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Tag: social media

  • X’s new location transparency feature unleashes questions about origins of MAGA accounts

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    A new transparency feature on X has stirred confusion, anger and a wave of online sleuthing after users discovered that the platform was suddenly displaying the surprising locations where certain accounts are based.

    Over the weekend, users noticed that clicking an account’s join date now opens a tab that shows the country or region in which the account is located.

    X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, teased the feature last month as a way to help users verify the authenticity of content they read and limit the influence of troll farms, which often run political accounts from outside the countries they target.

    But as soon as the feature appeared live for users, X was flooded with viral posts showing that numerous high-engagement, MAGA-branded accounts that present themselves as those of patriotic Americans appear to instead be based overseas in Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

    An account that calls itself “ULTRAMAGA 🇺🇸 TRUMP🇺🇸2028,” claiming to be based in Washington, D.C., is listed as being based in Africa. Another now-deleted account with a President Donald Trump-inspired username — “Trump Is My President” — was listed as being based in Macedonia. And an account with the username @American, complete with a profile picture featuring a bald eagle over an American flag, is apparently based in South Asia.

    But the posts that stirred the biggest frenzy came Friday morning, when screenshots and screen recordings claiming the U.S. Department of Homeland Security account was listed as being based in Israel quickly went viral. The department and Bier have both denied the speculation, claiming the posts are spreading misinformation.

    X users circulated images and videos that alleged to show the location field displaying “Tel Aviv, Israel.” The account information feature abruptly disappeared Friday night, fueling speculation that X had pulled the tool to suppress the DHS controversy. NBC News did not view the account’s location before the feature went away Friday and has not confirmed the authenticity of the posts.

    The situation unfolded amid mounting backlash from across the political spectrum to U.S. officials’ support for Israel, which many commentators have lamented as appearing to prioritize a foreign entity over America.

    DHS initially responded with a meme-like image of Trump, looking stunned, which neither confirmed nor denied the discourse about its account location.

    On Sunday, it followed up with an official denial.

    “I can’t believe we have to say this, but this account has only ever been run and operated from the United States,” DHS posted. “Screenshots are easy to forge, videos are easy to manipulate. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

    Reached for comment, a spokesperson for DHS pointed NBC News to the same social media statement.

    The account information feature returned soon after Friday’s brief shutoff, with Bier announcing a global rollout Saturday. But the feature, which previously listed both an account’s current location and its location on the date of its creation, no longer shows the latter.

    Bier also responded to the speculation by telling a user to “stop spreading misinformation,” saying X’s account information feature was temporarily shut off “because the account creation country was incorrect on a very small subset of old accounts, due to IP ranges changing over time.” He did not clarify whether such an error was present on DHS’ account specifically.

    Still, he responded to some of the posts showing the DHS account as being based in Israel, calling the claim “fake news.”

    “Location was not available on any gray check [government] account at any point,” he wrote in response to one screen recording, which X has now labeled as “manipulated media.” “Furthermore, the DHS has only shown IPs from the United States since account creation.”

    As of Sunday morning, however, the location information is available again on the DHS account. This time, it reads: “United States.” But DHS appears to be the only gray-check government account that displays the location where it is based, as other government accounts now display only their dates of account creation and account verification.

    Bier and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Bier said in a post that there are still “a few rough edges” around the feature that should be resolved by Tuesday.

    “If any data is incorrect, it will be updated periodically based on best available information,” he wrote. “This happens on a delayed and randomized schedule to preserve privacy.”

    Here are five things to know about Elon Musk.

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    Angela Yang | NBC News

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  • The most popular social media platform among US adults isn’t Instagram or TikTok

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    Social media is an overwhelming part of our lives these days, but the Pew Research Center provided an in-depth look at just how much we rely on these platforms. In a 2025 report that looks at social media usage with American adults, the data-driven think tank revealed some nitty-gritty details like year-to-year changes, age gaps and most importantly, frequency of use.

    At the number one spot, YouTube holds a dominant position, with 84 percent of the 5,022 adults surveyed saying they use Alphabet’s video-sharing platform. Meta earns silver and bronze medals since 71 percent of adults said they use Facebook, while 50 percent responded positively when it comes to Instagram use. However, not all of Meta’s social media outlets are doing well. Threads may have hit 400 million monthly active users this summer, but only eight percent of adults surveyed said they use it. Rounding out the bottom of the list, only 21 percent of adults surveyed said they use X, while four percent of adults said they’re on Bluesky and three percent are on Truth Social.

    Besides popularity, the Pew Research Center also explored the frequency with which American adults use their preferred social media platforms. In a separate survey with 5,123 adults, the report uncovered that 52 percent of adults go on Facebook daily, with 37 percent of them logging on several times a day. Nearly as frequently, 48 percent of adults use YouTube daily, including 33 percent of that demographic watching videos on the platform several times a day. When looking at frequency through the lens of age gaps, the starkest difference is found with 47 percent of adults between 18 and 29 using TikTok at least once a day, while only five percent of those aged 65 or older use the ByteDance-owned app every day.

    When looking at annual trends, YouTube and Facebook have largely maintained stable usage — and even some growth — since 2021. Even though it may feel like Facebook has begun to stagnate, the report shows that it has a loyal user base that’s still growing at a consistent rate. On top of that, Meta is still continuing to update the social media platform, including recently revamping Facebook Marketplace.

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    Jackson Chen

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  • X’s new location transparency feature unleashes questions about origins of MAGA accounts

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    A new transparency feature on X has stirred confusion, anger and a wave of online sleuthing after users discovered that the platform was suddenly displaying the surprising locations where certain accounts are based.

    Over the weekend, users noticed that clicking an account’s join date now opens a tab that shows the country or region in which the account is located.

    X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, teased the feature last month as a way to help users verify the authenticity of content they read and limit the influence of troll farms, which often run political accounts from outside the countries they target.

    But as soon as the feature appeared live for users, X was flooded with viral posts showing that numerous high-engagement, MAGA-branded accounts that present themselves as those of patriotic Americans appear to instead be based overseas in Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

    An account that calls itself “ULTRAMAGA 🇺🇸 TRUMP🇺🇸2028,” claiming to be based in Washington, D.C., is listed as being based in Africa. Another now-deleted account with a President Donald Trump-inspired username — “Trump Is My President” — was listed as being based in Macedonia. And an account with the username @American, complete with a profile picture featuring a bald eagle over an American flag, is apparently based in South Asia.

    But the posts that stirred the biggest frenzy came Friday morning, when screenshots and screen recordings claiming the U.S. Department of Homeland Security account was listed as being based in Israel quickly went viral. The department and Bier have both denied the speculation, claiming the posts are spreading misinformation.

    X users circulated images and videos that alleged to show the location field displaying “Tel Aviv, Israel.” The account information feature abruptly disappeared Friday night, fueling speculation that X had pulled the tool to suppress the DHS controversy. NBC News did not view the account’s location before the feature went away Friday and has not confirmed the authenticity of the posts.

    The situation unfolded amid mounting backlash from across the political spectrum to U.S. officials’ support for Israel, which many commentators have lamented as appearing to prioritize a foreign entity over America.

    DHS initially responded with a meme-like image of Trump, looking stunned, which neither confirmed nor denied the discourse about its account location.

    On Sunday, it followed up with an official denial.

    “I can’t believe we have to say this, but this account has only ever been run and operated from the United States,” DHS posted. “Screenshots are easy to forge, videos are easy to manipulate. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

    Reached for comment, a spokesperson for DHS pointed NBC News to the same social media statement.

