Spotify Adds ‘Verified’ Badges To Distinguish Human Artists From AI
Spotify is adding “Verified by Spotify” badges to distinguish human artists from AI-generated personas, using signals like linked social accounts, consistent listener activity, merchandise, and concert dates. The BBC reports: The world’s most-used music streaming service said the ‘Verified by Spotify’ text and green checkmark icon wo … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk Testifies That He Started OpenAI to Prevent a ‘Terminator Outcome’
The judge also warned Musk and Sam Altman to curb their “propensity to use social media to make things worse outside the courtroom” after both sides traded attacks online. ⌘ Read more

Linux Version of Framework’s Laptop 13 Pro is Outselling Its Windows Variant
Framework began shipping its new Laptop 13 Pro this week. And the Ubuntu variant is outselling the Windows variant, reports PC World:

[I]t’s selling quickly by Framework’s internal metrics, with six batches of the Intel version of the laptop already sold out. [A later Framework social media post added “Spoke too soon, w … ⌘ Read more

‘STAGED’: Conspiracy Theories Are Everywhere Following White House Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting
The word “staged” exploded on social media following the attack, as both right and left-wing influencers and anonymous accounts spread unfounded conspiracy theories. ⌘ Read more

Australia’s Teen Social Media Ban Isn’t Working. Half Their Teens Still Have Access, Survey Finds
After Australia banned social media for users younger than 16, teenagers “immediately worked to circumvent the restrictions,” reports Fortune:

14-year-old in New South Wales, told
The Washington Post in December 2025, just
before the implementation of the ban, she planned to use her mot … ⌘ Read more

Norway Set to Become Latest Country to Ban Social Media for Under 16s
Norway plans to ban social media access for children under 16 (source paywalled; alternative source), “joining a growing number of countries responding to concerns about the potential harm kids face online,” reports Bloomberg. From the report: The bill comes after “overwhelming” demand from the public, the government said Friday. It pla … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net @bender@twtxt.net Oh dear!

I heard that the USA loves their success story of social security numbers.

Motorola Sues Social Media Platforms and Creators in India
“Motorola has filed a lawsuit in India against social media platforms and content creators,” reports TechCrunch, “over posts it alleges are defamatory…”
The lawsuit, filed in a Bengaluru court and obtained by TechCrunch, names platforms such as X, YouTube, and Instagram along with dozens of content creators, and seeks takedown of the content as well as bro … ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net I returned home from an on-site week at work. Commute was an adventure every day. It started off with a canceled train on Monday morning. Luckily, some very good mates granted my asylum. But even with shorter rides, I faced delays due to fuckwits on the tracks, then the train was terminated early due to the large delay, so we had to change trains. On the bright side, they then sent an entirely empty one, but I don’t get why they just didn’t continue with the first one instead. Due to another delayed train I didn’t catch my connection and the next one was canceled, so I had to wait for the following one. Super great fun. I’m very exhausted now and am very glad that I had already filed in flex time for tomorrow before the on-site event was scheduled.

Meeting my workmates in person was actually nice. It’s okay to do that once a quarter, I don’t need to do that more often. We should have had more meetings, though, trying to work in the office was expectedly incredibly inefficient. We certainly would have had more topics to actually discuss and think about. And most of them would have really benefited from nearly everybody being in the same room. Anyway.

Today, I even met my workmates from past projects in the office, too. So, the socializing was great.

Social Media Platforms Need To Stop Never-Ending Scrolling, UK’s Starmer Says
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said social media platforms should remove addictive infinite-scroll features for young users as Britain considers new child-safety measures. “We’re consulting on whether there should be a ban for under 16s,” Starmer told BBC Radio. “But I think equally important, the addictive scrolling mecha … ⌘ Read more

Two-Week Social Media ‘Detox’ Erases a Decade Age-Related Decline, Study Finds
Critics say social media is engineered to be as addictive as tobacco or gambling, writes the Washington Post — while adding that “the science has been moving in parallel with the court’s recognition.”

