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☆ TikTok’s C.E.O. Uses Personal Touch to Address Antisemitism Concerns
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-01 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, has been getting personally involved in efforts to address concerns that the app has fueled anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, in a sign of how seriously the company is taking the criticism. In recent weeks, Mr. Chew, who lives in Singapore, has met in New York and on video calls with numerous prominent Jewish groups and leaders. The meetings, arranged by TikTok, have been with organizations including the American Jewish Committee, UJA-Federation of New York and the Anti-Defamation League, the groups told The New York Times. He also joined a call with dozens of Jewish tech and business leaders, including founders of Tinder and the apparel brand Bonobos, as well as Facebook’s ex-chief revenue officer. In the meetings, Mr. Chew emphasized that he was there to listen and sought to explain how the company moderated misinformation and hate speech, according to three people who attended the meetings and would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

Persons: Shou Chew, Chew, TikTok Organizations: American Jewish Committee, of New, Defamation League, New York Times, Tinder Locations: Israel, Singapore, New York, of New York

☆ Judge Halts TikTok Ban in Montana
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A federal judge in Montana on Thursday blocked a statewide ban of TikTok from taking effect next year, at least temporarily preventing the nation’s first such prohibition on the popular video app. The judge, Donald W. Molloy, said Montana could act as a leader in protecting its residents from harm but must “act within the constitutional legal context.” He said a ban of TikTok “limits constitutionally protected First Amendment speech” and granted a preliminary injunction to stop the ban. TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been locked in a legal battle with Montana since state lawmakers passed a bill banning the app in April. Lawmakers said the ban would protect residents’ data from the Chinese government, significantly escalating a national push to bar TikTok from government-owned devices. The Biden administration has been weighing a proposal from TikTok that the company says would address national security concerns.

Persons: Donald W, Molloy, ”, TikTok, Lawmakers, Biden Organizations: Big Tech Locations: Montana, Beijing

TikTok, accused of elevating pro-Palestinian content, blamed “unsound analysis” of hashtag data. Some Instagram and Facebook users circulated a petition accusing the platforms’ parent company, Meta, of censoring pro-Palestinian posts, which Meta attributed to a technical bug. Antisemitic content swarmed onto X, the platform formerly known as Twitter and run by the billionaire Elon Musk. The major tech companies have long offered some degree of access, but researchers said that now seems to be shrinking. TikTok has been accused of amplifying pro-Palestinian videos through its powerful algorithmic feed and of failing to address antisemitic content.

Persons: TikTok, Elon Musk, Linda Yaccarino, “ We’re, ”, Megan A, Brown, —, Sacha Baron Cohen, Debra Messing, Musk, Osama bin Laden, America ”, Isabelle Frances, Wright, Moustafa Ayad, Ms, Frances, Jamie Favazza, Meta, Sukrit Venkatagiri, standwithIsrael Organizations: Facebook, Tech, Meta, Twitter, University of Michigan, IBM, Institute for Strategic, Swarthmore College Locations: Israel, United States, U.S, Beijing

☆ Videos About Bin Laden’s Criticism of U.S. Surge in Popularity on TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-16 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Videos on TikTok supporting a decades-old letter by Osama bin Laden criticizing the United States and its support of Israel surged in popularity this week, adding to accusations that the company is fueling the spread of antisemitic content. The letter, titled “Letter to America,” was published a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that were orchestrated by Bin Laden. He defended the attacks in New York and Washington and said Americans had become “servants” to Jews, who he said controlled the country’s economy and media. American taxpayers, he wrote, were complicit in harming Muslims in the Middle East, including destroying Palestinian homes. Some TikTok users said this week that they viewed the document as an awakening to America’s role in global affairs and expressed their disappointment in the United States.

