Jesse Tinsley, CEO of a workforce management company, Employer.com, is conducting what could become the year’s wildest acquisition spree.
First, Employer.com announced its plan last month to acquire Bench, the Canadian accounting startup that abruptly shut down over the holidays.
Now, Tinsley and Employer.com have joined hands with YouTuber MrBeast and others to save TikTok by submitting an all-cash bid for the app, according to a report in Bloomberg.
They haven’t disclosed the bid’s amount. The group’s legal counsel includes Brad Bondi, the brother of Trump’s attorney general pick, Pam Bondi.
TikTok briefly went dark on Saturday but reinstated itself shortly before President Trump signed an executive order on Monday delaying any potential ban for 75 days.
It’s not clear if TikTok’s owner ByteDance has seriously considered the offer, Bloomberg reported. Others floated as potential buyers include Elon Musk, Amazon, Oracle, and a syndicate headed by billionaire Frank McCourt.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
A Delaware judge has sanctioned Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former COO and board member, for allegedly deleting emails related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
The decision arises from a case Meta shareholders brought against Sandberg and another former Meta board member, Jeff Zients, late last year. The plaintiffs alleged that Sandberg and Zients used personal email accounts to communicate about issues relating to a 2018 shareholder lawsuit that accused Facebook leaders of violating the law — and their fiduciary duties — in failing to protect users’ privacy.
Plaintiffs also alleged that Sandberg and Zients deleted emails from their personal inboxes despite being instructed not to do so by a court. In a decision Tuesday, the Delaware judge overseeing the case found the accusations to be convincing.
“The defendants disclosed Sandberg’s personal Gmail account, maintained under a pseudonym, that she used to ‘communicate about matters potentially relevant to the claims and defenses in this action,’” the judge’s decision reads. “Counsel’s failure to give a straight answer in Sandberg’s interrogatory responses or when answering plaintiffs’ questions supports an inference that Sandberg was not using an auto-delete function but rather picking and choosing which emails to delete.”
In sanctioning Sandberg, the judge raised the legal standard for Sandberg’s affirmative defense, the defense based on facts other than those in support of the plaintiff’s claim. Now, Sandberg must prove her defense by “clear and convincing” evidence — not merely a “preponderance” of evidence, a burden that’s easier to clear.
The judge has also awarded plaintiffs certain expenses.
In a statement to TechCrunch via email, a spokesperson for Sandberg said that the plaintiffs’ claims “have no merit.”
“All work emails were preserved on Facebook’s servers,” the spokesperson said.
At the root of the courtroom battle are allegations that Meta officials violated a 2012 FTC order under which the company agreed to stop collecting and sharing Facebook users’ personal data without their consent. Facebook allegedly later sold the data to commercial partners, including political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, and allegedly removed disclosures from privacy settings that were required under the FTC’s order.
In 2019, Meta agreed to pay the FTC $5 billion to settle charges that the company violated the 2012 order. The company has also paid penalties from regulators in Europe.
Update: Added a statement from a spokesperson for Sandberg.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Meta is luring TikTok creators over to its platforms with the promise of cash bonuses, content deals, and support to grow their communities. The company announced on Tuesday that eligible TikTok creators will be able to earn “up to” $5,000 in bonuses over three months for posting Reels on Facebook and Instagram.
These creators will also get access to the Facebook Content Monetization program, which allows creators to earn money for their videos, photos, and text posts on Facebook. Additionally, Meta will offer some TikTok creators content deals to help grow their audiences on Instagram and Facebook.
Some TikTok creators will also get a one-year trial of Meta Verified, which includes a verified badge, account support, and impersonation protection. (The company did not share the criteria for whose will receive access).
While TikTok is back online in the U.S. after going dark for 12 hours over the weekend, the ByteDance-owned social network is still missing from app stores. Although President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to delay the TikTok ban deadline by 75 days and told the Department of Justice not to enforce the ban’s penalties, it’s unknown when (or if) the app will return to Apple and Google’s app stores.
Meta is clearly taking advantage of TikTok’s current troubles by poaching and attracting some of the service’s creators.
The company also said it’s rolling out changes to Reels to make the short-form video format more appealing to TikTok creators. For instance, U.S.-based Instagram creators can now publish Reels up to three minutes long, a notable increase from the previous 90-second limit. On TikTok, however, creators can record videos up to 10 minutes long, and in some cases, upload content up to an hour in length.
In addition, Meta is going to make Reels more prominent, as the company plans to recommend Reels in more places across Instagram in Facebook. For instance, people may start to see recommended Reels higher up in their home feed. Plus, they may see more reels in their search results.
To further court TikTok creators, Meta notes that it has optimized its ranking systems to allow newer creators to break through to new audiences.
