Social Media

Thanks to a widget launched with a new update announced today. I do like the mock trending topics in this image, though the “Bluesky users turn 39” entry hits a little close to home. Let me go stretch while I think about it.

On Wednesday, the nonprofit DDoSecrets published a database of more than 41,000 employee records stolen from the DHS. Bluesky, which has strict policies against sharing someone’s personal information, tells Wired that it’s blocking links to the archive because they contain people’s email addresses and phone numbers “shared without their authorization.”

The ban comes into force on January 1st, 2027, and applies to any child under the age of 15. Greece is the latest country to consider or pass such legislation, following Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, France, the UK, and more. Similar efforts are also being made in some US states, including Florida.

With the new profile links feature, you can make buttons for links that sit above your posts. Links to payment platforms will be green.

After 15 years at Meta, the George W. Bush White House alum is exiting, Axios reports, amid a midterm election where Democrats are expected to win back more control in Washington. Kaplan will stay through 2027 to help with the transition, though, which will include bipartisan external affairs executives.

34 percent say they regularly get news from YouTube, Pew Research says. As for other social media platforms:

It’s not just celebrity deepfakes that are plaguing social media. AI hot girl accounts are stealing comedians’ jokes, and painters are seeing AI versions of their process videos rack up millions of views. Mosseri says it’s “not practical” to ban AI, but it’s not sure how to handle content that isn’t copyrighted, like jokes.

In addition to latest quote posts, you can sort them by (what appears to be) the ones with the most engagement. Seems like a useful way to see which quote posts might be generating conversations of their own.

The Network feed will be limited to your connections, and accounts you follow. It’s part of a wave of new and upcoming features including virtual business cards, profile notes to help you remember where you met someone, and new tools for LinkedIn creators to monetize their accounts.

The law prevents kids under 14 from creating an account on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, while requiring parental permission for teens aged 14 or 15. The tech trade group NetChoice won an injunction blocking the law in 2025, but a judge later paused the injunction during the appeals process, as reported by NBC 6 South Florida.

Even if Russian or other bots continue to post on social media unabated, the head of Threads, Connor Hayes, mentioned that “We recently made a change that could increase the posts you see from those you follow. For creators, this should mean you see on average more reach to your followers.”

Despite multiple Ukrainian strikes hitting Yandex servers in Russia, a thread by antibot4navalny, which has long tracked state-sponsored social media campaigns and troll farms, explains that the Cloudflare “Bot Traffic” chart many people have cited is really about automated web crawlers operated by Yandex accessing the web.

Another person was doxxed because of the Cornell rape lawsuit — this time, it was a man who shares a name with one of the defendants, and who didn’t attend Cornell at all.

After online vigilantes doxxed the former Cornell student, someone called the police in Jane Doe’s hometown claiming there had been a shooting at her parents’ house, her attorney told CNN.

A new filing calls for Meta to make several changes for teen users in Florida, like limits on who can message them and a two-hour time limit across Meta’s apps. As Reuters reports, Florida is continuing its lawsuit against Meta rather than accepting a settlement, which AG James Uthmeier called “a slap on the wrist.”

It would open the door for shorter handles, like “steviebonifield.bsky” rather than “steviebonifield.bsky.social.” But it might be a long wait before that’s an option — Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider said in a post that the application could take 18 to 24 months to go through.

This time the finding is in connection to Meta’s claims about privacy, and enforcement of its misinformation policies. The case stems from a 2021 lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general at the time, over claims related to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The judge will determine penalties next.

A24, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and The New York Times Company are all reportedly interested.

Over the weekend, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will penalize creators for failing to disclose paid political content, with fines reaching up to $5,000 per violation, The New York Times reports.

The long-running microblogging platform is adding a bunch of heavily requested features, including the ability to save posts for later and sort them into collections, like musings on physical media or quotes about creativity. Subscribers can also now use animated GIFs as their avatars.

The EU Kids Act will be formally unveiled tomorrow where it will eventually be put to a vote by the 27-nation bloc. Parent-chaperoned “mini accounts” are proposed for children 13 to 15.