Persons: Osama bin, ”, Bin Laden, bin, you’ve, Osama bin Laden’s, America ’, ’ Organizations: House, America Locations: United States, America, New York, Washington

TikTok is back in the cross hairs of Washington, with Republican lawmakers again calling to ban the popular short-form video app amid accusations that it is amplifying pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel videos through its powerful algorithmic feed. In the past week, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, asked the Biden administration to outlaw TikTok for its “ubiquity” of anti-Israel content. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida accused Beijing officials of using TikTok, whose parent company is based in China, to spread propaganda to Americans. ByteDance, which owns TikTok, has for years refuted claims that it poses a privacy or security risks. It has also said in recent weeks that the app does not disproportionately promote pro-Palestinian content.

Persons: TikTok, Josh Hawley, Biden, Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin, Marco Rubio, ” Mr, Rubio Organizations: Republican, America, Hamas Locations: Washington, Israel, Josh Hawley of Missouri, sympathizing, Florida, Beijing, China, “, United States

Deb Perelman, the best-selling cookbook author and creator of Smitten Kitchen, tends to focus her social media posts on her work, like pasta or chocolate chip cookie recipes. Of course, many people see immense importance in posting on social media about the war. Social media feeds have focused on major news events many times before. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a uniquely thorny and divisive issue to navigate on social media, though, particularly for those not educated about the region or its history, or who are still forming their opinions. People of both faiths have asked her to post about the war on social media, she said, and sending her graphic images.

Persons: Deb Perelman, “, ”, Perelman, ” Ms, —, outpourings, Israel, Phoebe Lind, Maddie Coppola, Israel ”, Coppola, Ms, Andrey Romanov, Nazhath Faheema, Faheema, — they’re, Minaa, ’ ”, Agneez Kang, Kang, ” Yiwen Lu Organizations: Harvard, Artforum, Harper’s, Facebook, LinkedIn Locations: Israel, Gaza, Washington, New York, Singapore, ”

☆ TikTok Pushes Back Against Claims It Fuels Antisemitism
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

TikTok pushed back on Thursday against growing claims in recent weeks that it had failed to to protect Jewish users and had pushed pro-Palestinian content in the United States. Many social networks have come under criticism for spreading misinformation and hate speech during the Israel-Hamas war. TikTok has the added scrutiny of being owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. While Beijing has pitched itself as a neutral broker in the dispute, a surge of antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiment is proliferating across the Chinese internet and state media. The company said it started offering such data to academic researchers and will include other groups in the future.

Persons: TikTok, Jeff Morris Jr, Israel hashtags, Israel, “, Marco Rubio, Rubio, Morris’s, ” TikTok, standwithisrael, Morris didn’t, Amy Schumer, Michael Rapaport, Debra Messing, Yaël, Eisenstat Organizations: Twitter, Jewish, Defamation, Defamation League Locations: United States, Israel, Beijing, Florida, China

☆ Prabal Gurung and Jessel Taank Kick Off New York’s Diwali Season
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-30 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The party, which drew about 300 people, is in its fourth year. The hosts included Indra Nooyi, the former chief executive of PepsiCo; Anjula Acharia, an entrepreneur who also manages Priyanka Chopra-Jonas; and the designer Prabal Gurung. People shared how they celebrated the Hindu festival of lights growing up. The holiday, which falls this year on Nov. 12, will be observed by New York City schools for the first time in 2024. (On Friday, a separate, similarly glamorous event will be held at the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan, chaired by Preet Bharara, Kal Penn and Radhika Jones of Vanity Fair.)

