The House committee leading the investigation into the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas to four major tech companies Thursday. January 6 select committee chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) sent letters to YouTube parent company Alphabet, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, Reddit and Twitter demanding for those companies to provide […]
Twitch Purged Over 15 Million Hate Raid Bots Last Year
A new open letter from Angela Hession, Twitch’s vice president of global trust and safety, details the company’s approach to making its streaming platform a more harmonious place, most notably the deletion of millions of bots in an attempt to stem the …
Top Twitch Streamer Amouranth Buys Inflatable Pool Company
Talk about literally owning your brand. Top Twitch streamer Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa, who made waves last year as a prominent figure during the streaming service’s “hot tub meta,” has recently purchased an inflatable pool company, she announced on …
Pendulum raises $5.9M to help organizations track harmful narratives
Pendulum helps companies, governments and other organizations track harmful narratives on social media platforms and elsewhere on the web. The company today announced that it has raised a $5.9 million seed round led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from Cercano Management and others. The service was incubated inside Madrona Venture Labs. “Pendulum’s platform applies […]
Tumblr is at war with Apple over ‘mature’ content on its app again
Hide your “Tony the Tiger”/”Eugene Levy” fan fiction — those phrases, along with hundreds of others, are now banned from Tumblr’s iOS app. Now, any personal blog that flags itself as “mature” is not accessible on the iOS app — users will see a pop-up explaining that the content has been hidden because of “potentially […]
Interactive streaming platform Adventr raises $5M in seed funding
Founder and CEO Devo Harris got the idea for Adventr while working with the music industry’s biggest artists. “Adventr was inspired by my experience creating content for artists like Kanye West, Britney Spears and Nas,” he said. “The music videos where I introduced interactive components shot up in popularity, proving that engaging viewers was not […]
Could Supernova be an ‘ethical alternative’ to the social media giants?
Supernova is a new app that has now gone live on the Apple and Android app stores billing itself as a new “ethical alternative” to Instagram and Facebook, where most of the ad revenues go to charities. Does it have a chance? It would be fair to say that after many years of either watching […]
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 […]
Google’s Area 120 launches Qaya, a service offering web storefronts for digital creators
A team at Google is today launching a new service called Qaya, which will allow creators to easily set up new web storefronts where they can sell their products and services directly to their audiences. The project is the latest to emerge from Google’s in-house project incubator, Area 120, which was recently a part of […]
Twitch’s ‘Pay-To-Win’ Boost Feature Doesn’t Actually Help People, Surprising No One
It seems Twitch’s controversial “pay-to-win” Boost feature is a bust. There was no positive impact for streamers who took part in a test of the Boost feature, according to a data analyst who crunched the numbers. Read more…