Musk’s xAI buys Musk’s X social media platform for $33 billion: Again?

Pixelfed leaks private posts from other Fediverse instances: Fixed but admins would need to update.

What happens when the internet disappears?: For so many links, the internet is not forever.

Do Republicans really believe this stuff?: Is the difference between the early days of Trump’s previous presidency and this one that they got high on their own supply and truly believe every unhinged tweet they see?

Have humans passed peak brain power?: ‘Data across countries and ages reveal a growing struggle to concentrate, and declining verbal and numerical reasoning’.

The World’s Most Invasive Apps: I’m not particularly convinced by the methodology, but, even so, hardly a surprise Meta apps come out as particularly terrible for keeping your personal data private.

How Mark Zuckerberg, Once a Trump Foe, Changed His Tune on President-Elect: There was a time when he didn’t publicly admire ‘President Trump’s divisive and incendiary rhetoric’ quite so much.

The Emptiness Of Zuck’s Promise To Move ‘Biased’ Trust & Safety From California To Texas: Zuckerberg’s ridiculous ‘we’ll move the remnants of our trust and safety team to Texas because that’ll make them magically less biased’ stunt is even sillier when it turns out many of them already live there.

Zuckerberg’s Spineless Surrender: Rehashing Old News To Enable False GOP Narratives: ‘Zuckerberg’s claim that he would stand up to government pressure on moderation is undermined by the fact that he’s revealing this literally while caving to government pressure on moderation.’

TikTok ban: App shuts down in the United States hours ahead of a ban: Whether the ban will last is a different story.

People Left Twitter Because Twitter’s Product Sucks, Not Because of Purity Politics: Hard to know how much of the decline is ethical concerns vs it’s simply not a very good experience for many people.

Meta surrenders to the right on speech: A good summary of Zuckerberg’s awful announcement about the future of moderation at Meta.

A new era of lies: Mark Zuckerberg has just ushered in an extinction-level event for truth on social media: Looks like I’m not the only person kinda terrified about Zuckerberg’s latest pronouncement.

Quitting social media gave me a new creed: only disconnect: ‘…our virtual selves are not our inner selves, but behaviours drawn out from us by the social media platforms’.

Older music has been getting a second life on TikTok, data shows: An increasing amount of TikTok videos use music that’s at least 5 years old.

More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators diagnosed with severe PTSD: Spending hours a day looking at the worst humanity has to offer is damaging to one’s health.

Why Romania’s election was annulled – and what happens next?: Romanian courts rule that their presidential election was too contaminated with social media manipulation, Russian interference, cyber attacks and illegal funding to stand.

Why is Meta adding fediverse interoperability to Threads?: I was somewhat astonished when Meta said it’d build Fediverse compatibility, am less so to hear they’re not doing so overly enthusiastically.