If rolled out, the feature would use the social media service’s TikTok Pay offering, which is already available in Southeast Asia for TikTok Shop purchases.

Reddit is beginning to test video and audio versions of popular posts, allowing users to watch or listen to Reddit stories instead of just reading them.

On the latest episode of Equity podcast, we discuss why not everyone is buying Zuckerberg’s vision.

X is expanding the open source code behind its 'For You' feed and launching new transparency tools that show users when its ranking systems have affected their accounts or posts.

The social media giant says it was time for a sharper and more modern look after a decade.

Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider is joined by COO Rose Wang for a Disrupt Stage session on whether social media can start over and where Bluesky fits into that potential reboot. 

"If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in," Twitch CPO Mike Minton said on a livestream responding to user feedback. "That's honestly the answer."

Over a year following its post-election surge, Bluesky’s mobile app is seeing a continued decline in active users, though its remaining community is still relatively engaged.

Platforms like Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and Google are facing a long road of litigation.

Creators who want to start earning on the platform will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days.

X, the social media platform now owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is shaking up how it pays influencers and creators.

Donald Trump‘s planned $400 million White House ballroom got an upgrade after the D.C. district court ordered the president to halt construction.

Trump rebranded the ballroom as a “military center” in a post to Truth Social that blamed the order on liberal activist judges. He said the addition’s security measures would keep future presidents and guests safe from attacks on the White House.

“Two Obama and Biden Appellate Court Judges just voted against the desperately needed Military Center, required for the National Security of Washington, D.C., and our Country, itself,” he wrote. “The Military and Secret Service are viewing this horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful ruling as a National Security threat to our Nation in that the entire Complex is being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents.”

In their decision, the D.C. court said that Trump’s construction project was unprecedented. They said that Trump needs the approval of Congress to make such significant changes to the White House.

“Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence. The President has no … constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people,” he wrote.

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Trump said the plaintiff in the case had no standing to bring the lawsuit and shared his intention to appeal the order to the Supreme Court.

“Why didn’t they bring this case long prior to construction starting?” he wrote. “This unjust decision must be overturned by the Supreme Court in its entirety.”

The post Trump pitches ballroom as “military center” after appeals court halts construction appeared first on Salon.com.

Bumble says it’s moving beyond swiping and deeper into real-world social experiences as it courts Gen Z users.

The social media giant is shuttering an office that housed some members of TikTok’s content-moderation team.

This generation of twentysomethings is so disillusioned with swipe-based dating apps that they'll try literally anything else — even an AI matchmaker.

Venture firms are turning to creators to build trust with the next generation of founders before a check is ever written. It’s a trend that’s been building with a16z’s acquisition of Erik Torenberg’s Turpentine podcast and OpenAI’s acquisition of TBPN. Lightspeed Venture Partners just made its own notable hire in that vein, bringing on Claire Zau, a seed investor with a major following on Instagram and […]

Reddit is expanding its moderation tools and building stronger abuse prevention systems that it says could eventually reduce communities’ reliance on karma and account-age requirements, making it easier for legitimate newcomers to participate.

Tinder is expanding its in-person events feature from an initial Los Angeles test to 26 cities worldwide by the end of September.

President Donald Trump continued to claim the United States and Iran were in active peace talks on Monday, despite denials from Iranian and U.S. officials. 

“Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They ask for a meeting, some would say’ beg,’ talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with ‘Oman.'”

Trump told reporters over the weekend that Iran came to the U.S. hat in hand to avoid further airstrikes. The president said that the Pentagon had planned “the biggest attack since World War II.”

“It would have been disastrous for them,” he said. “They didn’t want us to do it, and frankly, Saudi Arabia didn’t want it either.”

Iranian officials denied any such communication and said they had no planned talks with the U.S.  

“We currently do not have negotiations with America,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei shared, per NBC News.

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Trump called the denial a bit of “their usual bather.” He said that Iran needs to reach a deal with the U.S. or surrender unconditionally. Speaking to a reporter in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said he was offering Iran “every last chance before decapitation.”

“Very tough to do what we have planned, still planned,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”

The post “Last chance before decapitation”: Trump threatens Iran over stalled peace talks appeared first on Salon.com.

The ‘Depraved Essence of Insider Trading’

An API built by Truth Social, offering financial institutions faster access to the most influential posts on the platform — Trump’s — for $100,000, has gone live. The company has struggled for years to find a business model that works. Now it proposes to distribute early access to the thoughts of the president, which move markets and which he makes exclusively available on the platform, which his family also has a stake in.

In a letter to Truth Media and Technology Group, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MA) called the program the “depraved essence of insider trading.” “A public official with access to the ultimate insider information — his own next actions and policies as the Chief Executive of the United States — is selling advance access to that market-moving information to the high bidders,” he wrote.

This story has captured our attention because it compounds the corruption that has become endemic throughout the executive branch with a new, ridiculous feature of our economy — Trump manipulating the markets through his bespoke social media platform, prompting sell-offs and rallies with his statements about the status of such things as tariffs or the Iran war, regardless of those statements’ grounding in fact.

The problem, however, is not limited to big global issues. The Truth API also compounds Trump’s ability to manipulate the market as it relates to specific companies he favors or disfavors, prone as he is to attack firms and individuals via social media with little notice.

The program appears targeted at the world of computerized, high-frequency trading, where firms take new positions rapidly in response to emerging information, aiming to do so before other actors in the market can catch on that something has changed. Even milliseconds can make a difference.

The Truth API has attracted attention from both the House and Senate. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) have urged the SEC to investigate. But under the Trump administration, that prospect seems unlikely.

“When you don’t have enforcement of the rules and regulations, when there are different legal outcomes for the president than there would be for any other market actor that acted this egregiously,” Corey Frayer, former senior advisor at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, told TPM’s Layla A. Jones, “it becomes hard to hold anyone accountable.”

Trump’s Reflecting Pool Prosecution Implodes Gradually, Then Suddenly

The Trump administration dramatically dropped its troubled case against Olympian David Hearn amid a flood of finger pointing.

• In a Friday filing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. said the Interior Department had provided new documents that showed the damage to the pool to not be the result of vandalism, but instead the product of a botched installation by the contractor. (Kudos to former TPMer Ryan Reilly, who wrote for NBC that the DOJ concluded the allegations did not “hold water.”)
• The remarkable filing also blamed “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
• This left Trump raging throughout the weekend at D.C. U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro. “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,” he wrote, comparing it to a large “86 47” that was etched into the National Mall.

Tabs

• The Tate Brothers, and Trump world’s connections to them, should be a second, more reality-based Epstein scandal, Brian Beutler writes.
• Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is Republicans’ nominee to run against Jon Ossoff (D-GA) for Senate, is avoiding questions about his white supremacist son in law.

Man of the Hour

It’s Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who finally has his off-ramp! He’s ready to greenlight Todd Blanche for attorney general after receiving “assurances.” A vote on the nomination will be scheduled for Tuesday after a weekend of angst. David Kurtz will have more on what to make of this deal in Morning Memo.

Are We at War?

A question with an evolving answer. After Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with Trump this weekend, urging him not to attack Iranian infrastructure out of concern that the country would retaliate against Gulf States, Trump suddenly claimed a deal with Iran to be at hand, and later said talks would begin Monday. Iran said there are no talks. Regardless, whether we are at war or not at war, we are never at war, per Trump.

Trump: "This is the golden age of America. And we have a war that's going on. I call it a military operation."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-07-31T15:47:46.892Z