Beachfront residents in Sydney, Australia are paying massive amounts of money to help construct a 7-meter high concrete wall that’s meant to act as the last point of defense for their homes.
The only problem? It might be doing more harm than good.
Oh, Goop. My sin, my soul: G – o – o – p.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand has pivoted more and more into the sexy side of wellness in recent years. Its latest endeavors prove that: the new Netflix show Sex, Love, and Goop; “DTF” (down to fuck) supplements; and the release of its second vibrator, the Ultraplush Self-Heating G-Spot Vibrator.
This isn’t a far cry from Goop’s viral offerings of yore, such as vaginal jade eggs. In fact, the company is famous for slinging medically-questionable products.
Given this dubious track record, I was skeptical to try out this new vibrator but also curious. While heated sex toys may be a gimmick — and this one doesn’t change my opinion on that — it’s still a solid vibrator…and probably much more pleasurable than the eggs.
Goop began as an e-newsletter by Paltrow in 2008. A decade later, it had morphed into a multi-tentacled brand worth $250 million, complete with its e-commerce website, podcast, print magazine, and even IRL summits. Goop’s first Netflix show, The Goop Lab, debuted in January 2020.
Along with this budding success came claims from medical experts that goop packaged and sold pseudoscience, wielding products like body healing stickers (and, of course, the aforementioned vagina eggs).
In 2021, goop seems to be zeroing in on sexual wellness specifically. While Goop Lab explored different areas of wellness including sex, the new Sex, Love, and Goop has a specific focus. There’s even a “Sex, Love, and Goop” shop on the Goop website displaying new products like the DTF supplements, which claim to boost your sex drive. We haven’t tested them yet, but buyers should always be skeptical of supplements and ensure they don’t interact with prescribed medications.
Other new products signal this shift, as well. The brand dropped its first-ever vibrator, the Double-Sided Wand that looks like an ice cream cone, this February. Then in October they debuted their latest: the self-proclaimed “ultimate” G-spot vibe, which too is in the sex, love, goop shop.
I haven’t tried that ice cream vibe, but considering Goop’s reputation I wanted to give Ultraplush a try.
The toy retails for $89, which is actually inexpensive as far as heated vibrators go: Lora DiCarlo’s heated toy line, which Mashable’s Jess Joho reviewed, ranges from $95-$150.
Ultraplush, as I’ll take to calling her to save from copying that mouthful of a name, has a nautical look, with a deep blue insertable body and cream end, attached by a gold bauble.
The toy is made of body-safe silicone and is water-resistant. It can be submerged for up to 30 minutes in water around three feet deep — which is good news if you want to use it in the bath or shower.
As with other silicone-based sex toys, you should only use this with water-based lube (not oil- or silicone-based, as those lubes may degrade the material).
You charge it via USB; mine happened to arrive fully charged. At full charge, the toy lasts 60 minutes but it takes three hours to charge according to the user manual that arrives in the box.
Ultraplush has a feature I haven’t seen on another toy, and one I believe every vibe should have: LED lights that display how much charge time is left:
One light, around 5 minutes of usage time
Two lights, 25 minutes
Three lights, 40 minutes
Four lights, 60 minutes
No need to wonder if your vibrator is going to die just before you cum. Revolutionary!
The display is on the cream side of the toy, as are its two buttons. The top button (when holding the toy blue-side up) turns on the self-heating feature. Press and hold for two seconds to turn the warming function on or off (the button lights up when it’s on).
The bottom button controls vibration and intensities. Press and hold for two seconds to turn on or off. Press once to cycle through the different modes. Ultraplush has 10 total modes: The first three are a steady vibration in increasing intensity, and the latter seven are various pulse patterns.
Ultraplush also comes with a storage pouch, but the ends began to fray even with minimal use. As with all sex toys, clean them before and after every use.
Ultraplush takes a few minutes to reach its highest temperature, just above body temperature (98.6 degrees F) to around 107 degrees, a teensy-bit higher than Lora DiCarlo’s 104.
