Tech Trends: Social Media Repeats and the Taylor Swift Deepfake

Each month, Plugged In publishes a blog with the latest technology and social media trends. We’ll let you know what changes to keep an eye out for. We’ll offer some tips about how to handle technology in your family. And of course, we’ll give you the scoop on those things called “hashtags” so you can stay up to date on all the things your kids might be obsessed with.

And ICYMI (“in case you missed it,” for those up on their social acronyms), you can check out December’s Tech Trends, too.

Social Media Is at It Again

Remember last year when the U.S. government almost banned TikTok over privacy concerns? How about when Meta launched Threads and it garnered 10 million signups in the first seven hours? Or when the social media app BeReal became popular due to its lack of influencer culture?

Well, social media is at it again.

TikTok Still Might Get Banned

The short-form video app wasn’t banned last year. Instead, “Project Texas” was initiated, a plan to transfer U.S. user data to the American tech giant Oracle Corp. Unfortunately, that initiative is failing.

Not only are Project Texas managers instructing workers to share data with colleagues in other parts of the company and with ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company in China) without going through official channels, but ByteDance updates TikTok’s algorithm so frequently “that Project Texas employees struggle to check every change, and fear they won’t catch problems if there are any,” says The Wall Street Journal.

Now, a spokeswoman for TikTok said the company is “voluntarily implementing our plan to protect U.S. user data.” And TikTok has “repeatedly said it doesn’t share data with the Chinese government.” But TikTok is still in negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. over whether it can remain in the country.

So unless Project Texas starts making some serious strides, there’s still a chance TikTok could get banned.

Bye Bye Birdie, er, Twitter

When Meta’s Threads (a text-based social media app similar to X/Twitter) first launched last year, it quickly became the fastest-growing app in history with 100 million signups just five days after its launch on July 10. Twitter CEO Elon Musk threatened to sue, challenging Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a literal cage fight and grotesquely suggesting a comparison of genitals.

Musk eventually relented and focused instead on rebranding Twitter as X. And although new user interest in X has dropped under Musk’s ownership, Threads didn’t do so hot either, with its own 70% drop in active users by the end of last July.

However, six months later, Threads is on the rise once again. The Instagram-powered social media app ranked the 10^th most downloaded app in 2023, beating out X. Of course, as PCMag points out, X has been around since 2006 and already has a significant number of downloads from previous years.

Which app will win this popularity contest remains to be seen. But hopefully, Musk will avoid grotesque suggestions in the future.

BeReal Is Better But Not Perfect

BeReal, another social media app that saw its own wave of popularity last year, has been lauded for its ad-free, influencer-free culture that steers users away from the never-ending scroll.

However, the app still has its flaws—which appear to be growing.

PluggedIn’s Adam Holz alerted parents that while BeReal only allows users to post once a day (thereby limiting the number of posts in your feed), there’s still a public feed where you can scroll endlessly. Additionally, while you can only 500 accounts, you can befriend strangers. Although explicit content is prohibited, it relies on user-reports to be removed. And the app’s geolocation presents a problem with potential stalkers by displaying your exact location at the exact moment you post.

Despite these faults, Pew Research’s study “Teens, Social media and Technology 2023” reported that 13% of teens are using BeReal. And beginning February 6, celebrities and brands will officially be invited to join, too.

While that upcoming change might seem counter to what BeReal says it’s all about, BeReal’s chief operating officer Romain Salzman “made clear that he does not want this development to threaten the app’s distinct culture or sacrifice the sense of integrity central to its identity,” says Wired. He says that these accounts (which will be verified as “RealPeople” and “RealBrands” that regular users can follow as “RealFans”) won’t be given special privileges. Just like normal users, they’ll have two minutes to take two pictures—one using the regular camera on their device and one using the selfie camera. And they won’t be able “to pretty up their posts with filters, nor will they be able to pre-plan or schedule their posts.”

I’m inclined to give Salzman the benefit of the doubt. However, as with all social media apps, Holz tells us in a blog that “parental engagement and intentionality remain the best strategies to ensure that young users can enjoy BeReal’s benefits without being knocked off course by some of the vulnerabilities that still exist with it.”

How the Deepfake of Taylor Swift Affects the Rest of Us

Last October, I reported on many cases of deepfake nonconsensual explicit material generated by artificial intelligence. (I also gave some suggestions that might help protect members of your family from becoming victims.) Unfortunately, the trend is still going strong. Only this time, it incited the fury of Taylor Swift’s army of Swifties.

Sexually graphic AI-generated images of the pop star flooded X this week, soon spreading to other platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Her fans, lovingly dubbed “Swifties,” took to social media by storm, mass reporting the images to have them removed. But it wasn’t enough.

Unfortunately, the images are still circulating the internet. Due to the current lack of protective legislation, the perpetrators may never be held to account. And it begs the question, “If Taylor Swift can’t defeat deepfake porn, then what hope is there for the rest of us?”

Some experts believe the crackdown on AI deepfakes will never come due to free speech protections. Others worry about the practical limitations on the engineering side of the equation.

But those AI images of Swift may change the narrative and lead to at least some legal protections.

In 2014, an iCloud leak led to nude photos of celebrities spreading online. It was damaging and devastating to the victims. But it also prompted mass calls from the public for greater protections on people’s digital identities. And it ultimately led to Apple ramping up its security features, reports Wired. Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness, a nonprofit organization focused on using images and videos for protecting human rights, told Wired that what happened to Swift “does feel like this could be one of those trigger events.”

And it appears Gregory may be right. Several legislators were, in fact, already working toward bills that would regulate the creation and distribution of AI-generated imagery (explicit or otherwise). And this latest attack on arguably one of the most famous women in the world is now serving to bolster their arguments and further proceedings.