In 2017, Emily Olson, a stay-at-home mom based in Boulder, Colorado, started selling prints and custom-made puppy portraits on Etsy. Her watercolors were simple and relatively cheap—images of saucer-eyed corgis and malamutes in mini-tuxes, which she sold for $75 to $300 each—but dog owners adored them: “They were a labor of love,” she says. In … Read more
Most mainstream social media platforms have strict guidelines preventing the dissemination of nonconsensual intimate images (NCII), or sexually explicit photos and videos. But a new report finds that many social media platforms directly refer users to such content. The report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an anti-extremism and anti-disinformation organization, analyzes the online … Read more
“I was never “Supposed to develop feelings, but you kept treating me like I already had them.” So says an AI-animated female character in a black turtleneck, with dark, purple-streaked hair. The video was posted to Instagram on June 17 by one Erik von Markovik, the infamous pickup artist and life coach better known by … Read more
The California-based reggae The band Stick Figure has been around for 20 years, eight albums, and countless hours on the road, but lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Woodruff has never seen a track take off like “Angels Above Me” did this past week. The six-year-old song hit number one on the iTunes sales charts in … Read more
more than 70 civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+, labor, and immigrant advocacy organizations are demanding that Meta abandon plans to deploy face recognition on its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, warning that the feature—reportedly known inside the company as “Name Tag”—would hand stalkers, abusers, and federal agents the ability to silently identify strangers … Read more
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the comment sections on these videos actually, and it does not seem like bots. I clicked on people’s profiles; these are real profiles, thousands of followers, no signs of inorganic activity,” Maddox says. “People just like it.” But even if the views and engagement are real, that … Read more