Comedian and actor Kevin Hart has been forced to modify a number of social media posts to more conspicuously disclose his brand partnerships. The star took to social media to include more explicit language in sponsored posts for JPMorgan Chase and athletic apparel brand Fabletics, in which Hart owns equity. Hart frequently promotes both brands…
Move over, Coca-Cola and Pepsi–the next soft drink duo duking it out to win market share are prebiotic soda makers Poppi and Olipop. The two brands recently ended up in a social media scuffle when Poppi sent 32 full-sized vending machines to big influencers to promote its $8 million Super Bowl ad. Backlash was swift,…
In what is believed to be its first investment round since going private, Elon Musk-owned X is in talks with investors to raise money based on a valuation of $44 billion, reports Bloomberg News. If that $44 billion figure sounds familiar, it should. In 2022, Musk purchased then-Twitter for $44 billion. Bloomberg first reported on…
In this episode of The Speed of Culture podcast, Suzy founder and host Matt Britton sits down with Mike Romoff, chief revenue officer at Reddit, to take us inside the platform’s evolution–from AI-powered discovery tools to the power of community-driven advertising. In an era where digital trust is eroding, Reddit has emerged as a powerhouse…
As is the case with many startup success stories, YouTube’s original value proposition didn’t turn out to be its true superpower. Befitting its launch on February 14, 2005, the company actually began as an online dating service–“Tune in, Hook up”–before its founders uncovered its broader potential as a video platform. Twenty years on, that potential…
Brands are sending their condolences to Duolingo after fresh information emerged about the mysterious death of its iconic green owl mascot, Duo. The language learning app killed off Duo on Tuesday, sharing an announcement stating authorities were investigating his cause of death. “We’re aware he had many enemies, but we kindly ask that you refrain…
Duolingo has killed off its unhinged green owl mascot, Duo. The brand confirmed his unexpected demise on social, stating: “Authorities are currently investigating his cause of death and we are cooperating fully. We’re aware he had many enemies, but we kindly ask that you refrain from sharing why you hate him in the comments.” On…
VERIFY, the Tegna initiative which fact checked stories and looked to root out misinformation in the media, is losing its social media presence after being effectively eliminated by Tegna. VERIFY reportedly had 600,000 followers across its platforms. A quick check by TVSpy of VERIFY’s TikTok account, which had 312,000 followers, shows it has been taken…
A year and a half after its debut, Meta’s text-based social platform Threads is testing its first-ever ads with “a handful” of brands in the U.S. and Japan, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri. Ads will appear as image posts sprinkled throughout the home feed and will only appear for “a small percentage of people,”…
Dash Social, a 10-year-old company that helps brands manage their social media, wants a cut of creator budgets. Dash Social, formerly known as Dash Hudson, is launching a platform for brands to find and work with creators. Dash Social also sells social media technology that brands like Amazon, Estee Lauder, and Unilever use to schedule…
Way back in the early 2Ks, someone must have reported my Facebook account called “Dabitch”, as Facebook came demanding a scan of my government-issued ID or passport. My response was to delete the entire account and everything in it with a “cleanout” script. Under no circumstances do I trust US companies with my passport images. You know how you're just supposed to look straight ahead and have a neutral face for your passport photo? That's how AI maps your features to store them in a database.
Now the social app formerly known as Twitter, X, wants you to verify your identity by uploading your ID. If this becomes a requirement, my account will be script-deleted so that I can remove as much data as a user possibly can. I've already removed the app from my phone, as it tracks my location that way, I no longer trust the opt-out setting on that.
There are many reasons I think this is a terrible idea. With the GDPR in Europe, X might be banned there. Elon Musk has a lofty goal with X, he wants to turn it into the “one” app that does everything.
Think about your data habits, and what you are storing about yourself in other people's databases. Zuckerberg's Facebook knows all of your friends and family. Bezos knows what you buy, what you watch, and everything you eat if you shop at Wholefoods – and Amazon cloud stores millions of companies' data as well as the US military's.
