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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D vs. Ryzen 7 7800X3D: a close call

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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D vs. Ryzen 7 7800X3D: a close call

AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9800X3D is already one of the best processors you can buy. It delivers productivity and gaming gains across the board, though not in equal strides. Despite the improvements AMD made, the last-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D is still potent competition, particularly when it comes to gaming.

These are two of the go-to gaming CPUs right now, and although the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is newer and faster, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is still the right CPU for most people. That becomes clear when you look at the main focus of these CPUs — gaming performance — and how prices are starting to settle.

Specs and pricing

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D sitting on a motherboard.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D are almost identical on the specs front. You’re getting eight cores, 16 threads, and 104MB of cache through AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech. Both also top out at 120 watts, though they rarely ever reach that point. Even when pushed to the limit, both the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D rarely reach up to 100W, often operating between 50W and 70W, especially when you’re playing games.

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It may not look like there are a ton of differences between these two CPUs, but there are. First, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D uses the new Zen 5 architecture, which not only utilizes a smaller node, but also comes with a dedicated 512-bit data path for AVX-512 instructions — both CPUs support the instruction, however. For gamers, the bigger difference is how AMD changed the cache.

Both CPUs come with 104MB of total cache, but the 3D V-Cache die is in a different location. On the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, it’s stacked on top of the CPU cores, while on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, it’s tucked below the CPU cores. It might not sound like a big difference, but the Ryzen 7 9800X3D essentially gives the CPU cores more direct access to cooling. That allowed AMD to push clock speeds further, as well as fully unlock the Ryzen 7 9800X3D for overclocking.

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Ryzen 7 9800X3D Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Architecture Zen 5 Zen 4
Cores/Threads 8/16 8/16
L3/L2 Cache 96MB / 8MB 96MB / 8MB
Base frequency 4.7GHz 4.2GHz
Max turbo frequency 5.2GHz 5GHz
Socket AM5 AM5
Max temperature 95°C 89°C
TDP 120W 120W

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D doesn’t support manual overclocking, though you can still boost the speeds through AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO). This gives you some control over overclocking or undervolting your CPU, but the Ryzen 7 9800X3D has all of the overclocking bells and whistles if you want to push the CPU to its limit.

Pricing is a big departure for these two CPUs, and at the time of writing, I’m not sure where prices will end up. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has a list price of $479, which is $30 more expensive than the $449 the Ryzen 7 7800X3D launched at. However, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is currently sold out everywhere, and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is selling for around $460 in its absence.

Things won’t stay this way forever. When the Ryzen 7 9800X3D comes back in stock, that will have downward pressure on the price of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. On the secondhand market, the CPU is selling for around $350 right now, and I suspect it’ll drop below $400 for a new one once the Ryzen 7 9800X3D comes back in stock. AMD has said that it expects the Ryzen 7 7800X3D will stick around for a while, so we should see prices drop soon.

Productivity performance

Performance for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D in Cinebench R24.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D makes big leaps over the Ryzen 7 7800X3D when it comes to productivity performance. You can see the leaps in Cinebench R24 above. Some of that is attributed to the architectural shift in Zen 5, with a clear 19% uplift in single-core speeds. The multi-core speed also sees a 19% boost, however, showing that the change in cache location is allowing the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to fully capitalize on each core.

Performance of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D in Blender.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Rendering applications like Cinebench are the best showcase for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. In Blender, which is another rendering application, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is upwards of 21% faster than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. That’s a massive increase.

Performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D in Geekbench.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

In a multipurpose workload like Geekbench, things are a little different. Similar to Cinebench, you can see a clean 19% uplift in single-core performance due to the Zen 5 architecture. However, in multi-core performance, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D’s lead shrinks to 14%. That’s still a large uplift over the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, though not nearly as stark as what I saw in rendering apps.

Performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

In some apps, the difference really isn’t that large. Take Premiere Pro as an example. Here, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is 8% faster than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. That’s a solid speed-up, no doubt, but it’s not going to make Premiere Pro significantly better to use overall. We’re still working with two eight-core processors, and while the improvement in single-core performance on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is welcome, it doesn’t dominate across all productivity workloads. That’s just the nature of the beast.

