Author Interview: Adapting To Social Media's Disruptions In 'The Hype Machine' NPR's Michel Martin speaks with MIT professor Sinan Aral about his new book, The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health – and How we Must Adapt.
Google To Halt Political Ads After Polls Close, Amid Worries Over Delayed Results The tech giant will not allow election-related ads in Search, on YouTube or any of its other properties, citing the likelihood of delayed election results. Shannon Bond
Civil Rights Groups Say If Facebook Won't Act On Election Misinformation, They Will Facebook critics are banding together to monitor misinformation, hate speech and voter suppression on the social network because, they argue, it has fallen short. Shannon Bond
You Think Your Favorite Video Game Is Hard? Try Speedrunning It Speedrunning is the quirky subculture dedicated to playing through video games as fast as is humanly possible, exploiting glitches in game code and advanced techniques to barrel ahead. Keller Gordon
Can Circuit Breakers Stop Viral Rumors On Facebook, Twitter? False claims that blame left-wing activists for wildfires in Oregon have spread on social media. To stop the rumors, some experts say platforms should take inspiration from the stock market. Shannon Bond
Microsoft To Buy Bethesda In $7.5 Billion Deal, Acquiring Fallout, The Elder Scrolls The deal is set to be one of the largest ever acquisitions in the video game industry. Once the deal is finalized, Microsoft will own popular franchises such as Wolfenstein, Quake, and DOOM. Reese Oxner
U.S. Blocks Downloads of TikTok, WeChat, Starting Sunday The Commerce Department says it will ban all U.S. business transactions with Chinese-owned apps WeChat and TikTok. The parent company ByteDance is under pressure to sell TikTok to a U.S. company.
U.S. To Bar Downloads Of TikTok, WeChat As of Sunday, no mobile app store in the U.S. will be allowed to distribute or maintain the popular Chinese-owned apps, the Commerce Department says. Bill Chappell
Trump Casts New Doubt On Any Deal To Keep TikTok Alive In U.S. Trump also said he's been advised "there is no legal path" for the U.S. to keep a cut of whatever TikTok deal the government approves, an idea he had earlier floated. Bobby Allyn
Celebrities Boycott Facebook And Instagram For A Day Over Disinformation, Hate Speech Some of the most prominent users of the social media platforms called for a 24-hour boycott to protest Facebook's failure to control disinformation and hate speech. Mark Katkov