Science and Technology

Members of Congress have introduced a number of different bills intended to boost protections for children and teenagers online.One is a wide-ranging measure, the Kids Online Safety Act or KOSA. It would require online services like social media networks, video game sites and messaging apps to take “reasonable measures” to prevent harm — including online bullying, harassment, sexual exploitation, anorexia, self-harm and predatory marketing — to minors who used their platforms.It would also require the services to turn on the highest privacy and safety settings by default for users under 18. And it would allow young people to limit or…

In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by…

The genetic testing company 23andMe is being accused in a class-action lawsuit of failing to protect the privacy of customers whose personal information was exposed last year in a data breach that affected nearly seven million profiles.The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in federal court in San Francisco, also accused the company of failing to notify customers with Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage that they appeared to have been specifically targeted, or that their personal genetic information had been compiled into “specially curated lists” that were shared and sold on the dark web.The suit was filed after 23andMe submitted…

When Apple blocked the Beeper Mini app last month from giving Android users access to the tech giant’s messaging service, Beeper encouraged customers to use their Mac computers instead to connect and continue sending messages.But in recent days, dozens of Beeper customers have reported that they no longer have access to Apple’s messaging service on their Android phones or their Mac computers. Several have called Apple’s customer support and been told that the company had revoked their Mac’s access to iMessage because of irregular activity. None had been warned that they would be losing the service.For Beeper customers, many of…

Have your Sunday scaries ever given way to a “Nervous Ocean Monday Morning”? Does the weekend truly begin on Friday, or on a “Wild and Free Chaotic Thursday Afternoon”? How should one dress for a “Paranormal Dark Cabaret Evening”?Those odd strings of words are titles of “daylists,” a newish offering from the music-streaming giant Spotify. The feature provides users three new algorithmically generated playlists a day, each with an ultra-specific title that practically begs to be screencapped and posted.The often baffling titles have recently captured the attention of social media, propelling the service to fresh popularity about four months after…

When Augustin Lignier, a professional photographer in Paris, was in graduate school, he began to ponder the point of picture-taking in the modern world: Why did so many of us feel compelled to photograph our lives and share those images online?It was not a novel question, but it led Mr. Lignier to a surprising place, and before long he found himself building what was, in essence, a photo booth for rats.He took inspiration from B.F. Skinner, the famous behaviorist who had devised a test chamber to study learning in rats. The Skinner box, as it became known, dispensed food pellets…