A growing body of research links heavy social media use not only to declines in mental health but to measurable cognitive … ⌘ Read more

Meta Removes Ads For Social Media Addiction Litigation
Meta has started removing ads from law firms seeking clients for social media addiction lawsuits, just weeks after a jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in a landmark case involving harm to a young user. “Lawyers across the country now are seeking new plaintiffs, in the hopes of bringing a class action lawsuit that could result in lucrative verdicts,” reports Axio … ⌘ Read more

Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, postgresql-13, and tiff), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, cef, opensc, python-biopython, python-pydicom, and roundcubemail), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (ckermit, cockpit-repos, dnsdist, expat, freerdp, git-cliff, gnutls, heroic-games-launcher, libeverest, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, polkit, python-poetry, python-requests, python311-social-auth-app-django, and SDL2_image-devel), and Ubuntu (dogtag-pki, gdk-pixbuf, linux, linux-aws, … ⌘ Read more

[$] Sharing stories on Scuttlebutt
Not many people live on sailboats. Things may be better these days, but
back in 2014 sailboat dwellers had
to contend with lag-prone,
intermittent, low-bandwidth internet connections. Dominic Tarr
decided
to fix the problem of keeping up with his friends by developing a delay-tolerant,
fully distributed social-media protocol called
Scuttlebutt. Nearly twelve
years later, the protocol has gained a number of u … ⌘ Read more

Australia Readies Social Media Court Action Citing Teen Ban Breaches
Australia is preparing possible court action against major social media platforms that are failing to enforce the country’s social media ban on under-16s. “Three months after the ban came into effect, the eSafety Commissioner said it was probing Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok for possible breaches of t … ⌘ Read more

Five social media giants face crackdown over under-16 ban
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube are under investigation and facing fines of up to $49.5 million for potential non-compliance with Australia’s world-first social media ban. ⌘ Read more

Five social media giants face crackdown over under-16 ban
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube are under investigation and facing fines of up to $49.5 million. for potential non-compliance with Australia’s world-first social media ban. ⌘ Read more

Will Social Media Change After YouTube and Meta’s Court Defeat?
Yes, this week YouTube and Meta were found negligent in a landmark case about social media addiction.

But “it’s still far from certain what this defeat will change,” argues The Verge’s senior tech and policy editor, “and what the collateral damage could be.”

If these decisions survive appeal — which isn’t certain — the direct outcome would be multi … ⌘ Read more

Bluesky’s Newest Product: an AI Tool That Gives You Custom Feeds
“What happens when you can describe the social experience you want and have it built for you…?” asks Bluesky? “We’ve just started experimenting, but we’re sharing it now because we want you to build alongside us.”

Called “Attie” — because it’s built with Bluesky’s decentralized publishing framework, AT Protocol (which is open source) — the new a … ⌘ Read more

Five ways to beat your phone addiction (that actually work)
A jury just ruled social media is designed to addict you. We road-tested five ways to fight back. ⌘ Read more

Austria Plans Social Media Ban For Under-14s
Austria plans to restrict under-14s from using social media platforms over concerns about addictive algorithms and harmful content. The government says draft legislation should be ready by the end of June, though details around enforcement and age verification have yet to be finalized. The BBC reports: Announcing the plans, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler of the Social Democrats said th … ⌘ Read more

California Bill Would Require Parent Bloggers To Delete Content of Minors On Social Media
A California bill would let adults demand the removal of social media posts about them that were created by paid family content creators when they were minors. Supporters say Senate Bill 1247 addresses privacy, dignity, and safety harms caused when parents monetize their children’s lives online. Th … ⌘ Read more

Reddit Takes On Bots With ‘Human Verification’ Requirements
Reddit is rolling out human-verification checks for accounts that show signs of bot-like behavior, while also labeling approved automated accounts that provide useful services. The social media company stressed that these checks will only happen if something appears “fishy,” and that it is “not conducting sitewide human verification.” TechCrunch reports: To i … ⌘ Read more

Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case
A jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in a landmark social media addiction case, ruling that addictive design features such as infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations harmed a young user and contributed to her mental health distress. The verdict awards $3 million in compensatory damages so far and could pave the way for … ⌘ Read more