    The account information feature returned soon after Friday’s brief shutoff, with Bier announcing a global rollout Saturday. But the feature, which previously listed both an account’s current location and its location on the date of its creation, no longer shows the latter.

    Bier also responded to the speculation by telling a user to “stop spreading misinformation,” saying X’s account information feature was temporarily shut off “because the account creation country was incorrect on a very small subset of old accounts, due to IP ranges changing over time.” He did not clarify whether such an error was present on DHS’ account specifically.

    Still, he responded to some of the posts showing the DHS account as being based in Israel, calling the claim “fake news.”

    “Location was not available on any gray check [government] account at any point,” he wrote in response to one screen recording, which X has now labeled as “manipulated media.” “Furthermore, the DHS has only shown IPs from the United States since account creation.”

    As of Sunday morning, however, the location information is available again on the DHS account. This time, it reads: “United States.” But DHS appears to be the only gray-check government account that displays the location where it is based, as other government accounts now display only their dates of account creation and account verification.

    Bier and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Bier said in a post that there are still “a few rough edges” around the feature that should be resolved by Tuesday.

    “If any data is incorrect, it will be updated periodically based on best available information,” he wrote. “This happens on a delayed and randomized schedule to preserve privacy.”

    Here are five things to know about Elon Musk.

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    Angela Yang | NBC News

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  • Meta Buried ‘Causal’ Evidence of Social Media Harm, US Court Filings Allege

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    (Reuters) -Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a class action by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.

    In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said.

    Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company.

    Privately, however, staff assured Nick Clegg, Meta’s then-head of global public policy, that the conclusions of the research were valid.

    “The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.”

    Despite Meta’s own work documenting a causal link between its products and negative mental health effects, the filing alleges, Meta told Congress that it had no ability to quantify whether its products were harmful to teenage girls.

    In a statement Saturday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the study was stopped because its methodology was flawed and that it worked diligently to improve the safety of its products. 

    “The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens,” he said. 

    PLAINTIFFS ALLEGE PRODUCT RISKS WERE HIDDEN

    The allegation of Meta burying evidence of social media harms is just one of many in a late Friday filing by Motley Rice, a law firm suing Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat on behalf of school districts around the country. Broadly, the plaintiffs argue the companies have intentionally hidden the internally recognized risks of their products from users, parents and teachers.

    TikTok, Google and Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    Allegations against Meta and its rivals include tacitly encouraging children below the age of 13 to use their platforms, failing to address child sexual abuse content and seeking to expand the use of social media products by teenagers while they were at school. The plaintiffs also allege that the platforms attempted to pay child-focused organizations to defend the safety of their products in public.

    In one instance, TikTok sponsored the National PTA and then internally boasted about its ability to influence the child-focused organization. Per the filing, TikTok officials said the PTA would “do whatever we want going forward in the fall… (t)hey’ll announce things publicly(,), (t)heir CEO will do press statements for us.”

    By and large, however, the allegations against the other social media platforms are less detailed than those against Meta. The internal documents cited by the plaintiffs allege:

    Meta’s Stone disputed these allegations, saying the company’s teen safety measures are effective and that the company’s current policy is to remove accounts as soon as they are flagged for sex trafficking. 

    He said the suit misrepresents its efforts to build safety features for teens and parents, and called its safety work “broadly effective.” 

    “We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions,” Stone said.

    The underlying Meta documents cited in the filing are not public, and Meta has filed a motion to strike the documents. Stone said the objection was to the over-broad nature of what plaintiffs are seeking to unseal, not unsealing in its entirety.

    A hearing regarding the filing is set for January 26 in Northern California District Court.

    (Reporting by Jeff Horwitz in San Francisco; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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    Reuters

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  • Australia is adding Twitch to its social media ban for children

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    The breadth and reach of Australia’s grows as livestream platform Twitch has now been added to the list of banned platforms for users under 16 years of age. The nationwide ban is the first of its kind and encompasses Facebook, X, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and recently .

    According to the , Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said Twitch had been included because it was “a platform most commonly used for livestreaming or posting content that enables users, including Australian children, to interact with others in relation to the content posted.”

    No other platforms are expected to be added before the law goes into effect next month. Grant also said on Friday that Pinterest would not be included in the ban because the core purpose of the platform was not online social interaction.

    Under the ban, platforms are expected to take “reasonable steps” to prevent underage users from accessing their platforms, and face steep fees for failure to comply. While may provide a workaround in some instances, the law still creates an enormous barrier to entry for users under 16.

    Earlier this month, its lawmakers had reached a bipartisan agreement to enact a similar ban for users under 15, though details were scarce. In the US, several states have attempted to enact such a ban including and , though these measures either failed to pass or are held up in court. Even laws that don’t go as far, such as requiring parents to grant permission for teens to open social media accounts, are facing stiff opposition on First Amendment grounds.

    Concern around minors’ social media in the zeitgeist as surrounding the these platforms have on their youngest users.

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    Andre Revilla

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  • France moves against Musk’s Grok chatbot after Holocaust denial claims

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    PARIS — France’s government is taking action against artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, which was launched by a company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, after it generated French-language posts that questioned the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz and listed Jewish public figures, officials said.

    Grok, built by Musk company xAI and integrated into his social media platform X, said in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.

    The Auschwitz Memorial highlighted the exchange on X, and said that the response distorted historical fact and violated the platform’s rules.

    As of this week, Grok’s responses to questions about Auschwitz appear to give historically accurate information.

    Grok has a history of making antisemitic comments. Earlier this year, Musk’s company took down posts from the chatbot that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler after complaints about antisemitic content.

    The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that the Holocaust-denial comments have been added to an existing cybercrime investigation into X. The case was opened earlier this year after French officials raised concerns that the platform’s algorithm could be used for foreign interference.

    Prosecutors said that Grok’s remarks are now part of the investigation, and that “the functioning of the AI will be examined.”

    France has one of Europe’s toughest Holocaust denial laws. Contesting the reality or genocidal nature of Nazi crimes can be prosecuted as a crime, alongside other forms of incitement to racial hatred.

    Several French ministers, including Industry Minister Roland Lescure, have also reported Grok’s posts to the Paris prosecutor under a provision that requires public officials to flag possible crimes. In a government statement, they described the AI-generated content as “manifestly illicit,” saying it could amount to racially motivated defamation and the denial of crimes against humanity.

    French authorities referred the posts to a national police platform for illegal online content and alerted France’s digital regulator over suspected breaches of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.

    The case adds to pressure from Brussels. This week, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, said that the bloc is in contact with X about Grok and called some of the chatbot’s output “appalling,” saying it runs against Europe’s fundamental rights and values.

    Two French rights groups, the Ligue des droits de l’Homme and SOS Racisme, have filed a criminal complaint accusing Grok and X of contesting crimes against humanity.

    X and its AI unit, xAI, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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  • NFL coach mocks Trump: ‘He has no idea what’s going on’

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    Dave Toub, a special teams coach for the Kansas City Chiefs, mocked President Donald Trump in a recent viral clip, following Trump’s criticism of the new kickoff rule.

    “He has no idea what’s going on,” Toub said.

    Newsweek has contacted the White House and the Kansas City Chiefs for comment outside of regular working hours via email.

    Why It Matters

    The NFL brought in a new dynamic kickoff rule last season, and this rule has now been made permanent.