There’s no doubt that the Ryzen 7 9800XD is a better productivity CPU than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Both of these chips, however, are built for gaming with their additional cache. The productivity performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is almost identical to the Ryzen 7 9700X when using that CPU’s 105W mode. And you can pick up that CPU for around $325 — more than $150 less than the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. There are some who want gaming and productivity in equal strides, but compromising one area or the other a bit can save you a ton of money.

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Gaming performance

Gaming performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Do you want the fastest gaming CPU, or the secon- fastest gaming CPU? That’s really what it comes down to with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Even expensive flagships like the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 9 9950X can’t keep up with what these two CPUs offer. They’re in a league of their own, and although the newer Ryzen 7 9800X3D is technically faster, it’s not ahead by much.

At most, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is around 6% to 7% faster than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and that’s in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail where you can see big differences. There are a lot of games, such as Returnal, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Black Myth: Wukong where the differences don’t register. In those last two games, in fact, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D was ahead — though mostly due to some variance in runs.

It’s important to keep in mind that these tests were run at 1080p with High settings. If you push up the resolution and/or graphics settings, the differences in performance start to disappear. I don’t want to diminish the role of a CPU if your gaming PC completely. However, the thin single-digit margins between the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D call into question just much faster the Ryzen 7 9800X3D really is when inside a high-performance gaming PC.

Frankly, it’s not surprising the two CPUs are so tight. AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPUs didn’t move the needle much for gaming performance, and with the same amount of cache on both CPUs, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D doesn’t make huge improvements over the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, at least on the gaming front.

Power and temperature

Power draw of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in games.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Both the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D are very efficient CPUs. However, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is more efficient, if only by a hair. You can see that in action in the chart above. Compared to a CPU like the Intel Core i9-14900K, you see how much more efficient both these CPUs are. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D still draws more power than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and that’s true in games like Returnal where the two CPUs post identical performance.

Temperatures for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in games.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

In addition, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D runs hotter. All of AMD’s 3D V-Cache CPUs run hot, but the higher clock speeds and power draw on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D go further than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The difference isn’t quite as stark as power draw.

AMD is pushing the Ryzen 7 9800X3D hard. The change of the cache location allows for overclocking and higher clock speeds, and AMD took advantage of that extra headroom to push the power and temperature of the CPU, which mostly results in better productivity performance.

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A surprising upset

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D held between fingertips.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

I’m not sure how long it will take for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to reach its $479 list price. I don’t think it will be soon, however. The CPU sold out almost immediately, and it’s selling for between $700 and $900 on the secondhand market right now. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is currently selling for $460, but it’s around $350 on the secondhand market, and I suspect it’ll drop even lower once the Ryzen 7 9800X3D comes back in stock.

Keeping the price difference in mind, I’m on the side of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. There’s no doubt the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is much faster in productivity apps, but these are gaming CPUs. On that front, both the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D are very close, and the Ryzen 7 9800X3D isn’t worth the extra price. Depending on how things shake out, you could save upwards of $100 on the Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

We’ll have to see where prices end up, but I don’t suspect thry’ll change much. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is a very impressive CPU, but if you don’t mind sacrificing some productivity performance, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D still delivers on the gaming front for much less money.


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Netflix’s Back in Action teaser trailer: Cameron Diaz teams with Jamie Foxx to play spies

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Netflix's Back in Action teaser trailer: Cameron Diaz teams with Jamie Foxx to play spies

For her first film since 2014, Cameron Diaz is teaming with Jamie Foxx to play spies in Back Action, an upcoming action comedy from Netflix.

After working for the CIA as spies, Emily (Diaz) and Matt (Foxx) leave espionage behind to start a family. Years later, the couple returns to the field after their cover is blown. “For the first time in a really long time, I felt alive again,” Emily tells Matt in the teaser trailer. Rediscovering their elite combat skills is easy. Explaining their previous life to their two kids (McKenna Roberts and Rylan Jackson) is challenging.

When his son asks if he’s Jason Bourne, Matt says, “Yeah, but we remember stuff.”

Back in Action‘s ensemble features Kyle Chandler, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, and Jamie Demetriou.

