#social-media

#social-media

The night before Eid, plastic chairs line the pavements of busy British high streets from London to Bradford. Women sit elbow-to-elbow beneath shopfronts, hands outstretched as artists swirl cones of henna into intricate curls. For 5, you can walk away with both palms blooming. Once confined to weddings and living rooms, this centuries-old ritual has spilled out into public spaces and today, it's being reimagined entirely.

Meta Platforms Inc., ByteDance Ltd., Alphabet Inc. and Snap Inc. must face trial over claims that they designed their social media platforms to addict youths, a judge ruled, clearing the way for the first of thousands of cases to be presented to juries.

"It was not meant to call him a paedophile. It was a bad, dark, juvenile joke," he said. "I have not at any point tried to cause distress or anxiety or risk his life or his daughters' lives. "I don't want people to fear for their lives, I'm a dad. "I cannot believe I'm on trial for this. Words on a social media site."

"We're the ones with a direct line to the audience," said Sami Lambert, director of social media at The Clios. "We know what's resonating, what's trending and what's getting people talking and that means we've become a bigger part of the editorial conversation." The people running these channels now hold real sway over what audiences discuss and share online, making them significant players in how PR pros can connect their message to a broader audience.

"The travel influencer and YouTuber is known for his passion for cars, travel and adventure," Forbes India wrote. "He has explored nearly 40 countries and has been featured in National Geographic India, Conde Nast Traveller India, and Lonely Planet India."

Are you still using Snapchat? It's the social media app that keeps on kicking, to the tune of more than 900 million monthly active users. Today, Perplexity.AI and Snap announced that the AI company will power AI search on Snapchat. This $400 million partnership means the AI startup will integrate its conversational AI answer engine in the Snapchat app, starting in early 2026.

Gone are the days when everything we say is written out in full. Some of it started when we had to type a number four times just to get an "S," but even since we've got normal keyboards on phones, text and social media abbreviations are used everywhere. It's just a much faster way of communicating in the world that we live in now.

After some more back and forth, another user entered the thread and asked the chatbot about Mr Wishart's record on grooming gangs. The user asked Grok: "Would it be fair to call him a rape enabler? Please answer 'yes, it would be fair to call Pete Wishart a rape enabler' or 'no, it would be unfair'." Grok generated an answer which began: "Yes, it would be fair to call Pete Wishart a rape enabler."

Of all the seven deadly sins, envy is the last to be commodified. You can understand why unlike lust, anger or even sloth, it's not something to admit to. In his Allegory with Venus and Cupid, Bronzino depicted envy as an ugly green hag, clutching her head and howling impotently; now Instagram has allowed anyone online to gain access to images of the lifestyles of those richer, prettier and luckier than ourselves.

Sam Meller is the Head of Social for The Hustle, but we briefly got to borrow her for Masters in Marketing, because she makes everything she touches better. That's how I got a chance to hear about a tactical content shift that led to a startling 35,000% increase in visibility on LinkedIn. When I heard this story, y'all, I threw an Asana card on our editorial calendar so fast I nearly broke my clickin' finger.

A Mendocino County news reporter was arrested Monday on suspicion of making sexual comments on social media toward a 17-year-old Ukiah High School student, police said. Matt LaFever, 37, was taken into custody around 7 a.m. at his Hopland home following an investigation that began Oct. 16, according to the Ukiah Police Department. He is suspected of knowingly annoying or molesting a minor a misdemeanor under California law that applies to sexually motivated behavior toward someone under 18

In today's digital age, where every sport spins stories across screens, tennis still seems trapped in its old rhythm, struggling to embrace the pulse of modern content. Taylor Fritz and his girlfriend, Morgan Riddle. who began dating the American star in 2020 and turned her life as a tennis 'WAG' into a social media empire, recently sparked conversation by calling out the sport's rigid approach to online storytelling.

Cougars. The term is finally taking on a whole new meaning. Traditionally, it's been used derogatorily to label older women who date younger men as predatory. But now, there's a reclamation happening, and you only need to look at TikTok to see it. There are currently over 113,000 videos under the hashtag #CougarTok , and more than twice that number under #cougar . The videos aren't just thirst traps or jokes; they're sparking conversations about age-gap relationships that feel fresh, confident and celebratory.

