NEW YORK: Social network Parler announced Thursday that its planned sale to Kanye West has been called off, as the rapper-businessman now known as Ye continues to alienate fans and commercial partners with anti-Semitic comments.
“Parlement Technologies would like to confirm that the company has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale of Parler,” the network — seen as a home for online extremist rhetoric — said in a tweet.
It said the decision was made “in the interest of both parties in mid-November.”
Parler had announced a deal for West to buy the platform popular with conservatives in mid-October — just over a week after the rapper’s Twitter and Instagram accounts were restricted over anti-Semitic posts he made.
But the rapper, who has spoken openly about his struggles with mental illness, has seen his business relationships crumble in recent weeks as his erratic behavior and extreme speech continue to raise concerns.
In perhaps his most provocative outburst to date, West on Thursday declared his “love” of Nazis and admiration for Adolf Hitler during a rambling livestream with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
The 45-year-old’s restrictions on Twitter and Instagram last month were not the first time his posts prompted punitive action from major social media platforms.
Earlier this year, West was banned from posting on Instagram for 24 hours after violating the social network’s harassment policy amid his acrimonious divorce from reality star Kim Kardashian.
Launched in 2018, Parler became a haven for Donald Trump supporters and far-right users who say they have been censored on mainstream social media platforms. It has since signed up many more traditional Republican voices.
Parler was temporarily removed from Apple and Google app stores last year for failing to moderate calls for violence after the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of the former president.
It has since been allowed back in the both stores, ostensibly after improving its content moderation systems.
Social app Parler says sale to Kanye West called off
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Social app Parler says sale to Kanye West called off
- Owners said the decision was made “in the interest of both parties in mid-November.”
TikTok CEO to face tough questions as support for US ban grows
- CEO Shou Zi Chew said TikTok is at pivotal moment as he prepares to testify before Congress to address platform security concerns
- US could demand TikTok's Chinese owners to divest their stakes or face a potential ban
WASHINGTON: TikTok’s chief executive will face tough questions from lawmakers on Thursday who are convinced the Chinese-owned short video app should be barred for being a potential national security threat to the United States.
CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before Congress will also cap a week of actions by the Chinese company aimed at convincing Americans and their lawmakers that the app creates economic value and supports free speech.
TikTok, which has more than 150 million Americans users, has faced sharp accusations that its US user data would be shared with the Chinese government and that it fails to adequately protect children from harm.
TikTok has said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on what it calls rigorous data security efforts under the name “Project Texas” that currently has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and is contracted with Oracle to store TikTok’s US user data. It also says it rigorously screens content that could harm children.
The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing will be chaired by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican who says she is unconvinced by TikTok’s security commitments. “It’s clear that TikTok will say anything to...ensure that it is not banned in the United States,” she told Fox News.
Some political experts say a TikTok ban could be damaging to Democrats who have used the platform to reach younger voters. Three House Democrats rallied with TikTok creators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday in opposition to a ban.
“Why the hysteria and the panic and the targeting of TikTok?” asked Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York, at a news conference. “Let’s do the right thing here — comprehensive social media reform as it relates to privacy and security.”
Still, far more US lawmakers want TikTok banned. Last week, TikTok said President Joe Biden’s administration demanded its Chinese owners divest their stakes or face a potential ban.
“Restricting access to a speech platform that is used by millions of Americans every day would set a dangerous precedent for regulating our digital public sphere more broadly,” said Jameel Jaffer, Knight First Amendment Institute executive director at Columbia University.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner said on Wednesday two additional senators backed his bipartisan legislation with Republican John Thune to give the Biden administration new powers to ban TikTok — raising the total to 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans.
‘Cleanfluencers’ sweep TikTok, drawing millions
- With the global rise of TikTok, cleaning videos have become hugely popular on social media, inspiring a growing number to start posting content
HELSINKI, Finland: Marie Kondo may have admitted defeat, but a new generation of “cleanfluencers” is taking social media by storm, with millions watching them scour filthy homes and dole out cleaning hacks.
