Platforms

Despite negative headlines and growing concerns about social media’s impact on youth, teens continue to use these platforms at high rates—with some describing their social media use as “almost constant." Here’s a look at the key findings related to online platforms:

• YouTube continues to dominate. Roughly nine-in-ten teens say they use YouTube, making it the most widely used platform measured in our survey.

A bitter battle is taking place between Big Tech and the free press over how to share in the income that news content generates for technology giants. The future of our news ecosystem, a linchpin of democracy, depends on the outcome. Platforms gained their audience in part by sharing news content free.

European Union policymakers agreed to a sweeping new law to regulate artificial intelligence, one of the world’s first comprehensive attempts to limit the use of a rapidly evolving technology that has wide-ranging societal and economic implications. The law, called the A.I.

After the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, tech companies finally seemed to accept that their failure to moderate content was undermining public safety and democracy. In the aftermath, most social-media companies removed users who spread anti-democratic conspiracies or used their online platforms to incite violence. Leading up to the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, tech companies promised users, civil-society groups and governments that they would safeguard election integrity and free expression on their platforms.

For the past year, the political class has been wearing itself out over what sounds like a simple question: Why are Americans so down on the economy? One point of agreement is that core indicators seem to have diverged from how people report actually feeling about the economy or are insufficient to explain such things in the first place.

Mark Zuckerberg’s personal philanthropy and his company, Meta, have collectively donated hundreds of millions of dollars to more than 100 US colleges and universities across the country, giving the CEO powerful potential leverage to influence the institutions. The recipients of these donations range from research powerhouses like the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to smaller institutions like Des Moines Area Community College.

We’ve made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024. We understand that this is extremely disappointing news, and we want to explain why we made this decision and how we are planning to support those impacted. Ultimately, the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive and we have spent significant effort working to reduce these costs so that we could find a way for the Twitch business to remain in Korea. First, we experimented with a peer-to-peer model for source quality. Then, we adjusted source quality to a maximum of 720p.

In the year since the release of ChatGPT, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been moving fast and breaking things, and copyright law is only beginning to catch up. Intellectual property law has shaped the internet for three decades.

The US federal government has stopped warning some social networks about foreign disinformation campaigns on their platforms, reversing a years-long approach to preventing Russia and other actors from interfering in American politics less than a year before the US presidential elections. Meta no longer receives notifications of global influence campaigns from the Biden administration, halting a prolonged partnership between the federal government and the world’s largest social media company.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, December 13, 2023: