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As the world adjusts to a Twitter without @realdonaldtrump, the next big question is: “Now what?" Major tech platforms, long accused of giving President Donald Trump special treatment not allotted to regular users, have shown him the door in the wake of his incitement of violence by supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. He’s gone from Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat — even Shopify. But in many ways, booting the president was the easy part. Will companies now hold other world leaders to the same standard? Will they wade further into deciding what is and isn't allowed on their platforms, potentially alienating large swaths of their user base? Will all this lead to further online splintering, pushing those flirting with extreme views to fringe sites and secret chat groups? Although they've long sought to remain neutral, Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms are slowly waking up to the active role they and their algorithms have played in shaping a modern world filled with polarized, angry groups and huge factions falling for bogus conspiracies and misinformation about science, politics and medicine. “What we’re seeing is a shift from the platforms from a stance of free-speech absolutism, towards an understanding of speech…

President Trump today finds himself either banned or suspended from more than a dozen major internet services and apps, some of which have also taken similar actions against Trump supporters in the wake of last week’s violent DC riots that left at least five people dead. This comes as the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives drew up a new charge against President Trump on Monday to kick off another impeachment process for his role in the DC riots. This makes President Trump the first president ever to face the possibility of impeachment for a second time. The final full week of Donald Trump’s presidency began today, with the president currently in the extraordinary position of being the first president to potentially face impeachment for a second time — as well as having been banned or suspended from at least 15 major internet services, from Facebook to Twitter, plus Snapchat, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, PayPal, and more. All of it stems from President Trump’s connection to last week’s DC riots, which came after several days of Trump egging on his supporters with comments about the November election being “rigged” and “stolen” and then a speech on Wednesday that seemed to encourage his angriest…

The existing StreetCred platform will be shuttered StreetCred By David Cohen 6 hours ago Snap Inc. is putting some muscle behind Snapchat’s Snap Map feature with its acquisition of New York-based startup StreetCred, which had been working on a location data platform.Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.The existing StreetCred platform will be shuttered, and four members of its team will join Snap, including co-founders Randy Meech and Diana Shkolnikov.Prior to StreetCred, Meech and Shkolnikov were with Mapzen, Samsung’s now-defunct open mapping subsidiary, as CEO and engineering director, respectively. Meech was also senior vice president for local and mapping at AOL.Snap said its new additions from StreetCred will work on emerging product areas around Snap Map, the personalized location-based feature it introduced in June 2017 as a way to let Snapchatters see where their friends are on a map (opt-in required), along with publicly submitted Snaps from the map area and Places, added last June to highlight local businesses.They will also work on augmented reality location experiences, including local lenses, and other early-stage areas of map development.

Many of the services Facebook owns don’t broadcast the fact loudly. After the recent controversy surrounding WhatsApp, Snapchat users want to know if Facebook owns that company too. With the increasing awareness around privacy, more and more people are starting to be discerning about their personal data and how it’s used. So, is Snapchat owned by Facebook, or is it a separate entity?Does Facebook own Snapchat?Facebook does not own Snapchat. However, that’s not for lack of trying. Facebook reportedly made an offer of $3 billion in cash to acquire Snapchat in 2013, just as the app was starting to see a rise to popularity. Snapchat refused and remains an independent entity.Snapchat is owned by Snap Inc., which was originally Snapchat Inc. before its rebranding in 2016. The company has had its ups and downs, but after a successful year was valued at $50 billion in October 2020. This pales in comparison to the $720 billion valuation of Facebook as of August 2020. However, Snapchat is stable enough that there’s little risk of it being acquired by another entity.Adding to Snapchat’s stability is the company’s stock distribution. While Snap Inc. is a publicly-traded entity, 95% of the voting power is distributed…

Tanner Paul Clark. Photo Courtesy: Cache County Jail LOGAN, Utah, Jan. 10, 2021 (Gephardt Daily) — A man has been arrested for allegedly enticing a minor in Logan. A probable cause statement from the 1st District Court of Cache County said Tanner Paul Clark, 27, is facing charges of: Enticing a minor by internet or text, a second-degree felony Three counts of enticing a minor by internet or text, a third-degree felony Failure to register as a sex offender, a third-degree felony On Jan. 6, dispatch received a report of a man who had just gone to meet a minor at a church at 2394 W. 2200 South in Logan, the statement said. The complainant, a friend of the victim, was able to get a picture of the vehicle’s license plate which returned to a Tanner Clark out of South Weber. Clark was found to be on probation with Adult Probation and Parole and is a registered sex offender, the statement added. The victim, a 15-year-old female, told officials that Clark added her as a friend on Snapchat at the beginning of December. “She stated Tanner identified himself as a 17-year-old from Brigham City,” the statement said. “She stated that…

