Kevin Mayer has quit as CEO of TikTok as the Chinese-owned video sharing app faces enormous backlash from President Donald Trump.

"In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for," Mayer said in a memo to employees that was obtained by CNN Business. "Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company."

"We appreciate that the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin's role would be going forward, and fully respect his decision," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.

TikTok hired Mayer, a former top Disney executive, less than four months ago. The move appeared to be designed to bolster the app's American credentials and improve its standing with US regulators.

Since then, though, it has come under fire from the US government, and Trump has threatened to ban the app.

source:cnn

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Everyone knows story section of Instagram and Facebook. But very few know that this feature was a direct knock-off of Snapchat stories. Now Instagram is looking into a new feature that is very similar to TikTok.

Feature similar to TikTok where a user can select an audio and lipsync to that audio is being tested by Instagram in Brazil. Feature is named Reels and will give access to a huge catalog of music to choose from. Reels will live inside Instagram app along with other story modes like Boomerang and Super-Zoom allowing the user to record 15-sec clip and share it as stories. Reels is live in Brazil for both Android and iOS users but no words on when other locations will get this feature yet. 

 

A conservative social media user whose far-right memes have been praised and reposted by President Donald Trump has been kicked off Twitter for repeated copyright violations.

Logan Cook, a Kansas man who posts under the name Carpe Donktum, was permanently banned from the platform Tuesday night, days after he posted a video criticizing CNN that used doctored footage from the news channel.

The clip, which Trump retweeted last week, used footage from a CNN story from last year about the friendship of two toddlers, one Black and one white. Cook doctored the clip, set it to ominous music, and inserted a fake misspelled CNN caption reading “Terrified todler runs from racist baby,” then a clip from the original video before showing the message “America is not the problem. Fake news is the problem.”

Twitter later placed a “manipulated media” warning label on the clip. It was originally posted last year but received significantly more attention after Trump’s retweet.

Cook, who also posts his work to other platforms and websites, said in an interview that his posts are satirical and are therefore exempt from copyright rules. He said he believes Twitter was simply looking for a reason to boot him.

“They didn’t like my politics, they found an excuse to get rid of me,” he said.

Cook’s account has been temporarily suspended multiple times in the past for violations of Twitter’s copyright rules. He was also suspended for eight days last year for posting a video depicting Trump as a cowboy attacking CNN journalist Jim Acosta.

Twitter rules prohibit Cook from creating a new account to replace the old one, which had more than 270,000 followers at the time of the suspension.

Trump often retweeted Cook, who had emerged as a prominent creator of right-wing memes that uses humor, often dark, to condemn journalists and those who have criticized the president. Trump called Cook a “genius” during a meeting last year at the White House.

Trump has himself run afoul of Twitter’s rules. In March the platform placed the “manipulated media” warning on a video of Joe Biden shared by Trump.

Last month, Trump lashed out at the company after it added fact-check warnings to two of his tweets on mail-in voting. Following that back-and-forth the president vowed to add new regulations to rein in social media companies — an idea dismissed by constitutional law experts as legally difficult.

Some U.S.-based users of WeChat are suing President Donald Trump in a bid to block an executive order that they say would effectively bar access in the U.S. to the hugely popular Chinese messaging app.

The complaint, filed Friday in San Francisco, is being brought by the nonprofit U.S. WeChat Users Alliance and several people who say they rely on the app for work, worship and staying in touch with relatives in China. The plaintiffs said they are not affiliated with WeChat, nor its parent company, Tencent Holdings.

In the lawsuit, they asked a federal court judge to stop Trump’s executive order from being enforced, claiming it would violate its U.S. users’ freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and other constitutional rights.

It remains unclear what the orders will mean for the apps’ millions of users in the U.S., but experts have said the orders appear intended to bar WeChat and TikTok from the app stores run by Apple.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said Saturday saying it plans to mount a legal challenge against the executive order that President Trump issued against the popular video app.

WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users, is less well-known than TikTok to Americans without a connection to China.

Within China, WeChat is censored and expected to adhere to content restrictions set by authorities. The Citizen Lab internet watchdog group in Toronto have said WeChat monitors files and images shared abroad to aid its censorship in China.

Even so, the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance complaint argued that losing access to the app would harm millions of people in the U.S. who rely on it, noting it is the only app with an interface designed for Chinese speakers.

“Since the executive order, numerous users, including plaintiffs, have scrambled to seek alternatives without success. They are now afraid that by merely communicating with their families, they may violate the law and face sanctions,” according to the complaint.

Source:AP

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