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Seth Gordon, who directed Foxx in Horrible Bosses, helms Back in Action from a script he wrote with Neighbors scribe Brendan O’Brien. Gordon produces alongside Beau Bauman, Jeno Topping, Peter Chernin, and Sharla Sumpter Bridgett.

Like her character in the movie, Diaz is ending her acting retirement after 10 years. In 2014, Diaz appeared in The Other Woman, Sex Tape, and Annie. After Annie, Diaz took an extended break from acting, with the actress confirming her retirement in 2017.

Back in Action will not be a one-off, as Diaz has several acting projects lined up. The Mask actress will appear in Jonah Hill’s Outcome, an Apple TV+ comedy with Keanu Reeves. Diaz will also reprise her role as Princess Fiona in Shrek 5, which opens in theaters on July 1, 2026.

Back in Action streams on Netflix on January 17, 2025.

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TSMC-made Exynos chips could now be possible

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Featured image for New Exynos 2500 version emerges with enhanced specifications

Samsung may be making a radical change regarding the manufacturing of Exynos chips. The company produces its own SoCs at Samsung Foundry factories. However, it has not been up to the task of efficiently manufacturing 3nm chips. According to reports, it has been working to try to resolve the situation. Now, a reliable tipster claims that Samsung is considering outsourcing Exynos chip manufacturing to TSMC.

TSMC is currently the largest contract chip manufacturer in the world. Big Samsung customers have moved to TSMC in recent years due to problems at the South Korean giant’s factories. However, Samsung’s potential decision to switch to TSMC for Exynos chip production is still striking.

Samsung reportedly considering turning to TSMC to manufacture Exynos chips

Tipster Jukanlosreve posted on X the news about Samsung considering turning to TSMC factories. The source doesn’t offer any further details on this, but the recent background regarding Samsung Foundry explains the potential move. Industry insiders claim that the Galaxy S25 series will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip worldwide. Apparently, solving the low yield issues of the company’s 3nm GAA wafers will take longer than it has available.

Samsung considering using external factories to produce its Exynos chips is quite normal. This doesn’t mean that it will happen with total certainty, however. Big brands always need contingency plans in place for any incidents or problems that may arise during a project. What’s surprising is the company turning to its main rival in the chip production segment.

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In recent weeks, tipsters revealed that Samsung even explored the possibility of using the Dimensity 9400 chip in the vanilla and Plus models. The company also tested the Exynos 2500 until the last minute, hoping to resolve Foundry’s issues. However, it seems that Samsung will have to turn to Qualcomm for the hardware that will power its next flagship mobile devices. Therefore, switching to TSMC could serve as a backup plan in the event that problems persist with Samsung Foundry wafers.

Samsung’s move to a 3nm process has been problematic

In the recent past, chips manufactured by Samsung have presented issues related to temperature management, throttling, and modem performance. The company seemed to have solved these problems with the 4nm Exynos 2400 chip, which performs admirably. However, the difficulties returned when Samsung tried to migrate to the more advanced 3nm process.

 

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Apple’s M2 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM drops to $749 ahead of Black Friday

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Apple's M2 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM drops to $749 ahead of Black Friday

Black Friday is set to soak the world in glorious deals, but why wait until later in the month? Some of these deals are already live. For instance, the M2 MacBook Air . The regular price is $1,000, so this is a discount of 25 percent. It even boasts 16GB of RAM.

This model easily made , even with the presence of the . Here are the takeaways. This laptop, obviously, includes Apple’s proprietary M2 8-core CPU, which is more than fast enough for basic tasks and fine for even many advanced tasks, like music-making. We called it “Apple’s near-perfect Mac” in our official review.

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This is not the bare-bones standard model, as it comes with 16GB of RAM. Most versions ship with 8GB of RAM. The multitasking bona-fides are strong with this one. The M2 MacBook Air also ships with a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display with 500 nits of brightness and support for the P3 wide color gamut.

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It’s thin and light. It’s a MacBook Air. This thing weighs around 2.7 pounds. The battery life is solid, at around 18 hours of use per charge. The four-speaker sound system can get surprisingly loud, so headphones are not a requirement when watching random YouTube videos or listening to music.

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So what’s the downside? There isn’t one. Not really. This isn’t the M3 MacBook Air, so those looking for the latest and greatest model may be let down. The model does only ship with a 256GB solid state drive, but it’s easy enough to plug in an external.