By Associated Press | January 9, 2021 at 6:05 PM EST - Updated January 9 at 6:05 PM BOSTON (AP) — One Twitter wag joked about lights flickering on and off at the White House being Donald Trump signaling to his followers in Morse code after Twitter and Facebook squelched the president for inciting rebellion. Though deprived of his big online megaphones, Trump does have alternative options of much smaller reach, led by the far right-friendly Parler — even if Google removed it from its app store Friday and Apple threatened the same. Trump may launch his own platform. But that won’t happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb incendiary speech as Americans take stock of Wednesday’s violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-incited mob. In a statement Friday, Trump said: “We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.” The “immense power that the social media platforms have as gatekeepers of public discourse” had been flexed as never before — a power that should be…

President Trump Banned on Major Social Media Apps ... Pinterest, Shopify Too!!! 1/9/2021 5:21 PM PT 5:20 PM PT -- The deadline has come and gone for Parler to get its act together to Apple's standards -- because the tech company has officially wiped it from their app store until they can submit a plan that Apple considers up to snuff. If Trump didn't download it before today ... he's outta luck. President Trump might have to resort to opening a MySpace account to be "online" -- because the guy can't get bandwidth anywhere else right now ... not even on Shopify. DT has been banned from a handful of social media apps and social networking websites well beyond Twitter and Facebook/Instagram -- which booted him earlier this week after they say he used their platforms to incite a violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Since then ... even more companies have taken steps to keep their pages Trump-free, including some you never thought the Prez might use, be it posting or consuming. Among those that've blocked/restricted Trump and/or Trump content -- Pinterest (for #StoptheSteal items), Shopify (for MAGA and other related merch), Twitch (no more Trump live streams), Snapchat…

Normally, most of us don’t take rejection well, especially if we’re being turned down by someone we’re madly in love with. But one Pittsburgh teenager has made it his mission to get rejected — for a hilarious purpose.Meet Hunter Badamo. For the past couple of weeks, the 16-year-old has been posting videos himself conducting “speedruns.” In competitive video games, a speedrun is a playthrough with the goal of finishing a game as quickly as possible. In Badamo’s case, the teen sends private messages to girls on Snapchat and times how long it takes for them to reject him.In one of his TikToks posted on Dec. 29, Badamo narrates his conversation with an unidentified girl on Snapchat while pretending to play the exchange out as if it were a video game.“Okay, here we go, getting left on read speedrun,” he says, sending a selfie to the girl. “Okay, we’re at the line. By the way, full-face picture for an 80 percent greater chance of rejection.”In a message to the girl, Badamo asks her if she will go out with him. When the girl opens his Snap, she asks if he plays any sports.“Perfect setup,” Badamo says, before telling her that he’s…

Gabriel Monte   | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal A federal judge this week handed down a 30-year prison sentence to a 27-year-old Alabama man who admitted to coercing and blackmailing a 14-year-old Shallowater girl to sending him images of child sexual abuse. Bo Jack Kelley of Cullman, Alabama, pleaded guilty in August to a count of production of child pornography and was sentenced on Thursday by a U.S. District Judge in Lubbock to 360 months in prison. After his release, he will be on supervised release for 20 years. Kelley's charge stems from an FBI investigation after the sexually explicit videos of the girl were sent to her mother's social media account. Court documents state Kelley, using a false name, began an online relationship with the girl in 2019. The girl told him she was 14 and he told her he was 19. As the relationship developed, Kelley pressured the girl into sending him sexually explicit videos of herself. Materials posted to Snapchat typically expire after a certain period of time but can be saved using screen recording tools. Kelley also sent the girl videos of himself performing sexual acts and pictures that showed his face.In November, Kelley created another Snapchat account and told the girl to send him more explicit videos and threatened to send the…

Share This Article:President Trump’s Twitter account during the 12-hour lockout. By Chris Jennewein The online revolution centered in California’s Silicon Valley came to the rescue of democracy Wednesday by temporarily locking out President Trump from social media platforms.Support Times of San Diego's growthwith a small monthly contribution When Trump refused to quickly condemn the riot he incited at the Capitol, and later offered only mealy-mouthed calls for calm that reiterated his big lie about the election being stolen, Twitter and Facebook acted on their own. Twitter locked out the President for 12 hours. Facebook went further, making the ban indefinite, as did Snapchat. That did this to prevent Trump for possibly inciting further violence. Unlike many, perhaps most countries, media is the United States is almost entirely in private hands. We don’t have a public broadcaster like the BBC, an official newspaper like the People’s Daily, or a state news agency like ITAR-TASS. It’s entirely up to private American owners to decide how to cover the news. A lot of politicians throughout the world hate independent, privately owned media because they can’t control it. This is especially true of the new media types spawned by the creativity of Silicon Valley.…