Cheugiest tech moments of 2021

Technology has come a long way in 2021. There’s widespread mRNA vaccines! An asteroid-deflecting space mission! A very powerful laptop with a very controversial notch! But it’s unfortunately easier to think about the cringiest moments of the year than it is to remember times when we marveled at indoor farming robots.  So hop aboard the choo-choo-cheugy […]

TikTok dodges questions about biometric data collection in Senate hearing

In its first-ever Congressional hearing, TikTok successfully dodged questions about what it plans to do with the biometric data its privacy policy permits it to collect on the app’s U.S. users. In an update to the company’s U.S. privacy policy in June, TikTok added a new section that noted the app “may collect biometric identifiers […]

Lawmakers will grill Snap, TikTok and YouTube on kids and safety tomorrow

After dragging in the same companies and their reticent, overtrained executives time and time again, Congress is turning its attention to two of the tech industry’s fresh but important faces: TikTok and Snap. On Tuesday, lawmakers on the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security will question policy leads from those two […]

Facebook grilled in Senate hearing over teen mental health

Last night, Facebook published two annotated slide decks in an attempt to contextualize the documents that the Wall Street Journal published this month, which reported evidence that the company is aware of its negative impact on teen mental health. These documents were released in anticipation of today’s Senate hearing on the mental health harms of […]

Facebook knows Instagram harms teens. Now, its plan to open the app to kids looks worse than ever

Facebook is in the hot seat again. The Wall Street Journal published a powerful multi-part series on the company this week, drawing from internal documents on everything from the company’s secretive practice of whitelisting celebrities to its knowledge that Instagram is taking a serious toll on the mental health of teen girls. The flurry of […]

A new Senate bill would totally upend Apple and Google’s app store dominance

With two giants calling the shots and collecting whatever tolls they see fit, mobile software makers have long complained that app stores take an unfair cut of the cash that should be flowing directly to developers. Hearing those concerns, a group of senators introduced a new bill this week that, if passed, would greatly diminish […]