Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, a grouping of top stories from the past week found at the intersection of politics and the all-inclusive world of technology.
Obama’s social media warning
Former President Barack Obama’s cutting, suggestive joke about Donald Trump’s obsession with … crowd … size seems to have been the most widely shared clip from his rousing speech last week at the Democratic National Convention. I certainly found it funny.
But I don’t think that should overshadow his critical comments about social media and the provocateurs in the political sphere — like Trump — who use such platforms to sow division and enrich themselves. Hearing that, it was hard for me not to also think of Big Tech powerbrokers like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg; people who’ve either deliberately used their platforms to benefit Trump or whose platforms have been used by bad actors to try to help him. And knowing the role that social media played in Obama’s political rise, I always find it interesting to hear him speaking critically of the types of platforms he once used to reach the masses.
Here’s the line:
We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last: money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.
Barack Obama: "We live in a time of such confusion and rancor — with a culture that puts a premium on things that don't last: money, fame, status, likes."
— ABC News (@ABC) August 21, 2024
"We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves and then we wonder why we feel so alone." https://t.co/zIMsa2tNjk pic.twitter.com/e6cw3WxqCJ
Trump goes on the podcast circuit
Trump’s tour of the bro-ey podcast circuit continued over the past week, as his campaign tries to woo (chronically online) young men. Over at The Atlantic, Helen Lewis wrote about one of his more recent stops, an interview with comedic influencer Theo Von.
Read more at The Atlantic.
Cash flow crackdown
Fundraising platform ActBlue has provided a boon for Democrats ever since President Joe Biden suspended his re-election campaign and Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race. And Republicans seem to want to slow that momentum with investigations stemming from baseless allegations of impropriety. Fast Company published a breakdown of the ways that conservatives at the state and federal level are launching investigations into ActBlue.
Read more at Fast Company.
Trouble for Telegram’s founder
The founder of the Telegram messaging platform, which is known for being a hub for right-wing misinformation and pro-Russian propaganda, was arrested in France on Saturday over an investigation into alleged criminal activity said to have been conducted on the app. Pavel Durov, who launched Telegram in 2013, was being held in custody as of Tuesday afternoon but had not been charged with a crime. In a statement Sunday, Telegram said it’s “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”
Read more at The New York Times.
Jenna Ortega’s disturbing Twitter story
Actor Jenna Ortega, who stars in the upcoming film “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and the Netflix series “Wednesday,” revealed that she deleted her then-Twitter account after seeing explicit AI-generated images of herself as a child.
Read more at NBC News.
World Bank reversal
The World Bank suspended its advertising on X after CBS News discovered that the organization was being promoted alongside a racist post from an account known to spread neo-Nazi content.
Read more at CBS News.
White supremacist whitewashing
Wired has a report on efforts made by pro-Trump figures in Silicon Valley to minimize or sanitize Trump’s infamous claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the deadly Unite the Right rally held by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
Read more at Wired.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.