Reddit Is Weighing Identity Verification Methods To Combat Its Bot Problem
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: There could be one more step required before creating an account and posting on Reddit in the future. According to Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, the social media platform is exploring different ways to verify a user is human and not a bot. When asked by the TBPN podcast how to c … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk Announces $20B ‘Terafab’ Chip Plant in Texas To Supply His Companies
“Billionaire Elon Musk has announced plans to build a $20 billion chip plant in Austin, Texas” reports a local news station:

Musk announced on Saturday night during a livestream on his social media platform X that the plant, called “Terafab,” will be built near Tesla’s campus and gigafactory in eastern Travis County. … ⌘ Read more

Millions Face Mobile Internet Outages in Moscow. ‘Digital Crackdown’ Feared
13 million people live in Moscow, reports CNN.

But since early March the city “has experienced internet and mobile service outages on a level previously unseen.” (Though Wi-Fi access to the internet is still available…) Russian social media “is flooded with jokes and memes about sending letters by carrier pigeons or using sma … ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Shutting Down VR Social Platform Horizon Worlds
Meta is shutting down its VR social platform Horizon Worlds, which was once a key piece of the pivot to the metaverse. The company said the app will be taken off the Quest store at the end of March, and fully removed from Quest headsets by June 15. After that date, it will shift to a standalone “mobile-only experience.” CNBC reports: The shift for Horizon Worlds, … ⌘ Read more

Finance Bros To Tech Bros: Don’t Mess With My Bloomberg Terminal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: A battle of insults and threats has broken out between the tech world and Wall Street. What’s got everyone so worked up? The same thing that starts most fights: business software. A series of social-media posts went viral in recent days with claims that AI has created a worthy … ⌘ Read more

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me I never saw the point of a registry to be honest, as it defeated the point of what I believed to be a truly decentralised non-social social ecosystem. What can and does work however is a search engine and crawler. I used to run one, but I took it down, mostly because it got expensive to operate, at least the implementation I built… Maybe one day i’ll try again with a SQLite backend.

Meta Acquires Moltbook, the Social Network For AI Agents
Axios reports that Meta has acquired Moltbook, the viral, Reddit-like social network designed for AI agents. Humans are welcome, but only to observe. Axios reports: The deal brings Moltbook’s creators – Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr – into Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the unit run by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Meta did not disclose Moltbook’s purchas … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net OMG, the yarn.social creator himself replied, what an honor!

AI Allows Hackers To Identify Anonymous Social Media Accounts, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned. In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT – successfully matched anonymous online users wit … ⌘ Read more

A Security Researcher Went ‘Undercover’ on Moltbook - and Found Security Risks
A long-time information security professional “went undercover” on Moltbook, the Reddit-like social media site for AI agents — and shares the risks they saw while posing as another AI bot:

I successfully masqueraded around Moltbook, as the agents didn’t seem to notice a human among them. When I attempted a genuine connect … ⌘ Read more

Indonesia To Ban Social Media For Children Under 16
Indonesia will ban children under 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms as part of a government push to protect minors from harmful content, addiction, and online threats. The rule will roll out starting March 28 and makes Indonesia the first country in Southeast Asia to impose such a restriction. The Guardian reports: Meutya Hafid said in a statement to … ⌘ Read more

America Used Anthropic’s AI for Its Attack On Iran, One Day After Banning It
Engadget reports:

In a lengthy post on Truth Social on February 27, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to “immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology” following strong disagreements between the Department of Defense and the AI company. A few hours later, the U.S. conducted a major air attack on Iran with … ⌘ Read more

Duolingo Grows, But Users Disliked Increased Ads and Subscription Pushes. Stock Plummets Again
Friday was “a horrible day” for investors in Duolingo, reports Fast Company. But Friday’s one-day 14% drop is just part of a longer story.

