Tag: social media

Dad stuck in support nightmare after teen lied about age on Discord

Brady Frey did not realize that his daughter lied about her age when she set up her Discord account. He only found out after her account got hacked and he got trapped in a spiraling support nightmare while trying to stop the hacker from targeting dozens of her young friends with financial extortion scams.

When Frey’s daughter signed up for Discord, she was 12 and technically not old enough to have an account. But like many kids who, regulators have found, commonly lie about their age to access social media platforms, she didn’t want to wait another year to join her friends on the messaging app. Hiding her age, she created an account that listed her as over 18 years old.

Now 13, the teen had been happily using the app for months when she suddenly got locked out of her account after clicking on a link from an attacker posing as Discord support. Since she didn’t enable two-factor authentication, the attacker was able to commandeer the account. Frey only found out what was happening when the attacker asked the teen to share her parents’ banking information if she wanted to get her account back.

Once Frey realized his daughter had been hacked, he assumed that Discord would promptly intervene, recognizing that many minor victims on her friends list could be harmed the longer the attacker kept control. Instead, Discord’s chatbot, Clyde, and a seeming human support member, Nelly, automatically closed her support tickets after telling her it would be best to report the issue from inside the app, which she could not access.

Frey told Ars he was shocked to see a platform as big as Discord relying on such poor support infrastructure.

“There’s no pathway for a parent to step in and advocate for a minor whose account has been compromised,” Frey told Ars.

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Secret Grand Jury Convened to Unmask Anonymous Government Critic on Reddit

Federal prosecutors have ordered Reddit to appear before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., and hand over the personal data of an anonymous user who posted criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company has until April 14 to comply. Reddit has declined to say whether it plans to fight the order.

The user, identified in court filings as John Doe, is a US citizen in the Pacific Northwest. Doe’s attorneys reviewed the account’s post history and found nothing resembling criminal activity.

The most aggressive posts they could locate: sharing already-public biographical details about Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good in Minneapolis in January; suggesting “Urine speaks louder than words” as an anti-ICE protest sign (a reference to a song); and writing “TSA sucks and we all know it.”

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Massachusetts House Passes Social Media Age Verification Digital ID Bill

Massachusetts just voted to force every social media user in the state to prove their age to a tech company. 

The bill passed the House 129-25 on Wednesday, banning children under 14 from social media entirely, requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, and mandating that platforms build age verification systems to enforce all of it. If it becomes law, the policy takes effect on October 1.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

House Speaker Ron Mariano and Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz framed the legislation as protection. “This ban would be among the most restrictive in the entire country, helping to protect young people from harmful content and addictive algorithms that have a proven negative impact on their mental health,” they said in a joint statement. 

They also described the broader goal: “The simple reality is that Massachusetts must do more to ensure that our laws keep pace with modern challenges – especially when it comes to protecting our children, and to setting students up for success in the classroom and beyond.”

The bill doesn’t say how companies should verify ages. It leaves that to Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who would have until September 1 to write the implementing regulations. 

That vagueness is deliberate, according to Michlewitz, who said it gives the AG flexibility in a changing industry. 

But the practical reality of age verification is that someone has to prove who they are. 

That means government IDs, facial scans, or behavioral tracking, and those requirements don’t just apply to kids. Every user on the platform has to go through the system, because you can’t filter minors without checking adults, too.

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TikTok Leftist Reveals Latest Symbol Of White Supremacy And You’re Probably Guilty

A bizarre TikTok video has gone viral for its unique take on how “white supremacy” is manifesting in neighborhoods across America — and for the plant-based remedy the video offers.

In the wild clip shared on X by Libs of TikTok, among others, the earnest TikTok user reveals her theory on the racial hate inherent in having — a lawn. “I can’t stop thinking about how grass lawns are racist and like, based in white supremacy,” the woman says. She admits her theory may not make sense, but offers a plant-based solution to the problem of racist grass maintenance anyway.

“I can’t stop thinking about how grass lawns are racist and like, based in white supremacy,” says the woman in the clip. “If that doesn’t make sense, that’s OK, I guess. It seems really obvious to me. It’s, it’s really upsetting.”

The triggered user suggests a fix for the problem of racial hatred via lawn care, saying “Bring back weeds. Bring back clover yards.”

“Look, can we just, can… can anything just be OK in its natural state?” she continues. “Or do we just have to whitewash everything, make it a competition, and use it as a sign of your worth as a human being in society? Like, can we just have weeds?”

Proper lawn care helps prevent soil erosion and runoff, thereby reducing pollution in waterways, helps to filter rainwater, improves water quality and absorption, traps dust/pollutants while producing oxygen, reduces urban heat by cooling surrounding air and surfaces while also reducing noise and glare, according to the University of Minnesota. Properly maintained lawns also support wildlife habitat and minimize issues like excess fertilizer runoff.

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UK Foreign Affairs Committee Calls for Government Agency to Police Online “Disinformation”

The UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee wants the government to build a new censorship agency. The proposed “National Counter Disinformation Centre” would be given the power to identify and act against speech the state considers “disinformation,” placed on a statutory footing, and modeled on bodies like Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency, which once ran a public campaign warning citizens about the dangers of memes.

The committee’s report, published on March 27 2026, goes further than a single new body.

It calls for new censorship rules in a forthcoming Representation of the People Bill to target AI-generated content and “the creation and dissemination of disinformation.”

It wants amendments to the Online Safety Act that would force platforms to publicly display where user accounts were created and whether the user connected through a VPN. It wants more money for the FCDO’s Hybrid Threats Directorate. And it wants the government to review the National Security Act’s foreign interference offense because, apparently, an existing law that carries up to 14 years in prison isn’t strict enough.

