In TikTok’s Final Hours, Users React to a Nationwide Ban of the App Users in the United States react to a nationwide ban of the app.

“It has hit me, but it doesn’t seem real because it has been such an impactful thing in my life.” TikTok users in the U.S. on Saturday scrolled through the app for what could be its final hours. The mood was relatively somber, at least by TikTok’s typically unserious standards.

Opinion | Bluesky Is Different From X. For Now. Users are looking for a more curated experience on a platform that is not constantly trying to get them to interact with brands.

"If Bluesky turns out to be a long-term home for political conversation, it will be because, as also happened on early Twitter, the new arrivals create appealing new habits and norms, not just new content," writes the author Clay Shirky. nyti.ms/4f2A28E

Hi! We compiled a list of our journalists in our starter pack here:
go.bsky.app/HxQY3Ba

You can also add them to your feed here: bsky.app/profile/did:...

The snippet generation Long-form entertainment is out and snack-sized media is in.

"The snippet generation:"

"Long-form entertainment is out and snack-sized media is in for the next generation of kids, teens and young adults."

Phones and social networks are "changing the way we think, eroding young people's willingness to focus."
www.axios.com/2024/11/29/g...

Australia Bans Social Media for Everyone Under 16 The law sets a minimum age for users of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X. How the restriction will be enforced online remains an open question.

Breaking News: Australia has passed a sweeping ban on social media for children under 16, one of the world’s most comprehensive measures aimed at safeguarding young people from potential hazards online. nyti.ms/3VbiGzc

At least one item on his wishlist has been granted: Bluesky has decided to quadruple the size of its contract workforce of content moderators from 25 to 100, the company told Platformer. The move comes in response to Bluesky’s rapid growth since this month’s US presidential election, which triggered a fresh exodus of users away from Elon Musk’s X and over the weekend took the platform past 22 million total users.

Some news: amid rapid growth and some over-enforcement of its community guidelines, Bluesky trust and safety chief @aaron.bsky.team tells me the company will quadruple the size of its content moderation team www.platformer.news/bluesky-grow...

A mistake during IVF treatment led two mothers to give birth to each other's baby girls. After bonding with them for months, the families discovered the truth — and faced a devastating choice. Should they switch their girls? nyti.ms/3OtbJG5

Strands is a word search with a unique twist. Can you uncover the theme? Play here: nyti.ms/4i2FbQB

Agree tbh

A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness A small study found ChatGPT outdid human physicians when assessing medical case histories, even when those doctors were using a chatbot.

This is a fascinating study, and speaks to the vast perception gap between what LLMs are capable of and what people think they are capable of.

Doctors using ChatGPT for diagnosis performed *worse* than ChatGPT alone, because they kept second-guessing the model.

www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/h...

At the same time, Bluesky’s exiled Trump-era Twitter resistance posters have given it something quite valuable to a new social network: a coherent identity. Bluesky users like to say that they’re having more fun than people on other networks, but my sense is that their fun comes largely from the fact that they know why they are there. It’s an environment for like-minded people to learn, to express outrage, to grieve, to support, and to plan. Given that Trump is about to give them an inexhaustible supply of (legitimate!) outrage over the next four years, that strong identity could serve as a durable engine for community building. And I think it speaks to much of the excitement we have seen there over the past few days.

Here's my best effort to work out why Bluesky blew up over the weekend. Much more than Threads, it's a network that knows what it's *for* www.platformer.news/bluesky-post...

I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how. Sometimes it's healthy to do something you love less, and differently.

"I’m still a working journalist and a huge part of my job is to read and follow the news. I’ll still do both those things because I love them. But sometimes it’s healthy to do something you love a little less, and differently."