    The rule seeks to make kickoffs, which have long been one of the most dangerous plays in the game, safer. Under the old rules, the team kicking began at their 35-yard line and attempted to kick the ball as far downfield as possible, while the receiving team tries to move the ball up the field as far as they can. The two teams running at each other at top speed means that collisions can occur, and these can potentially be disastrous.

    Under the new rule, the ball is still kicked from the team’s 35-yard line. However, every player on the team that is kicking, aside from the kicker themselves, now lines up with one foot at least on the 40-yard line of the returning team, and players must wait to move until the ball either hits the ground or is touched by a returner inside of the 20-yard line.

    The president posted on Truth Social in September and urged the NFL to get rid of the rule, which he described as “ridiculous looking” and said it was “at least as dangerous” as the old version.

    What To Know

    During a press conference on Thursday, a clip of which has been shared by the official account for the radio station, Sports Radio 810 on X and viewed over 240,000 times, Toub responded to Trump’s criticism of the kickoff rules.

    Loading twitter content…

    “He doesn’t even know what he’s looking at. He has no idea what’s going on with the kickoff rule. So take that for what it’s worth,” Toub said.

    “And I hope he hears it,” Toub added.

    The league has mostly been pleased with the kickoff rule. It led to the rate of kickoff returns increasing from a record-low 21.8 percent in 2023 to 32.8 percent last season, and reduced the rate of injuries on what had been the game’s most dangerous play.

    The league has said the rate of concussions dropped 43 percent on returns, with a significant reduction as well in lower-body injuries.

    Trump, though, is nonplussed. In September, he described the rule as “the exact opposite of what football is all about,” and dubbed it “Sissy’ football.”

    What People Are Saying

    President Donald Trump, in a post on Truth Social in September: “’Sissy’ football is bad for America, and bad for the NFL! Who comes up with these ridiculous ideas? It’s like wanting to ‘roll back’ the golf ball so it doesn’t go (nearly!) as far. Fortunately, college football will remain the same, hopefully forever!!”

    One social media user wrote on X, in response to Toub’s remarks: “Like most fans, Trump might not know the technical details of the KO the way an NFL coach should, but I think he voiced what NFL fans are feeling about the KO—it sucks and is weird. Dave Toub, why act like such an arrogant tool?”

    Another social media user wrote on X: “I’m now a big fan of Dave Toub.”

    What’s Next

    The president is yet to respond to Toub’s remarks.

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  • Australia Adds Amazon’s Twitch to Teen Social Media Ban, Spares Pinterest

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    SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s internet watchdog on Friday said it would include Amazon.com-owned live streaming service Twitch in its upcoming teen social media ban, but will not add image-sharing platform Pinterest to the list.

    From December 10, Australia will become the world’s first country to bar people aged 16 years and under from using social media, with penalties up to A$49.5 million ($32 million) for companies that fail to take “reasonable steps” to comply.

    ($1 = 1.5494 Australian dollars)

    (Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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    Reuters

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  • Meta gives Australian kids 2-week warning to delete accounts as world-first social media age restrictions loom

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    Melbourne, Australia — Technology giant Meta on Thursday began sending thousands of young Australians a two-week warning to downland their digital histories and delete their accounts from Facebook, Instagram and Threads before a world-first social media ban on accounts of children younger than 16 takes effect.

    The Australian government announced two weeks ago that the three Meta platforms plus Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube must take reasonable steps to exclude Australian account holders younger than 16, beginning Dec. 10.

    California-based Meta on Thursday became the first of the targeted tech companies to outline how it will comply with the law. Meta contacted thousands of young account holders via SMS and email to warn that suspected children will start to be denied access to the platforms from Dec. 4.

    “We will start notifying impacted teens today to give them the opportunity to save their contacts and memories,” Meta said in a statement.

    Meta said young users could also use the notice period to update their contact information “so we can get in touch and help them regain access once they turn 16.”

    Meta has estimated there are 350,000 Australians aged 13-to-15 on Instagram and 150,000 in that age bracket on Facebook. Australia’s population is 28 million.

    Account holders 16-years-old and older who were mistakenly given notice that they would be excluded can contact Yoti Age Verification and verify their age by providing government-issued identity documents or a “video selfie,” Meta said.

    Terry Flew, co-director of Sydney University’s Center for AI, Trust and Governance, said such facial-recognition technology had a failure rate of at least 5%.

    “In the absence of a government-mandated ID system, we’re always looking at second-best solutions around these things,” Flew told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

    The government has warned platforms that demanding that all account holders prove they are older than 15 would be an unreasonable response to the new age restrictions. The government maintains the platforms already had sufficient data about many account holders to ascertain they were not young children.

    Social media companies will face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars (about $33 million) if they are found to be failing to prevent people under 16 from creating accounts on their platforms.

    Meta’s vice president and global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said she would prefer that app stores including Apple App Store and Google Play collect the age information when a user signs up and verifies they are at least 16 year old for app operators such as Facebook and Instagram.

    “We believe a better approach is required: a standard, more accurate, and privacy-preserving system, such as OS/app store-level age verification,” Davis said in a statement.

    “This combined with our investments in ongoing efforts to assure age … offers a more comprehensive protection for young people online,” she added.

    Dany Elachi, founder of the parents’ group Heaps Up Alliance that lobbied for the social media age restriction, said parents should start helping their children plan on how they will spend the hours currently absorbed by social media.

    He was critical of the government’s only announcing on the complete list of platforms that will become age-restricted on Nov. 5.

    “There are aspects of the legislation that we’re not entirely supportive of, but the principle that children under the age of 16 are better off in the real world, that’s something we advocated for and are in favor of,” Elachi said. “When everybody misses out, nobody misses out. That’s the theory. Certainly we expect that it would play out that way. We hope parents are going to be very positive about this and try to help their children see all the potential possibilities that are now open to them.”

    There was significant resistance to the legislation last year, however, including from  some children’s advocacy groups.

    The CEO of the Save the Children charity Mat Tinkler said in a statement a year ago, when the ban was approved by Australian lawmakers, that while he welcomed the government’s efforts to protect children from harm online, the solution should be regulating social media companies, rather than a blanket ban.

    He said the government should “instead use the momentum of this moment to hold the social media giants to account, to demand that they embed safety into their platforms rather than adding it as an afterthought, and to work closely with experts and children and young people themselves to make online spaces safer, as opposed to off-limits.”

    The Australian Human Rights Commission, an independent government body, also expressed “serious reservations” over the law before it was approved, saying last year that there were “less restrictive alternatives available that could achieve the aim of protecting children and young people from online harms, but without having such a significant negative impact on other human rights. One example of an alternative response would be to place a legal duty of care on social media companies.”

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  • This 26-year-old was laid off from his ‘dream job’ at PwC building AI agents. He’s worried the tech he built has led to more job cuts | Fortune

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    Titans of industry like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Intel have all been slashing staff, and employees are hand-wringing about being next on the chopping block. Donald King, a 26-year-old who built AI agents for PwC, never thought he’d be the next one out the door—but he soon realized why consultants are called “hatchet-men.”

    After graduating with a degree in finance from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, King landed a job at one of the “Big Four” consulting giants: PwC. He packed his bags and moved to New York to start his role as an associate in technology consulting, working with major clients, including Oracle, during his first year. But everything changed when PwC announced a $1 billion investment in AI; King was already intrigued by the tech, so he pitched himself to join the company’s AI factory team. Working 60 to 80 hours a week, he immersed himself in the tech, even throwing knowledge-sharing AI agent block parties within the firm that drew up to 250 participants. King logged a ton of hours—sometimes at the expense of his weekends—but was confident he was excelling in his role as a product manager and data scientist.