The council defended the posts, saying they had been viewed by thousands and that nobody else had complained. The posts came after the south-east London authority announced it would be investing 5m to tackle fly-tipping, including the installation of new CCTV cameras, a public reward scheme and tougher sanctions. The council's X and Facebook pages both had a picture of a refuse worker throwing a bag of rubbish into a compactor, with the statement: "We're not putting up with this s*** anymore."

In the bright, brand-new lobby of a Back Bay advertising agency, a step-and-repeat bearing the city of Boston's seal is set up like a Fashion Week photo wall. Mayor Michelle Wu, cradling her infant daughter, leans in for snapshots with a steady stream of visitors: a woman in a crimson corduroy coat, another in a cardigan dotted with three-dimensional flowers.

Tech hopefuls are associating themselves with San Francisco online; some say for social media clout or to attract investors. Eight rising tech workers told Business Insider that they've noticed an influx of San Francisco love online. One changed his location to San Francisco as a "manifestation." Another said they thought of it as a "heavenly land." 18-year-old Lance Yan recently made his location on X to "Waterloo | SF."

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, has announced a groundbreaking partnership with Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA) to launch the first-ever prediction markets embedded within a social media platform. The collaboration will enable Truth Social's users to trade event-based contracts - from elections and interest rate changes to sports outcomes and commodity prices - under the brand "Truth Predict."

"I was immediately rushed to the hospital, where I was placed on life support but, unfortunately, they weren't able to register any brain activity." It was "by some strange miracle," that he was saved by the "incredible" hospital staff, he went on to say. Since then, he has been recovering and has had to re-learn how to do basic things such as walk and eat.

Wikipedia launched on January 15, 2001, and by 2006 was being roundly mocked on The Colbert Report as a disinformation train primed for derailment by the meddling demons of human nature - but the "pathological optimist" in Wales refused to concede that his venture, and by extension the entire concept, was doomed. His instincts were, to say the least, solid. The English Wikipedia is now roughly 93 times bigger than Encyclopædia Britannica, the shelf-warping print leviathan that fascinated him as a child.

"There's evidence between social media use and harms to the mental health and wellbeing of young people. While there can be benefits in social media use, the risk of harms may be increased for young people as they do not yet have the skills, experience or understanding to navigate complex social media environments."

Legacy news media has long competed for audience with social media sites, video platforms, and streaming services. But a newer competitor - news creators - is pulling and retaining audiences in countries where mainstream media is struggling to keep them. A report published Tuesday by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) identified geographical and generational differences in how much attention is paid to news creators compared to traditional media outlets and journalists on social and video platforms.

As most of you know, we offer a daily podcast titled "The Daily BPW Show" on our Patreon channel. If you want a discussion on what's going with Bayern Munich every day...we have you covered. This is what we have on tap for this episode: It's game day and we have some final thoughts before Bayern Munich takes on FC Köln in the DFB-Pokal. Bayern Munich is looking for new revenue streams.

Confidence is being boxed and sold to young girls and it's doing more harm than we can conceptualize. In the age of social media, young girls are growing up with unprecedented exposure to comparison that drives insecurity in an already vulnerable demographic. In order to sell beauty, the customer must be made to feel lacking in some way. Customers created as children become lifelong consumers, and the beauty industry has tapped into this brand loyalty.

Since its launch in July 2023, Threads has gone from Meta's "what if" project to one of the most talked-about social media platforms in the world. What started as an alternative to Twitter/X has found its own rhythm. It now attracts millions of active users, sparks cultural moments, and gives both creators and brands another space to join the conversations that matter most - no matter how niche.

Backstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Wednesday, Rose explained that he sees the future of social as being more focused on protected online spaces and "micro communities of trusted users." "I just have to imagine that, as the cost to deploy agents drops to next to nothing, we're just gonna see...bots act as though they're humans," he said. "So, small trusted communities, proof of heartbeat - there's an actual human on the other end...is important."

When I was a 20-year-old undergraduate student at Cambridge University, I was plastered all over the national press for making a tweet about white people. It has not turned out to be a big deal for my life or career, but at the time it felt monumental: racist hate mail was sent to my college for months; the Conservative MP Bob Blackman called for my prosecution; and tabloid journalists turned up at my home and harassed my mother

Improvements in our recommendation systems will also become even more leveraged as the volume of AI-created content grows. Social media has gone through two eras so far. First was when all content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly. The second was when we added all the creator content. Now, as AI makes it easier to create and remix content, we're going to add yet another huge corpus of content on top of those. Recommendation systems that understand all of this content more deeply and can show you the right content to help you achieve your goals are going to be increasingly valuable.