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PHILADELPHIA – A member of the University of Pennsylvania Women’s swim team spoke to OutKick, the right-wing sports website owned by Fox News this week, proceeding to anonymously attack her teammate, Trans swimmer Lia Thomas. The swimmer who said she feared for her ability to find employment after graduating from college for sharing her honest opinion about her Trans teammate, was given anonymity according to OutKick for that reason. In the OutKick article the unnamed female swimmer alleges that most members of the team have expressed displeasure over the situation to their coach, Mike Schnur. “Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this. Our coach just really likes winning. He’s like most coaches. I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do,” the female Penn swimmer said during a phone interview. “When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake,” she added. Thomas has been shattering previously set records at the school. According to Swim Swam, the Austin, Texas based swimming news and lifestyle website, at a meet including Princeton and Cornell universities’…

Peloton responds after a major character died after riding one of its bikes on the HBO show. by Diana Bradley / Added 18 hours ago Social media users are comparing Peloton to Crock-Pot for killing off a beloved TV character. (Photo credit: Getty Images). NEW YORK: One unexpected brand is trending following the premiere of Sex and the City’s reboot on Thursday: Peloton. Spoiler: During the first episode, character John James "Mr. Big" Preston dies of a heart attack after riding on a Peloton bike. The death of one of the show’s recurring characters wasn’t only a shock to fans – Peloton also had no idea Mr. Big would bite the dust after using one of its products, BuzzFeed reported. Though the company did know the bike would be featured in the episode.Following the episode, Peloton’s stock declined 11% in Thursday’s session alone. Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a preventative cardiologist and member of Peloton’s health and wellness advisory council, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that the character didn’t die due to the bike.“Mr. Big lived what many would call an extravagant lifestyle — including cocktails, cigars, and big steaks — and was at serious risk as he had a…

The way the season was going, you can be excused if you didn't believe that Rutgers had a shot against No. 1 Purdue this evening. The friendly confines of Jersey Mike's Arena - known as the "Trapezoid of Terror" - didn't give fans much comfort when their 4-4 Scarlet Knights battled the previously undefeated Boilermakers. That all changed as Ron Harper Jr. dribbled the ball down the court with seconds remaining and a chance to send the Scarlet Knights to a historic victory.  Harper Jr. launched a 3 point shot that will forever be remembered by the fans that stormed the court, cementing a 70-68 victory for the home team. The victory instantly sent Twitter ablaze. Here are some of the comments that stood out from the pack.  Just watched Ron Harper Jr., the son of my friend, hit a buzzer beater for Rutgers to beat the #1 team in the country Purdue 70-68! He got the inbound pass at 3 seconds, dribbled past half-court, and pulled up for the game-winning 3 point shot! Wow wow wow! ?? — Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) December 10, 2021 How about: The Piscataway Prayer. https://t.co/fETRHVNosl — Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) December 10, 2021 We…

Politician Andrew Yang poses for pictures with fans during 2021 New York Comic Con at Javits Center on Oct. 10. | Mike Coppola/Getty Images Can Twitter carry a politician to win an election? Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels and deputy editor Zack Stanton talk to Republican digital strategist Eric Wilson, former Andrew Yang presidential campaign manager Zach Graumann and Aaron Smith, director of the Pew Research Center’s Datalab, about the role of social media in political campaigns and the limitations of the platforms. On the political necessity of having a Twitter presence: “We know that most voters are more active on Facebook. So what's happening on Twitter is primarily performative for journalists, influencers, opinion makers and other elected officials that you may need to win over — or politicians — in order to break through on Twitter. You have to sort of try and become the main character for the day. So if you're playing that sort of status game, then that's the objective, particularly in light of restrictions from Twitter on political advertising.” — Eric Wilson, GOP digital strategist and managing partner of Startup Caucus “We had to find the crowd that found Andrew Yang appealing, so social media for…

Press play to listen to this article PARIS — A French court on Thursday will hear a case aimed at shedding light on Twitter's best-kept secret: Just how much the social network invests in the fight against illegal content. The social media platform, pitted against a group of four NGOs including also SOS Racism, SOS Homophobia and the Union of French Jewish students, will argue before the Paris court of appeal that it should not have to disclose detailed information about internal processes. The case touches upon a core issue that has long haunted policymakers and researchers when it comes to platform regulation: The actual means — human and financial — allocated to the moderation of illegal and harmful content. So far, companies such as Twitter, Facebook and Google’s YouTube have been reluctant to make detailed and specific information public about the numbers of content moderators by country and/or language. According to the French NGOs, Twitter is not doing enough against hate speech online. In July, a court ordered the company to share very specific information about how it polices content — a first in Europe. The social media platform was required to provide “any administrative, contractual, technical or commercial document relating to material…

