the design of the apps “makes children easy prey for pedophiles” due to a lack of safeguards and predator screening.
After Ethan’s tragic death, his family learned from law enforcement that the man who groomed him had been arrested in Florida “for sexually exploiting other children through Defendants’ apps,” the complaint said.
Today, Roblox’s default settings do not allow adults to directly message children under the age of 13, but children can still create accounts with fake birth dates giving them full access to direct-messaging options, the complaint said.
“We are deeply saddened by this tragic loss. While we cannot comment on claims raised in litigation, we always strive to hold ourselves to the highest safety standard,” a spokesperson for Roblox told NBC News.
Roblox said it is designed with “rigorous built in safety features” and is “continually innovating new safety features — over 100 this year alone — that protect our users and empower parents and caregivers with greater control and visibility.”
Safety efforts include processes to detect and act on problematic behaviors and 24/7 human moderation. Roblox added that the company partners with law enforcement and leading child safety and mental health organizations worldwide to combat the sexual exploitation of children.
While Discord has settings to keep minors safe such as automatically scanning messages for explicit images and videos, the suit said Discord is “overflowing with sexually explicit images and videos involving children, including anime and child sex abuse material.”
Discord said it doesn’t comment on legal matters but said the platform is “deeply committed to safety.”
“We require all users to be at least 13 to use our platform. We use a combination of advanced technology and trained safety teams to proactively find and remove content that violates our policies,” a spokesperson said. “We maintain strong systems to prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming on our platform and also work with other technology companies and safety organizations to improve online safety across the internet.”
Other allegations against Roblox, Discord
Anapol Weiss, the firm that filed Dallas’ suit, noted this is the ninth lawsuit it has filed in connection with allegations that children were groomed, exploited or assaulted after contact on Roblox or related platforms.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation in 2024 complied a “Dirty Dozen” list of mainstream entitles it says facilitate, enable and profit from sexual abuse and exploitation. It included Discord, saying “this platform is popular with predators seeking to groom kids and with creeps looking to create, trade or find sexually abusive content of children and unsuspecting adults,” and Roblox, saying children are exposed to sex-themed games and exposed to predators.
An NBC News investigation in 2023 found 35 cases over the six years prior in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications on Discord.
In August, Louisiana’s top prosecutor sued Roblox, alleging that its failure to implement strong safety protocols for children has made it “the perfect place for pedophiles.”
“This case lays bare the devastating consequences when billion-dollar platforms knowingly design environments that enable predators to prey on vulnerable children,” saidAlexandra Walsh, a partner at Anapol Weiss. “These companies are raking in billions. Children are paying the price.”
Dallas seeks a jury trial and compensatory damages.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or go to 988lifeline.org, to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
Comments on social media have led to an employee at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta being taken off the job.
A spokesperson for the healthcare system confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that an employee was terminated because of comments made about the murder of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
“Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is aware of inappropriate comments made on social media by an employee yesterday. This type of rhetoric is not acceptable for Children’s employees and violates our social media policy,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Kirk, 31, was shot and killed during an event for his nonprofit, Turning Point USA, on the campus of Utah Valley University on Wednesday afternoon. He was pronounced dead after being rushed to a nearby hospital.
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On Friday, the FBI and Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced the accused shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was in custody.
Kirk’s death has sparked heated debate on social media, with many mourning the loss of the activist and others criticizing him for the controversial beliefs he was known for.
Reports by numerous Israeli media outlets state that the prime minister’s social media post largely implies that the Israeli strike in Doha to take out top-ranking Hamas officials had failed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Hamas for blocking ceasefire attempts in Gaza, specifically Hamas leaders living abroad, in a post on X/Twitter.
“The Hamas terrorists chiefs living in Qatar don’t care about the people in Gaza,” Netanyahu wrote.
“They blocked all ceasefire attempts in order to endlessly drag out the war. Getting rid of them would rid the main obstacle to releasing all our hostages and ending the war.”
Reports by numerous Israeli media outlets state that the prime minister’s social media post largely implies that the Israeli strike in Doha to take out top-ranking Hamas officials had failed.
Prior reports that Hamas officials likely survived
This comes two days after an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post of the increased likelihood that no senior Hamas officials were killed in the strike.