As Mashable’s Joho observed, warm-up sex toys are all the rage right now — perhaps because, after almost two years of an ongoing pandemic, we need more warmth — but they likely don’t live up to the hype. Our bodies are already plenty warm, and it’s not likely a 10-degree increase will feel like much.
Indeed, while Ultraplush was hot in my hand and elsewhere on my skin, that heat didn’t make a sensational difference internally. While Goop claims the toy “feels like a partner’s touch,” it felt like…well, a toy. That’s not a bad thing — that’s literally what this is — but make no mistake, silicone doesn’t feel like skin even when it’s a bit hot.
The heated element was actually nice externally on the vulva but it may be too much for some, so test elsewhere on your body first (the manual suggests the inside of your forearm). I’d even venture to try out the warm end on non-genital parts of my body just as a muscle relaxant.
Beyond the lukewarm heat, I had fun with Ultraplush. The blue end is perfect for G-Spot stimulation, and has enough give to be flexible for different bodies. The vibration intensities and patterns are varied enough to have something for everyone, and the buttons were easy to handle even when inserted.
See Also: The best budget-friendly sex toys under $50
If you’re looking for G-spot stimulation, don’t just stick in the toy and go to town. The G-spot swells with initial arousal — say during foreplay, or if you’re teasing yourself or watching/listening to porn — which is the optimal time to stimulate the area. Give yourself a few minutes to warm up before inserting a toy (or fingers, or what have you).
Given that the insertable end is so bulbous, I’d definitely use water-based lube with this toy. That bulbous end makes G-spot stimulation easy, though, so I wouldn’t want Goop to change it.
At its highest temperature, the toy may be too hot on vaginal (or anal, though I didn’t try that out) walls when inserting it. In that case, if you still want to experiment with the heat internally, I’d turn on the heat-function and insert it before it reaches full temperature.
Overall, heated sex toys aren’t really my thing. I don’t feel the intended difference between them and non-heated toys, especially if I’ve been using the latter for a few minutes or a longer solo session.
Despite this, Ultraplush is a good G-Spot vibrator, and I had fun using it externally too even though it wasn’t made for that. Did Goop give me the most earth-shattering orgasms of my life? No, but it did the job.
Goop is an…interesting brand, to say the least. When it comes to “wellness,” I trust doctors over Gwyneth Paltrow, but when it comes to vibrators, I’m more lax on medical expertise. I’d try Ultraplush if you enjoy G-spot stimulation and believe a heated toy may be up your alley.
Or, if nothing else, you know it’s a better deal than body healing stickers.
Some white dude from a long time ago asked, “What’s in a name?”
And, well, Facebook is called Meta now, and as journalist Kim Masters noted, “A Facebook by any other name is still a toxic waste site.”
So, yes Facebook has rebranded as Meta, apparently because it is focused on expanding into the VR/immersive online world.
“I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,” Facebook Meta head honcho Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge in an interview.
Of course, Facebook also might be trying to change up its branding because it’s constantly in the news for terrible things, such as its algorithm leading folks into extremism, turning a blind eye when it comes to user’s mental health, or its cozying up to right-wing pundits.
Anyway, the name change and apparent reinvention led to lots of jokes and memes, as one might expect. I mean, what else could have possible happened?
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Grandmas are often stereotyped as frail and out of touch, but those aren’t the grandmas we know.
Contrary to ageist stereotypes, grandmothers can be into anything: tech, pop culture, even powerlifting. And when the holiday season rolls around every year, it’s up to you to find a gift that makes her feel seen and heard — not just as a matriarch, but as a person.
Here’s where all the best Black Friday 2021 deals will be
Maybe that seems like a big ask. Maybe you’re tempted to cop out and get her (yet another) pair of slippers. But here’s the thing: You can do so much better than that, and all it takes is a little quality time spent with your grandma to get to know her interests.
Now, setting aside those few hours to chat with Nana, Nonna, Oma, Abuela, Yia-Yia, Mimi, Geema, Gramms — whatever you call her — might be all she wants from you this year, in all honesty. But just in case you feel like going in with your siblings or cousins and getting her something a bit… well, more, we’ve got you covered.
