Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain on Feb. 23, 2016. AOP.Press/Corbis via Getty Images
Pavel Durov, the 39-year-old billionaire founder and CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, who has historically flown under the radar, suddenly made headlines over the weekend after he was arrested in a Paris airport on Saturday (Aug. 25), according to local media reports that were later confirmed by French law enforcement. The surprise news came after Telegram faced backlash for enabling criminal activities through its encrypted messaging platform, and Durov was reportedly held responsible.
Telegram messages are encrypted, meaning no outside influence—not even the company itself or law enforcement—can see conversations that take place on the app. This has made the platform a center for free speech, particularly in non-democratic countries that stifle news at the state level. The flip side, however, is that Telegram has also become a breeding ground for criminal activities, extremism and disinformation. Durov’s arrest was specifically related to Telegram’s lack of content moderation, which has reportedly led to the propagation of pedophilia.
“Telegram abides byE.U.U laws, including the Digital Services Act,”the company said in a statement on Xon Sunday, adding, “Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe.”
A potential criminal trial could set a precedent in the European Union for executives of social media companies being held responsible for content moderation on their platforms. The most recently passed applicable legislation in theE.U.. is the Digital Services Act (DSA), which aims “to create a safer digital space in which the fundamental rights of all users of digital services are protected,” including stronger protection of children online and less exposure to illegal content. The DSA is generally considered more strict than previous regulations and was pushed over the finish line after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. So far, there have only been two major rulings relating to the DSA. The first, Delfi AS v. Estonia, upheld the online platform Delfi as liable for hate speech. The second, Index.hu Zrt v. Hungary, determined the case to be an infringement on freedom of expression.
“This arrest may break the holding pattern as it has generated a new outbreak of public discourse about encryption and platform responsibility,” Alexander Linton, a director at Oxen Privacy Tech Foundation, a global privacy tech nonprofit based in Australia, told Observer. “Due to uncertainty, people may turn to more resilient alternatives.” Linton explained that one option includes Session, a decentralized, end-to-end encrypted messaging app run by a community of node operators from around the world.
Durov, originally from Russia, founded Telegram in 2013 with his brother, Nikolai Durov. Today, the app has more than950 million active users globally.Durov has been historically secretive about sharing where the company operates over the years. Media reports show Durov has been based out of Dubai since 2017 when he fled Russia after refusing to disclose data to the Russian government. Durov became a naturalized citizen of France and the United Arab Emirates in 2021. Arabian Business named Durov themost powerful entrepreneur in Dubai in 2023. Forbes estimates his net worth to be around $15.5 billion.
For now, Telegram remains operational while French officials investigate the case. French PresidentEmmanuel Macron wrote on X about Durov’s arrest, “It is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter.”
It would appear that Brittany Mahomes is not liking the comments she’s been getting on social media recently.
The wife of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is facing backlash after appearing to “like” and subsequently un-like an Instagram post from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in recent days. Brittany Mahomes, who is currently pregnant with the couple’s third child, reportedly double-tapped a post from Trump outlining the “2024 GOP platform,” including bulletpoints such as “keep men OUT of women’s sports” and “end the weaponization of government against the American people.”
On Friday, Brittany took to her Instagram Story with a text-only post that didn’t directly reference Trump or what she was biting back against, but addressed “haters.”
“I mean honestly,” she wrote. “To be a hater as an adult, you have to have some deep-rooted issues you refuse to heal from childhood. There’s no reason your brain is fully developed and you hate to see others doing well.”
She has not explicitly endorsed a presidential candidate, and does not currently follow Trump on Instagram.
Husband Patrick Mahomes told Time in April that he would not speak publicly about his choice in candidates either.
“I don’t want to pressure anyone to vote for a certain president,” Patrick said. “I want people to use their voice, whoever they believe in. I want them to do the research.”
Of course, the couple is friends with Taylor Swift via Travis Kelce, Patrick’s Kansas City Chiefs teammate and Swift’s boyfriend. The two couples have been spotted hanging out socially several times, ringing in the new year together, and even celebrating mutual pal Blake Lively’s birthday at Swift’s Rhode Island estate over the weekend. The Mahomeses have also been in the audience alongside Kelce at Swift’s Eras Tour, just as Swift and Brittany have taken in several Chiefs games together.
Swift has notably spoken out against Trump in the past, endorsing Joe Biden against him in 2020, and leading many to wonder if she’ll do the same for the coming election in support of Kamala Harris. Recently, Trump shared AI-generated images featuring young women in “Swifties for Trump” gear, writing, “I accept!” alongside them on social media, implying that the singer herself supports him. One of the images is specifically and prominently labeled “SATIRE.” Swift has not yet shared a presidential endorsement, nor responded to Trump’s tweets.
A representative for Patrick Mahomes did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.
Hilary Swank has shared a rare photo of herself with one of her twins.
Swank, 50, took to social media to post a snap of herself cradling one of her one-year-old twins, Aya and Ohm, while on a return flight home from Fiji on Sunday, August 25.
The Million Dollar Baby star was photographed sitting in the plane’s cockpit alongside a pilot as she wrapped her arms around the child positioned on her lap.
“Surprise.. Amelia has been found!” Swank joked while captioning the Instagram post, referencing her 2009 film Amelia which charts the story of pioneering female aviatrix Amelia Earhart. “After 24 hours of travel with 2 babies who refuse to sleep on planes, we decided to take our final flight home into our own hands.”
Four years after they secretly tied the knot, Hilary Swank announced that she and husband Philip Schneider were expecting twins. “This is something that I’ve been wanting for a long time, and my next thing is I’m gonna be a mom,” the Oscar winner revealed during an October 2022 appearance on Good Morning America. “And […]
Swank, who celebrated her milestone birthday on July 30 by swimming with whales, then clarified what the candid photo actually captured.