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

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Mission Space launches next quarter to provide real-time space weather forecasts

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Mission Space launches next quarter to provide real-time space weather forecasts

When you board a plane, the pilot already knows the weather on the flight path and can steer clear, or at least warn you it’s coming. The same can’t be said of “space weather” from solar events, which can seriously affect satellites and even passenger planes.

Mission Space is about to launch a constellation provide near-real-time monitoring of this increasingly important phenomenon.

Space weather is a general term for the radiation in the near-Earth environment; outside the planet’s protective aura, satellites and spacecraft feel the full brunt of the sun’s rays, and a solar storm can interfere with or disable them. The type and intensity of this radiation shifts and flows just like atmospheric weather, but being invisible and moving at the speed of light, it’s considerably more difficult to observe and predict.

There are numerous satellites and deep-space missions that monitor solar radiation, but they are necessarily limited; imagine trying to predict the path of a storm using only a handful of wind and rain sensors scattered across the ocean. And while historically this has been sufficient, the growth of the new space economy has transformed space weather from an occasional inconvenience to a constant and quantifiable threat.

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“More and more companies are putting space weather on their agenda,” said Alex Po, CEO and founder of Mission Space. “We have 7,000 satellites in space, but in ten years it’ll be 50,000; that means space weather events will be the same as now, but they will have ten times the impact.”

A serious solar storm is not dangerous not only to electronics, but also to unprepared astronauts. If someone happens to be doing a spacewalk, they could get a face full of radiation — and if we want to establish a permanent presence on the Moon, where there’s similarly little protection, we’ll want to know exactly when it’s safe to go outside.

Nearer the surface, airlines are concerned about passengers getting large doses of radiation during a long flight over the poles, and some have even canceled flights because of it. And there are numerous secondary effects on services that rely on satellites, including precision agriculture.

Mission Space exhibiting at TC Disrupt SF; CEO Alex Po visiting NASA.Image Credits:Mission Space

Po’s startup, originally founded in Europe but now based in Israel and the U.S., is about to launch the first two of a planned 24-satellite constellation that will monitor space weather and provide reports and predictions in near real time.

It’s not intended to replace the scientific instruments currently in space, but augment their data (much of which is public) with a voluminous, proprietary stream that enables more precise, timely monitoring.

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Po explained that while many companies and governments are increasingly aware of the need for better space weather prediction, the satellites are aging and the data is difficult to share.

“The infrastructure for space weather monitoring was developed in the late 90s, and many of the scientific models were developed 50 years ago,” Po said. Information sharing agreements between organizations like NASA, NOAA, and ESA are complex, and the data itself is not trivial to integrate and harmonize.

“There are no people in the companies who need this data who can understand it. What’s needed is, say, alerts for different alert levels for launch, or for airlines. Everyone uses weather data but no one thinks about how it is generated: you just want to know if it’s going to rain or not. It’s the same here,” he continued.

Mission Space currently uses public sources, doing the work of normalizing it to create something of a unified data stream. But they are launching the first two of their own satellites in the first quarter of 2025, with more planned for later that year. Po said they could probably launch faster, but that it’s more beneficial to learn from the first set and improve as they go. “Engineers…” he said, “There are always more changes.”

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Image Credits:Mission Space

The satellites themselves (named Zohar) are specialized but not exotic, he noted, leading to a lower cost for a constellation of 24 than you might expect. The important part is that they still collect 15 parameters a thousand times a second.

“Space weather is a data monopoly game: the first to launch the constellation and build the infrastructure will win,” he predicted. “Even with half a constellation, in two years we will generate a thousand times more space weather data than humans have generated in the last 60. And the real-time data will let us develop machine learning models based on it.”

They are not in competition with governments and scientific organizations, he claimed, or really even startups looking to serve those customers — collaboration is a necessity for a number of reasons.

Their customers are “aerospace in general; satellite operators and space tourism companies; anyone doing private space stations. They’re all very aware of the problem,” said Po. “It was common knowledge in the aviation industry but now the companies are actually paying attention to solutions. And of course for defense, they’ve been developing the domain, and you must be sure you will not have issues in critical space operations. With the current level of precision, that’s hard for them.”