Here’s our list of the best gifts for grandmas, from nostalgic picks to the latest and greatest gadgets:
Long-distance relationships are the epitome of bittersweet.
A perpetual ache takes the place of the company you wish you were keeping; whoever said “absence makes the heart grow fonder” was really onto something. They were also corny as hell, but mushy quotes elicit less of an eye roll when you treasure falling asleep on FaceTime together every night.
Here’s where all the best Black Friday 2021 deals will be
However, LDRs don’t have to be as dramatic as Fake Deep Twitter makes them out to be. There are tons of items out there that can make the separation more bearable, especially if your next trip to see each other is still up in the air. Until teleportation is a thing, fill the void with these nifty gifts that can make you feel more connected, keep that spark alive, or simply help your S.O. feel less alone. (The presents can’t prevent every downside, but at least they’ll give your person reassurance that they’re on your mind.)
While some of these gifts are clearly for couples, others aren’t limited to a romantic long-distance relationship. Living far away from family members or friends and not seeing them often can be just as hard. Many of these gifts would make just as sweet a gift for your BFF or parent, too.
I’m wary of kitchen gadgets — mostly because many feel like a solution in search of a problem. Here is an avocado slicer that does the job of a knife; there is a tool for removing corn from the cob, again doing the job of…a knife.
But sometimes gadgets make sense. A garlic press, for instance, is technically a gadget but remains obviously useful for most home cooks.
So I’m here to tell you about an oil sprayer — ostensibly a gadget — that is worthwhile and helpful, if incredibly basic.
First, why buy an oil sprayer when cooking spray, like Pam, exists? Well, first, because cooking spray bottles are wasteful, expensive, and can prove dangerous for the folks tasked with recycling or disposing of them. Also, cooking spray often isn’t great with high-heat cooking. It smokes and turns an unpleasant, crude-oil-black color in the pan. A spray of canola or grapeseed oil, however, can handle super high temps.
SEE ALSO: The best air fryers
However, a lot of oil sprayers looked, for lack of a better word, crappy. They misted, practically leaked, but hardly seemed capable of giving a good spray.
Then I stumbled across this sprayer and a video that seemed to show it dispensing a wide, even stream of oil. As someone who does a ton of air frying for work and who cooks eggs most days while working from home, I could stand to reduce my cooking spray usage.
I ordered the $16.99 sprayer off Amazon and it arrived after a few days. As far as I can tell, the NGECORS oil sprayer is a typical, random Amazon gadget, which means it’s part of an invented brand that’s shipped from China. NGECORS is a brand owned by the Hunan Soft Power Information Technology Co., which is based in China. Anyway, it’s basically of unknown origin, but so are so many things we buy online.
It came with some rubber labels — I suppose if you had multiple sprayers this would prove useful — and a nifty, collapsible funnel for filling it with oil. The funnel worked really well and it was simple enough to load up the sprayer.
So, the $16.99 question: Does it spray well?
Quick answer: yes.
I used the sprayer for a number of tasks: greasing an airfryer basket, frying eggs, prepping meat for the grill. It did all of the tasks well. The sprayer has three settings, which basically amount to a direct squirt and two levels of mist. There’s really no use for anything but the mist functions.
Does it make a perfect line of oil like in the video? I mean…no, not totally. It’s not as smooth of a process. But it does a great job spraying a thick mist of oil, using just a quarter-teaspoon of oil per trigger pull. You won’t coat an entire pan with one spray unless you have fantastic aim, but two or three might do.
A few tips: It helps to hold the bottle upright; pull the trigger hard; watch your aim. The sprayer really lets the oil fly. It comes out fast and in a horizontal line, so my main issue was that I often missed the pan using it. An errant spray would pfffft against the backsplash in my kitchen.
Otherwise, I found the sprayer to be simple, functional, and easy to use. It’s not quite as good at spreading the oil out like cooking spray in an aerosol can, but it’s like 90 percent as good. To me that’s a huge win.
Here’s a pic of me spraying a pan before frying an egg.