“Kidding!! We were in wonderful hands with the @fly_fijiairways crew,” she wrote. “So happy we extended our trip to spend time in the beautiful land that is Fiji and connect with the incredible people that live there. More content to come soon ✨❤️”
Swank and her husband, Philip Schneider, welcomed their twins in April 2023, with a source telling Us Weekly that the pair were “ecstatic but exhausted” to be raising their little ones.
The source added that Swank had “some help” with the twins but wanted to be as hands-on as possible. “She has a type A personality and wants to do everything herself,” the insider said at the time.
A second source told Us that having children shifted Swank’s priorities in life. “[It’s] transformed Hilary’s perspective on everything,” the insider said. “She used to be so focused on her career, now it’s all about her family.”
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The actress revealed her children’s names in an Instagram post on Valentine’s Day this year, sharing on February 14 that her daughter was named Aya and her son is Ohm.
“I have a busy week of talk shows ahead where I’ll be sharing about my new film and a fun partnership, but I figured what better day to share the names of my two little loves with you all first👼🏼👼🏼💝,” she captioned the photo, which showed the backs of her children dressed in brightly colored swimsuits and sitting on a beach.
The Nebraska native announced in October 2022 that she and Schneider, whom she wed in 2018, were growing their family. “This is something that I’ve been wanting for a long time, and my next thing is I’m gonna be a mom,” Swank said during an appearance on Good Morning America where she revealed her pregnancy. “And not just of one, but of two. I can’t believe it.”
The afternoon Joe Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race, eight days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and well into a year of axis-tilting events, @DifficultPatty posted a question on X, thirsty for an answer: “Which wine pairs best with unprecedented times?”
“All of them,” replied one user.
“Apocalypse IPA,” said another. “It’s a real thing.”
Also real are the times we continually find ourselves. All devastation and disquiet. That’s the vibe of late, anyway. New historical benchmarks sprout with wild surprise on what feels like a weekly basis, and a collective mood has developed across social media that we live in a constant state of “unprecedented times.”
The phrase, now a fixture of the zeitgeist, initially shot into pop discourse around 2015 during Trump’s first presidential campaign, a campaign, you’ll remember, that fed on a specific American lust for political agitprop. It has since become shorthand for the continuous spiral of everyday reality. Not long after, as the spread of Covid-19 reengineered work and home life, the phrase further lodged itself into our shared vocabulary, recast as a convenient descriptor for an increasingly inconvenient future.
A study conducted in 2020 by The New York Times and research firm Sentieo found that the phrase saw a 70,830 percent increase in usage in corporate presentations from the previous year (outpacing du jour expressions like “new normal” and “you’re on mute”). In an article published by MIT, titled “Surviving and thriving in unprecedented times,” Christa Babcock, a CEO and alum on the business school, advised entrepreneurs to embrace the difficulty in front of them: “Expect that things will not return to the way they were and be thrilled about it.”
Only, for the rest of us, the constant, uncomfortable change was the problem.
The phrase was gaining traction offline and on. “Only difference between millennials and gen z is how many ‘unprecedented times’ u live thru before climate change swallows ur house,” @bocxtop tweeted in February 2022 when X was still called Twitter. That same year, 19 students were gunned down at an elementary school in rural Texas and California was hit with record unemployment . In grocery stories across the country, food prices steadily climbed as a result of the war in Ukraine.
Today, the phrase has magnified beyond actual meaning, a cheap emblem of our erratic cultural mood. It is uniformly used to describe just about every fresh hell that emerges, from the US election and the conflict in Gaza to the menacing threat of climate catastrophe. Living through “unprecedented times” is our new normal on social media.
It’s not just you. The word “demure” is being used to describe just about everything online these days.It all started earlier this month when TikTok creator Jools Lebron posted a video that would soon take social media by storm. The hair and makeup she’s wearing to work? Very demure. And paired with a vanilla perfume fragrance? How mindful.Video above: Rossen Reports: TikTok made me buy it, but does it really work?In just weeks, Lebron’s words have become the latest vocabulary defining the internet this summer. In addition to her own viral content that continues to describe various day-to-day, arguably reserved or modest activities with adjectives like “demure,” “mindful” and “cutesy,” several big names have also hopped on the trend across social media platforms. Celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Penn Badgley have shared their own playful takes, and even the White House used the words to boast the Biden-Harris administration’s recent student debt relief efforts.The skyrocketing fame of Lebron’s “very mindful, very demure” influence also holds significance for the TikToker herself. Lebron, who identifies as a transgender woman, said in a post last week that she’s now able to finance the rest of her transition.”One day, I was playing cashier and making videos on my break. And now, I’m flying across country to host events,” Lebron said in the video, noting that her experience on the platform has changed her life.She’s not alone. Over recent years, a handful of online creators have found meaningful income after gaining social media fame — but it’s still incredibly rare and no easy feat.Here’s what some experts say.How can TikTok fame lead to meaningful sources of income?There is no one recipe.Finding resources to work as a creator full-time “is not as rare as it would have been years ago,” notes Erin Kristyniak, vice president of global partnerships at marketing collaboration company Partnerize. But you still have to make content that meets the moment — and there’s a lot to juggle if you want to monetize.On TikTok, most users who are making money pursue a combination of hustles. Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University, explains that those granted admission into TikTok’s Creator Marketplace — the platform’s space for brand and creator collaborations — can “earn a kickback from views from TikTok expressly,” although that doesn’t typically pay very well.Other avenues for monetization include more direct brand sponsorships, creating merchandise to sell, fundraising during livestreams and collecting “tips” or “gifts” through features available to users who reach a certain following threshold. A lot of it also boils down to work outside of the platform.And creators are increasingly working to build their social media presence across multiple platforms — particularly amid a potential ban of the ByteDance-owned app in the U.S., which is currently in a legal battle. Duffy notes that many are working on developing this wider online presence so they can “still have a financial lifeline” in case any revenue stream goes away.Is it difficult to sustain?Gaining traction in the macrocosm that is the internet is difficult as is — and while some have both tapped into trends that resonate and found sources of compensation that allow them to quit their nine-to-five, it still takes a lot of work to keep it going.”These viral bursts of fame don’t necessarily translate into a stable, long-term career,” Duffy said. “On the surface, it’s kind of widely hyped as a dream job … But I see this as a very superficial understanding of how the career works.”Duffy, who has been studying social media content creation for a decade, says that she’s heard from creators who have had months where they’re reaping tremendous sums of money from various sources of income — but then also months with nothing. “It’s akin to a gig economy job because of the lack of stability,” she explained.”The majority of creators aren’t full-time,” Eric Dahan, the CEO and founder of influencer marketing agency Mighty Joy, added.Burnout is also very common. It can take a lot of emotional labor to pull content from your life, Duffy said, and the pressure of maintaining brand relationships or the potential of losing viewers if you take a break can be a lot. Ongoing risks of potential exposure to hate or online harassment also persist.Is the landscape changing?Like all things online, the landscape for creators is constantly evolving.Demand is also growing. More and more platforms are aiming not only to court users, but to bring aspiring creators to their sites. And that coincides with an increased focus on marketing goods and brands in these spaces.Companies are doubling down “to meet consumers where they are,” said Raji Srinivasan, a marketing professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. YouTube and other social media platforms, such as Instagram, have also built out offerings to attract this kind of content in recent years, but — for now — it’s “TikTok’s day in the sun,” she added, pointing to the platform’s persisting dominance in the market.And for aspiring creators hoping to strike it big, Dahan’s advice is just to start somewhere. As Lebron’s success shows, he added, “You don’t know what’s going to happen.” AP technology writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this story from Oakland, California.