Digging through a mountain of trash, Auri Kananen uncovered a rotten piece of pizza on the floor of a Helsinki flat, with insects devouring it.
“I love cleaning, I love dirt,” declared the 30-year-old Finn, who has far more social media followers than Kondo, the Japanese tidying guru who has admitted embracing the messier side of life since having her third child.
Kananen has quickly become one of the world’s most successful “cleanfluencers,” traveling the globe hunting for “the dirtiest homes possible.”
“I remember when I had 19 followers. Even then it felt really cool to have 19 strangers wanting to see me clean,” said Kananen, or aurikatariina as she is known to her nine million followers on TikTok, with two million on YouTube.
In her upbeat videos, she dusts, scrubs and sorts, wearing her signature hot pink rubber gloves as zippy pop music plays in the background.
Her voiceovers often explain how the person she is helping ended up living in squalor.
“Usually people have some mental health problem or other tragedy that has happened in their lives,” Kananen told AFP.
The flat in Helsinki is the home of a depressed young man whose brother suffers from multiple sclerosis, she explained.
She can relate to people living in miserable conditions because she went through a period of depression herself, she said.
“I know how overwhelming it is,” she said.
But her experience has shown her that no situation is hopeless.
The comments sections of her videos are filled with people saying how her videos have helped them cope with their difficulties, praising her non-judgmental manner.
“I love how she is understanding the person in this situation and helping them instead of blaming them,” one commenter wrote.
With the global rise of TikTok, cleaning videos have become hugely popular on social media, inspiring a growing number to start posting content.
“I was watching videos and I thought, that’s what I do at home, I can just film myself doing it,” recalled 27-year-old Abbi, known as cleanwithabbi to her two million followers.
The English single mum films herself cleaning, doing the dishes and hoovering in her red brick home in Huyton near Liverpool.
Cleaning has always been an important part of her life as her youngest son Billy lives with sensory processing disorder.
“He really loves his routine and he does like things to be clean,” she said.
Now Abbi, who does not wish to reveal her full name, posts TikTok videos for a living. Brands sponsor her to use their products, and she earns between $720 and $1,200 a video.
Abbi — whose sons Jack and Billy are six and five — hits the record button on her phone and swiftly makes their beds, arranging the soft toys nicely.
“It relaxes me, it’s like therapy,” she told AFP.
“For me it’s like an escape from any worries I’ve got.”
Ann Russell, a 59-year-old full-time cleaner from the south of England, has a different approach.
Sitting on her sofa with her black dog Hollie, she answers a question from one of her TikTok followers, holding her phone up to her face.
To remove a felt tip mark from a wooden table without removing the varnish she recommends isopropyl alcohol: “Dip a cotton bud in it and just rub it gently.”
She said people need to be taught how to clean properly.
“If nobody told you, how on earth are you supposed to know?” she told AFP.
Russell makes between four and 12 videos every day, answering questions from her 2.3 million followers in a no-nonsense fashion.
“I turn the phone on, I talk to the phone, and that’s it. That’s about as good as it gets. I am not very proficient,” she said with a laugh.
The fact that cleaning “is satisfying” may be behind the videos’ success, Russell said.
Most of her and Abbi’s viewers are women and millennials, as well as people struggling to find the motivation to clean.
“Washing your socks, pairing them up and putting them in the drawer (gives) a sense of a good job well done,” she said.
“It makes people feel in control. And because they feel in control in their personal life, they feel that the outside world is a safer place.”
Suit says Meta board ‘turned blind eye’ to human trafficking
- Claims mischaracterize platform efforts to combat this type of activity, Meta argues
SAN FRANCISCO: A shareholder lawsuit filed late Monday accuses board members of Instagram and Facebook parent Meta of shirking their duties by ignoring human and sex trafficking on the tech giant’s social platforms.
The suit filed in the Court of Chancery in the US state of Delaware calls for Mark Zuckerberg, along with other executives and board members, to be ordered to institute reforms and pay damages.
