The Beef Tallow Skin Care Trend Smells Like a Scam

Who needs vaccines and Vanicream, when you have raw milk and beef tallow? That’s what the internet thinks, anyway. TikTok (or TallowTok) is currently slathered with devotees hailing beef tallow (yes, the rendered fat from a cow) as a miracle moisturizer. As of March 2025, there have been more thanContinue Reading

Meta Tries to Bury a Tell-All Book

It was Meta itself that first told me about the new book attacking Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the allegedly bankrupt morals of their company. On March 7, a Meta PR person contacted me to ask if I’d heard about Careless People, a presumed takedown of the company that wasContinue Reading

Inside the Telegram Groups Doxing Women for Their Facebook Posts

Once a woman was mentioned, her privacy was permanently compromised. Users frequently shared social media handles, which led other members to contact her—soliciting intimate images or sending disparaging texts. Anonymity can be a protective tool for women navigating online harassment. But it can also be embraced by bad actors whoContinue Reading

In her 2012 book, Addiction by Design, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll lays out the different technological mechanisms casinos employ to keep people gambling. From the architecture of buildings and placement of ATMs to the design of casino carpets—all of it exemplifies strategic calculation. As a blurb for a gambling tradeContinue Reading

TikTok Is Back in US App Stores

Twenty-six days after it was banished from US app stores, TikTok has returned to the iOS App Store and Google Play store. Apple and Google brought back the Chinese-owned video app after receiving a letter from US Attorney General Pam Bondi assuring the companies they would not be fined forContinue Reading

DOGE’s Website Is Just One Big X Ad

At a press conference in the Oval Office this week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project would be “maximally transparent,” thanks to information posted to its website. At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty. However, when the siteContinue Reading

At a press conference in the Oval Office this week, Elon Musk this week promised the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project would be “maximally transparent” thanks to information posted to its website. At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty. However, whenContinue Reading

The Loneliness Epidemic Is a Security Crisis

UTA’s Wang notes that while she hasn’t assessed whether scammers are using generative AI to produce romance scam scripts, she is seeing evidence that they are using it to produce content for online dating profiles. “I think it is something that has already happened, unfortunately,” she says. “Scammers right nowContinue Reading

TikTok Stole Our Hearts, but Can It Last?

Zoë Schiffer: Booktok got me fully immersed in the romantasy world. Now I’m incapable of reading normal literature. Thank you. Lauren Goode: I’m going to assume that romantasy is romance and fantasy? Zoë Schiffer: Oh, yes it is. Dragons. There’s fairies, there’s dragons. I’m not proud of this, but IContinue Reading

Inside the Bust That Took Down Pavel Durov—and Upended Telegram

As Maillochon and other French journalists went on to report, prosecutors had been secretly investigating Durov for months over his and Telegram’s alleged failure to block illegal activity—which authorities claim included fraud, drug trafficking, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), organized crime, and terrorism—on the platform. The French Gendarmerie alone hadContinue Reading