I fried the egg on high heat until it was super, super crispy on the bottom in an effort to show the sprayer works great and the oil left no burnt residue, unlike cooking spray.
So yes, the sprayer isn’t the coolest gadget in the world. Let’s be real, it’s basically a Windex bottle for oil. But cool doesn’t necessarily mean useful. The sprayer is useful and serves two purposes: reducing waste and cooking more effectively. That’s more than you could say for an avocado slicer. And at $16.99, after spending a week or two with it, I think it’s worth the price.
A kitchen gadget that’s practical and works. Who would’ve thought?
The official trailer for the live action Cowboy Bebop has finally arrived, giving us a good look at Netflix’s adaptation of the classic 1998 anime. Complimented by the anime’s iconic opening track “Tank!,” the new trailer also hints at Spike Spiegel’s (John Cho) mysterious past.
The 10 episode neo-noir sci-fi Western series follows bounty hunters Spiegel, Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) as they track down criminals through space. Being a cosmic bounty hunter isn’t all fun and games, though. In an exclusive livestream event, Netflix also revealed a short, comedic clip of Spiegel and Black’s first encounter with canine crewmate Ein — which also revealed a somewhat dystopic detail about Cowboy Bebop‘s universe.
“Why steal dogs?” says Spiegel. “Those things are harder to move on the black market than diamonds.”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw a real dog,” says Black.
Cowboy Bebop gets everybody and the stuff together on Netflix Nov. 19.
Everything coming to Netflix in November
Netflix’s ‘Cowboy Bebop’ teaser is a fast, fun intro to your space bounty hunter pals
Netflix unleashes the slick and jazzy intro for its live-action ‘Cowboy Bebop’
Few people thought an app as complex and compute-intensive as Photoshop would be possible on the web. But Adobe today launched a web version of not just Photoshop, but also Illustrator, along with several new online experiences.
Some qualification is required, however. As when Adobe launched Photoshop on the iPad, it’s not the entire set of Photoshop and Illustrator tools, but the web apps let you open documents and do basic editing. They also let you comment on and share work with collaborators. The Photoshop web app is labeled as beta, and Illustrator on the web is an invite-only private beta.
The web versions rely on the same Cloud Documents required in the iPad versions of the Creative Cloud software. Adobe has already taken the Creative Cloud management app to the web. Two completely new online features you access from that interface join the web versions of old standbys: Creative Cloud Spaces and Creative Cloud Canvas.
Creative Cloud Spaces is an online repository for your team’s assets, with collaboration and shared content in one interface. You can access it either from the Creative Cloud web interface or within Photoshop, Illustrator, XD, and Fresco on desktop or iPad. Creative Cloud Canvas is what it sounds like—an online collaborative workspace. Contributors can, according to Adobe’s blog, “place shapes, text, stickers, images, and working files from other Creative Cloud apps” onto a canvas that a team can collaborate on in real time.
Adobe dogfooded the new web tools with its own staff to get feedback on them. “The Adobe Design team has worked with these new tools over the past few months, and they’ve changed the way we work together,” says Adobe’s vice president of design, Eric Snowden. “Putting teamwork and collaboration at the heart of Creative Cloud democratizes access and creates transparency around creative projects like never before.”
But it’s not all web and cloud at Max. The good ole installed programs on desktop and tablet see some nifty new features as well. Photoshop gets a more powerful Object Selection tool with hover auto-masking. That’s what it sounds like: You go to the Object Selection tool and it uses Adobe’s Sensei AI to detect all objects in the image. A related menu option, Layer > Mask All Objects, creates separate masks for all the objects detected in a layer.
Neural Filters, launched at last year’s Max show, get a boost, too. The new Landscape Mixer filters let you change a scene’s season, from, say, summer to fall, or to make a midday scene look like it was shot at sunset. Another theme with the new AI is harmonization. By this, Adobe means that masked objects can be rendered in the colors and tones of the filter. So, if you have a portrait on one layer and a landscape on another, the color and tone are blended on both. Another filter, Color Transfer, lets you apply the colors and tones of one image to another. Other Neural filters that see updates include Depth Blur, Superzoom, Style Transfer, and Colorize.
