Social Media

The New York Times reports: Brazil blocked the social network X on Friday after its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with a Brazilian judge’s orders to suspend certain accounts, the biggest test yet of the billionaire’s efforts to transform the site into a digital town square where just about anything goes. Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, …

CNBC reports: Elon Musk ramped up his online attacks on Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes on Thursdayl. X Global Government Affairs issued a statement on Thursday evening ahead of an anticipated suspension of its platform in Brazil. Among other things, the company said X plans to publish all of de Moraes’ demands, which it believes to be illegal, …

Mediaite reports: Social media platform X slapped a “warning” on links to NPR’s follow-up reporting on the Trump campaign’s altercation in Arlington National Cemetery, stalling users who click on the story and suggesting the link is “unsafe” or “spam.” The warning appeared on links posted soon after the story was published by the article’s author, NPR journalist Stephen Fowler. The …

Axios reports: A Brazil Supreme Court judge warned Elon Musk Wednesday that he would have X suspended in Latin America’s largest nation if the billionaire didn’t name a legal representative for the platform in the country within 24 hours. Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ summons alerting Musk that X has until about 8pm local time Thursday (7pm ET) to comply with …

NBC News reports: Pavel Durov, the CEO and co-founder of the news and messaging app Telegram, has been charged in France with enabling various forms of criminality in the app, French prosecutors said Wednesday. One of the charges — complicity in administering an online platform permitting illicit transactions by an organized group — carries a maximum penalty of 10 years …

NBC News reports: Before Telegram’s CEO was arrested in France, the app had gained a reputation for ignoring advocacy groups fighting child exploitation. Three of those groups, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, all told NBC News that their outreach to Telegram about child …

Via email from Gab CEO Andrew Torba: Over the weekend Pavel Durov the CEO of Telegram, a chat messaging app, was arrested. Durov’s detention at Bourget airport in France on August 24, 2024, marks a significant escalation in the ongoing battle between governments and tech platforms over content moderation and free speech. His arrest follows just weeks after one million …

Reuters reports: Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg said senior officials in the Biden administration had pressured his social media company to censor COVID-19 content during the pandemic, adding that he would push back if this were to happen again. In a letter dated Aug. 26, Zuckerberg told the judiciary committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that he regretted not …

CNN reports: Pavel Durov is a lot of things to a lot of people. Programming prodigy. Billionaire entrepreneur. Kremlin stooge. Free-speech fighter. Biological father to at least 100 kids. Durov, the elusive founder of Telegram who was detained in France over the weekend, cuts the figure of a mysterious, globe-trotting tech bro with Mark Zuckerberg’s prodigiousness, Jack Dorsey’s bizarre lifestyle …

Reuters reports: Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV and BFM TV said, citing unidentified sources. Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of …

Mother Jones reports: Lawyers representing Elon Musk and X, previously known as Twitter, have quietly begun sending subpoenas to a host of public interest groups, Mother Jones has learned. Most of the targeted organizations have signed open letters to X’s advertisers expressing concerns about the platform’s direction under Musk’s leadership. The groups include the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the …

The Wall Street Journal reports: The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis. The seven banks involved in the deal, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, lent the money to the billionaire’s holding company to take the social-media platform, now named X, private …

Reuters reports: Media platform X said on Saturday it would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes. X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, claims Moraes secretly threatened one of the company’s legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal …

ABC News reports: 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 …

Variety reports: J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have both been named in a criminal complaint filed to French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against Algerian boxer and newly crowned Olympic champion Imane Khelif. Nabil Boudi, the Paris-based attorney of Khelif, confirmed to Variety that both figures were mentioned in the body of the complaint, posted to the …

Reuters reports: EU industry chief Thierry Breton told billionaire Elon Musk in a letter on Monday he must comply with EU law ahead of Musk’s interview with U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on social media platform X. The interview, scheduled for 8PM Eastern Time, will also be accessible to users in the EU, Breton wrote, adding: “In this context, I …

Agence France-Presse reports: Social platform X said Friday it would work European regulators after agreeing to suspended its heavily criticized use of European users’ personal data to train its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. After Elon Musk’s social platform began using personal data in public posts made by European users Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the DPC, launched a court case arguing …

The Guardian reports: President Nicolás Maduro said he had ordered a 10-day block on access to X in Venezuela, accusing the owner, Elon Musk, of using the social network to promote hatred after the country’s disputed presidential election. Associated Press (AP) journalists in Caracas found that by Thursday night posts had stopped loading on X on two private telephone services …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit Friday against TikTok and parent company ByteDance for failing to protect children’s privacy on the social media app. The government said TikTok violated a law that prohibits collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under 13 without parental consent. The DOJ said TikTok knowingly permitted children …

Reuters reports: Former CNN anchor Don Lemon sued Elon Musk on Thursday, saying that the billionaire entrepreneur refused to pay him after a partnership with the X social media platform got shelved. The lawsuit was filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco, a legal filing showed. X canceled its partnership with Lemon in March after he said Musk would …