Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[firestar464]

We are so fucked.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... r-BB1kS92F

[wjfox]

US TikTok ban would be 'devastating', UK firms warn

25 April 2024

A TikTok ban in the US could have a "potentially devastating" impact on some UK businesses, online traders are warning.

President Biden has signed into law a bill that gives TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to sell its stake in the app or it will be blocked in the US. TikTok has said it will challenge this in court.

Some 1.5 million UK businesses operate on the app, according to TikTok.

Isobel Perl, founder of Perl Cosmetics in London, is worried about the possible impact of a ban as a quarter of her sales now come from the US.

Ms Perl founded her skincare and accessories business after losing her job during the pandemic and uses apps such as TikTok to drive traffic to her website.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gl5qly48qo

[Time_Traveller]

Tech firms face tougher online age checks - Ofcom

8 May 2024, 00:18 BST

Ofcom has warned social media sites they could be banned for under-18s if they fail to comply with new online safety rules.

The media regulator has published draft codes of practice which require tech firms to have more robust age-checking measures, and to reformulate their algorithms to steer children away from material they should not see.

But parents of children who died after exposure to harmful online content have described Ofcom's new rules as "insufficient" - one told the BBC change was happening "at a snail's pace."

In statements, Meta and Snapchat said they had extra protections for under-18s, and offered parental tools to control what children can see on their platforms.

Other firms have not responded to a BBC request for comment.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czrx13jj9p3o

[Time_Traveller]

Facebook and Instagram suspected to be 'too addictive'

16 May 2024, 12:09 BST

The European Union is investigating Facebook and Instagram over whether they are so addictive that they are having "negative effects" on the "physical and mental health" of children.

It will also scrutinise if have done enough to check whether users are old enough to use them, and how content is recommended to children.

A number of big tech firms are now under investigation for potential breaches of the EU's tough new Digital Services Act (DSA), and could be fined up to 6% of annual global turnover.

Meta, which owns both platforms, says it has "spent a decade developing more than 50 tools and policies" to protect children.

"This is a challenge the whole industry is facing, and we look forward to sharing details of our work with the European Commission," it said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2d2j8y38lo

[Powers]

^^^ Missing the trunk and the whole elephant.

[caltrek]

Trump’s Social Media Company Just Keeps Losing Money
by Russ Choma
May 21, 2024

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) Donald Trump’s Truth Social stock might be doing better these days, but the company is still struggling to make money. In the first three months of 2024, it pulled in just $770,000 in advertising revenue. To put that in some context, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, earned more revenue in just three minutes, on its way to making $36.4 billion in revenue over three months.

Truth Social posted those dismal revenue numbers in a public stock filing on Monday, but as anemic as the revenue numbers are, they aren’t even an improvement from last year. Despite all of Trump’s bluster and the publicity from finally going public, the platform actually saw it’s ad revenues drop from the same period last year, when the company reportedly earned a not-much-better $1.1 million in ad revenue.

The new filing also revealed that the company, which went public in March, lost about $13.1 million from first quarter operations, a dramatic uptick from last year’s $3.6 million. And that’s just the cost of doing business—when the company factored in the cost of going public and distributing shares to people who were owed pieces of the venture, it actually lost $327.6 million in the first three months of the year. It still has about $274 million in cash to play with, but none of this is a good sign for the company’s future.

The company’s current stock price would indicate a value of nearly $6 billion, of which Trump personally controls about $4 billion. That valuation seems hard to square with the company’s revenues, which currently amount to less than the sales at an average Chick-Fil-A franchise. On Monday, following the release of its new financial data, the stock price fell by roughly 9 percent by mid-afternoon.

The long-term outlook for the share price is particularly important for Trump, who cannot cash his shares out until September—six months from the stock going public—and so the value of his stake in the company is entirely theoretical, at least for now.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... g-money/