<p>With TikTok&#8217;s fate in the U.S. uncertain — its ban in the country has been paused, but only temporarily, thanks to an executive order from President Donald Trump — the ByteDance-owned company is now encouraging Android device owners to sideload its video app onto their phones and tablets. The company announced in a Friday X [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Consumer demand for alternatives to Big Tech&#8217;s social apps is heating up. Alternative social networks like Bluesky and Mastodon are gaining traction with people looking to leave X, while others are building ban-proof TikTok alternatives on open protocols. Similarly, many independent developers are also working on open, decentralized alternatives to Instagram, Meta&#8217;s flagship photo-sharing app [&hellip;]</p>

<p>President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the company formerly known as Twitter appears to be over. Trump sued the social media platform for banning him in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. While a federal judge dismissed the suit in 2022, the then-former president’s lawyers continued to appeal. Soon [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Elon Musk recently said he is “not champing at the bit to acquire TikTok.” Musk made those remarks during an interview at the WELT Economic Summit on January 28. A video of the interview was published today. The interview came after President Donald Trump delayed a law requiring parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok or [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re diving into Google quietly removing its pledge to not build AI weapons for surveillance; how Elon Musk and DOGE are facilitating the biggest breach of U.S. government data; researchers who were able to re-create a premium “reasoning” model for $50; and more! Let’s get into it. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Social network Bluesky will soon give its users more control over who can reply to their posts. Confirmed by Bluesky developer Paul Frazee, Bluesky will add a new &#8220;followers only&#8221; setting that users can configure to limit replies. In addition, he says, Bluesky will create a way for users to set their default reply settings. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Under European Union law, X is one of a handful of major social media platforms that has a duty to facilitate public interest researchers&#8217; access to support the study of systemic risks &#8212; such as to elections and other democratic processes. But the Elon Musk-owned company formerly known as Twitter has been blocking civil society [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta is launching a new program in partnership with UNESCO to collect speech recordings and transcriptions the company said will help the development of future openly available AI. The program, the Language Technology Partner Program, is seeking collaborators who can contribute more than 10 hours of speech recordings with transcriptions, large amounts of written text, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>One of Meta’s earliest employees is suing the company for sexual harassment, sex discrimination, and retaliation, according to a lawsuit filed this week in the state of Washington. Kelly Stonelake, who spent 15 years at the company and rose to the rank of director, alleges in the lawsuit she faced a cycle of gender-based discrimination [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and the chief executive of the California Community Foundation, Miguel Santana, are launching a program focused on helping residents in Altadena and Pacific Palisades rebuild on their own terms after last month&#8217;s wildfires. The California Community Foundation,&nbsp;Snap, Spiegel, and Snap CTO Bobby Murphy are committing $10 million in funding to staff [&hellip;]</p>

<p>In a bid to boost its subscription service and attract more paying users, Snapchat is rolling out additional features for Snapchat+ subscribers, including allowing Snapchat+ subscribers to create AI-generated stickers in chats. The social media company is also adding the option to send self-destructing Snaps. Snapchat+ subscribers in the U.S. can now create and send [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Mark Zuckerberg’s charity has told its employees it will remain committed to DEI even as Meta eliminates its DEI programs, The Guardian reports.  Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), founded and co-led by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, reassured its employees after many began expressing concerns about recent changes at Meta as the company scales back [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Flashes, an Instagram alternative built on top of the Bluesky social network, is now opening its doors to beta testers. Announced just weeks ago, the app offers people a means of exiting Meta&#8217;s social networking empire for a more open alternative, while also attracting new users who may not have been interested in using Bluesky&#8217;s [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Dating app giant Tinder updated its Explore page to give users access to new categories, “Non-Monogamy,” “Serious Dater,” “Short-Term Fun,” “Long-Term Partner,” and “New Friends,”  the company announced on Thursday.  These new categories are designed to help users find compatible matches by grouping profiles according to dating intentions. The “Serious Dater” option focuses on users [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Fizz, the college social app, is looking for ways to enhance and expand its platform, and a recent new hire is poised to help drive these ambitions. The company has brought on David Vasquez, who previously served as TikTok’s head of creator monetization and a product lead for TikTok Shop, as Fizz&#8217;s new head of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Google will no longer have diversity hiring targets and will review its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, according to an email sent to employees that was seen by The Wall Street Journal.  Google now joins other tech companies rolling back DEI practices, especially as DEI practices come under fire from conservative groups. Amazon and Meta [&hellip;]</p>

<p>During Snap&#8217;s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Evan Spiegel said that the uncertainty surrounding TikTok&#8217;s future has positively affected its business. “We&#8217;re not trying to draw too many conclusions from some of the engagement lift we saw when [TikTok] went dark for that brief period of time. I would say that the overall environment [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta&#8217;s Threads is doubling down on support for custom feeds as it faces challenges from the growing social network Bluesky, now with over 30 million users, which also offers custom feeds as one of its key features. On Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that users can now set their custom feeds to be public [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Snap has unveiled an AI text-to-image research model for mobile devices that will power some of Snapchat&#8217;s features in the coming months. The company said on Tuesday that the model can produce high-resolution images in around 1.4 seconds on an iPhone 16 Pro Max.&nbsp; The new diffusion model runs entirely on the device, which reduces [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Video reigns supreme on social media like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. And now, video is becoming a bigger business for LinkedIn.&nbsp; The Microsoft-owned social network for the working world has yet to go full TikTok. But with a big boost of usage — today it said that video uploads jumped by 36% compared to last [&hellip;]</p>