    “I was coding and managing a team onshore and offshore. It was crazy, it’s like, ‘Give this 24-year-old millions of dollars of salary spent per month to build AI agents for Fortune 500 [companies],’” King tells Fortune. “[It was] my dream job…I won first place in this OpenAI hackathon across the entire firm.”

    Although King was proving himself as a key AI talent for PwC, he did begin to question the impact of his work. The AI agents King was building for major corporations could undoubtedly automate swaths of human roles—perhaps even entire job departments. One Microsoft Teams agent his group created mimicked an actual person, and King was a little spooked. 

    “We had a late night call with all the boys that are building this thing, like, ‘What the hell are we building right now?’” King says. “Just saying ‘Treat them like humans’ is probably not the best way to think about it.”

    Behind the scenes, a layoff was brewing—but this time, for King. In October 2024, just eight months into his final role at PwC, the Gen Zer presented his winning project from the OpenAI hackathon: a fleet of AI agents that automated manual tasks. King was proud and felt confident in his place at the firm, but two hours later, PwC called King to inform him he was being laid off. The 26-year-old recorded the meeting and posted it on TikTok, raking up more than 75,000 likes and 2.1 million views. Commenters under his videos expressed shock that King would be let go after winning the hackathon.

    “I thought I was safe, especially after I won first place,” King says. “I just got a little blindsided.”

    King clarifies he doesn’t think there were any “nefarious” intentions behind his layoff, reasoning he was likely a random staffer dismissed after the firm had overhired in previous years. However, he does connect the dots between the AI agents he built for PwC customers and the layoffs that soon ensued at those client companies. 

    Fortune reached out to PwC for comment. 

    King believes his AI agents may have been connected to layoffs 

    While King doesn’t believe his former role at PwC was automated, he recognizes that the AI agents he built likely had an impact on others. The year after his layoff, King observed that some of the Fortune 500 clients he served were implementing staffing cuts. Those AI agents he helped create may have had a hand in the layoffs. 

    “It’s 100% connected,” King says. “I knew that consulting was a hatchet-man type job, I knew you’re going in to potentially lay people off, but I didn’t think it was going to be like this.”

    While King believes AI agents are akin to the reasoning power of a five-year-old, they still know “all the corpus of information in the world” and can automate mundane tasks. Oftentimes, that means entry-level jobs are most at risk of being disrupted. 

    “It’s automating tasks, 100%, those are gone,” King says. “If your job is doing those menial types of things, if you’re just emailing a spreadsheet back and forth, you can kiss your job goodbye.”

    Pivoting to his new life purpose: founding a marketing agency 

    While being on PwC’s AI team may have once been his dream job, the layoff didn’t crush his spirit. 

    “I’m grateful for it happening…It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but then it turned into the best thing,” King says. “Overall, [I’m] very grateful that I got laid off.”

    In the aftermath of being let go, King says he was inundated with job offers from major tech companies to join their AI operations. However, the scrappy young entrepreneur sidelined the idea of returning to a nine-to-five gig; instead, King started his own marketing agency, AMDK. The business officially launched in December last year, less than two months after being laid off from PwC. 

    So far, King says AMDK has roped in clients ranging from small companies to billion-dollar enterprises, many of whom are looking for AI agents of their own. His end goal is to build a swarm of agents that help companies with their back ends—but after his experience on PwC’s AI team, he says he’s being cautious about the ramifications of his creations. He’s still learning the ropes of entrepreneurship, but wouldn’t trade the highs and lows for a salaried corporate job.

    “This is my purpose in life, versus this is someone else’s purpose,” King says. “[I’m] way happier.”

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    Emma Burleigh

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  • Meta prevails in historic FTC antitrust case, won’t have to break off WhatsApp, Instagram

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Meta has prevailed over an existential challenge to its business that could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp after a judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.

    U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued his ruling Tuesday after the historic antitrust trial wrapped up in late May. His decision runs in sharp contrast to two separate rulings that branded Google an illegal monopoly in both search and online advertising, dealing regulatory blows to the tech industry that for years enjoyed nearly unbridled growth.

    The Federal Trade Commission “continues to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set, and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions,” Boasberg wrote in his ruling. “Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now. The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so.”

    The federal agency had argued that Meta maintained a monopoly by pursuing an expression CEO Mark Zuckerberg made in 2008: “‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats.”

    During his April testimony, Zuckerberg pushed back against claims that Facebook bought Instagram to neutralize a threat. In his line of questioning, FTC attorney Daniel Matheson repeatedly brought up emails — many of them more than a decade old — written by Zuckerberg and his associates before and after the acquisition of Instagram.

    While acknowledging the documents, Zuckerberg has often sought to downplay the contents, saying he wrote the emails early in the acquisition process and that the notes did not fully capture the scope of his interest in the company. But the case was not about the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago, which the FTC approved at the time, but about whether Meta holds a monopoly now. Prosecutors, Boasberg wrote in the ruling, could only win if they proved “current or imminent legal violation.”

    The FTC’s complaint said Facebook also enacted policies designed to make it difficult for smaller rivals to enter the market and “neutralize perceived competitive threats,” just as the world shifted its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.

    Meta said Tuesday’s decision “recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition.”

    “Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America,” said Jennifer Newstead, chief legal officer, in a statement.

    The social media landscape has changed so much since the FTC filed its lawsuit in 2020, Boasberg wrote, that each time the court examined Meta’s apps and competition, they changed. Two opinions to dismiss the case — filed in 2021 and 2022 — didn’t even mention popular social video platform TikTok. Today, it “holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival.”

    Quoting the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “that no man can ever step into the same river twice,” Boasberg said the same is true for the online world of social media as well.

    “The landscape that existed only five years ago when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly. While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social networking and social media, that wall has since broken down,” he wrote.

    Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley said Meta’s win “is not necessarily surprising considering the lengths it’s gone to in recent years to keep up with TikTok.”

    “But from a regulatory standpoint, Meta is far from out of the woods: next year, major social networks will face landmark trials in the US regarding children’s mental health,” she added. “Still, today’s win is surely a boost for the company as it battles criticism and questions over how its massive AI spending will ultimately benefit Meta in the long run.”

    Facebook bought Instagram — then a scrappy photo-sharing app with no ads and a small cult following — in 2012. The $1 billion cash and stock purchase price was eye-popping at the time, though the deal’s value fell to $750 million after Facebook’s stock price dipped following its initial public offering in May 2012.

    Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Up until then, Facebook was known for smaller “acqui-hires” — a type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion.

    WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged. However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp.

    Investors didn’t appear surprised at the ruling. Shares of the Menlo Park, California-based company were down $1.52 at $600.49 in afternoon trading Tuesday, in line with broader market trends.

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  • Meta alerts young Australians to download their data before a social media ban

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    MELBOURNE, Australia — Technology giant Meta on Thursday began sending thousands of young Australians a two-week warning to downland their digital histories and delete their accounts from Facebook, Instagram and Threads before a world-first social media ban on accounts of children younger than 16 takes effect.

    The Australian government announced two weeks ago that the three Meta platforms plus Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube must take reasonable steps to exclude Australian account holders younger than 16, beginning Dec. 10.

    California-based Meta on Thursday became the first of the targeted tech companies to outline how it will comply with the law. Meta contacted thousands of young account holders via SMS and email to warn that suspected children will start to be denied access to the platforms from Dec. 4.