While the real-time readings and predictions will have to wait for the full constellation, the pair going up in a few months should offer a marked improvement over the existing offerings. No exact date is set for launch.

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Pro-Harris TikTok felt safe in an algorithmic bubble — until election day

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Pro-Harris TikTok felt safe in an algorithmic bubble — until election day

In the weeks leading up to the US presidential election, Kacey Smith was feeling hopeful. Smith, who supported Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, says she knew it would be a close race between the Democratic nominee and Republican Donald Trump. But as she scrolled TikTok, she believed Harris would be victorious.

But Election Day approached, and she started to sense red flags in that positivity. She recalls TikTok serving her enthusiasm for reproductive choice with videos encouraging “women’s rights over gas prices” — implying, falsely, she thought, the choice was “either/or.” The rhetoric fit well inside her feed filled with strangers, but as a campaign strategy, it felt limiting and risky. “When I started seeing that messaging play out,” Smith says, “I started getting a little uneasy.” Her fears were borne out: Harris lost the popular vote and Electoral College and conceded the election to President-elect Trump.

Filter bubbles like TikTok’s recommendation algorithm are a common point of concern among tech critics. The feeds can create the impression of a bespoke reality, letting users avoid things they find unpleasant — like the real people in Smith’s life who supported Trump. But while there are frequent complaints that algorithmic feeds could serve users misinformation or lull them into complacency, that’s not exactly what happened here. Voters like Smith understood the facts and the odds. They just underestimated how convincingly something like TikTok’s feed could build a world that didn’t quite exist — and in the wake of Harris’ defeat, they’re mourning its loss, too.

TikTok’s algorithm is hyperpersonalized, like a TV station calibrated exactly to a user’s brain. Its For You page serves content based on what you’ve previously watched or scrolled away from, and breaking out of these recommendations into other circles of the app isn’t easy. It’s a phenomenon political activists must figure out how to adapt to, says Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of progressive youth voter organization NextGen America.

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“It not only makes it harder for us to do our job, I think it makes it harder for candidates to do their jobs. It makes it harder for news media to do their job, because now you’re talking about having to inform a public that has so many different sources of information,” she says.

From the onset, the Harris campaign seemed to understand the power of these silos. On TikTok, where the Kamala HQ account has 5.7 million followers, an all-Gen Z team of staffers produced video after video that are, at times, indecipherable to the average person. If you saw a video stringing together clips of Harris saying things like “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people” and “I have a Glock” with a gentle Aphex Twin song as the soundtrack, would you understand it as “hopecore”? The campaign bet that it didn’t really matter because the TikTok algorithm would carry it to people who did understand it. And at least to some extent, they were right.

Smith, like other TikTok users, knows that the platform recommends her content based on what she watches, saves, comments on, or likes. When pro-Trump content came across her For You page, Smith would purposely not engage and simply scroll away. 

“I don’t want my algorithm to think that I’m a Trump supporter, so I just want to scroll up and ignore it,” she says. 

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In hindsight, Smith wonders if that was the right thing to do or if a mix of different types of political content may have given her more insight into what the other side was saying, doing, and thinking. She likens it to being a liberal or progressive who consumes news from right-wing outlets like Breitbart or Fox News — not because you agree with the material, but because it’s helpful to know what messages are resonating with other types of voters. 

The echo chamber effect isn’t limited to politics: we don’t even really know what is popular on TikTok generally. Some of what we see may not be guided by our preferences at all. A report by The Washington Post found that male users — even liberal men — were more likely to be served Trump content on TikTok than women. According to data from Pew Research Center, about 4 in 10 young people regularly get news from TikTok.

TikTok obviously isn’t the only filter bubble out there. Two years into Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now called X, the platform has morphed into a right-wing echo chamber, with content boosted by Musk himself. While TikTok is simply (as far as we know) serving people things they like to sell ads, the slant on X was a deliberate electoral strategy that paid off handsomely for Musk.

“I don’t think we know the full implications of X’s algorithm being rigged to feed us right wing propaganda,” Tzintzún Ramirez of NextGen America says. A recent Washington Post analysis found that right-wing accounts have come to dominate visibility and engagement on X. That includes an algorithmic boost to Musk’s own posts, as the billionaire angles for influence with the incoming administration. 

