Amanda Silberling, Author at TechCrunch

Pornhub disables access in Texas due to age verification law

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 21:33:32 +0000

Texas residents can no longer access Pornhub — without a VPN. As of Thursday, when people in Texas try to access any of the porn sites owned by Aylo, formerly MindGeek, they’ll instead see a long message in opposition to age verification laws. Laws requiring age verification on adult entertainment sites have already gone into […]

Creators are frustrated but energized as TikTok ban gains momentum

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 22:08:31 +0000

The bill that could ban TikTok took one step closer to becoming a law on Wednesday. After being introduced just last week, the bill was fast-tracked through the House of Representatives and will now head to the Senate. V Spehar, the TikTok creator behind UnderTheDeskNews, has been a staunch critic of efforts to ban TikTok; […]

Depop sellers faced ongoing payment delays due to tech issue, company admits

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:51:58 +0000

Sellers on the Etsy-owned clothing resale app Depop have been facing delayed payments. Over the last few months, more and more sellers have reported that their payment dates were being delayed over and over, with little response from Depop’s support team. Depop, which Etsy bought for $1.6 billion in 2021, is like Instagram for pawning […]

The bill that could ban TikTok passes in the House

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 14:38:43 +0000

The House voted on Wednesday in favor of a bill to require TikTok to sever its connection with parent company ByteDance or face a ban, moving the legislation forward with surprising speed. President Joe Biden has already said that he would support the legislation, but TikTok faces an uncertain fate as the bill heads to […]

Kate Middleton’s photo editing controversy is an omen of what’s to come

Amanda Silberling — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 20:19:27 +0000

After frenzied speculation that a recent photo of Kate Middleton and her children was AI generated, the Duchess of Cambridge herself had to address the controversy. “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” Middleton wrote in a statement. “I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared […]

Fortnite is coming back to iOS in Europe (for real this time)

Amanda Silberling — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 18:49:22 +0000

After terminating Epic Games’ developer account on Wednesday, Apple said it will reinstate the Fortnite maker’s access to publish iOS apps in Europe. This means that Epic can move forward with its plans for an Epic Games Store, and it can bring Fortnite back to iOS in Europe. Last month, Epic announced it would be […]

TikTok begs users to tell Congress not to ban it

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 18:57:24 +0000

When some American users opened TikTok on Thursday morning, they were met with a full-screen message encouraging them to call Congress and say no to a TikTok ban. “Speak up now — before your government strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression,” the screen says. “Let Congress know what TikTok means […]

Binance made crypto perfume in a baffling attempt to woo women

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:00:00 +0000

What does crypto smell like? Ozone, salt and moss, according to Binance’s new fragrance, “CRYPTO.” Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world by volume, but it is facing serious challenges. The company and its co-founder, Changpeng Zhao, pled guilty to money laundering charges and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines to the […]

Elon Musk’s Twitter a year later: Everything you need to know

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:05:09 +0000

Welcome to Elon Musk’s Twitter (now X), where the rules are made up and the check marks don’t matter. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced his bid to buy Twitter in April 2022, zealously driven to rid the platform of spam bots and protect free speech; now, it’s the one-year anniversary since he made his […]

YouTube no longer experiencing outages, site confirms

Amanda Silberling — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 16:41:00 +0000

Update: The outages have been resolved as of around 3:00 p.m. ET. A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch that there was a surge in traffic beginning at around 10:25 a.m. ET, which correlated with an unrelated service disruption. Though the spokesperson didn’t specify further details, that timing lines up with a major outage at Meta, where […]

Former Twitter CEO sues Elon Musk

Amanda Silberling — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 23:15:22 +0000

Another day, another lawsuit involving Elon Musk. Four former Twitter executives, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, sued Musk on Monday, alleging that they’re owed over $128 million in severance payments. When Musk bought Twitter (now X), one of his very first moves as the company’s owner was to fire Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and lawyers Sean […]

A minor league baseball team trolls Disney with its ‘Steamboat Willie’ jerseys

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 22:12:03 +0000

I’ve seen enough: The prize for the best use of public domain Mickey Mouse goes to the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. For its public domain theme night, the minor league baseball team will wear jerseys made entirely of iconic images that are no longer protected by copyright: Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” King Kong, and the earliest […]

Reddit IPO could usher in the next big meme stock, users speculate

Amanda Silberling — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 22:07:24 +0000

Jeremiah Johnson says he has “an embarrassing amount” of Reddit karma. So, as a longtime moderator of subreddits like r/economics, he was part of a select group of power users who were granted first dibs to buy stock in Reddit’s IPO as the company prepares to go public. “You would never see Instagram doing something […]

Reddit cites r/WallStreetBets as a risk factor in its IPO filing

Amanda Silberling — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 17:42:07 +0000

As Reddit finally files to go public, the company wrote in its S-1 filing that “meme stock” schemes on r/WallStreetBets could pose a risk to investors. The subreddit r/WallStreetBets, a community of retail traders with 15 million members, describes itself as being “like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.” It’s most well known for coordinating a […]

Tumblr CEO publicly spars with trans user over account ban, revealing private account names in the process

Amanda Silberling — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:31:31 +0000

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic, is supposed to be on sabbatical. Instead, he’s arguing with Tumblr users over an individual content moderation decision, which has sparked communitywide outcry and accusations of transphobia. Over the last few days, the situation escalated to the point that Mullenweg has engaged with the user in question on […]

Almost half of adults on TikTok have never posted a video, research shows

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 17:00:45 +0000

Adults on TikTok lean camera-shy, a new study from Pew Research Center suggests. A survey of 2,745 adults who use TikTok revealed that 48% of respondents have never posted a video, and a typical user hasn’t even updated their bio. It’s not abnormal to prefer lurking to making original content on social media. In fact, […]

Reesa Teesa’s ‘Who TF did I marry?’ TikToks are like an audiobook

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 23:01:51 +0000

TikTok’s latest viral superstar is Reesa Teesa, a Georgia woman who posted 50 videos — just under 10 minutes long apiece — chronicling her tumultuous relationship with her ex-husband. That’s over six hours of content, all about a stranger’s experience living with a compulsive liar. But millions of viewers are eating it up, clinging to […]

Discord took no action against server that coordinated costly Mastodon spam attacks

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 21:54:00 +0000

Over the weekend, hackers targeted federated social networks like Mastodon to carry out ongoing spam attacks that were organized on Discord, and conducted using Discord applications. But Discord has yet to remove the server where the attacks are facilitated, and Mastodon community leaders have been unable to reach anyone at the company. “The attacks were […]

Amazon and SpaceX are quietly trying to demolish national labor law

Amanda Silberling — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 23:44:46 +0000

Amazon alleged in a legal filing published Friday morning that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional. SpaceX and Trader Joe’s — companies that, like Amazon, have repeatedly faced labor law violations from the federal agency — have recently made similar attacks that threaten national worker protections. This is just Amazon’s latest attempt to block union organizing […]

Lawmakers revise Kids Online Safety Act to address LGBTQ advocates’ concerns

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 20:24:23 +0000

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is getting closer to becoming a law, which would make social platforms significantly more responsible for protecting children who use their products. With 62 senators backing the bill, KOSA seems poised to clear the Senate and progress to the House. KOSA creates a duty of care for social media […]