A CCTV footage shows explosion in Doha, Qatar, September 9, 2025 in this screen grab obtained from a social media video. (credit: SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITE/VIA REUTERS)
Some senior Hamas officials are believed to have been injured, although this has not yet been fully confirmed.
The same day, a Qatari expert told The Media Line also that the Hamas officials who were targeted had survived.
Amichai Stein and Giorgia Valente/The Media Line contributed to this report.
Several Delta Air Lines employees have been suspended because of comments they made on social media about the murder of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
CEO Ed Bastian released a memo across the Atlanta-based company on Friday saying he was made aware of several employees whose social media comments “went well beyond healthy, respectful debate.”
Those employees have been suspended pending an investigation. The number of those involved was not released.
“Whether we’re in uniform and on the clock, online or out in public, our colleagues, customers and communities expect us to reflect Delta’s values – integrity, care and servant leadership,” Bastian wrote in the memo.
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Kirk, 31, was shot and killed during an event for his nonprofit, Turning Point USA, on the campus of Utah Valley University on Wednesday afternoon. He was pronounced dead after being rushed to a nearby hospital.
On Friday, the FBI and Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced the accused shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was in custody.
Kirk’s death has sparked heated debate on social media, with many mourning the loss of the activist and others criticizing him for the controversial beliefs he was known for.
Media pundits, journalists, and academics, including MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd, have also been fired or targeted over their comments about Kirk. Executives from Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, sent out an email to employees seemingly referencing Dowd’s dismissal over an “unacceptable and insensitive comment about this horrific event. That coverage was at odds with fostering civil dialogue.” In response to a request for comment, Comcast redirected WIRED to the aforementioned letter.
Red Hood is also not the only cultural product being disappeared in light of Kirk’s death. Comedy Central has decided not to rerun the South Park episode “Got a Nut,” which satirized the right-wing activist. But Kirk himself had said the episode was “hilarious” and an example of the “cultural domination” of his Prove Me Wrong college campus debates; he even changed his show’s TikTok profile picture to an image of the South Park character Cartman parodying him. (The episode will still be available to stream on Paramount+.)
Kirk was one of the most influential conservative activists in the US. He cofounded Turning Point when he was just 18 and turned it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. But his political views were frequently inflammatory, racist, and transphobic, and he had many critics, including people like Felker-Martin, who belonged to one of the groups he derided. In his final exchange before he was shot, Kirk was asked about transgender mass shooters. He responded that there were “too many,” repeating a myth that has been used to attack trans people.
Author Roxane Gay, who has spoken out in Felker-Martin’s defense, says that whether she agrees with Felker-Martin’s views “doesn’t matter.”
“Either you believe in free speech or you don’t,” she tells WIRED, describing DC Comics’ decision to pull Red Hood as the “overreaction of the century.”
From Trump’s plan to wipe “race-centered ideology” and trans people from the Smithsonian to the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the campaign against Kirk’s critics and its impact on pop culture isn’t happening in a vacuum. Humor and satire are particularly triggering for authoritarian figures, according to curator and culture critic Hrag Vartanian, editor in chief of the arts publication Hyperallergic.
“Authoritarians can deal with violence. They can deal with everything except being laughed at,” Vartanian says.
Vartanian tells WIRED he has spoken with many artists who have delayed showing works about topics like the war in Gaza or queerness due to the current political environment, in a form of self-censorship.
Gay says because she has a family, she too has to take fewer risks. But she says she is still “shocked” that more writers aren’t openly backing Felker-Martin. “If it’s her today, it’s going to be someone else tomorrow,” she says.
For her part, Felker-Martin, who has also been outspoken in her support of Palestine, says that once she’s back on Bluesky, she’ll likely keep a lower profile.
Asked if there’s anything that’s making her feel positive right now, she recalls a recent baby shower for a queer family member.
“We had this huge crowd of trans and queer people, into which we dropped my very kind and normal parents. And it was just this really pleasant day with all of our lives kind of mixed together and kids running around,” she says. “I think that living in that is the best thing we can do for ourselves right now. Having and making community by being with each other.”
On Friday, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah native, was identified by federal law enforcement as a suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk. During Friday’s press conference, officials said that several bullet casings recovered from a hunting rifle found near the crime scene had messages inscribed on them.