NEW YORK —
It’s not just you. The word “demure” is being used to describe just about everything online these days.
It all started earlier this month when TikTok creator Jools Lebron posted a video that would soon take social media by storm. The hair and makeup she’s wearing to work? Very demure. And paired with a vanilla perfume fragrance? How mindful.
Video above: Rossen Reports: TikTok made me buy it, but does it really work?
In just weeks, Lebron’s words have become the latest vocabulary defining the internet this summer. In addition to her own viral content that continues to describe various day-to-day, arguably reserved or modest activities with adjectives like “demure,” “mindful” and “cutesy,” several big names have also hopped on the trend across social media platforms. Celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Penn Badgley have shared their own playful takes, and even the White House used the words to boast the Biden-Harris administration’s recent student debt relief efforts.
The skyrocketing fame of Lebron’s “very mindful, very demure” influence also holds significance for the TikToker herself. Lebron, who identifies as a transgender woman, said in a post last week that she’s now able to finance the rest of her transition.
“One day, I was playing cashier and making videos on my break. And now, I’m flying across country to host events,” Lebron said in the video, noting that her experience on the platform has changed her life.
She’s not alone. Over recent years, a handful of online creators have found meaningful income after gaining social media fame — but it’s still incredibly rare and no easy feat.
Here’s what some experts say.
How can TikTok fame lead to meaningful sources of income?
There is no one recipe.
Finding resources to work as a creator full-time “is not as rare as it would have been years ago,” notes Erin Kristyniak, vice president of global partnerships at marketing collaboration company Partnerize. But you still have to make content that meets the moment — and there’s a lot to juggle if you want to monetize.
On TikTok, most users who are making money pursue a combination of hustles. Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University, explains that those granted admission into TikTok’s Creator Marketplace — the platform’s space for brand and creator collaborations — can “earn a kickback from views from TikTok expressly,” although that doesn’t typically pay very well.
Other avenues for monetization include more direct brand sponsorships, creating merchandise to sell, fundraising during livestreams and collecting “tips” or “gifts” through features available to users who reach a certain following threshold. A lot of it also boils down to work outside of the platform.
And creators are increasingly working to build their social media presence across multiple platforms — particularly amid a potential ban of the ByteDance-owned app in the U.S., which is currently in a legal battle. Duffy notes that many are working on developing this wider online presence so they can “still have a financial lifeline” in case any revenue stream goes away.
Is it difficult to sustain?
Gaining traction in the macrocosm that is the internet is difficult as is — and while some have both tapped into trends that resonate and found sources of compensation that allow them to quit their nine-to-five, it still takes a lot of work to keep it going.
“These viral bursts of fame don’t necessarily translate into a stable, long-term career,” Duffy said. “On the surface, it’s kind of widely hyped as a dream job … But I see this as a very superficial understanding of how the career works.”
Duffy, who has been studying social media content creation for a decade, says that she’s heard from creators who have had months where they’re reaping tremendous sums of money from various sources of income — but then also months with nothing. “It’s akin to a gig economy job because of the lack of stability,” she explained.
“The majority of creators aren’t full-time,” Eric Dahan, the CEO and founder of influencer marketing agency Mighty Joy, added.
Burnout is also very common. It can take a lot of emotional labor to pull content from your life, Duffy said, and the pressure of maintaining brand relationships or the potential of losing viewers if you take a break can be a lot. Ongoing risks of potential exposure to hate or online harassment also persist.
Is the landscape changing?
Like all things online, the landscape for creators is constantly evolving.
Demand is also growing. More and more platforms are aiming not only to court users, but to bring aspiring creators to their sites. And that coincides with an increased focus on marketing goods and brands in these spaces.
Companies are doubling down “to meet consumers where they are,” said Raji Srinivasan, a marketing professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. YouTube and other social media platforms, such as Instagram, have also built out offerings to attract this kind of content in recent years, but — for now — it’s “TikTok’s day in the sun,” she added, pointing to the platform’s persisting dominance in the market.
And for aspiring creators hoping to strike it big, Dahan’s advice is just to start somewhere. As Lebron’s success shows, he added, “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
AP technology writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this story from Oakland, California.
Threads is testing the option for users to put a 24-hour expiration timer on their posts, after which the post and all replies would disappear, Stories-style. A spokesperson confirmed to that the feature is being tested among a group of users after it was first spotted earlier this summer by developer . It sounds a lot like pre-X Twitter’s Fleets, . But, the ephemeral format could save habitual post-deleters some trouble.