Meta will also allow creators to show their Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube handles and follower counts in their Facebook profiles to boost their credibility on its platform.
Meta already made other changes to take advantage of TikTok’s current uncertainty in the U.S.
On Sunday, Meta revealed that it’s going to launch a Capcut-like app called Edits next month. On Friday, it introduced updates to make it easier for Instagram users to find Reels that their friends and followers are liking on the platform. The app will also encourage users to start conversations about Reels through a new “reply bar.”
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Before there was social media, there were internet forums. Millions of forum sites continue to operate, which is why it’s notable that one top forum software provider, NodeBB, is now joining the fediverse, also known as the open social web.
The fediverse today includes apps like decentralized X rival Mastodon, Instagram alternative Pixelfed, an open YouTube competitor PeerTube, and others. These “federated” services are powered by a protocol called ActivityPub, which allows for decentralized social networking.
As users began to shift away from centralized social media apps owned by billionaires like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and X’s Elon Musk, the ActivityPub protocol has been adopted by a wider range of software applications and services. This includes the ActivityPub integrations enabled by WordPress (and WordPress.com), Flipboard, Medium, and even Meta itself with its Instagram Threads app. Substack competitor Ghost is working to federate as well.
With NodeBB’s joining, forum operators will now also have the option to join the decentralized social web, too.
As NodeBB co-founder Julian Lam explains in a post, the idea first came about in mid-2023 when he had the idea to connect NodeBB forums to each other. Initially, this was going to be a centralized service, he says. But while researching this concept further, Lam came across Mastodon and ActivityPub and realized that the project could be decentralized instead.
In addition, funding from the NLNet Foundation allowed NodeBB to implement the ActivityPub protocol more quickly. “Their funding was instrumental in providing the financial stability to experiment with ActivityPub and to participate in developer circles, such as the SWICG, FediForum, and much more,” Lam wrote.
Going forward, any new forums created with NodeBB will federate with the wider open social web automatically. However, existing customers will have the option to interact with other NodeBB forums and any other ActivityPub-powered software, like Mastodon.
Unlike another internet forum solution, Discourse, the option to federate will be native to NodeBB, not just an add-on.
“We opted to make this a core feature instead of a plugin, since there were many changes made to core to support even the concept of accepting content from outside itself,” Lam noted in his announcement.
The new feature is available in v4 of NodeBB and was already used to federate Lam’s announcement from NodeBB to Mastodon.
Lam tells TechCrunch that because NodeBB is open source software, they don’t have numbers on usage. (Plus, they try not to track that information for privacy reasons.) However, you can get a sense of the rough count by viewing the download counts for the default NodeBB theme. Though not a direct translation to the number of NodeBB installs, the the project was downloaded 4,582 times last week.
NodeBB currently powers forum sites like Opera, Moz, MLB: The Show, Bleeding Edge, The Daily WTF, Vivaldi, f.lux, and others.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Meta announced on Tuesday that users will soon be able to add their WhatsApp account to their Accounts Center, a hub where users can manage connected experiences across their Facebook, Instagram, and Meta Quest accounts.
With this integration, users will be able to cross-post their WhatsApp Status as Stories on Instagram and Facebook, getting rid of the need to post multiple times. It will also allow users to log in to multiple apps with the same account through the “Single Sign On” feature, which is an authentication option that allows you to do things like use your Facebook account information to log into Instagram.
Adding your WhatsApp account to Accounts Center is optional and off by default.
Meta notes that your WhatsApp messages and calls will remain end-to-end encrypted if you choose to connect your WhatsApp account to the hub.
Accounts Center, which is found in the Settings section of Meta’s apps, was first introduced in 2020 as a way to give users the ability to manage their connected experiences across the company’s services.
Meta plans to roll out additional functionality to Accounts Center, such as the option to manage avatars, Meta AI stickers, and Imagine Me creations.
The company says it’s rolling out the WhatsApp integration globally, but that it will take months for it to make it available to every user. When the integration is available, you’ll see the option in your WhatsApp settings. You may also see the integration when you try to take action across accounts, such as re-posting your Status to one of Meta’s other apps.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at restoring TikTok service in the U.S.
The order instructs relevant government agencies to “pursue a resolution” that “protects national security” while “saving [TikTok.]” Via the order, Trump is instructing the U.S. Attorney General not to take any action for 75 days to enforce the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), the act that effectively banned TikTok in the U.S. on Sunday, January 19.
“During this period, the Department of Justice shall take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act,” the executive order reads. “Even after the expiration of the above-specified period, the Department of Justice shall not take any action to enforce the Act […]”
Trump’s move comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the PAFACA, which passed with bipartisan Congressional support during former President Joe Biden’s term.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch