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Caryn Marjorie is a social media influencer whose content has more than a billion views per month on Snapchat. She posts regularly, featuring everyday moments, travel memories, and selfies. Many of her followers are men, attracted by her girl-next-door aesthetic. In 2023, Marjorie released a “digital version” of herself. Fans could chat with CarynAI for US$1 per minute – and in the first week alone they spent US$70,000 doing just that. Less than eight months later, Marjorie shut the project down. Marjorie had anticipated that CarynAI would interact with her fans in much the same way she would herself, but things did not go to plan. Users b...... Read Full article on HadNews

You’re hard at work, lying in a hammock, composing the perfect selfie on the beach. The turquoise sea sets off the idyllic sunset, and just visible though the fronds of a palm tree is the logo of the hotel which is paying you to promote it to your millions of followers on Instagram. Click. The perfect shot. And another typically perfect day in the life of an influencer. Or is it? Certainly a career as an influencer can seem appealing. The work generally involves promoting products or services through sponsored social media posts or “branded content”, and communicating with people who are interested in what you do. The industry is ...... Read Full article on HadNews

The US House has voted 360-58 in support of a bill that would ban the video-sharing app TikTok if Chinese owners ByteDance fail to sell within 270 days. The bill, part of a larger foreign aid bill that includes aid for Ukraine, also includes the option to extend the timeframe by 90 days if a deal is in progress. US officials allege that ByteDance is subservient to the Chinese Communist Party and as a result, the app poses a threat to US security. The next step for the controversial bill is to be approved by the Senate, which will return from recess on April 29. From there, President Joe Biden has expressed his support for the bill. Tik...... Read Full article on HadNews

With the ban looming, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is trying to diversify by promoting its other social media platform named Lemon8. According to the New York Post, the company is paying influencers to suggest the other app via TikTok. Often described as being similar to Pinterest, Lemon8 allows users to share photos and look for inspiration from others. It’s said to be very similar to the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu. A content creator spoke exclusively to The Post saying she was offered $200 for a brand deal where she was asked to upload ‘a video that promotes Lemon8 on TikTok.’ While she didn’t take ByteDance up on the ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Meta has decided to experiment with a bonus payment initiative for creators who provide engaging content on Threads, its rival app to Elon Musk’s X. An invite-only program will contact eligible users with a pop-up notification with Instagram’s help centre detailing further information on how this venture will work. Creators may be able to earn a cash reward  “based on the performance of your Threads posts and based on the number of posts you create. For example, you may need to create a certain amount of posts to earn a bonus amount per post.” The site also outlined how Threads posts with “less than 2,500 eligible views” will not quali...... Read Full article on HadNews

For much of the year, TikTok has been on the defensive. On March 13, 2024, the House of Representatives voted to approve a bill that would force the short-form video app to be sold off from its Chinese parent company to non-Chinese owners or face a ban in the U.S. The Senate will still have to vote on the legislation, which received broad bipartisan support due to beliefs that TikTok creates risks to national security. Meanwhile, Universal Music Group, one of the biggest record labels in the world, stopped licensing its music to TikTok at the end of January 2024. Since then, songs by Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and scores of other ar...... Read Full article on HadNews

Vaping is on the rise among young Australians. Recent figures from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey show current use of e‑cigarettes among teenagers aged 14–17 increased five-fold from 1.8% in 2019 to 9.7% in 2022–2023. For young adults aged 18–24, use quadrupled from 5.3% to 21% over the same time period. If these young Australians were using e-cigarettes to quit smoking, perhaps we would have slightly less to worry about. But many young Australians using e-cigarettes do so recreationally and haven’t previously been exposed to nicotine. Although we’re still learning about how vaping will affect health in the long term, we ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Tattle Life, an anonymous gossip forum, has been described as “the most toxic place on the internet”. A selection of thread titles on the site reveal posts such as: “Fake boobs, fake teeth, fake nose, fake life”; “Career is down the drain; she’s still so vain!” and “Always the wedding guest but never the bride”. People are increasingly turning to gossip forums like Tattle Life, Guru Gossip, GOMI (“Get Off My Internets”) and the Blogsnark subreddit to critique the influencers they follow. On these forums, users pick apart everything from the influencer’s social media content to their appearance. Even their relationships with their frie...... Read Full article on HadNews

When you think about the far right, you probably picture groups of young, white men carrying images of swastikas or torches like those seen at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. But the face of the far right is changing, at least on social media. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we hear about new research into a cohort of women influencers peddling far-right ideology on mainstream platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. Eviane Leidig is a postdoctoral research fellow at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, focusing on far-right ideology, gender and the internet. She spent coun...... Read Full article on HadNews