Now X wants to become the one app for everything. That sounds like a digital ID to me. Twitter already has your voice if you participated in any spaces, now they want your face. Musk stores data outside of the GDPR, so he can ignore all data protection rules.
So what's so scary about one app that can also be used as an ID to log in with say, facial recognition at the NHS? That's not the freaky part, it's the combination of everything. Twitter is where users voice their political opinions, engage in debates, announce their dislikes, vent, and more often than not they do so with their qualifications, job titles, and companies that they work for in their bio. Clearview.ai has over 100 billion images in its database, and a whole bunch of those were illegally collected.
Faulty facial recognition has already gotten Uber Eats drivers fired in the UK, and facial recognition is used as a surveillance tool of Palestinians in Israel. Private use of facial recognition, by institutions and even individuals, poses just as much of a threat to the future of human civilization as government use.
Now, Bezos, Musk, and, his buddy Pieter Theil are also heavily invested in funding Quantum Computing as well. Google has already announced new algorithm that makes FIDO encryption safe from quantum computers, but it's safe to say this is a now a digital arms race.
I had a hunch that Musk was going to do something strange, so I luckily deleted a large portion of my past Twitter history with an app before he locked the API down. Now that those apps no longer work, people who have been on Twitter since it began have their entire Twitter history in this man's hands. While I only have 2000 posts to manually remove.
You can find me on Keybase, on Telegram (if you know my number), and on Discord as .dabitch but not as frequently on X anymore. I've even removed my face from the profile pic.
The success of advertising rests on clear, concise, and culturally considerate communication. Yet only 22 days into 2025, legal mandates and corporate maneuvers would suggest that facts are not important to consider when crafting what we say, how we say it, or how we show it. Everyone was left a little shaken following Mark Zuckerberg’s…
Seventeen years ago, a multimillion-dollar brand was born before the eyes of 1.13 million TV viewers, and none of them knew it. It began during the first season of The Real Housewives of New York. In episode six (“Girl’s Night Out”), Bethenny Frankel and Luann de Lesseps are ordering cocktails. “I only drink one drink,…
The creator marketing ecosystem dodged a potentially devastating bullet with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order postponing the ban on TikTok in the U.S. Now, a creator luminary is stepping in to help save the platform. Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has now joined a group in a bid to buy TikTok from its…
It’s been a busy few days in U.S. politics, from Donald Trump’s tech-CEO-studded presidential inauguration, the declaration of a “border emergency,” and the revoking of federal DEI guidelines. Amidst all this, America’s 47th POTUS found time to sign an executive order instructing the attorney general’s office to delay by 75 days enforcing a Supreme Court…
The vertical videos that once flowed natively from a sleek smartphone app have been replaced by a link to a website, and the trending tunes that soundtracked them have been silenced. TikTok has officially gone dark in the U.S., at least for now. A message on the app for U.S. users says that TikTok isn’t…
As the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the TikTok ban, brands and publishers are grappling with how to maintain their connection to young consumers. The reality of losing TikTok has sparked reactions ranging from strategic reevaluation to outright panic. However, history shows us that platforms evolve, algorithms shift, and audiences adapt. Here’s what marketers need to…
Hours after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a law banning TikTok in the U.S. as of Sunday, the platform’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, posted his response in video form, going out of his way to praise President-elect Donald Trump. “On behalf of everyone at TikTok and all our users across the country, I want to…
Stanley Cups, Charli XCX’s Apple dance, Duolingo’s “unhinged” green owl mascot, and being “very demure, very mindful.” Some things are simply synonymous with TikTok, including the brands that have used the platform to boost themselves into the stratosphere via paid and native content. From January 19, TikTok will be banned in the U.S. after the…
The Supreme Court Friday upheld the law banning TikTok in the U.S. as of Jan. 19, dealing a major blow to the platform’s 170 million American users and the businesses that rely on it for marketing and commerce. The decision marks a significant escalation in the government’s efforts to curb Chinese-owned tech companies, leaving brands,…
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