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 […]

Backed by former Facebook and Twitter execs, Tagg launches social branding app for Gen Z

Gen Z isn’t satisfied with the social media they grew up with, so they’re building the apps that they want to use. A “social branding” app for creative teens and twenty-somethings, Tagg is announcing a $2 million seed round today from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Facebook’s former VP of International Growth Ed Baker, TripAdvisor founder […]

Democrats Announce Bill Aimed At Stopping Bots From Buying All Your Consoles & Graphics Cards

A group of Democrats are introducing the “Stopping Grinch Bots Act”, a proposal with an incredibly stupid name that is aimed at preventing (or at least curtailing) the use of bots to snatch up stocks of goods from online retailers. Something many of yo…

Facebook changes its corporate branding to Meta

Well, it’s official. After 17 years of being called Facebook, the social networking parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus has a new name. Facebook’s corporate entity is now Meta. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg announced the change at the company’s AR/VR-focused Connect event, sharing that the new title captured more of the company’s core […]

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 […]