It comes a few months after Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared that Threads was . That optional feature would let users designate a date for their posts to be hidden from the feed. But Threads users in the past have indicated that they of automatic archiving, and such a feature hasn’t yet shown up on a wider scale. Threads at the beginning of August, and recently introduced an for users — particularly those with large followings — to keep track of their account’s performance. Meta also said the option to schedule posts is on the way.
The World Bank has ceased all paid advertising on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, which was formerly Twitter, after a CBS News investigation found promoted advertisements from the organization showing up under a racist post from an account that prolifically posts pro-Nazi and white nationalist content.
CBS News found a verified X account with more than 115,000 followers that had posted a racist image alongside a post praising Europe’s colonization of Africa. CBS News is not publicly identifying the accounts spreading racist content on X.
A promoted advertisement for the World Bank showed up in the comments section below the post.
“The World Bank Group had already reduced its paid marketing on X while working with the platform to implement the strongest safety protocols X offers for our content,” a spokesperson for the World Bank told CBS News on Friday, adding: “This latest incident is entirely unacceptable, and we are immediately ceasing all paid marketing on X.”
Two screengrabs from X show, at left, a post containing racist messaging and, at right, a promoted advertisement for the World Bank that had appeared under the post. The World Bank told CBS News on Aug. 23, 2024 that it was pulling all paid advertising off the X platform over its ad appearing underneath the racist post.
X
CBS News has asked X to comment on the World Bank’s withdrawal of paid advertising from the platform but had not received a reply by the time of publication.
The account has shared dozens of antisemitic and racist posts over the course of the past week alone, and CBS News found promoted advertisements from numerous businesses under multiple posts from the account as it shared pro-Nazi content, including one post showing archival video of Adolf Hitler with the caption: “We defeated the wrong enemy.” That post has garnered more than two million views on the platform, according to X’s own metrics.
CBS News has found more than a dozen accounts on X with the blue check indicating “verification” by the platform that have large followings and regularly post white nationalist or pro-Nazi content, and which have promoted advertisements from some recognizable brands showing up in their comments threads.
X’s policy on hateful conduct states that users “may not attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” It says the platform prohibits any targeting of people or groups with media that refers to or depicts the Holocaust or “symbols historically associated with hate groups, e.g., the Nazi swastika,” as examples.
A promoted advertisement from Saudia Airlines, the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, showed up under the same post as the World Bank advertisement. CBS News has sought comment from Saudia Airlines on the placement of its advertisement and on how the airline determines whether and how to spend money on the platform.
In public court filings unsealed Tuesday, it was revealed that Kingdom Holdings, a Saudi Arabian conglomerate operated by members of the country’s royal family, is a key investor in the X platform. Saudia Airlines is owned by the government of Saudi Arabia.
On at least five occasions, promoted advertisements for the backpack company Nordace showed up under white nationalist or pro-Nazi posts on X. This included an advertisement for a Nordace backpack under a post from another verified account with 161,000 followers.
The thread shared by the account included pro-Nazi posts that said “antisemites will save the world,” and “Weimar problems require Weimar solutions” with the “Weimar problems” phrase painted in the colors of the LGBTQ rainbow flag. The Weimar Republic was a name used for Germany before Hitler rose to power with the Nazi regime.
On its website, Canadian-owned Nordace describes its core values as including, “Respect People” and “leave a positive impact.”
CBS News has sought comment from Nordace about the placement of its advertisements on X and how the company determines its ad spend on the platform.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has dismantled safeguards on the platform since his October 2022 takeover of what was then Twitter — including dramatic changes to its verification system and the disbanding of its Trust and Safety advisory group, as well as changes to broader content moderation and hate speech enforcement.
Musk has created a system that sees X’s algorithms favor accounts that pay for the platform’s blue-check subscription service. According to X’s own marketing for its verification service, X premium offers “reply prioritization” for all subscribers.
Changes made by Musk to the X business model since his purchase of the company have allowed influencers who buy into the company’s verification subscription to monetize their content. Subscribers are eligible to receive a share of advertising revenue for their content if they “have at least 5M organic impressions on cumulative posts within the last 3 months” and “have at least 500 followers.”
According to the platform’s terms of use, accounts can do this without publicly disclosing their identity, provided the account holder privately discloses their ID to the platform.
“X allows the use of pseudonymous accounts, meaning an account’s profile is not required to use the name or image of the account owner. Accounts that appear similar to others on X are not in violation of this policy, so long as their purpose is not to deceive or manipulate others,” according to the platform’s own guidelines.
All of the verified X accounts reviewed by CBS News would, according to the company’s own guidelines, qualify for a share of its ad revenues under this policy.
One account that has frequently shared antisemitic posts, with more than half of a million followers, has even bragged about its earnings on X.
In a post from March, the account shared a screenshot allegedly showing earnings from X’s ad revenue sharing program for verified accounts. The screenshot was accompanied by the caption: “X monetization is about to overtake TikTok and change the whole social media landscape. I’m not sure if live-streaming made the difference or if X has increased its revenue sharing, but this is approaching the point where I can support myself off of X.”
CBS News has reached out to X for comment on whether the accounts reviewed are profiting from their content and on how it decides which verified accounts should receive ads and revenue.
The account under which the Nordace ad appeared had shared several antisemitic posts, including one that said “our country is controlled by an international criminal organization that grew out of the Jewish mob and now hides in modern Zionism behind cries of ‘antisemitism.’”
While no promoted advertisements showed up under that specific post, ads have shown up under other posts by the account, including some spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation.
In recent months, Musk even boosted engagement for this specific X account as it peddled an unfounded conspiracy theory that influential figures in the media wanted to take American children away from their parents. In July, the account shared a clip of an old MSNBC commercial taken out of context with a caption reading: “The goal IS to take your children. They openly say it. This is why we have the second amendment.”
Musk replied “absolutely” to the post in question, which has been viewed 4.3 million times according to X’s metrics.