During the press conference, officials appeared to take the inscriptions literally, to the extent they ascribed meaning to them at all. But the four messages apparently written by the alleged shooter instead seem to invoke a variety of memes and video game references.
One of the casings was said to be engraved with the phrase “Hey Fascist! Catch!” followed by an up arrow, a right arrow, and three downward-facing arrows. That sequence is an apparent reference to the “Eagle 500kg bomb” in the popular third-person-shooter game Helldivers 2. The bomb has become a meme in the Helldivers community for being comically excessive.
Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers of Helldivers 2, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Launched in 2024, the game has grown a cult following for its Starship Troopers–like storyline. The cooperative shooter allows teams of up to four players, called “Helldivers,” to spread “freedom” across a fictional universe—fighting bugs, robots, and squid-like aliens rather than other humans. Their form of managed democracy is “basically fascism,” says independent extremism researcher Harry Batchelor, who works with the Extremism and Gaming Research Network.
Helldivers 2 is satire, and the vast majority of players are in on it. The game, says Batchelor, “takes “the whole ‘pretending to be democracy while actually being a fascist government’ so seriously, it’s obviously a joke.” The community around the game has generally maintained a positive reputation, even working together to combat “review bombing”—coordinated negative reviews intended to hurt a game’s chance of success.
The arrows that activate the Eagle 500kg bomb have been used in other memes to show that a user is “going to do a big, violent action,” Don Caldwell, editor in chief of Know Your Meme, tells WIRED. “That’s maybe a cheeky way of expressing it on the casing.”
Shortly after the Friday press conference about Kirk’s fatal shooting, moderators locked the r/Helldivers subreddit. “Due to recent events and the high amount of posts about the topic, we will be locking the subreddit temporarily,” a post on the subreddit reads. “We’re aware of what happened, our modteam doesn’t condone it.”
Helldivers may not be the only game reference on the casings. Another casing was allegedly engraved with lyrics to a famous Italian folk song called “Bella Ciao,” which translates directly to “goodbye beautiful.” The song, which has associations with postwar anti-fascist movements in Italy, has seen a resurgence on social media in recent years. Notably, “Bella Ciao” holds significance for rebel forces during a mission in Far Cry 6, a video game set on a fictional Caribbean island ruled by a dictator. A USB stick with the song is a collectible item labeled “Bella Ciao de Libertad,” a reference to the rebel group; the in-game description notes that the song has been “inspiring guerrillas and partisans for over a century.”
For years, extremist groups, white nationalists, and militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw Charlie Kirk not as their ally, but as their enemy.
But in the immediate aftermath of Kirk being fatally shot while speaking at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, these same groups were quick to frame the incident as an attack on one of their own, portraying Kirk’s death as part of what they see as an ongoing war against white, Christian men. The same groups were relatively quiet on Friday after police announced they had arrested a 22-year-old from Utah for the killing who had no obvious ties to the left.
These groups, many of which have been relatively dormant since the mass arrests surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, have used the outpouring of grief around Kirk’s death as a lightning rod, a signal that they need to mobilize and take action. Many of them, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, have used Kirk’s death as a recruitment and radicalizing tool to convince his supporters to take a more extreme worldview.
“Nothing can stop what is coming,” Ryan Sánchez, the leader of the far-right National Network, who was caught on video giving a Nazi salute during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, wrote on his Telegram channel. “We are mobilizing young Nationalists to defend our communities against the Radical Left—we need your help!”
The appeals appear to be at least somewhat working: Sánchez’s post was accompanied by a screenshot showing a $1,000 donation he received on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.
“This is the beginning of a movement that may define our nation,” the donor wrote on the site. “Use it for good and purge the country of these insane ideologies.”
Another donor, who called himself “White Nationalist,” commented: “Time to take our country back fellas. Get to work!”
Sánchez, an acolyte of far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, has already mobilized. A video from a vigil for Kirk that Sánchez promoted in Huntington Beach, California, on Wednesday shows a group of men chanting: “White man fight back.” He shared another image of himself speaking at the vigil on his Telegram channel, with the caption: “DEATH TO THE LEFT.”
The video of the chanting in Huntington Beach was shared in many other extremist groups, including the Anti-Communist Combat HQ channel on Telegram, which is a hub for amplifying antisemitic, racist, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from groups including Active Clubs and the National Justice Party.