    “We will start notifying impacted teens today to give them the opportunity to save their contacts and memories,” Meta said in a statement.

    Meta said young users could also use the notice period to update their contact information “so we can get in touch and help them regain access once they turn 16.”

    Meta has estimated there are 350,000 Australians aged 13-to-15 on Instagram and 150,000 in that age bracket on Facebook. Australia’s population is 28 million.

    Account holders 16-years-old and older who were mistakenly given notice that they would be excluded can contact Yoti Age Verification and verify their age by providing government-issued identity documents or a “video selfie,” Meta said.

    Terry Flew, co-director of Sydney University’s Center for AI, Trust and Governance, said such facial-recognition technology had a failure rate of at least 5%.

    “In the absence of a government-mandated ID system, we’re always looking at second-best solutions around these things,” Flew told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

    The government has warned platforms that demanding that all account holders prove they are older than 15 would be an unreasonable response to the new age restrictions. The government maintains the platforms already had sufficient data about many account holders to ascertain they were not young children.

    Failure to take reasonable steps to exclude young children could earn platforms fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($32 million).

    Meta’s vice president and global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said she would prefer that app stores including Apple App Store and Google Play collect the age information when a user signs up and verifies they are at least 16 year old for app operators such as Facebook and Instagram.

    “We believe a better approach is required: a standard, more accurate, and privacy-preserving system, such as OS/app store-level age verification,” Davis said in a statement.

    “This combined with our investments in ongoing efforts to assure age … offers a more comprehensive protection for young people online,” she added.

    Dany Elachi, founder of the parents’ group Heaps Up Alliance that lobbied for the social media age restriction, said parents should start helping their children plan on how they will spend the hours currently absorbed by social media.

    He was critical of the government’s only announcing on the complete list of platforms that will become age-restricted on Nov. 5.

    “There are aspects of the legislation that we’re not entirely supportive of, but the principle that children under the age of 16 are better off in the real world, that’s something we advocated for and are in favor of,” Elachi said.

    “When everybody misses out, nobody misses out. That’s the theory. Certainly we expect that it would play out that way. We hope parents are going to be very positive about this and try to help their children see all the potential possibilities that are now open to them,” he added.

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  • Sentence doubled for man who pled guilty to assault after hair salon tirade

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    Great Clips on Mission Gorge Road in Santee. (File photo courtesy of Google Street View)

    A man who hurled merchandise while cursing at employees and customers inside a Santee hair salon was sentenced Tuesday to six years in state prison.

    August Marriott, 28, was seen in cell phone video becoming irate with workers at the Great Clips salon on Mission Gorge Road in January.

    Sheriff’s officials said Marriott became angry upon arriving at Great Clips after a staffer pointed out that he was late for his appointment.

    In the footage posted to various social-media platforms, Marriott can be seen vandalizing the business, threatening employees and throwing shampoo bottles. One person suffered minor injuries, sheriff’s Sgt. Stephen Chambers said.

    Marriott left the salon prior to the arrival of deputies, but was arrested later. Investigators subsequently identified him as the perpetrator “thanks to many tips from the public,” the sergeant said.

    He initially bailed out of jail, but was arrested in Florida and has remained in county jail since he failed to make a court appearance, law enforcement officials said.

    He pleaded guilty earlier this year to an assault count stemming from the hair salon incident and admitted to having a prior strike conviction, which resulted in his sentence being doubled.


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  • Meta prevails in historic FTC antitrust case, won’t have to break off WhatsApp, Instagram

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    Meta has prevailed over an existential challenge to its business that could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp after a judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.

    U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued his ruling Tuesday after the historic antitrust trial wrapped up in late May. His decision follows two separate rulings that branded Google an illegal monopoly in both search and online advertising, dealing yet another regulatory blow to the tech industry that for years enjoyed nearly unbridled growth.

    The Federal Trade Commission “continues to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set, and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions,” Boasberg wrote in his ruling. “Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now. The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so.”

    Meta Platforms Inc., the FTC had argued, has maintained a monopoly by pursuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy, “expressed in 2008: ‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats.”

    During his April testimony, Zuckerberg pushed back against the FTC’s contention that Facebook bought Instagram to neutralize a threat. In his line of questioning, FTC attorney Daniel Matheson repeatedly brought up emails — many of them more than a decade old — written by Zuckerberg and his associates before and after the acquisition of Instagram.

    While acknowledging the documents, Zuckerberg has often sought to downplay the contents, saying he wrote them in the early stages of considering the acquisition and that what he wrote at the time didn’t capture the full scope of his interest in the company. But the case was not about the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago, which the FTC approved at the time, but about whether Meta holds a monopoly now. The FTC, Boasberg wrote in the ruling, could only win if it proved “current or imminent legal violation.”

    The FTC’s complaint said Facebook also enacted policies designed to make it difficult for smaller rivals to enter the market and “neutralize perceived competitive threats,” just as the world shifted its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.

    Meta said Tuesday’s decision “recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition.”

    “Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America,” the Menlo Park, California-based company said in a statement.

    The social media landscape has changed so much since the FTC filed its lawsuit in 2020, Boasberg wrote, that each time the court examined Meta’s apps and competition, they changed. Two opinions to dismiss the case — filed in 2021 and 2022 — didn’t even mention popular social video platform TikTok. Today, it “holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival.”

    Quoting the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “that no man can ever step into the same river twice,” Boasberg said the same is true for the online world of social media as well.

    “The landscape that existed only five years ago when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly. While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social networking and social media, that wall has since broken down,” he wrote.

    Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley said Meta’s win “is not necessarily surprising considering the lengths it’s gone to in recent years to keep up with TikTok.”

    “But from a regulatory standpoint, Meta is far from out of the woods: next year, major social networks will face landmark trials in the US regarding children’s mental health,” she added. “Still, today’s win is surely a boost for the company as it battles criticism and questions over how its massive AI spending will ultimately benefit Meta in the long run.”

    Facebook bought Instagram — then a scrappy photo-sharing app with no ads and a small cult following — in 2012. The $1 billion cash and stock purchase price was eye-popping at the time, though the deal’s value fell to $750 million after Facebook’s stock price dipped following its initial public offering in May 2012.

    Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Up until then, Facebook was known for smaller “acqui-hires” — a type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion.

    WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged. However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp.

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  • Denver officials defend use of bleach on unlicensed taco vendor’s food

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    Denver health officials defended an inspector’s decision to pour bleach into an unlicensed taco vendor’s food over the weekend, after a video of the incident spread on social media.

    Two Denver health inspectors approached a table operated by Tacos Tacolorado near the intersection of Evans Avenue and Colorado Boulevard on Saturday evening. Health officials had previously cited the vendor and thrown out its food for failing to follow various food safety rules, according to inspection reports reviewed by The Denver Post. When inspectors approached Saturday, the vendor placed some food into the back of a truck so it couldn’t be disposed of, prompting one health inspector to pour bleach into the remaining food, according to Emily Williams, spokeswoman for the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

    The incident was caught on video, showing the inspector dumping the chemical into plastic containers of food on a tablecloth-covered table.

    Though uncommon, using bleach to intentionally contaminate food is a tool inspectors use to ensure food can’t be served, said Danica Lee, Denver’s director of public health investigations.

    “It is a tool that we use not really often, because we prefer to use different methods, but from time to time, it is necessary,” she said.