Musk has also repeatedly engaged with another verified account, which has almost 366,000 followers, with an interaction between the tech mogul and the account as recently as Friday morning.
This account has repeatedly touted the so-called “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, an unfounded far-right claim that White European populations are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-whites.
Last week, the account posted the unfounded claim that there is “a war on White people going on and the mainstream media and politicians are ‘ignoring’ it.”
Paid advertisements also showed up under that post.
CBS News has asked X’s press office whether it is comfortable with the platform’s owner engaging with such content, but there was no reply by the time of publication.
In an October 2022 post, Musk had vowed that X’s new policy would be “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter,” he said, adding that such content would be unfindable “unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”
The Kamala Harris campaign is launching its own Twitch channel where it will be streaming the vice president’s acceptance speech on Thursday.
The Twitch channel is part of the campaign’s broader strategy for engaging young and difficult to reach voters online. The account, which is under the handle of “kamalaharris,” joins the campaign’s suite of social and streaming accounts like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube.
“The VP’s address tonight will be one of the biggest moments of the entire campaign thus far — and we’re making sure we’re bringing her live to voters wherever they may be, Twitch included,” Seth Schuster, a Harris spokesperson, told WIRED in a statement. “Our job as the campaign is to break through a historically personalized media landscape, taking the VP and her vision for the future directly to the hardest to reach voters and those who will decide this election.”
The Harris-Walz campaign has invested heavily in digital, hiring more than 175 staffers across digital organizing, content creation, and digital advertising and fundraising. In the week after Harris jumped to the top of the Democratic ticket, the rebranded KamalaHQ TikTok account quintupled in followers and its Harris-focused content received 232 million views and 33 million likes.
There are also 200 creators who have been credentialed to cover the Democratic National Convention this week. It’s the first time independent creators have been allowed access to the DNC and they’ve been provided with opportunities to interview politicians and party leaders like DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.
The Harris campaign isn’t the first to join Twitch. The Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns joined Twitch as well in 2020. Trump’s account was suspended following the January 6 attack on the Capitol and was only reinstated this summer. When the Biden channel launched, the Biden team streamed a live feed from the back of a train the now-president was traveling on while playing lo-fi beats reminiscent of 24-hour relaxing music streams.
NEW YORK — It’s not just you. The word “demure” is being used to describe just about everything online these days.
It all started earlier this month, when TikTok creator Jools Lebron posted a video that would soon take social media by storm. The hair and makeup she’s wearing to work? Very demure. And paired with a vanilla perfume fragrance? How mindful.
In just weeks, Lebron’s words have become the latest vocabulary defining the internet this summer. In addition to her own viral content that continues to describe various day-to-day, arguably reserved activities with adjectives like “demure,” “mindful” and “cutesy,” several big names have also hopped on the trend. Celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Penn Badgley have shared their own playful takes, and even the White House used the words to boast the Biden-Harris administration’s recent student debt relief efforts.
The skyrocketing fame of Lebron’s “very mindful, very demure” influence also holds significance for the TikToker herself. Lebron, who identifies as a transgender woman, said in a post last week that she’s now able to finance the rest of her transition.
“One day, I was playing cashier and making videos on my break. And now, I’m flying across country to host events,” Lebron said in the video, noting that her experience on the platform has changed her life.
She’s not alone. Over recent years, a handful of online creators have found meaningful income after gaining social media fame — but it’s still incredibly rare, and no easy feat for most to maintain.
Here’s what some experts say.
There is no one recipe.
Finding resources to work as a creator full-time “is not as rare as it would have been years ago,” notes Erin Kristyniak, VP of global partnerships at marketing collaboration company Partnerize. But you still have to make content that meets the moment — and there’s a lot to juggle if you want to monetize.
On TikTok, most users who are making money pursue a combination of hustles. Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University, explains that those granted admission into TikTok’s Creator Marketplace — the platform’s space for brand and creator collaborations — can “earn a kickback from views from TikTok expressly,” although that doesn’t typically pay very well.
Other avenues for monetization include more direct brand sponsorships, creating merchandise to sell, fundraising during livestreams and collecting “tips” or “gifts” through features available to users who reach a certain following threshold. A lot of it also boils down to work outside of the platform.
And creators are increasingly working to build their social media presence across multiple platforms — particularly amid a potential TikTok ban in the U.S., which is currently in a legal battle. Duffy notes adding that many are working on developing this wider online presence so they can “still have a financial lifeline” in case any revenue stream goes away.
Gaining traction in the macrocosm that is the internet is difficult as is — and while some have both tapped into trends that resonate and found sources of compensation that allow them to quit their nine-to-five, it still takes a lot of work to keep it going.
“These viral bursts of fame don’t necessarily translate into a stable, long-term career,” Duffy said. “On the surface, it’s kind of widely hyped as a dream job … But I see this as a very superficial understanding of how the career works.”
Duffy, who has been studying social media content creation for a decade, says that she’s heard from creators who have months where they’re reaping tremendous sums of money from various sources of income — but then also months with nothing. “It’s akin to a gig economy job, because of the lack of stability,” she explained.
“The majority of creators aren’t full-time,” Eric Dahan, the CEO and founder of influencer marketing agency Mighty Joy, added.
Burnout is also very common. It can take a lot of emotional labor to pull content from your life, Duffy said, and the pressure of maintaining brand relationships or the potential of losing viewers if you take a break can be a lot. Ongoing risks of potential exposure to hate or online harassment also persist.
Like all things online, the landscape for creators is constantly evolving.
Demand is also growing. More and more platforms are not only aiming to court users but specifically bring aspiring creators on their sites. And that coincides with an increased focus on marketing goods and brands in these spaces.
Companies are doubling down “to meet consumers where they are,” Raji Srinivasan, a marketing professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. YouTube and other social media platforms, such as Instagram, have also built out offerings to attract this kind of content in recent years, but — for now — it’s “TikTok’s day in the sun,” she added, pointing to the platform’s persisting dominance in the market.