Since last May, Duolingo’s stock has dropped 81%. Yes, the company faced a social media backlash that month after its CEO promised they’d become an “AI-fir … ⌘ Read more

Someone on #twtxt or #yarn.social on IRC told me to use a client that supports extensions and replies. Uhh… Client? I’m writing my microblogging by hand! (Hides in a very weird mix of pride and shame)

If we’re serious about social cohesion, these big tech hate machines must be reined in
The social media feeds that once connected us are now driving us apart. We must regain control from big tech’s greedy and reckless algorithms. ⌘ Read more

Meta’s Metaverse Leaves Virtual Reality
Meta is pivoting Horizon Worlds away from its original VR-centric metaverse vision and toward a mobile-first strategy, “explicitly separating” its Quest VR platform from the virtual world. TechCrunch reports: By going mobile-first, Horizon Worlds is positioning itself to compete with popular platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. “We’re in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at sca … ⌘ Read more

PayPal Discloses Data Breach That Exposed User Info For 6 Months
PayPal is notifying customers of a data breach after a software error in a loan application exposed their sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, for nearly 6 months last year. From a report: The incident affected the PayPal Working Capital (PPWC) loan app, which provides small businesses with quick access to financing. PayP … ⌘ Read more

Trump Directs US Government To Prepare Release of Files on Aliens and UFOs
US President Donald Trump says he will direct US agencies, including the defence department, to “begin the process of identifying and releasing” government files on aliens and extraterrestrial life. From a report: Trump made the declaration in a post on Truth Social, after he accused Barack Obama earlier in the day of revealin … ⌘ Read more

Mark Zuckerberg Grilled On Usage Goals and Underage Users At California Trial
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced a barrage of questions about his social-media company’s efforts to secure ever more of its users’ time and attention at a landmark trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday. In sworn testimony, Zuckerberg said Meta’s grow … ⌘ Read more

Mark Zuckerberg Testifies During Landmark Trial On Social Media Addiction
Mark Zuckerberg is testifying in a landmark Los Angeles trial examining whether Meta and other social media firms can be held liable for designing platforms that allegedly addict and harm children. NBC News reports: It’s the first of a consolidated group of cases – from more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and … ⌘ Read more

Instagram Boss Says 16 Hours of Daily Use Is Not Addiction
Instagram head Adam Mosseri told a Los Angeles courtroom last week that a teenager’s 16-hour single-day session on the platform was “problematic use” but not an addiction, a distinction he drew repeatedly during testimony in a landmark trial over social media’s harm to minors.

Mosseri, who has led Instagram for eight years, is the first high-profile tech ex … ⌘ Read more

India’s New Social Media Rules: Remove Unlawful Content in Three Hours, Detect Illegal AI Content Automatically
Bloomberg reports:

India tightened rules governing social media content and platforms, particularly targeting artificially generated and manipulated material, in a bid to crack down on the rapid spread of misinformation and deepfakes. The government on Tu … ⌘ Read more

Your Friends Could Be Sharing Your Phone Number with ChatGPT
“ChatGPT is getting more social,” reports PC Magazine, “with a new feature that allows you to sync your contacts to see if any of your friends are using the chatbot or any other OpenAI product…”

It’s “completely optional,” [OpenAI] says. However, even if you don’t opt in, anyone with your number who syncs their contacts are giving OpenAI your digits. … ⌘ Read more

Social Networks Agree to Be Rated On Their Teen Safety Efforts
Meta, TikTok, Snap and other social neteworks agreed this week to be rated on their teen safety efforts, reports the Los Angeles Times, “amid rising concern about whether the world’s largest social media platforms are doing enough to protect the mental health of young people.”

The Mental Health Coalition, a collective of organizations focused on des … ⌘ Read more

The EU Moves To Kill Infinite Scrolling
Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way. From a report: The European Commission is for the first time tackling the addictiveness of social media in a fight against TikTok that may set new design standards for the world’s most popular apps. Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing … ⌘ Read more

Meta’s New Patent: an AI That Likes, Comments and Messages For You When You’re Dead
Meta was granted a patent in late December that describes how a large language model could be trained on a deceased user’s historical activity – their comments, likes, and posted content – to keep their social media accounts active after they’re gone.

Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO, is listed as the primary autho … ⌘ Read more