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    Seth Klamann

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  • 10 AI Tools Marketers Are Using Right Now

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    Who doesn’t want to be more efficient? That’s why millions of Americans are turning to AI at the office. Over the past year, the share of U.S. workers using AI tools as part of their job doubled to 40 percent, according to a Gallup poll published in June.

    That number gets even higher for the marketing industry. By one measure, 61 percent of creative and marketing professionals use AI for their work, including analytics, content creation, strategy, and planning. Another poll found that 76 percent of marketers employ AI tools.

    For those marketers searching for the most effective AI tools to incorporate into their daily work flow, Inc. surveyed marketing-focused founders and their chief marketing officers. Here are the models and platforms they cannot live without.

    1. ChatGPT

    Unsurprisingly, one of the most frequently cited tools was ChatGPT. Founders and chief marketing officers rely on the LLM for daily tasks, including brainstorming, market research, data analysis, strategy development, and content creation. One chief marketing officer trained a custom GPT to become their chief of staff. Another says they use ChatGPT to formulate step-by-step guides when learning how to use other AI tools. 

    With a team of less than 10 people, Sophie Mann, chief marketing officer of Furnished Finder, an online marketplace for furnished rental properties, uses ChatGPT as both her executive assistant and copywriter. Mann taps the LLM to help her draft board updates, structure meeting agendas, write performance reviews, and negotiate partner contracts. Without a full-time copywriter on staff, Mann also built a custom GPT, which is trained on Furnished Finder’s brand voice and customer personas, to write content.

    “It’s now the starting point for nearly every marketing asset. From email campaigns, social captions, blog posts, and paid ads, to event collateral and even voice-over scripts for our phone lines. You name it. We’re likely starting our drafts in Chat,” says Mann. “ These tools help us scale our output without adding headcount. Reading through 1,000+ customer survey responses, for example, used to take hours. Now, I can have AI summarize key themes and insights in under a minute.” 

    2. Descript

    For creators and founders building in public through video, whether it’s TikTok or podcasts, Descript has become a go-to tool to make editing easier and faster. The AI-powered video editing platform, which landed on Fast Company’s list of Most Innovative Companies this year, creates transcripts from raw video and lets users edit through a text document by deleting words, phrases, or entire chunks. Last year, Descript added new AI capabilities, which automatically remove filler words, repeated words, bad takes, and background noise. 

    Overall, the company claims their tool enables users to make “130 percent more videos in 27 percent less time” and “first-time users were 25 percent more likely to complete their project,” Fast Company reported earlier this year. 

    3. OpusClip

    Many of the founders who use Descript also use OpusClip, an AI-powered video editing software that helps users cut down longer videos, such as hour-long podcast interviews, into a series of shorter clips for social media. Within two years of launching, the company has scaled to more than 12 million users and become a favorite of social media managers. 

    Shana Ayabe, founder of the marketing company Grace Digital Media and co-host of the podcast “The Exit Interview,” calls the tool a game changer. Opus Clip “allows us to quickly edit, reformat from landscape to vertical, and add dynamic captions while maintaining high production quality,” says Ayabe, who uses the paid version so her team can collaborate in real-time on the platform, “hearting” and commenting on different clips. “The built-in virality scoring system helps us understand why a clip is likely to perform well, so we can strategically schedule posts around traffic patterns and trends.”

    4. Perplexity

    ChatGPT is not the only LLM that marketers use. In fact, most of the founders and CMOs that spoke with Inc. use multiple different models, depending on the task. Perplexity was the tool of choice when it came to research, including analyzing documents and data sets.

    Denise Aguilar, a global marketing strategist and founder of her eponymous Seattle-based company, Denise Aguilar Consulting, used the paid version of Perplexity and says the LLM has streamlined her workflow, allowing her to take on more ambitious projects for her clients. 

    “The upgraded features, such as advanced file handling, faster processing, and priority support, have enabled me to work with large sets of PDFs and rapidly search, organize, and synthesize information,” says Aguilar, who has worked with companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, General Motors, and Vogue. “Investing in the Pro version has definitely raised my efficiency, especially when refining communications strategies, building personas, and editing across multiple marketing campaigns.”

    5. Midjourney

    Midjourney, an AI-powered image generation tool, is being sued by a collection of visual artists and the major Hollywood studio Warner Bros for copyright infringement, but marketers, especially those who work in the creative side of advertising, still say the tool is helpful for developing concept art and mock ups. To avoid any legal issues, be careful to restrict any images to internal and exploratory use only.

    6. Lovable

    Marketers have joined the vibe coding trend and started developing their own software by telling AI tools what they want to create, rather than writing code themselves. Many founders and CMOs prefer to use Lovable. The platform has become so popular that it became a unicorn within eight months of launching and has attracted nearly 8 million users. Inc. AI reporter Ben Sherry used the free version to create an entire website in an hour. Marketers tend to opt for the paid version and say the tool is especially helpful for creating prototypes of client websites and apps.

    Maria Pergolino, chief marketing officer of SPS Commerce, a Minneapolis-based software company that helps retail partners optimize supply chain operations, says Lovable has been “transformative” for her work flow. 

    “No longer do you need to awkwardly describe your vision for an app, ad, slide or campaign. Instead you can describe your vision to an LLM and pop the directions into Lovable to bring your ideas to life,” says Pergolino. “This saves me hours every week.”

    7. Claude

    If Perplexity has become the researcher and ChatGPT has become the catch-all for marketers, Claude has become the go-to LLM for writing. Founders and CMOs say the model excels as a place for brainstorming, storytelling, and testing out ideas or phrases. 

    Patrick Finan, the co-founder and CEO of Block Club, a branding, strategy, and content agency for B2B technology companies based in Brooklyn, says Claude is the main LLM that he and his team use. “It’s fully integrated into Slack, Gmail, Google Workspace, Google Calendar,” he says.  

    8. Gamma

    For help making presentations, marketers have turned to Gamma as the PowerPoint of the AI era. The AI-powered platform takes text, such as documents or outlines, and transforms them into a slide presentation with one prompt. Using this same method, Gamma also lets users create polished-looking PDF documents, social media assets, and websites. 

    Within two years of launching the San Francisco-based startup has attracted 50 million users, Fast Company reported earlier this year. Founders who spoke with Inc. recommended the paid version.

    9. AirOps

    “Marketers are losing their minds” trying to optimize their existing SEO strategy for the new era of AI search, Andy Crestodina, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media Studios, a Chicago-based digital agency that focuses on web development and website optimization, told Inc. recently. AirOps has helped streamline that process, founders and CMOs say.

    The company, which secured a $40 million Series B fundraising round earlier this month, calls itself the first content engineering platform for AI search. Marketers say the platform makes their AI optimization strategy more efficient. 

    Leah Taylor, who runs communications for the AI sales platform Apollo, says Apollo has embedded the AirOps AI infrastructure into its core marketing operations to automate performance reporting and identify new revenue opportunities. “AirOps ingests our first-party data across notes, OKRs, experiment logs, and Slack, then uses enterprise LLMs to analyze and publish insights,” says Taylor.

    Since WebFlow, a no-code website experience platform, started using AirOps, the company increased its visibility on AI search with more than 330 new citations and a 24 percent uptick in SEO impressions, says chief marketing officer Dave Steer. AirOps has also increased revenue, turbocharging AI-attributed signups jumping from the low single digits to nearly 10 percent.

    10. Gemini 

    Marketers that are incorporating LLMs into their daily workflow also name-checked Gemini. 