And for aspiring creators hoping to strike it big, Dahan’s advice is just to start somewhere. As Lebron’s success shows, he added, “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
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AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this story from Oakland, California.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation spreads on the company’s platforms.
Wednesday’s shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits. In May, dozens of groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, Human Rights Watch and NYU’s Center for Social Media & Politics, sent a letter to the company asking that it keep the tool running through at least January so it would be available through the U.S. presidential elections.
“This decision jeopardizes essential pre- and post-election oversight mechanisms and undermines Meta’s transparency efforts during this critical period, and at a time when social trust and digital democracy are alarmingly fragile,” the letter said.
CrowdTangle, “has been an essential tool in helping researchers parse through the vast amount of information on the platform and identify harmful content and threats,” it added.
In March, the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation sent Meta a similar letter asking it to keep the tool, which was available for free, functioning until January. That letter was also signed by several dozen groups and individual academic researchers.
“For years, CrowdTangle has represented an industry best practice for real-time platform transparency. It has become a lifeline for understanding how disinformation, hate speech, and voter suppression spread on Facebook, undermining civic discourse and democracy,” the Mozilla letter said.
Meta has released an alternative to CrowdTangle, called the Meta Content Library. But access to it is limited to academic researchers and nonprofits, which excludes most news organizations. Critics have also complained that it’s not as useful as CrowdTangle — at least not yet.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a blog post last week that the company has been gathering feedback about Meta Content Library from “hundreds of researchers in order to make it more user-friendly and help them find the data they need for their work.”
Meta said Wednesday that CrowdTangle doesn’t provide a complete picture of what is happening on its platforms and said its new tools are more comprehensive.
Science literacy is a crucial skill for modern students. It equips them with the knowledge to critically evaluate information, understand scientific concepts, and make informed decisions in a rapidly changing world.
In today’s digital age, however, both students and educators are at risk of information overload. Each day, we are bombarded with content from websites, social media, and a hundred other sources that demand our attention and seek to influence our behavior. It’s enough to make the human brain short circuit.
So, how do we prepare our students to navigate this confusing world of digital tools without getting lost in a jungle of misinformation? We start by cultivating a mindset that makes critical engagement second nature, and that fosters the confidence they need to meet challenges head on.
Here are just five simple strategies that can help students navigate science literacy in the digital age:
1.Is It CRAAP?:The CRAAP strategy teaches students to evaluate information sources based on five criteria: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. This teaches students to first ask important questions like, “How old is this information?”, “Is it being published by a reliable source?” and “How does this compare to other research?” This allows students to assess the reliability of the information and helps them discern credible sources from misleading ones.
2.Employ fact-checking websites: It never hurts to call in a professional. Educators should encourage students to fact-check their own information against websites like FactCheck.org and Snopes. Both websites do a great job explaining why something is true or false and what details may have been embellished.
3.Bias Bingo:This activity engages students in identifying different types of bias in texts, advertisements, or media by marking corresponding squares on a bingo card. This interactive exercise helps students develop critical thinking skills and recognize bias, enhancing their ability to evaluate information objectively. There are many free bingo creator sites where educators can create their own cards to use with their students.
4.Data your way: Students can take ownership of their learning by choosing how they represent their data from an investigation. This will stretch their abilities and teach them a new way to graph or chart data. They may also observe other students’ representations and want to learn that method. By sharing different representations with students, educators can allow them to rank them in order of how best they represent the data. As students grow in their data representation skills, they can start providing feedback to their own data representation creations.
5.Data choice chart: As students start learning how to make their own data representations, educators should use this resource to maximize their growth. The flowchart helps students determine what sort of graph representation they might want to make for their investigation. From there, they can use the graphing tips to help them create a representation that can successfully show what happened in their investigation.
Let’s face it–teaching students science literacy is a challenge that won’t be solved overnight. It will take diligence, creativity, and more than a little grit. Still, by using simple strategies and keeping up with the latest digital tools, teachers can create a path forward for students in the ever-changing digital landscape. With the right attitude, students won’t just tackle the problems of today—they’ll create a future where curiosity, critical thinking, and a steadfast commitment of scientific inquiry can flourish.
Cory Kavanagh, Van Andel Institute for Education
Cory Kavanagh is a Learning Specialists for Van Andel Institute for Education, a Michigan-based education nonprofit dedicated to creating classrooms where curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking thrive.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation spreads on the company’s platforms.
Wednesday’s shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits. In May, dozens of groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, Human Rights Watch and NYU’s Center for Social Media & Politics, sent a letter to the company asking that it keep the tool running through at least January so it would be available through the U.S. presidential elections.
“This decision jeopardizes essential pre- and post-election oversight mechanisms and undermines Meta’s transparency efforts during this critical period, and at a time when social trust and digital democracy are alarmingly fragile,” the letter said.
CrowdTangle, “has been an essential tool in helping researchers parse through the vast amount of information on the platform and identify harmful content and threats,” it added.
In March, the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation sent Meta a similar letter asking it to keep the tool, which was available for free, functioning until January. That letter was also signed by several dozen groups and individual academic researchers.
“For years, CrowdTangle has represented an industry best practice for real-time platform transparency. It has become a lifeline for understanding how disinformation, hate speech, and voter suppression spread on Facebook, undermining civic discourse and democracy,” the Mozilla letter said.
Meta has released an alternative to CrowdTangle, called the Meta Content Library. But access to it is limited to academic researchers and nonprofits, which excludes most news organizations. Critics have also complained that it’s not as useful as CrowdTangle — at least not yet.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a blog post last week that the company has been gathering feedback about Meta Content Library from “hundreds of researchers in order to make it more user-friendly and help them find the data they need for their work.”
Meta said Wednesday that CrowdTangle doesn’t provide a complete picture of what is happening on its platforms and said its new tools are more comprehensive.
X today that it is rolling out support for passkeys on its Android app. The social media platform formerly known as Twitter introduced this security option for iOS users in January, then in April.
