The European Commission claims TikTok broke its online platform rules by offering a recommendation algorithm that creates a "rabbit hole effect" on users. In an announcement on Friday, the regulators allege TikTok's algorithm can harm users with "endless and repeated exposure" to content related to sadness, isolation, or body image.

The findings come months after the EU Commission declared that TikTok's design is too "addictive." While TikTok has implemented controls to mitigate the algorithm's "rabbit hole effect," the Commission says its preliminary findings suggest that they're not effective. TikTok must now change the design of its For …

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A week before the midterm elections, Vice President JD Vance hosted a town hall in Texas with Fox News host Jesse Watters. It was a friendly event with a friendly audience in what should have been a friendly state, and maybe that's why Vance couldn't help himself. When a college student earnestly asked how the right expected young people like her to settle down and have kids, given the ever-growing cost of living, Vance replied with a quip about Jon Husted's ass.

The student, Kate White, introduced herself as the vice president of the Texas Christian University chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative group started by Donald Trump all …

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WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature that allows you to invite friends and family members to events in the app - even if they don't have the messenger installed. When you create an event in WhatsApp, you can share a link with a friend or family member without the app, and they can still view all the details.

WhatsApp will let you manage your events through a new Events Home, where you can create and send invites, as well as manage RSVPs. You can use the new hub to send custom reminders and include an option for guests to add a plus-one. WhatsApp says you can view a complete list of past and upcoming events by navigating to your Settings me …

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Instagram's standalone video editing app is now available on macOS, where you can plug in your AI agent of choice to assemble your videos. Instagram's Matthew Simari, head of product management for Edits, said in an interview with The Verge, "One of the things we're releasing with Edits Desktop is a MCP for all the tools within Edits Desktop. You can use any agent you want, you can use Muse - we would love you to - but really any agent you want of [your] choice, to edit, tweak, work with your video."

The Edits app originally launched on mobile platforms last year. Simari said creators have been "heavily" requesting a desktop version, but AI …

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Reddit is testing ads on another area of its platform: search. With this update, ads will appear within your search results "based on a range of factors, including contextual relevance to a search query," according to Reddit.

That means searching for "espresso station" could present you with ads for espresso, machines, beans, or mugs, while a search for a "home office setup" may yield ads for monitors, desks, or office chairs. Reddit currently shows ads across its feeds in a variety of formats, including images, videos, sponsored posts, and AMAs. It also shows ads within threads.

Reddit has announced a number of changes to its platform ove …

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In the future, you won’t be able to use Reddit without logging in.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman confirmed the impending change in a letter (PDF) to shareholders today about Q3 performance. He said that Reddit is shifting “to a logged-in-only experience," adding:

Moving to primarily logged-in will ensure our users have the best Reddit experience possible, and can find the content and communities most relevant to them. It is better for our business because we will have more signals for ads targeting, and being logged-in leads to higher engagement generally. It also allows us to protect access to Reddit’s extremely valuable corpus of data, and helps us better adapt to emerging regulations around the world.

Huffman also said that the login requirement will help Reddit better retain new users.

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Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word “train” from its “streamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30.

Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages. Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy rollout. In response to backlash, Meta's spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, acknowledging Nieman Lab's initial report but not its follow-up report reiterating experts' concerns:

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