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Meta To Comply With Florida Age Verification Digital ID Law

Meta agreed to comply with Florida’s age verification law, HB 3, and will begin purging accounts belonging to children under 14 starting in May. 

The company’s capitulation comes ahead of an April 8 deadline set by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who threatened litigation against any platform still refusing to verify the ages and identities of its users. Uthmeier is now pressuring Snapchat, Roblox, Discord, and TikTok to do the same.

What Florida calls child protection is also the construction of a statewide identity verification system for the internet. Meta is one of the biggest companies lobbying for age verification checks on the app store level.

HB 3 bans under-14s from social media entirely and requires parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. But to block minors, platforms first need to determine who is and isn’t a minor. That means age-checking everyone, adults included. The surveillance burden falls on millions of people who have every legal right to use these services without proving who they are.

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Downed U.S. Drone Appears On TikTok Live As Iraqi Children Try To Sell It

As the U.S.-Iran conflict enters its second month, America’s Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, is becoming increasingly visible across the Middle East theater, a sign that the Department of War has learned one critical lesson from both the Iranian drone playbook and the Ukraine-Russia war: cheap drones are the future of warfare.

The latest news on LUCAS comes from an unverifiable TikTok video, amplified on X, which appears to show a downed drone seized by Iraqi children who are reportedly trying to sell it.

If authentic, the footage is another reminder that low-cost drones are proliferating so widely across the region that they will likely spread to other parts of the world.

In a separate video reposted on X, Iranian forces appear to have recovered a LUCAS drone in the Persian Gulf area.

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Foreign Influence Exposed: How Non-U.S. Social Media Accounts Shape the Narrative on Iran Conflict

Foreign social media accounts could be shaping negative narratives about the U.S.-Iran conflict, raising concerns about misinformation and public perception.

A report by Pew Research Center on March 25 indicates that a significant number of Americans are against U.S. military involvement in Iran. According to their survey, about 61 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with President Donald Trump’s handling of the conflict, while 37 percent express approval.

Furthermore, by a margin of almost two-to-one, more of the survey’s participants believe military action is not progressing well—45 percent compared to the 25 percent who think it is going extremely or very well.

But is someone shaping this narrative? On X, foreign users are certainly influencing the way the conflict is perceived. A recent analysis published on conservative political commentator Glenn Beck’s website of more than 1,000 viral English-language posts may offer valuable insights into who is crafting the narrative.

These posts, published between February 28 and March 13, showed a significant influence from accounts based outside the U.S. In his opinion, these accounts, along with the groups or governments behind them, are significantly steering the conversation on X, inundating it with “inflammatory and demoralizing propaganda,” which can alter public perception and sentiment.

Mauro, a national security analyst and founder of The Mauro Institute, spoke to The Gateway Pundit about his discovery. He shared that, according to his research, “more than half, specifically 559 out of 1,000, of the viral X posts written in English about Iran come from abroad. These 559 posts garnered more than 650 million views and accumulated nearly 22 million total interactions, including reposts, likes, and replies. For him, “This engagement underscores the power of social media to amplify certain narratives.”

Interestingly, a random selection of 150 posts from the thousand viral X posts showed that 108 (72%) were negative, whereas only 40 (27%) were positive. The non-U.S. portion of that random selection showed a significantly negative response, with 64 percent expressing negativity and only 10 percent showing positivity. According to Mauro, this imbalance alone raises questions about the authenticity of the discourse surrounding the issue.

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British Law Enforcement No Longer Policing Social Media Posts Looking for ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’, as Commissioner Celebrates Increased Ability To Investigate Real Criminals

British police are back to investigating crime, not hurt feelings.

The United Kingdom is the leading country in incarcerating citizens for social media posts, and – what’s worse – police wasted time and resources with something called ‘non-crime hate incidents’.

You read it right: perfectly legal posts.

But now, the police are no longer involved in these internet arguments, and that has enabled officers to ‘solve more real crimes’.

The Telegraph reported:

“Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said the force had doubled the number of real hate crimes that it had solved since he announced in December last year that his force would no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs).

In an exclusive article for The Telegraph, he said this change had already saved officers ‘thousands of hours’, enabling them to devote more time to ‘preventing and solving crime, protecting vulnerable people, and responding to real risks of harm’.”

It’s been two days since Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the abolition of NCHIs nationally.

“Sir Mark, whose force pre-empted the national move, said NCHIs had ‘eroded’ the public’s trust in the police because of ‘unclear guidance’ from policing bodies and the Government on how to apply them.

Officers had been knocking on people’s doors to deal with ‘online squabbles and everyday disagreements that never met the threshold of criminality’, he said.”

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Children’s Health Defense Wins Settlement in Landmark Censorship Case

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) finalized a settlement in CHD’s landmark class action censorship lawsuit against key Biden administration officials accused of colluding with tech companies to censor social media content.

In a press release, the DOJ cited President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, Executive Order “acknowledging that ‘the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.’ 90 Fed. Reg. 8243 (Jan. 28, 2025).”

CHD, along with its then-Chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sued the Biden administration in March 2023.

The lawsuit, Kennedy v. Biden, became CHD v. Trump after Trump became president of the U.S., and Kennedy, who first left CHD to run his own presidential campaign, was later named secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration.

The class action lawsuit against then-President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies alleged they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.

Jed Rubenfeld, attorney for CHD, called the settlement a “tremendous win” against government censorship.

“We brought this case years ago to challenge the Biden administration’s assault on free speech,” Rubenfeld said. “Today, the government, under a new administration, acknowledged that assault. And via a previously issued Executive Order, the president prohibited government officials from pressuring social media companies in the future to trample on Americans’ First Amendment rights.”

As part of the settlement with CHD, the government agreed to pay attorneys’ fees.

The DOJ also settled a similar lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, and issued a consent decree in the case.

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