Passkeys started to take off as an option from tech companies and online services last year. We have a detailed , but in short, this approach to protecting an account creates a digital authentication credential. It’s a stronger alternative to passwords, which can be guessed or stolen. Even have been moving to offer a passkey option for customers.
For X users, you’ll still need a password in order to create an account. But once you’re in the app, you’ll need to click through some menu options to a passkey. It’s listed under “Additional password protection” in the Security tab.
Pinned on vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ official Instagram page is a post featuring her alongside her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz. In the comments, along with praise, criticism, and more than one “Trump 2024,” are several comments asking if Harris had offered Walz oral sex, with one calling her “Kamel toe.”
Harris has long been the subject of online abuse, which is likely to intensify as her campaign wears on. But a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and misinformation online, found that Instagram failed to remove 93 percent of the 1,000 hateful and violent comments it flagged to the platform targeting both Republican and Democratic female politicians, including Harris.
In doing so, Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, says that the platform is helping to create an environment that discourages women from seeking political office. “It’s an unconscionable, regressive barrier to women’s participation in politics,” he says.
Researchers monitored the accounts of 10 incumbent female politicians in the US for six months. These included five Democrats (Harris, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jasmine Crockett) and five Republicans (Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Anna Paulina Luna, Lauren Boebert, and Maria Elvira Salazar, and Senator Marsha Blackburn). The abuse the researchers observed ranged from death and rape threats to racial slurs and more generally toxic comments.
In one comment directed at Senator Blackburn, a user posted, “Hope someone leaves you for a dead in a ditch.” Another targeting Representative Crockett read, “All these black women trolling her should spend more time not being single mothers, raising the trash that’s destroying your shitty country …” Yet another, this time directed at Representative Pelosi, said, “hope whoever attacked your husband has more people ❤️❤️❤️❤️ so they can finish the job.”
Researchers collected more than half a million comments from 877 Instagram posts between January 1 and June 7, 2024, and, using Google Jigsaw’s Perspective API, analyzed them for content that appeared to violate the platform’s community standards. (Meta’s policies prohibit attacks based on “race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disease” as well as threats of violence, calls for self-harm, or “severe sexualized commentary.”) The research team then flagged 1,000 abusive comments to the company using its reporting function to see whether they would be removed from the platform.
Some comments, like one that used a racial slur to refer to Representative Crockett, seem to clearly violate Meta’s community standards. Others, like one directed at Vice President Harris saying “GO TO THE BORDER YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT !” are what researchers defined as “toxic”—not necessarily a direct threat or slur but a “rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comment that is likely to make someone leave a discussion.” Though they may not cross the line to using sexualized or racialized language that would warrant removal, toxic comments are part of what researchers say creates an overall hostile environment for women politicians online. According to CCDH’s analysis, about one in every 25 comments contained toxic content.
Instagram is failing to enforce its own rules and allowing some of its most high-profile accounts to be targeted with abusive comments “with impunity,” according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The anti-hate group claims that Meta failed to remove 93 percent of comments it reported to the company, including ones that contain racial slurs, violent threats and other disturbing language that would seem to clearly violate the social network’s rules.
CCDH’s researchers zeroed in on five Republican and five Democratic lawmakers who are up for election this year. The group included Vice President Kamala Harris, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Senator Marsha Blackburn and Representative Lauren Boebert.
The researchers reported 1,000 comments that appeared on the lawmakers’ Instagram posts between January and June of this year and found that Meta took “no action” against the vast majority of those comments, with 926 of them still visible in the app one week after being reported. The reported content included comments with racial slurs and other racist language, calls for violence and other abuse.
“We’re simulating the moment at which someone reaches out their hand asking for help, and actually, Instagram’s failure to act on that compounds the harm done,” CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said in a briefing about the report.
The CCDH also found that many of the abusive comments came from “repeat offenders” which, according to Ahmed, has “created a culture of impunity” on the platform. The report comes less than three months before the US presidential election, and it notes that attacks targeting Harris, who is now campaigning for president seem to have “intensified” since she took over the ticket. “Instagram failed to remove 97 out of 105 abusive comments targeting Vice President Kamala Harris, equivalent to a failure to act on 92% of abusive comments targeting her,” the report says. It notes that Instagram failed to remove comments targeting Harris that used the n-word, as well as gender-based slurs.
In a statement, Meta said it would review the report. “We provide tools so that anyone can control who can comment on their posts, automatically filter out offensive comments, phrases or emojis, and automatically hide comments from people who don’t follow them,” Meta’s Head of Women’s Safety, said in a statement. “We work with hundreds of safety partners around the world to continually improve our policies, tools, detection and enforcement, and we will review the CCDH report and take action on any content that violates our policies.”
In the hours leading up to the conversation on X Spaces, this seemed to be the case: Trump posted 10 times on X, his first posts on the platform since August 2023 and his first sustained period of activity since he was notoriously banned from the platform for his part in spreading election conspiracies ahead of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
But Trump, who also stayed online for hours after the event, instead returned to Truth Social, the platform he built after being kicked off of X. He shared more than a dozen updates—or “truths”—encouraging followers to go out and vote in primaries in Minnesota and Wisconsin for candidates he was endorsing.
At around 1:20 am on Tuesday morning, hours after the event had wrapped, Trump finally posted a link on Truth Social to a recording of the conversation with Musk. But rather than a link directly to the recording on X, Trump posted a link to a recording of the event from his own YouTube channel. Later, Trump posted another link to the conversation, this time to a recording on video sharing site Rumble.
While Trump has a much larger following on X than Truth Social—90 million versus 7.5 million—there are other considerations to take into account.
Trump owns a 60 percent stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social. As part of his deal with the company, he is obligated to post on Truth Social before posting on any other platform, with exceptions for campaign and political content.
The price of TMTG shares also fell on Monday after Trump began posting on X, which could also be a consideration for Trump, given that he has to wait until September 19, when a six-month lockout period expires, before he can sell any of the shares he holds in the company.