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) recommended mouthwash as a treatment for the coronavirus during a town hall meeting Wednesday, immediately drawing criticism for suggesting gargling would offer protection.The senator has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and has promoted the use of drugs that have shown little to no evidence that they are effective in treating covid-19. YouTube this year suspended his account for violating the company’s medical misinformation policies. He has also expressed skepticism about the efficacy of coronavirus vaccine mandates and doses, which have undergone vigorous health testing.His latest remarks run up against medical advice from a major producer of mouthwash and health experts.Story continues below advertisementJohnson later shared on Twitter a study on a public website that concluded mouthwash provides “modest benefits” in lowering viral loads in saliva. That study recruited 176 adults who had tested positive for the virus but were asymptomatic or showing mild symptoms.Though mouthwash can partially kill off parts of the coronavirus in a person’s mouth, most infections occur through the nose, health experts said. “Even if gargling kills some of the virus, it won’t be able to clean the nasal area, nor the viruses that’s already penetrated deeper into the…

How could a policy intended to protect against doxxing and harassment go so wrong, so quickly?Last week, Twitter announced it would start penalizing users who tweet “private media”, or images of other users shared without their consent, “that is not available elsewhere online as a tool to harass, intimidate and reveal the identities of individuals”. The platform would allow users to report other users sharing their images. If a review concluded the complaint had merit and the image wasn’t used for a journalistic or public interest purpose, those accounts would be deactivated. Activists swiftly warned that the policy as it was published would backfire. The policy was vague and had been put together without much input from the communities most vulnerable to harassment and doxxing, the activists argued. They had little faith in Twitter’s reporting and appeals process, which they described as unreliable, automated and allowing for little discussion about the enforcement of policies.And indeed, hours after the policy became public, users affiliated with far-right movements like the Proud Boys and others espousing QAnon conspiracies put out calls to their followers, urging them to weaponize the new rules to target activists who had posted about them.On 1 December, for example,…

James Martin/CNET Twitter has begun testing an overhauled process for users to report harmful tweets, with the goal of simplifying the process by asking users to describe what they're seeing, the social network said Tuesday.Instead of requiring users to identify which Twitter rule a tweet violates, Twitter's new "symptoms-first" approach asks them what they felt was wrong with a tweet, relieving them of the burden of interpreting Twitter's rules. Twitter likened the new approach to an emergency room situation in which a doctor asks where the patient is feeling pain rather than asking if they have a broken leg. Get the CNET Now newsletter Spice up your small talk with the latest tech news, products and reviews. Delivered on weekdays. "What can be frustrating and complex about reporting is that we enforce based on terms of service violations as defined by the Twitter Rules," senior Twitter UX manager Renna Al-Yassini said in a blog post. "The vast majority of what people are reporting on fall within a much larger gray spectrum that don't meet the specific criteria of Twitter violations, but they're still reporting what they are experiencing as deeply problematic and highly upsetting."The testing, which will begin with a…

You may not have heard of messaging service Quill, but it was positioned as a Discord- or Slack-style app for team communications that tried to be less noisy and more structured. The platform only launched this past February, but today Twitter has announce it is purchasing Quill and shutting it down this weekend. Twitter's tech GM Nick Caldwell announced the move this morning, and Quill confirmed the news in a blog post on its own site. The fact that it's shutting down this weekend is a stunningly fast turn-around; Quill is offering details on how to export data, which any team using it will probably want to do ASAP. (They'll also want to go and find a new messaging service to use post-haste.)  The app had billed itself as "messaging for people that focus," and it's not clear how that mission will continue as part of Twitter. Caldwell said that the goal was to have the Quill team help "make messaging tools like DMs a more useful & expressive way people can have conversations." Chances are good this is more of an acqui-hire situation, in which Twitter wanted to have the Quill team working on Twitter's existing products. Given how…

I closed my DMs, changed my notification settings, and got my life back. Escape the harassment, at least somewhat, by changing your Twitter notifications. Credit: Bob Al-Greene / Mashable Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.I’m in a love-hate relationship with Twitter. I love the online friendships I’ve fostered through K-pop fancams, Gossip Girl memes, and media industry woes. And I hate the fact that everything I’ve learned about NFTs has been against my will because some cryptoperson tweeted it into the ether and it has now been retweeted onto my timeline. In the spirit of truthfulness, I feel extremely validated by retweets, likes, and positive replies. I am a Virgo. I run solely on coffee and validation from others. But, ultimately, I hate how addicted I am to this app. My iPhone tells me that I currently spend more than 15 hours a week on Twitter, or just a little over two hours a day — and that’s not accounting for all of the hours I put in on my desktop throughout the work day. I’m not alone in my habitual need to stay chronically online. The average person spends two hours and 24…