RUSSIA’S INVASION OF Ukraine is not the first social media war—but it is the first to play out on TikTok. The 2011 Arab Spring was fomented and furthered on Twitter and Facebook. Clips of Syrian children choking from chemical weapons filled social media timelines in 2018. And the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, with all the chaos that wrought, was live-tweeted into our homes last year. Images of unspeakable horrors supplanting the banality of status updates and selfies is nothing new. But the current conflict is a very different kind of social media war, fueled by TikTok’s transformative effect on the old norms of tech.

Read more

NBC News spoke with 12 social media personalities with audiences ranging from under 100,000 to more than 10 million followers who detailed how they feel pushed to look perfect in real life and online. This has led younger creators in their teens and early 20s to get cosmetic procedures, ranging from lip filler injections to plastic surgery — many of which they received at discounted rates. Many expressed regrets about some of their procedures. Six of them described feeling addicted to body modification.

Read more

She likes beer and sports and hanging with the guys. She might flirt with someone’s boyfriend and she definitely wore Converses to her prom. She’s simply not like other girls. She’s what’s known as a Pick-Me, and the internet loves to hate her.

Read more

TikTok is feeding false and misleading content about the war in Ukraine to users within 40 minutes of their signing up to the app, regardless of whether they run any searches on the platform, an investigation by NewsGuard has found.

Marta Vasyuta is a regular 20-year-old Ukrainian.

And like many people of her age she's on TikTok.

Until last week she had a few hundred followers on the video-sharing app. She posted videos from nights out, and lip-synced to her favourite music.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, she happened to be in the UK visiting friends she'd met at university.

She watched in horror at reports of Russian bombs falling on Kyiv.

Read what happened next

This is a tragedy and an interesting resource on the price and value of privacy.

'Over time, Justin's obsession with the girl became worrying. She learned that her hometown friends in Naples, Florida, were selling the man photos of her and other information, including her cellphone number.

Justin began calling and texting her, and even agreed to do one of her classmate's math homework in exchange for information about Ms Majury.'

Read more