Musk knows that keeping Trump happy and on his platform is possibly key to reinvigorating X. But at the end of the day, Musk is still looking out for himself: During the conversation on Monday, right after agreeing with Trump’s takes on electric vehicles and US oil drilling that would appear to directly contradict Musk’s own business interests, Musk proposed that he would take a role in a potential second Trump administration on a “government efficiency body.”
Another generation is coming of age in a world of mobile phones and social media…the first who grew up learning “phone” like a language. And the language is something most parents do not understand or speak fluently. In a New York Times opinion piece, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy confirmed there is growing evidence showing a connection between social media use and teen and kids’ deteriorating mental health, so much so social media platforms should carry a mental health warning, similar to the health risk label on cigarettes. Today’s parents need support. Here is some help for your kids to keep them from social media dangers.
Teen mental health studies have shown extended time on social media platforms can lead to depression, anxiety, and a disconnect in when “feelings of self-worth are being formed between 10 years-old and 19 years-old”.What can a parent do to mitigate the damage and possible effects of social media on tween and teen brains? Here is help for you to keep your kids from social media danger.
Preeti Davidson of the Unloveables Podcast has teamed up with Curt Dalton to start Maya4Life, an extensive 8-to-12-week program that works with teens on self-confidence, self-esteem, and learning the different between external validation and internal validation. The program works one-on-one with teens to develop a new sense of self-worth not based on social media validation symbols like hearts, thumbs-ups, and likes.
“For parents that can’t stand their kid’s social media account, then Maya is for you” says Preeti Davidson. “So many parents don’t know what to do when their teen starts posting racy pictures or unhealthy pictures online in order to gain attention or external validation”.
Preeti Davidson graduated from Colombia University and has worked in the education field and recovery fields for over 20 years now. “One thing teens need is self-esteem and self-confidence so that they don’t become prone to the dopamine rush from seeing likes and hearts on their social media posts. With Maya4Life, teens develop their own “brand” that they want to be and present to the world going forward.”
“Rasing 3 teen boys and having edited over 7,000 cannabis-based articles in the past 8 years gives me a unique perspective on the social pressures today’s teens are facing with vaping, smoking, underage drinking, and advanced dating activity” says Curt Dalton, U Chicago graduate and director at Cannabis.net . “Talking to teens about their current world they live in right now and the social pressures they face, not our adult world and pressures we face, is a big paradigm shift. They face constant pressure to drink, smoke, vape nicotine, vape cannabis, and do things we may not have had access to 30 years ago” says Curt Dalton.”
“Maya4Life gets teens to create the life they want and love in conjunction with their parents, not despite there parents” says Preeti. “Once you heal some of those wounds and have a loving relationship with your teen or tween, you feel so much joy and abundance being a parent again!”
But in parallel, these companies, particularly Facebook, were spending tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying efforts to ensure that any type of legislation that might be introduced was not the type of legislation that would impact their financial well-being.
Ultimately, even the minor steps the companies did take to try and make their platforms safer were removed, or forgotten about, in what Benavidez calls the “Big Tech backslide.”
“Their values ultimately lie in making money, their bottom line is more important than protecting users or democracies,” Benavidez says. “This year, a major flashpoint for democracies worldwide, where billions of people will be voting, the platforms have washed their hands of the role they play in protecting [the elections].”
Even before Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, right-wing voices were already poisoning the well, resharing baseless conspiracies about the vice president’s eligibility to run for president, framing her past relationships as something illicit, and attacking her race and gender.
“This year is one in which the question of what women can do and the agency women have over their bodies and in the public world, that question is thrown front and center,” Benavidez says. “So it makes sense that Gamergate tactics, being that first signal flare years ago around what women can and cannot do, should be back in the spotlight.”
These attacks have become so normalized they are happening everywhere, all the time, and while we may hear about some of them, such as the so-called Gamergate 2.0 earlier this year, most of them will never come to wider attention, and the women targeted by these campaigns will be left on their own to deal with the fallout.
“There’s a new Gamergate every week, and no one outside of gaming journalism is ever dealing with these things, because they don’t make any sense,” Broderick says. “They don’t really feel like they matter. So these problems just sort of compound over time, because there’s really no way for popular culture in America to talk about these things.”
Beyond games, the news cycle moves so fast in 2024 that even if someone does pay attention to a coordinated online attack, 24 hours later they have likely moved on to something else. This is how an account like LibsofTikTok is able to direct hate toward the trans community and the doctors and hospitals helping them.
Chaya Raichik, the person behind LibsofTikTok, is supported in her efforts by powerful figures within the GOP who are similarly pushing an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, and by Musk, the owner of X, the platform where many of these hate attacks begin. Just last month, Musk dead-named his own daughter in an interview, claiming she was “killed” by the “woke mind virus.”
The Information and Communication Technologies Authority barred access to Instagram on Aug. 2 without providing a specific reason. Government officials later said the ban was imposed because the social media platform failed to abide by Turkish laws.
“In our talks with Instagram officials, we were assured our requests would be met, especially those regarding criminal activity, and given a promise that we would work together on a means of censoring users,” Abdulkadir Uraloglu, Turkey’s transportation and infrastructure minister wrote on the social media platform X Saturday.
Uraloglu elaborated in a video also posted on X, saying that the platform “was to establish compliance with Turkish law and that in instances where the law was violated, there would be quick and effective intervention.”
He added that all accounts owned by “terrorist” organizations would be banned and all content promoting such organizations would be removed, singling out the PKK, PYD and FETO.
The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, is an outlawed group that has waged a decades-long insurgency within Turkey to establish an autonomous region in southeastern Turkey. The PYD is a Syrian Kurdish political organization that Turkish officials claim is an arm of the PKK. FETO is the movement led by Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that the government blames for a failed coup attempt in 2016.
Instagram has more than 57 million users in Turkey, a nation of 85 million people, according to We Are Social Media, a digital marketing news company based in New York.
The Electronic Commerce Operators’ Association estimates that Instagram and other social media platforms per day generate about 930 million Turkish lira ($27 million) worth of e-commerce.