    While Doug Straton, chief marketing officer at Bazaarvoice, an Austin-based software platform that helps brands harness user-generated content, ratings, and reviews, calls ChatGPT the “easiest and most fun” LLM to use, he usually turns to Gemini instead for its repeatability and reliability.  

    “I find Gemini, while harder to brief, creates more uniform, consistent results. It’s my company’s default,” says Straton, who uses the paid version. “It seems less eager to please you with a result you want to see, versus what you need to see.”

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    Ali Donaldson

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  • Police warn of dangerous TikTok ‘door-kicking’ challenge

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    Police in Pennsylvania are warning residents about a viral TikTok challenge where kids record themselves kicking in the front doors of people’s homes. Similar instances of door-kicking have been reported in other states.In Pennsylvania, Multiple police departments in the Susquehanna Valley have reported these incidents. The Lower Swatara Township Police Department said officers responded to a report of disorderly juveniles just before 3 a.m. on Sunday. Police reviewed video camera footage, which showed one juvenile kicking in a front door while recording on her phone before running off with two other juveniles. Watch: Ring camera footage of the incident Officers walked through the neighborhood and spoke to several residents who said the same incident had happened to them. Anyone who recognizes the individuals in this video is asked to contact Lower Swatara Township police. Police said this incident is likely related to a viral TikTok trend where kids are kicking in the front doors of people’s homes, warning that this challenge is very dangerous. Adams County Crime Stoppers reported a similar “door-kicking” incident where a male kicked the front door of a home in McSherrystown Borough, Pennsylvania, multiple times the night of Halloween, Oct. 31. Authorities said the male fled with two other individuals after causing damage to the door. Police released a photo of the male suspect. KCRA reports that police in the Sacramento, California, area have warned residents of an uptick in cases of kids kicking the front doors of strangers’ homes. In Baltimore, WBAL reported that two teenagers were arrested while carrying out the trend in July.In September, a “ding-dong ditch” prank in Houston, Texas, resulted in the death of an 11-year-old boy when the homeowner exited the house and shot him.Anyone who experiences similar activity at their home is advised to call the police immediately.

    Police in Pennsylvania are warning residents about a viral TikTok challenge where kids record themselves kicking in the front doors of people’s homes.

    Similar instances of door-kicking have been reported in other states.

    In Pennsylvania, Multiple police departments in the Susquehanna Valley have reported these incidents.

    The Lower Swatara Township Police Department said officers responded to a report of disorderly juveniles just before 3 a.m. on Sunday.

    Police reviewed video camera footage, which showed one juvenile kicking in a front door while recording on her phone before running off with two other juveniles.

    Watch: Ring camera footage of the incident

    Officers walked through the neighborhood and spoke to several residents who said the same incident had happened to them. Anyone who recognizes the individuals in this video is asked to contact Lower Swatara Township police.

    Police said this incident is likely related to a viral TikTok trend where kids are kicking in the front doors of people’s homes, warning that this challenge is very dangerous.

    Adams County Crime Stoppers reported a similar “door-kicking” incident where a male kicked the front door of a home in McSherrystown Borough, Pennsylvania, multiple times the night of Halloween, Oct. 31.

    Authorities said the male fled with two other individuals after causing damage to the door. Police released a photo of the male suspect.

    KCRA reports that police in the Sacramento, California, area have warned residents of an uptick in cases of kids kicking the front doors of strangers’ homes.

    In Baltimore, WBAL reported that two teenagers were arrested while carrying out the trend in July.

    In September, a “ding-dong ditch” prank in Houston, Texas, resulted in the death of an 11-year-old boy when the homeowner exited the house and shot him.

    Anyone who experiences similar activity at their home is advised to call the police immediately.

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  • YouTuber Jack Doherty arrested for drug possession after blocking Miami Beach traffic for social media video, police say

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    YouTuber and social media influencer Jack Doherty was arrested for drug possession and other charges in Miami Beach after he was found disrupting traffic to allegedly film social media content, police said.

    Miami Beach Police announced that the 22-year-old was taken into custody early Saturday on multiple charges, including possessing amphetamine and marijuana, along with resisting an officer without violence.

    “The Miami Beach Police Department remains steadfast in its commitment to maintain public safety and order throughout the city—regardless of celebrity status,” the agency said. “The Department will continue to take proactive enforcement action against behavior that endangers residents, visitors, or officers and will hold all individuals accountable under the law.”

    Later Saturday night, Doherty posted a TikTok video showing him bonding out of jail with the caption “I got arrested last night and now I’m free.”

    “I’m a free man, baby,” he said in the video, while holding the property bag that held his personal items at the time of his arrest. “Let’s go.”

    According to his bio on Delka Talents, his talent agency, Doherty has over 3.2 million YouTube subscribers and over 500 million YouTube views. Doherty is best known for filming “daredevil” stunts and pranks, and his most-watched video has over 18 million views as of March 2018, his bio said.

    CBS News Miami has reached out to Doherty’s representatives for comment on his arrest.

    An influencer blocks traffic for the sake of “content”

    Around 3:12 a.m. Saturday, Miami Beach Police officers were conducting a high-visibility detail along the 700 block of Washington Avenue within the city’s Entertainment District, when a group of individuals entered the roadway from the east sidewalk into the northbound lanes. A man from the group — later identified as Doherty — separated from them and attempted to engage officers to “create video content, positioning himself in the middle of the roadway with passing vehicular traffic and creating a significant safety hazard,” according to arrest documents obtained by CBS News Miami.

    Miami Beach Police officers began issuing multiple commands to direct Doherty to exit the roadway, but he refused. Even after his group urged him to comply, he continued refusing officers’ commands.

    Officers continued, warning Doherty that failure to comply would result in his arrest. Still, the influencer continued to refuse commands and told them, “Once I’m done with this bet,” the arrest documents said. At this moment, Miami Beach Police safely apprehended Doherty in the middle of the road due to his “deliberate refusal to follow lawful orders and continued to obstruct traffic.”

    According to arrest documents, while officers searched Doherty’s person, they found “half of an orange oval-shaped pill with 3 imprinted on it, consistent with a Schedule II amphetamine, as well as a black plastic container holding three hand-rolled suspected cannabis cigarettes weighing approximately 4.0 grams combined.”

    After a records check that showed no active warrants, officers took Doherty to Miami Beach Police’s holding facility for booking and contacted an after-hours attorney for charging guidance.

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    Hunter Geisel

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  • Influencer-fueled protein trends are reshaping everyday snacks and weight goals