An old Photoshop standby, Gradients, gets a major update: Now you have three choices Classic mode, Perceptual mode, and Linear mode. Perceptual is based on how we perceive light and looks best to me.
Designers will rejoice that you can now paste vector shapes from Illustrator into Photoshop while maintaining edit capabilities. There are plenty more updates, which you can read about in Adobe’s Photoshop blog post.
The iPad version of Photoshop gets a huge update with the addition of a single feature: Camera Raw capability. The inability of the iPad app to intake Raw camera files was a big gap between it and the desktop program.
The installed desktop version of Adobe Illustrator doesn’t see huge updates, aside from the web version previously mentioned. It does get an enhanced 3D panel with updated lighting and shading that takes advantage of ray-tracing technology and adds direct access to Adobe Substance 3D materials. The iPad version of Illustrator gets a technology preview of the Vectorize image-tracing tool.
Lightroom is the favorite software of serious photographers in both its Classic and non-classic flavors. The newfangled Lightroom now includes something I first saw in the Picsart app—the ability to submit your work to the broad community for them to work their own editing magic on your picture. This is called Community Remixing. AI-recommended presets appear in the program, too.
Both flavors of Lightroom get new masking tools, including luminance, color, and multiple masking capability. Moving the photo apps closer to Photoshop are their new Select Subject and Select Sky tools. Additional presets and automatically recommended presets for things like food, travel, and architecture, as well as helpful new crop tool options, round out what’s new in the photo software.
The big news for Adobe’s video-editing software lately has been the company’s acquisition of frame.io, the industry-standard online video collaboration platform. And one of the nicest new things in Premiere Pro is Simplify Sequence, which gets rid of unused tracks, gaps, and effects for a much simpler view of the timeline. Format support now extends to 10-bit and HDR media from mirrorless cameras and iPhones, with color management and hardware acceleration.
The new Remix, which smoothly changes song lengths to video lengths, goes to public beta at Max. In my testing of a similar feature in CyberLink PowerDirector, these tools are dependent on the musical genre, so I’m eager to see how Adobe’s new tool performs.
As for motion graphics, After Effect performance boosts include multi-frame rendering, speculative preview, composition profiler, and a reimagined render queue. Read about all these in the Max video app blog post.
The animation program, Adobe Character Animator, now lets you start a Puppet Maker animation without the need for Photoshop or Illustrator, and a cool transcription-based lip-sync tool lets your character speak written text with accurate mouth movements.
Two years ago, Adobe launched the Content Authenticity initiative, which gave creators a way to verify the authenticity of their work. Newly announced at Max is Content Credentials, a beta tool available in Photoshop, which offers a way for the creator to attach secure metadata that verifies the work’s authenticity.
Interested parties can go to the Verify website (now in beta) and upload an image file to check its authenticity. Adobe Stock, the company’s answer to ShutterStock, now provides Content Authenticity info for all uploaded content. Adobe is also working with government and industry leaders to combat deepfakes and created a technical standard for tracing media origins.
The online Adobe Max “creativity conference” is free for anyone who wants to avail themselves of it, and features celebrity presenters including Kenan Thompson, Tilda Swinton, and Bryan Cranston. Head to max.adobe.com to join.
When Lox Club burst onto the dating app scene in 2020 as the app “for Jews with ridiculously high standards,” I was intrigued. Like other “exclusive” dating apps such as Raya and The League, Lox Club requires an application to get in. It boasted a 20,000 person waitlist earlier this year, according to a spokesperson at the time.
Lox Club lured me in a way that other membership-based apps or Jewish dating apps like JDate and JSwipe didn’t. This was partly for the promise of matches with similar life and cultural experiences (the name instantly reminded me of my mom topping her schmeared bagels with lox). But let’s be real: It was also the chic branding and the “ridiculously high standards” attitude.
Perhaps those latter reasons, too, are why non-Jewish people are applying — and why Lox Club has paid at least one non-Jewish influencer to promote it.