Lindsay Ellis, a California-based filmmaker and mother of two, has been making videos for YouTube since 2007. But even she was surprised by the response to her most recent release on the platform. In her 142-minute video “The Unforgivable Sin of Ms. Rachel,” Ellis explains how the children’s entertainer figures into debates about “woke” children’s media before pivoting to conversations about genocide, the war in Gaza, and the roots of antisemitism. The video ends by saying that charitable donations can make a difference in situations that otherwise seem intractable, and provides a link to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. As of September 12, the video has over 2 million views and has raised more than $750,000 for the charity.
In a call one week after she posted the Ms. Rachel video, Ellis tells Vanity Fair that she put extra care into it. “If you are releasing something to YouTube, you are making a pact with the algorithm,” she says. “If someone already got to the topic, you had better have a good take. You had better have something new and refreshing, or people are going to be so annoying about it.”
Ellis’s approach is more Ken Burns than Mr. Beast—a style that’s increasingly successful on a website once associated mostly with short, disposable clips. Though video essays, which intercut narration and footage—both self-recorded and stock—with occasional textual references, have had a home on YouTube since the site’s early years, they’re having a moment right now thanks to a generation of creators who have leveled up both their technical skills and their marketing abilities.
Ellis’s opus on Ms. Rachel is only one of several slickly produced video essays that have racked up millions of viewers this summer, feature-length YouTube videos that feel more like documentaries than the prank wars or makeup tutorials of yore. On March 24, ContraPoints—a Peabody Award–winning channel with 1.9 million subscribers that counts Ezra Klein, Jameela Jamil, and Chris Hayes as fans—released “Conspiracy,” an almost three-hour deep dive into Jeffrey Epstein, Alex Jones, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that’s been watched 4.1 million times and counting. In August, Elephant Graveyard, an anonymous creator who makes videos about comedy, released a 90-minute video about Joe Rogan’s influence on the medium, both in Austin and globally, as part three of a bigger series on the famous podcaster. In typical YouTube fashion, its title captures the argument well: “How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult.” The trilogy has attracted almost 9 million views.
Clearly, these videos are responsive to news headlines—but they analyze issues in a different way than news channels or topical comedians like Josh Johnson, whose viral stand-up sets launched him into a hosting role on The Daily Showthis July. Video essayists rely on a balance of deep research and on-the-fly adjustments, taking a long view of what is driving the news cycle and continuing to tweak their videos until the very last minute—which adds an urgency that might not come through via scripted narration alone. Ellis said she improvised her latest video’s emotional conclusion soon before she posted it to YouTube. “I don’t know if you could tell, but my hair is dirty. That’s why it’s pulled back,” she says. “I filmed it basically the day before the video went up—like fuck it, conclusion.”
The next time someone tells you the youth aren’t engaged enough in politics, just point them to Nepal. According to multiple reports, the youth of the South Asian nation managed to oust the existing government following an attempted ban of major social media platforms and took to Discord to hold an impromptu convention to elect an interim prime minister.
Earlier this week, demonstrations led primarily by students and youth groups took to the streets of Nepal to protest the decision of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to ban operations of social platforms (including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Twitter) in the country after accusing the companies of failing to appoint liaisons to hear the demands of the Nepali government. Some citizens of the country believe the crackdown came for another reason, though: social media had become a primary source of directing discontent at the current administration, including a recent “Nepo Kid” campaign that alleged corruption throughout the government, highlighted by the lavish lifestyles of the children of elected officials.
A server set up to act as a digital convention space attracted more than 100,000 users, organized by a civic group known as Hami Nepal and dominated by activists who spearheaded and took part in the demonstrations that ultimately led to the ouster of the former prime minister. Within the server, discussions as to who the group wants to lead the country have taken place. Per the Times, the Discord server has hosted conversations with candidates for the role, and members have voted on the platform for their choice: Sushila Karki, a former chief justice and well-known anti-corruption crusader within the country.
The organizing appears to have worked. On Friday, the military accepted the recommendation of the protest group and named Karki the interim prime minister. Karki, who accepted the role, is expected to pick a new cabinet and eventually hold elections. According to the Times, that is expected to happen within the next six months or so.
Gizmodo reached out to Discord for comment on the situation, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Tremblay didn’t identify the teacher or comment on the content of the post, but said an internal review was underway.
