<p>Adam Candeub, a known critic of Big Tech, looks poised to join the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Candeub will be general counsel of the FCC, reports Semafor, which cites direct confirmation from FCC chairman Brendan Carr. TechCrunch has reached out to the FCC for more information. Candeub has long been a vocal critic of Section [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Social media changed everything, from news consumption to shopping. Now, Dub thinks it can do the same for investing through an influencer-driven marketplace where users can follow the trades of top investors with a few taps. Think of it as TikTok meets Wall Street. Founded by 23-year-old Steven Wang — a Harvard dropout who began [&hellip;]</p>

<p>X is now suing more advertisers in an antitrust lawsuit focusing on what the company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino has claimed is a “systematic illegal boycott.” The company formerly known as Twitter first filed the lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers and its brand safety initiative the Global Alliance of Responsible Media in August 2024. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re looking at DeepSeek’s major boost in the U.S.; Elon Musk admitting he was wrong about FSD; teens losing trust in Big Tech; and more! Let’s do it. DeepSeek went viral this week after its AI models led Wall Street analysts and technologists to question whether the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>As Elon Musk&#8217;s X sees a decline in daily active users, some people are deciding to ditch the social network entirely, whether that&#8217;s for Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, or perhaps, better yet, nothing at all. Since the Tesla and SpaceX CEO bought Twitter in 2022, numerous alternatives have cropped up, seeking to ensnare people who are [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Investor, former GitHub CEO, and all-around Tech Guy™ Nat Friedman has posted a strangely enticing offer on X. His post reads, &#8220;Need volunteers to come to my office in Palo Alto today to construct a 5000 piece Lego set. Will provide pizza. Have to sign NDA. Please DM.&#8221; Thanks to the investigative reporting of my [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A startup called Graze, which lets you build your own feeds for the Bluesky social network, has caught investors&#8217; attention. In addition to offering tools to easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds, Graze will soon allow feed creators to monetize their efforts with advertising, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. In other words, Graze has [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta&#8217;s newer social network Threads announced on Thursday that it&#8217;s introducing a dedicated &#8220;media&#8221; tab for both photos and videos, only days after its rivals, including X and the startup Bluesky, did the same for videos. In addition, Meta will also now allow users to tag people in the photos they share. Instagram head Adam [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased a &#8220;return to OG Facebook&#8221; as part of his key goals for 2025 in Wednesday&#8217;s Q4 earnings call with investors. While the company was short on details as to what specific changes lay in store, it&#8217;s clear that Meta is in desperate need of younger Facebook users to sustain itself [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta says its controversial decision to put an end to its fact-checking program hasn&#8217;t impacted advertiser spend. On its Q4 2024 call, Meta CFO Susan Li assured investors that advertiser demand remains strong and the company&#8217;s commitment to brand safety remains unchanged, despite the new measures. Meanwhile, CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the community notes [&hellip;]</p>

<p>LinkedIn, the social platform where people look for and talk about work, may be less visible in Microsoft’s earnings compared to the years when it was an independent company. But around earnings time, LinkedIn often reveals some figures that point to how it continues to grow.&nbsp; On Wednesday, as Microsoft reported its Q2 numbers, the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta continues to target creators in the days following the U.S. TikTok ban. In addition to paying TikTok creators big bonuses to publish reels, Instagram announced on Wednesday that it&#8217;s introducing new ways for creators to better understand how their short videos are performing. The platform is introducing additional metrics that allow creators to see [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Openvibe&#8217;s clever app that integrates multiple open social networks, including Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr, and Threads, just got a boost toward its future development. The company on Tuesday announced that it has received outside investment of $800,000 in a round led by Czech Founders VC, which includes backing from WordPress.com and Tumblr parent company, Automattic, as [&hellip;]</p>

<p>There are a number of projects now underway that are focused on developing a video-first app for the open source social network Bluesky. However, one stands out from the rest: An upcoming app called Reelo (which has since rebranded to Spark) isn&#8217;t building on top of the Bluesky social network, as so many others are, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>President Donald Trump told reporters that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok&#8217;s U.S. operations, Bloomberg reports. Although Trump didn&#8217;t elaborate, he stated that &#8220;there&#8217;s great interest in TikTok&#8221; and that there will be &#8220;a lot of people bidding on it.&#8221; Microsoft and Oracle were in the running to acquire the ByteDance-owned app back in [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Social network Bluesky is doubling down on video. After it added a new TikTok-like custom video feed last week in the wake of the U.S. ban on the popular video app (now on pause), the company on Monday announced it&#8217;s adding a new video tab to Bluesky user profiles. The tab will allow people to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta says that it is rolling out improvements to Meta AI, its cross-platform chatbot, including the ability to have the bot &#8220;remember&#8221; details from conversations. In a post on Meta&#8217;s official blog, the company said that, in chats with Meta AI on Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp for iOS and Android in the U.S. and Canada, users [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Perplexity AI has submitted a revised proposal to merge with TikTok in an arrangement that would give the U.S. government up to 50% ownership of the new entity. The Associated Press first reported on the new proposal. A source with knowledge of the bid confirmed to TechCrunch that the AP’s reporting is accurate. The AI [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The Trump administration is negotiating a deal that would see Oracle take over TikTok alongside new U.S. investors, according to a report by NPR. Lawmakers passed a bill last year forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to either sell TikTok or see it banned in the U.S. The app briefly went dark before the law took [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re diving into OpenAI’s newly released AI agent, called Operator. We also look at where TikTok stands after being resuscitated, whether it’s time to go back to Tumblr, and more! Let’s get into it. OpenAI launched a research preview of Operator, a general-purpose AI agent that can [&hellip;]</p>