Meta deleted nonbinary and trans themes for its Messenger app this week, around the same time that the company announced it would change its rules to allow users to declare that LGBTQ+ people are “mentally ill,” 404 Media has learned. Meta’s Messenger app allows users to change the color scheme and design of their chat…
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss weird fake furniture and shared reality (or the lack thereof). SAM: It has been such a busy week I forgot it’s Friday until I woke up this…
This article was produced with support from WIRED. Some of the world’s most popular apps are likely being co-opted by rogue members of the advertising industry to harvest sensitive location data on a massive scale, with that data ending up with a location data company whose subsidiary has previously sold global location data to US law enforcement. …
Meta employees are furious with the company’s newly announced content moderation changes that will allow users to say that LGBTQ+ people have “mental illness,” according to internal conversations obtained by 404 Media and interviews with five current employees. The changes were part of a larger shift Mark Zuckerberg announced Monday to do far less content…
There’s a video going viral this week of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles with a wildfire raging behind it, letters glowing in the blaze. It’s a powerful scene, up there with the burning McDonald’s sign in imagery that’s come out of this week’s devastating fires spreading across LA. Unfortunately goes hard pic.twitter.com/Hzglibzs4t — Joseph…
In 2020, after walking by refrigerated trailers full of the bodies of people who died during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic one too many times, my fiancé and I decided that it would maybe be a good idea to get out of New York City for a while. Together with our dog, we…
When Google’s AI Overview search feature launched in May, it was generally regarded as a mess. It told people to eat glue and rocks, libeled newsworthy figures, plagiarized journalists’ work, and was so bad Google added a feature to turn it off entirely. In the nearly 10 months since AI Overview launched, it’s still getting…
Telegram, the popular social network and messaging application which has also become a hotbed for all sorts of serious criminal activity, provided U.S. authorities with data on more than 2,200 users last year, according to newly released data from Telegram. The news shows a massive spike in the number of data requests fulfilled by Telegram…
Members of an underground criminal community that hack massive companies, steal swathes of cryptocurrency, and even commission robberies or shootings against members of the public or one another have an unusual method for digging up personal information on a target: the truck and trailer rental company U-Haul. With access to U-Haul employee accounts, hackers can…
Let’s start 2025 off strong by avoiding it entirely and escaping a thousand years into the past to an Amazonian civilization of forest islands, garden cities, and duck tales. From there, we’ll flee even farther from the present, though we’ll keep the “enchanted forest” vibe going strong. Then, the BATS are SURFING. What else do…