“As a District, we are committed to fostering a safe and respectful environment for everyone. We do not condone violence or hateful behavior in any form,” Tremblay said in a statement. “While the law prevents us from discussing specific personnel matters, the employee is on leave pending an internal review. Be assured that we are addressing the situation in full compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”
“Today, we were made aware of and were extremely concerned about a recent personal social media post by a member of our staff that has been shared publicly in other social media posts,” Botelho and Keenan wrote in a letter to the school community. “We recognize that this post has caused distress for members of our school community.”
Botelho and Keenan didn’t identify the teacher in question, and they didn’t comment on the content of the post, only noting that the views don’t reflect the values of the town’s schools.
“The views expressed in that post categorically do not reflect the values of Sharon High School or Sharon Public Schools. As a district and school, we are and remain committed to fostering an environment grounded in empathy, respect, and thoughtful reflection and dialogue,” Botelho and Keenan wrote. “The post in question is inconsistent with those values, and we are reviewing and addressing the matter in accordance with established district policies and procedures.”
Botelho and Keenan didn’t say if the teacher would face any disciplinary action.
“These comments sparked heated debate, millions of views, and brought into question the safety of school operations for both students and staff at WRHS,” the Holden Police Department said in a statement.
In the wake of the comments, police officers were assigned to patrol the high school campus throughout Thursday out of an abundance of caution.
Police and school officials didn’t reveal what the teacher’s post stated, but screenshots floating around on social media showed the words, “Just a reminder, we’re NOT offering sympathy.”
While investigators uncovered no credible threat, Wachusett Regional School District Superintendent James Reilly and School Committee Chair Lauren Salmon-Garrett announced the teacher will remain on leave “for the foreseeable future and is not allowed on school property” while an investigation is conducted.
“As many are aware, a teacher has been accused of making inappropriate comments in response to this event on her own personal social media page,” Reilly and Salmon-Garrett wrote in a letter to the school community. “Please know that Wachusett Regional School District condemns violence in all forms. Political violence, especially, has no place in our country, and it directly contradicts our nation’s founding principles.”
The incidents in Framingham, Sharon, and Holden both remain under investigation.
Mastodon, an open source, decentralized alternative to X, is rolling out a somewhat controversial feature by adding quote posts, which will launch next week. The feature, which allows a user to quote someone else’s post and re-share it with their own response or commentary, has contributed to a culture of “dunking” on X, where users often deride other people by responding with snark or insulting humor.
To address this concern, Mastodon says it’s implementing quote posts with safety controls.
These protections are designed to allow quote posts to be used responsibly, to “expand discussions, make new connections, and amplify underrepresented voices,” the platform states.
Image Credits:Mastodon
Mastodon gives users several ways to control how their posts can be quoted. For starters, the platform lets users decide who can quote them through a setting where you can change your defaults. Here, you can set the permissions for who can quote you by choosing between “Anyone,” “Followers only,” or “Just me.” Additionally, you can control the visibility of quote posts by setting them to be visible to the public, to followers only, or a setting called “quiet public,” which makes the quotes public but removes them from Mastodon’s search, trends, and public timeline.
Users will also be able to override their default settings on a post-by-post basis, if need be, by navigating to the “Visibility and interaction settings” within the composer screen. This would be useful if you know you’re about to say something controversial or anything that could attract unwanted attention from those with opposing views, for instance.
Image Credits:Mastodon
Plus, users will have control of their posts even after they’re quoted, the Mastodon blog post about the new feature explains.
When someone quotes a post, the user being quoted is notified in the app, and they can choose to remove their original post from the other person’s quote post. This is accessible through the Options menu (the three dots icon). From this location, users can change the quote settings to address any future quoting of their post going forward. They can also block users to prevent them from seeing and quoting their posts in the future.
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Support for quote posts will first arrive over the week ahead to the larger Mastodon servers at mastodon.online and mastodon.social. It will then become available in Mastodon’s 4.5 software update.
To quote a post, you’ll find the new option under Mastodon’s Boost (similar to X’s repost/retweet feature). Because the fediverse, or open social web, is a network of servers running different software, quote posts may not immediately appear everywhere, and some platforms may not update to use the technical specification enabling quote post support right away.
