Florida’s Legislature has passed a sweeping social media bill that would make the state the first to effectively bar young people under 16 from holding accounts on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. The measure — which Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would “be wrestling with” over the weekend and has not yet signed — could…
The ominous messages began arriving in Elissa’s inbox early last year. “You sell pics of your underage daughter to pedophiles,” read one. “You’re such a naughty sick mom, you’re just as sick as us pedophiles,” read another. “I will make your life hell for you and your daughter.” Elissa has been running her daughter’s Instagram…
Instagram does not allow children under 13 to have accounts, but parents are allowed to run them — and many do so for daughters who aspire to be social media influencers. What often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a…
Images showing people of color in German military uniforms from World War II that were created with Google’s Gemini chatbot have amplified concerns that artificial intelligence could add to the internet’s already vast pools of misinformation as the technology struggles with issues around race. Now Google has temporarily suspended the A.I. chatbot’s ability to generate…
The Chinese hacking tools made public in recent days illustrate how much Beijing has expanded the reach of its computer infiltration campaigns through the use of a network of contractors, as well as the vulnerabilities of its emerging system. The new revelations underscore the degree to which China has ignored, or evaded, American efforts for…
AT&T said on Thursday that it had fully restored service to its wireless network after a widespread outage temporarily cut off connections for users across the United States for many hours, the cause of which was still under investigation. The outage, which affected people in cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York, was first…
Reddit, the community-focused message board site, took a significant step on Thursday toward going public, paving the way for it to be the first major social media company to debut on the stock market in years and a test for private companies after a drought in initial public offerings. In an offering prospectus, Reddit revealed…
In 1999, an up-and-coming software engineer in Switzerland was preparing for a conference in France when he learned that the Swiss computer scientist Niklaus Wirth, a pioneer in the field, was also attending and would be on the same flight. The engineer, Kent Beck, had never met Dr. Wirth. But, he recalled in an interview,…
Leaked documents posted online last week show how the Chinese government is working with private hackers to obtain sensitive information from foreign governments and companies. The hackers worked for a security firm called I-Soon, part of a network of spies for hire working closely with Beijing. The leak showed how China’s top surveillance agency, the…
The hackers offered a menu of services, at a variety of prices. A local government in southwest China paid less than $15,000 for access to the private website of traffic police in Vietnam. Software that helped run disinformation campaigns and hack accounts on X cost $100,000. For $278,000 Chinese customers could get a trove of…