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Unlike somebody drinking from Musk’s algorithmic fire hose, a young person deep in a pro-Harris TikTok bubble likely wasn’t being fed racist “great replacement” theory stories or false claims about election fraud. Instead, they were probably seeing videos from some of the hundreds of content creators the Democratic Party worked with. Though the direct impact of influencers on electoral politics is difficult to measure, NextGen America’s own research suggests that influencer content may turn out more first-time voters.

“I should know better than to be fooled”

Alexis Williams is the type of influencer that Democrats were hoping could carry their message to followers. For the last several years, Williams has made content about politics and social issues and attended the Democratic National Convention this year as a content creator, sharing her reflections with 400,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram. Though Harris wasn’t a perfect candidate in Williams’ eyes, she felt Harris would win the presidency in the days leading up to the election.

“As someone with a literal engineering degree, I should know better than to be fooled,” Williams says. She was fed TikToks about a bombshell poll showing Harris ahead in Iowa; young women in Pennsylvania going to the polls in support of Harris; analysis about why it was actually going to be a landslide. Professional polls consistently showed a dead heat between Trump and Harris — but watching TikTok after TikTok, it’s easy to shake off any uncertainty. It was a world full of what’s frequently dubbed “hopium”: media meant to fuel what would, in retrospect, look like unreasonable optimism. 

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TikTok and the Harris campaign didn’t respond to The Verge’s requests for comment.

For many voters on TikTok, the Kamala HQ content fit in seamlessly with other videos. The campaign used the same trending sound clips and music and a casual way of talking to viewers that seemed, at times, borderline unserious. (The Trump campaign also used popular songs and post formats but didn’t seem as native to the platform — more like a politician’s attempt at TikTok.) But Smith says that even as a Harris supporter, there was a limit to how much of that she could stomach. At a certain point, the trends get old, the songs get overplayed, and the line between a political campaign and everything else on TikTok starts to get blurry. Kamala HQ, Smith says, started to feel like just another brand.

Williams’ confidence began to break down on Election Day, as she walked to a watch party. “I know what I’m seeing on the internet and everything, but I still had [something] in my heart that was like, I don’t see us having another Donald Trump presidency, but I also don’t see a world where a Black woman gets elected for president right now,” she says. She started to wonder whether that much had changed in the eight years since the last female presidential candidate. “You’re seeing all this stuff, and people are getting so excited, but this could be just a mirage.”

Filter bubbles are not a new phenomenon, and voters have a wide range of places to get hyperpartisan news apart from TikTok: blogs, talk radio, podcasts, TV. Whether on the right or the left, there’s a tendency to look around at what you see and assume it’s representative. But the false sense of certainty that TikTok brings is perhaps even more powerful. What we see on the platform is both uncomfortably personal and incredibly global: a video talking about something that happened on our neighborhood block might be followed up by someone across the country voting for the same candidate for the same reasons. It gives an illusion that you are receiving a diverse assortment of content and voices.

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As social media algorithms have gotten more precise, our window into their inner workings has gotten even smaller. This summer, Meta shut down CrowdTangle, a research tool used to track viral content on Facebook. A public TikTok feature called Creative Center — which allowed advertisers to measure trending hashtags — was abruptly restricted by the company after reporters used it to report on the Israel-Hamas war. It is harder than ever to understand what’s happening on social media, especially outside of our bubbles.

“As technology gets more advanced and more convincing, our idea of a communal reality might genuinely become archaic,” Williams says. “This election has really taught me that we are very much sucked into these worlds that we create on our phone, when the real world is right in front us.”

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D-Link devices are already being attacked after the company said it would no longer support them

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A person's fingers type at a keyboard, with a digital security screen with a lock on it overlaid.


  • Earlier this week, researchers discover a 9.2 flaw affecting multiple NAS models
  • D-Link says it won’t patch them since they reached end-of-life status
  • Crooks are now targeting them with available exploit code

Cybercriminals have begun targeting D-Link NAS devices, recently found to have a critical vulnerability, but which will not be patched due to being at their end of life.

Threat monitoring service Shadowserver recently sounded the alarm in a brief thread posted on X.

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