Persons: bedazzled, Indra Nooyi, Anjula, Priyanka Chopra, Jonas, Prabal Gurung, Nooyi, ”, Sarita Choudhury, Kamala Harris, Preet Bharara, Kal Penn, Radhika Jones Organizations: PepsiCo, White House, American, New York Locations: New York, New, New York City, Manhattan

And when Robert Van Winkle, better known as Vanilla Ice, sang his 1990 hit “Ice Ice Baby,” flanked by 10-foot sparklers, he pulled the Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath onstage. This was Cameopalooza 2021, a company retreat celebrating the meteoric rise of Cameo, an app and website where regular people could buy personalized videos from minor celebrities for as little as $1. Three hundred Cameo employees danced, took videos and basked in their good fortune to be a part of the Cameo “Fameo” — the company’s nickname for its employees and community of celebrities. A former collegiate party promoter, he shared the lifestyle of Cameo’s celebrity talent, jet setting between parties, sporting events and luxury homes in Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Cameo had just raised $100 million on the audacious ambition to pioneer the “connection economy,” landing a $1 billion “unicorn” valuation just a few years into its existence.

Persons: Kenny G, Paula Abdul, Hamilton, Lance Bass, Robert Van Winkle, Ray, Mark McGrath, Jack Harlow, Steven Galanis, Cameo Organizations: Chicago, Hilton Locations: American, partied, Miami , Los Angeles, Chicago

TikTok employees in the United States expressed frustration and dismay this week after the company introduced a tool for tracking office attendance and threatened disciplinary action for failing to comply with new in-person mandates, in an unusual effort to get workers back into the office with custom data-collection technology. Employees at TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, received notices this week about the new tool, an app called MyRTO. A dashboard with the data is visible to employees, their supervisors and human resource staff members. TikTok requires many of its roughly 7,000 U.S. employees to work in offices three times a week beginning in October. Employees were told that “any deliberate and consistent disregard may result in disciplinary action” and could “impact on performance reviews.”

Persons: ” Organizations: Employees, The New York Times Locations: United States, TikTok

☆ TikTok Popularizes Products. Can It Sell Them, Too?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-12 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

TikTok has cemented itself as an essential advertising venue for brands aiming to reach its young users. But at the party, the marketers were abuzz about TikTok’s efforts to sell products from the app itself. The reason: After nearly a year of testing, speculation and some internal upheaval, TikTok this week is rolling out TikTok Shop for all users in the United States. Both enable users to buy products in a few clicks without leaving the app. But it is a venture that other popular social platforms, including Instagram, have not succeeded with in the United States.

Persons: TikTok, Gucci Organizations: New York Locations: New, United States

☆ Taxes, Drugs and … TikTok?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-02 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On a recent summer day, Austin Knudsen, Montana’s attorney general, drove his red Buick from Helena, the state’s capital, to Boulder, a tiny town about a half-hour away whose main claim to fame is that it’s home to the state’s highway border patrol. The road was quiet, flanked by the sort of sprawling pastures and expansive landscapes that give Montana its nickname of Big Sky Country. When Mr. Knudsen visits the highway patrol, which is under his purview, he swears by the steak and burgers at the Windsor, a local haunt that grills its meats behind the bar and where patrons can be spotted drinking beer straight from a pitcher. In May, the state passed a law to ban TikTok that was drafted by Mr. Knudsen’s office. Federal lawmakers, just like Mr. Knudsen, have been concerned that TikTok could expose private user data to Beijing because the app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.

Persons: Austin Knudsen, Knudsen, Chris LeDoux Organizations: Big Sky, Washington , D.C, Federal, ByteDance Locations: Helena, Boulder, Montana, Windsor, United States, Washington ,, Beijing

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to China is putting a spotlight on the future of TikTok in the United States, where criticism of the app and its ties to Beijing reached a fever pitch this year. Despite the intense pressure on the popular short-form video app, which is owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, efforts to ban or regulate it in Washington have not yet borne fruit. And even with all that scrutiny, Ms. Raimondo is not planning to discuss TikTok while in China, a glaring omission that reflects the impasse at which it has left the Biden administration. The administration has been stymied by how to deal with TikTok even as intelligence officials have warned that it poses a national security threat. Ms. Raimondo memorably told Bloomberg News this year that if the administration banned TikTok, “the politician in me thinks you’re going to literally lose every voter under 35, forever.” (TikTok claims 150 million users in the United States.)