Either way, Lox Club appears to be using its branding as both Jewish and exclusive to draw people in. But that tagline? Flimsy at best, disingenuous at worst.
Katy Bellotte, a lifestyle influencer, isn’t Jewish, but she first heard about Lox Club through Jewish friends. She was under the impression that only Jews could apply until recently.
“It made me want to join even more,” Bellotte told Mashable, due to the air of mystery and exclusivity.
Then she started hearing “rumors” that it was “opening up” to non-Jews.
Friends of friends who worked with the app connected her with the team, and she realized that she could indeed sign up. Lox Club has always allowed non-Jewish members, but Bellotte didn’t realize until that time because, well, look at the branding.
She started using the app, and Lox Club reached out to her to produce a paid Instagram ad. In the promo, she encouraged her more than 170,000 followers to apply to attend Lox Club’s New York Fashion Week party and try out the service.
Bellotte was met with the obvious question from her followers: Is Lox Club not for Jewish people? She clarified that you don’t need to be Jewish to apply.
Religion-based apps are nothing new. JDate has been pairing Jewish singles for 20 years and Christian Mingle has done the same for Christians. Newer apps like Upward for Christians and Muzmatch for Muslims are keeping the trend alive.
There’s no stopping a non-religious person from signing up for these apps. As an Upward spokesperson told me, anyone can join — but if they’re not Christian, they likely won’t have much luck.
What actually seems to set Lox Club apart is that its founder and CEO, Austin Kevitch, who declined to speak with me for this piece, didn’t actually set out to create a Jewish dating app — because he apparently didn’t set out to create anything at all. In a recent interview with E!, he said he made the initial Lox Club site as a parody of other social clubs and dating apps he found cringey.
Despite it being a joke, people were interested. “I wake up [a day or two later] and over 1,000 people had applied on this website for an app that didn’t even exist,” he told E!
Is Tinder Platinum worth it? I tried it for 3 months to find out.
Kevitch then hired a team and launched Lox Club last fall. From the start, the app wasn’t just for Jews. As he told the New York Times, Lox Club is “like a deli: culturally Jewish, but anyone can enjoy it.” The site’s FAQ uses the same line.
Except for the name, there’s not much that’s “culturally Jewish” about the app beyond some profile questions, like one that asks users to state their Bar/Bat Mitzvah theme. Dubious comparison aside (can a dating app be like a deli, really? Is dating a Jewish person like eating at Katz?), though, it’s understandable to want to expand the app’s clientele. Less than three percent of American adults say they’re Jewish, compared to 65 percent who identify as Christian. Plenty of American Jews consider themselves culturally Jewish, as in they don’t tend to attend religious services but enjoy eating Jewish foods and celebrating some holiday traditions. But whether a dating app itself can be culturally Jewish raises questions about who Lox Club is for and whether folks who aim to meet Jewish partners will get what they expect out of the paid service.
The app is only for people who are single and want to date. Combine that with the fact that you need to apply, then pay for the service (it’s around $36 for three months), and the pool of potential users shrinks. As it was, when I was using Lox Club earlier in 2021, I’d rarely come across fellow New Yorkers or even users on the East Coast.
Nothing is worse than a dating app with paltry numbers — except maybe an actual party with too-few attendees. This is where influencer marketing comes in: Lox Club paid Bellotte to drum up buzz and RSVPs for fashion week.
Of the actual party, Bellotte said she connected with all sorts of people from different corners of the city. “They’re not looking for one kind of person to join their app and promote them,” she said. “It’s for everybody.”
We have to ask, then: Why is Lox Club called Lox Club in the first place? Why is it “for Jews with ridiculously high standards,” even thought it’s actually not? What exactly are we paying $36 for? JSwipe, meanwhile, can be used for free, while JDate is a paid membership that costs about $30 for six months after a free trial.
Bellotte guessed that Lox Club took this route to stand out in the increasingly large heap of dating apps. “There’s so many different apps out there now,” she said. “They need to have something that makes them different.”
I wonder, too, if Kevitch knows the answers to these questions himself. Given that he started Lox Club as a joke, that might explain why its “mission” doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.