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    New diets come and go often, but every now and then, some stick around. The latest: protein. Everyone seems to be looking for more ways to add it to their diet.From coffee shops to grocery stores, you couldn’t miss the promotion of protein even if you tried. But how much do you need? Doctors and nutritionists say it’s less than what social media might lead consumers to believe. Prioritizing protein isn’t new, but the number of people doing so is.”Things tend to go to an extreme at first,” said Kim Flannery, director of nutrition at the Wisconsin Athletic Club. “And I think that’s kind of where we are right now.”It’s everywhere, from social media influencers and now in coffee shops.For the first time, Starbucks added protein to its menu of drinks, even allowing customers to add it to their cold foam on top of their coffee.The trend has continued at the grocery store, too.Emilie Williamson with Metro Market said she’s seen a substantial increase in protein-filled snacks. “A big goal of ours is to meet shoppers where they’re at,” Williamson said.Walking down the aisle of your local grocery store, you will quickly find protein in many everyday snacks, like muffins, cereal, pretzels, chips, and even protein pastries.Dr. Lisa Morselli, assistant professor in the division of endocrinology at Froedtert Hospital in Wisconsin, said this is where she gets worried about the quality of the product.”These are all foods that are pretty processed,” Morselli said. “The protein snack marketing probably gives people license to snack without really paying attention to what they put in their mouth.”Morselli believes the trend has been influenced by social media.Morselli said those on GLP-1 weight loss medications need more protein in their diet for muscle gain.Separately, those looking to lose weight can find success in protein, too, according to Dr. Morselli.”Protein is involved in the control of hunger,” Morselli said.Morselli explains that protein-rich foods can make you feel full longer.Protein can also be great for balancing blood sugar levels. But for muscle gain or weight loss, protein isn’t a magic pill, either.”It’s not that if you take a higher protein, or if you have a higher protein intake, it will magically protect your muscles; you still need to exercise them,” Morselli said.Flannery said when talking to nutrition clients, she hopes to emphasize that protein is just one piece of the pie. “People tend to focus so much on the protein that they tend to lose the balance,” Flannery said.Flannery worries the trend of sharing personal protein goals could be going too far.”One number does not by any means apply to everyone,” Flannery said.Flannery said personal protein goals are different for everyone, with age, sex and activity levels all taken into consideration.According to the recommended dietary allowance, when calculating protein goals, the person should take .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight.For example, if the person weighs 150 pounds, a modest protein goal would be around 54 grams of protein.Arguably more importantly than any goal is the quality of protein the person is consuming.”A lot of the health problems that we have are due to the, all the processed foods,” Flannery reminds.A New York Times investigation in October found many popular protein powders and shakes contain dangerous levels of lead.Flannery said this is what worries her about the rise in protein snacks.”We’re just adding protein to junk food,” Flannery said.Flannery recommends getting protein from real foods like beans, tofu, meat, fish, and in some cases, pasta that can be healthy, too.”My opinion is that it’s better to eat real food and get your protein from real food,” Morselli agreed.

    New diets come and go often, but every now and then, some stick around. The latest: protein. Everyone seems to be looking for more ways to add it to their diet.

    From coffee shops to grocery stores, you couldn’t miss the promotion of protein even if you tried. But how much do you need?

    Doctors and nutritionists say it’s less than what social media might lead consumers to believe.

    Prioritizing protein isn’t new, but the number of people doing so is.

    “Things tend to go to an extreme at first,” said Kim Flannery, director of nutrition at the Wisconsin Athletic Club. “And I think that’s kind of where we are right now.”

    It’s everywhere, from social media influencers and now in coffee shops.

    For the first time, Starbucks added protein to its menu of drinks, even allowing customers to add it to their cold foam on top of their coffee.

    The trend has continued at the grocery store, too.

    Emilie Williamson with Metro Market said she’s seen a substantial increase in protein-filled snacks.

    “A big goal of ours is to meet shoppers where they’re at,” Williamson said.

    Walking down the aisle of your local grocery store, you will quickly find protein in many everyday snacks, like muffins, cereal, pretzels, chips, and even protein pastries.

    Dr. Lisa Morselli, assistant professor in the division of endocrinology at Froedtert Hospital in Wisconsin, said this is where she gets worried about the quality of the product.

    “These are all foods that are pretty processed,” Morselli said. “The protein snack marketing probably gives people license to snack without really paying attention to what they put in their mouth.”

    Morselli believes the trend has been influenced by social media.

    Morselli said those on GLP-1 weight loss medications need more protein in their diet for muscle gain.

    Separately, those looking to lose weight can find success in protein, too, according to Dr. Morselli.

    “Protein is involved in the control of hunger,” Morselli said.

    Morselli explains that protein-rich foods can make you feel full longer.

    Protein can also be great for balancing blood sugar levels. But for muscle gain or weight loss, protein isn’t a magic pill, either.

    “It’s not that if you take a higher protein, or if you have a higher protein intake, it will magically protect your muscles; you still need to exercise them,” Morselli said.

    Flannery said when talking to nutrition clients, she hopes to emphasize that protein is just one piece of the pie.

    “People tend to focus so much on the protein that they tend to lose the balance,” Flannery said.

    Flannery worries the trend of sharing personal protein goals could be going too far.

    “One number does not by any means apply to everyone,” Flannery said.

    Flannery said personal protein goals are different for everyone, with age, sex and activity levels all taken into consideration.

    According to the recommended dietary allowance, when calculating protein goals, the person should take .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight.

    For example, if the person weighs 150 pounds, a modest protein goal would be around 54 grams of protein.

    Arguably more importantly than any goal is the quality of protein the person is consuming.

    “A lot of the health problems that we have are due to the, all the processed foods,” Flannery reminds.

    A New York Times investigation in October found many popular protein powders and shakes contain dangerous levels of lead.

    Flannery said this is what worries her about the rise in protein snacks.

    “We’re just adding protein to junk food,” Flannery said.

    Flannery recommends getting protein from real foods like beans, tofu, meat, fish, and in some cases, pasta that can be healthy, too.

    “My opinion is that it’s better to eat real food and get your protein from real food,” Morselli agreed.

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  • YouTuber Jack Doherty arrested for drug possession after blocking Miami Beach traffic for social media video, police say

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    YouTuber and social media influencer Jack Doherty was arrested for drug possession and other charges in Miami Beach after he was found disrupting traffic to allegedly film social media content, police said.

    Miami Beach Police announced that the 22-year-old was taken into custody early Saturday on multiple charges, including possessing amphetamine and marijuana, along with resisting an officer without violence.

    “The Miami Beach Police Department remains steadfast in its commitment to maintain public safety and order throughout the city—regardless of celebrity status,” the agency said. “The Department will continue to take proactive enforcement action against behavior that endangers residents, visitors, or officers and will hold all individuals accountable under the law.”

    According to his bio on Delka Talents, his talent agency, Doherty has over 3.2 million YouTube subscribers and over 500 million YouTube views. Doherty is best known for filming “daredevil” stunts and pranks, and his most-watched video has over 18 million views as of March 2018, his bio said.

    CBS News Miami has reached out to Doherty’s representatives for comment on his arrest.   

    An influencer blocks traffic for the sake of “content”

    Around 3:12 a.m. Saturday, Miami Beach Police officers were conducting a high-visibility detail along the 700 block of Washington Avenue within the city’s Entertainment District, when a group of individuals entered the roadway from the east sidewalk into the northbound lanes. A man from the group — later identified as Doherty — separated from them and attempted to engage officers to “create video content, positioning himself in the middle of the roadway with passing vehicular traffic and creating a significant safety hazard,” according to arrest documents obtained by CBS News Miami.

    Miami Beach Police officers began issuing multiple commands to direct Doherty to exit the roadway, but he refused. Even after his group urged him to comply, he continued refusing officers’ commands.

    Officers continued, warning Doherty that failure to comply would result in his arrest. Still, the influencer continued to refuse commands and told them, “Once I’m done with this bet,” the arrest documents said. At this moment, Miami Beach Police safely apprehended Doherty in the middle of the road due to his “deliberate refusal to follow lawful orders and continued to obstruct traffic.”

    According to arrest documents, while officers searched Doherty’s person, they found “half of an orange oval-shaped pill with 3 imprinted on it, consistent with a Schedule II amphetamine, as well as a black plastic container holding three hand-rolled suspected cannabis cigarettes weighing approximately 4.0 grams combined.”

    After a records check that showed no active warrants, officers took Doherty to Miami Beach Police’s holding facility for booking and contacted an after-hours attorney for charging guidance.

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