Meta board members and senior executives named in the suit “turned a blind eye to sex/human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, and other predatory conduct occurring on Meta’s online platforms,” the suit charged.
Meta chief and controlling shareholder Zuckerberg is a primary target of the lawsuit.
“We prohibit human exploitation and child sexual exploitation in no uncertain terms,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in reply to an AFP enquiry.
“The claims in this lawsuit mischaracterize our efforts to combat this type of activity.”
Those behind the suit include Employees’ Retirement System of the State of Rhode Island, Kiwi Investment Management Wholesale Core Global Fund, and Teamsters Pension Fund, according to the filing.
Meta has teams, policies, partnerships and software devoted to thwarting misuse of its platforms for criminal activities.
Meta already faces numerous lawsuits on an array of grounds, including whether it is harmful to the mental health of young users of its social networking services.
The tech titan has been under increasing pressure from legislators since 2021, when whistleblower Frances Haugen — a former Facebook engineer — leaked documents suggesting the firm put profits before safety.
TikTok CEO says company at ‘pivotal’ moment as some US lawmakers seek ban
- Shou Zi Chew to testify before congress to try to address US data security concerns
- Chew said ban would damage businesses, individuals as platform confirms it has more than 150 million active monthly US users
WASHINGTON: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said the Chinese-owned short video app company faces a pivotal moment as a growing number of US lawmakers seek to ban the popular app over national security concerns.
Chew said in a video posted on TikTok early Tuesday the app now has more than 150 million active monthly US users. “That’s almost half the US coming to TikTok,” Chew said. TikTok in 2020 said it had 100 million US users.
Chew, who will testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said: “Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok.”
“Now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you,” he said in the video that features the US Capitol in the background.
He asked TikTok users to leave comments about what they wanted US lawmakers to know about “what you love about TikTok.”
Chew also said 5 million US businesses use TikTok to reach customers.
TikTok’s critics fear its US user data could be passed on to China’s government by the app, which is owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance. TikTok rejects the spying allegations.
TikTok also said Tuesday it had updated its community use guidelines and offered more details of its plans to secure the data of US users. The company said it had started to delete this month US user protected data in data centers in Virginia and Singapore after it started routing new US data to the Oracle Cloud last year.
Last week, TikTok said the Biden administration demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stake in the app or it could face a US ban.
TikTok, which has said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts, said “if protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access.”
A growing number of US lawmakers support a ban on TikTok. This includes Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, congressional aides told reporters on a call Monday. On Friday, six more US senators backed bipartisan legislation to give Biden new powers to ban TikTok.
On March 1, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted along party lines to give President Joe Biden new powers to ban TikTok.
Google suspends Chinese shopping app amid security concerns
- Google urged users to uninstall any Pinduoduo app not downloaded from its own Play store
HONG KONG: Google has suspended the Chinese shopping app Pinduoduo on its app store after malware was discovered in versions of the app from other sources.
Google said in a statement Tuesday that it suspended the Pinduoduo app on the Google Play app store out of “security concerns” and that it was investigating the matter.
The suspension of the Pinduoduo app –- mainly used in China –- comes amid heightened US-China tensions over Chinese-owned apps such as TikTok, which some US lawmakers say could be a national security threat. They allege that such apps could be used to spy on American users.
Pinduoduo is a popular e-commerce app in China which often offers discounts if users team up to buy multiples of an item. Google warned users Tuesday to uninstall any Pinduoduo app not downloaded from its own Play store.
“Google Play Protect enforcement has been set to block installation attempts of these identified malicious apps,” Google said in its statement. “Users that have malicious versions of the app downloaded to their devices are warned and prompted to uninstall the app.”
It was unclear if there are similar security concerns around the Pinduoduo app for Apple users, and Pinduoduo was still available to download from Apple’s iOS store Tuesday.
PDD Holdings Inc, which operates Pinduoduo, did not immediately comment. Hong Kong traded shares in the company tumbled 14.2 percent on Tuesday.