“They need to have something that makes them different.”
Now, over a year since its inception, Lox Club continues to be in this murky Jewish-but-not-really territory. Rappers Lil Yachty (not Jewish) and Bhad Bhabie (half-Jewish, as am I) signed on as investors, with their manager Adam Kluger blasting other Jewish dating apps: “JDate screams desperation,” he told Rolling Stone in June. “JSwipe is just a piece of shit.”
“There’s a real gap in the marketplace,” Kluger added, but exactly what gap is Lox Club filling for Jewish daters? The simple act of mingling in a members-only space?
“I haven’t been on Lox Club for a week yet and I’ve already liked more people than my three years on Bumble, Hinge, The League, etc,” a testimonial on the website claims. Based on my experience, I don’t see how that’s possible, unless you don’t mind liking people in LA or Toronto.
SEE ALSO: Which dating app is right for you?
Bellotte told me she loves Lox Club for its unique look and elevated feel, but beyond that it’s not clear what non-Jewish people get out of the experience, either — except, of course, being able to say they got in.
Long story short? I canceled my Lox Club subscription. Maybe my standards are too ridiculously high.
It’s TikTok and Snapchat’s turn in the hot seat on Capitol Hill.
On Tuesday, executives from TikTok and Snapchat as well as a representative from YouTube answered questions from members of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security surrounding the current hot-button topic: Kids’ safety on social media platforms.
The issue has been thrust into the spotlight recently due to internal Facebook documents leaked by former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen. These documents detailed how the social media company’s own research found that its platforms, such as Instagram, were having negative effects on the mental health of kids, especially young women.
The same subcommittee recently grilled Facebook and questioned Haugen earlier this month over the trove of internal company documents she leaked to the press.
In those initial hearings, there appeared to be a rare instance of bipartisan support for some sort of Congressional action to be taken over what was learned in the leaked documents. The Facebook hearings were focused on the issue at hand: child safety on social media platforms.
Yet, while watching the hearing with TikTok and Snapchat execs on Tuesday, some Senators, namely Republicans, lost the plot and were back to bickering over their old partisan pet issues.
With many issues facing children and these social media platforms, Republican Senators like Ted Cruz used their time to focus on TikTok. And, their focus wasn’t on the troubling eating disorder content or problematic challenges that go viral on the platform.
No, their focus was on TikTok’s ties to its Chinese parent company, Bytedance.
It was TikTok’s first time appearing before Congress, so questions about China were bound to come up. There are obvious privacy and data concerns there. But, the specific line of questioning seemed more as if those Republicans were continuing former President Donald Trump’s war on the social media app, where he sought to ban it from the country last year.
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For example, Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) grilled TikTok’s VP and head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, on whether users can make videos comparing China’s president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh, a common satirical nickname thrown at him by his critics. How is this an issue facing 13-year-old American kids?
And, unlike the Facebook hearings, it also felt very partisan. Such as Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) referring to and emphasizing the “Chinese Communist Party” every time she brought up China when questioning TikTok.
In those moments, it was as if Congress was getting further away from a Big Tech issue they are actually so close to acting on.
However, there were relevant takeaways from the hearing.
It was interesting to see representatives from all three social media companies distance themselves from Facebook.
TikTok’s Beckerman honed in on how Facebook is based on a users’ relation with the people they follow and interact with online and that’s just not how TikTok’s algorithm works.
Snap’s VP of global public policy, Jennifer Stout, took aim at Facebook, saying that even beyond regulation, there should be a responsibility from the social media companies to moderate themselves.
The YouTube Kids app was often referenced by the company’s VP of government affairs and public policy, Leslie Miller, as an example of the company already taking action.
Yet even then, when Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) asked them simple questions about whether they would support a federal bill that protected children online based on the very things they were discussing, all three representatives balked at answering the question straightforward.
Facebook is the worst offender, but it’s clear that the issue extends beyond Mark Zuckerberg. This hearing showed that our political representatives may be able to unite on the issues when it comes to Facebook…but that’s about it.