Persons: Gina Raimondo’s, Raimondo, ”, TikTok Organizations: Biden, White, Bloomberg News Locations: China, United States, Beijing, Washington

☆ New York City Bans TikTok on Government-Owned Devices
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

New York City on Wednesday joined a wave of states and federal agencies in banning TikTok from government-owned devices based on security concerns, snuffing out some popular city-run TikTok accounts in the process. Jonah Allon, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams, said in a statement that the city’s Cyber Command determined that the app “posed a security threat to the city’s technical networks.” City agencies must remove the app within 30 days and employees will lose access to TikTok and its website from city-owned devices and networks. The TikTok accounts of Mr. Adams, the city’s Department of Sanitation and the Department of Parks and Recreation all updated their bios with this message: “This account was operated by NYC until August 2023. It’s no longer monitored.”Numerous government officials have been restricting access to TikTok in reaction to concerns that the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could give Beijing access to sensitive user data. New York State has banned TikTok on state-issued mobile devices for more than three years, with some exceptions.

Persons: Jonah Allon, Eric Adams, Adams, It’s Organizations: Wednesday, Command, city’s Department of Sanitation, Department of Parks, Recreation, New York State Locations: York City, City, Beijing

☆ The Women’s Magazines of 2023 Are in a Facebook Group and Your Inbox
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-05 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

When Kate Middleton wore a Suzannah London dress in different colors to various events, it prompted Ms. Holmes to ask readers what clothing items they had in multiples. In her newsletter, she compiled the responses in a spreadsheet and featured a dozen products that had been suggested by more than one person. For some, these communities are a salve for the sheer amount of stuff for sale online, targeted to them in feeds fueled by algorithms. These women want a review of a review and the truth behind a flawless Instagram picture — has a real person actually tried that face roller? Has anyone else been targeted by ads for that particular eyeliner?

Persons: Kate Middleton, Holmes, Ms, “, there’s, —, Moss, Malinsky Organizations: Glamour, GQ Locations: Somerset, “

“I want to be in these Netflix shows, I want to be in the Hulu shows, but we’re standing by the writers, we’re standing by SAG,” Ms. Giulietti said. She said she was living at home with her parents in Cheshire, Conn., and putting off renting an apartment in New York City while she saw how the strike — which, along with a writers’ strike, could go on for months — would affect her income. The last time Hollywood’s screen actors and writers went on strike, social media platforms and the $5 billion influencer industry didn’t exist. A number of creators have pledged support for writers and actors and circulated “scab” lists of influencers who promote new releases or appear at related events. Others have been frustrated or confused by instructions from a union that doesn’t protect them, and that some had never heard of.

Persons: ” Ms, Giulietti, TodayTix, Hulu Organizations: Netflix, Hulu, SAG, Searchlight, Disney Locations: Cheshire, Conn, New York City

☆ Texas TikTok Ban Challenged for Threatening ‘Academic Freedom’
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-13 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | More About Sapna Maheshwari | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“The Supreme Court has characterized academic freedom as a special concern of the First Amendment,” said Ramya Krishnan, a lawyer at the Knight First Amendment Institute. The lawsuit said that Jacqueline Vickery, an associate professor at the University of North Texas and a digital media scholar, had been forced to “suspend research projects and change her research agenda, alter her teaching methodology, and eliminate course material,” because of the ban. The Texas ban also appears to extend to her personal cellphone based on her use of university email and other apps there, the lawsuit said. Ms. Vickery said in an interview that she had not been able to access TikTok since the university returned from winter break, even for an assignment where she wanted her students to read the privacy terms on TikTok’s site. The ban’s effect on her classes and research has been “really challenging,” particularly as she does not have a personal laptop, she said.

Persons: “, ”, Ramya Krishnan, Abbott, Jacqueline Vickery, Vickery Organizations: University of North Locations: University of North Texas, Texas

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