Politics
AI lobbying at the U.S. federal level is intensifying in the midst of a continued generative AI boom and an election year that could influence future AI regulation. New data…
More than 100 VCs, including Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla and Mark Cuban have pledged to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Mobilizing under the…
Ethereum co-founder’s warning against ‘pro-crypto’ candidates: ‘Are they in it for the right reasons?’
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, issued a warning on Wednesday against choosing a candidate purely based on whether they claim to be “pro-crypto.” In a blog post, Buterin said…
Yes, we’re calling it “ThreadsDeck” now. At least that’s the tag many are using to describe the new user interface for Instagram’s X competitor, Threads, which resembles the column-based format…
Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.
Finally, something that both sides of the aisle can agree on: social media companies are too powerful. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 78% of American adults…
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Gen Z is losing its political voice on social media
President Joe Biden signed the bill this week that could ban TikTok from the U.S. if its parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell the platform. According to young political content creators, the ban could decimate Gen Z’s access to political news and information. “An unfortunately large amount of 18- to 24-year-olds…
Social networking service Bluesky is now allowing heads of state to sign up and join the platform. The move comes ahead of major general elections in countries like the U.S.…
It’s election season in the U.S., and Instagram has changed the way that it recommends political content. On both Instagram and the newer X competitor Threads, this change won’t impact…
This year, billions of people will vote in elections around the world. We will see — and have seen — high-stakes races in more than 50 countries, from Russia and…
Threads, Meta’s Twitter-like service and competitor to X, may be distancing itself from politics, but that doesn’t mean it won’t try to tackle the misinformation that spreads across social media…
Tech companies are pledging to fight election-related deepfakes as policymakers amp up pressure. Today at the Munich Security Conference, vendors including Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, Adobe and IBM signed an…
Ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Anthropic, the well-funded AI startup, is testing a technology to detect when users of its GenAI chatbot ask about political topics and redirect…
Meta doesn’t want its new app Threads to become another Twitter, full of heated political debates and the resulting toxicity that entails. In an announcement today, the company detailed how…
Pakistan has temporarily suspended mobile phone network and internet services across the country to combat any “possible threats,” a top ministry said, as the South Asian nation commences its national…
TikTok is pushing back against claims of bias in the Israel-Hamas war, after American politicians resumed efforts to ban the app over the apparent popularity of pro-Palestinian content. In a…
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‘TikTok whisperer’ Annie Wu Henry on social media and 2024
Connecting with the youth is a craft that has long eluded the Olds — a demographic that’s less defined by age than it is by social media habits. Politicians, historically, have not prioritized young voter outreach. But in recent elections, the youth voter turnout cinched major wins for Democrats, and…
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Republicans still don’t know how to talk to young voters online
In an appeal to younger voters, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — who proposed raising the voting age to 25 — launched his TikTok presence with an endorsement from Jake Paul, the YouTuber turned boxer who built a content empire by marketing to children. Ramaswamy is one of the only…
Vivek Ramaswamy is on TikTok now, thanks to Jake Paul. In the week since he joined the platform, Ramaswamy has amassed about 33,000 followers, secured an endorsement from one of…
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New California law would force firms to report diversity metrics
The bill requires venture capital firms operating in California to report the diversity breakdown of the founders they fund to the state.
X this week confirmed it’s lifting its ban on paid political ads — a move it committed to earlier this year, shortly after Elon Musk took over the social network…
Three years after her big streaming moment, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make her return to Twitch. The lawmaker and cultural icon turned occasional Twitch personality announced on Twitter that she…
YouTube was the slowest major platform to disallow misinformation during the 2020 U.S. election, and almost three years later, the company will toss that policy out altogether. The company announced…
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was set to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on a Twitter Space with Elon Musk today, but Twitter itself had other ideas. The livestreamed group voice chat…
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VC investors and startup founders see hope in the red wave that wasn’t
TechCrunch conducted a vibe check with investors and founders to gauge how they feel as the results of the U.S. midterm elections continue trickling in.
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More than 100 VC firms join VCs for Repro coalition to support reproductive rights
VCs for Repro is a commitment to use social and cultural resources to incite discussions and action rather than a promise to allocate economic capital.
Thiel Capital’s recent investment in a women’s health startup is symbolic, perhaps, of what more could come.
If my PR inbox is anything to go by (trust me, it is), companies, and especially stock-market listed megacorps, are scrambling to out-green each other with tales of how the…
Meltem Demirors hasn’t just been working in crypto for seven years — she’s been shaping its trajectory. Demirors, chief strategy officer at publicly traded European…
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How the myth of the ‘girlboss’ harms emerging women in tech
On Lafayette Street in SoHo, young, fashionable women lined up around the block to enter a minimalist, millennial oasis, the most perfect Instagram feed brought to life. Staff members glided around the store in pastel pink suits, each embodying the kind of girl that Glossier made us all want to…
