Australia will soon become the first nation to ban children under 16 from creating accounts on many social media platforms, but the law is already facing criticism as some platforms will be excluded.
Beginning on Wednesday, December 10, Australia will require social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, to take &#8220;reasonable steps&#8221; to block children under 16 years old from creating accounts. Any platform that fails to restrict children under 16 from gaining access could face civil penalties of up to $49.5 million, according to the government&#8217;s <a href="https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/platforms-on-notice-to-comply-with-social-media-minimum-age">eSafety Commissioner</a>.
&#8220;We haven&#8217;t really seen a plan like this be put into action,&#8221; said Jessica Melugin, the director of the Center for Technology &amp; Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. &#8220;So I think the world is certainly watching.&#8221;
Along with Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, the Australian government also lists Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, and X as &#8220;age-restricted&#8221; social media platforms. Numerous social media platforms, however, will not be affected by the law, including messaging platforms and gaming apps such as Discord, Roblox, and Steam. Australia&#8217;s decision to keep those platforms off its age-restricted list has raised more questions about whether the law will keep children away from online harm.
&#8220;It is a little bit of a red flag. I don&#8217;t agree with doing it this way at all, but it does make it harder for the government to make its case when you have gaming apps and AI chatbots exempted,&#8221; said Melugin. &#8220;It seems like a strange line to draw.&#8221;
The Australian government says the new law is popular with parents and would reduce the number of risks that children are exposed to online, the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo">reported</a>.
&#8220;Delaying children’s access to social media accounts gives them valuable time to learn and grow, free of the powerful, unseen forces of harmful and deceptive design features such as opaque algorithms and endless scroll,&#8221; said Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman. &#8220;This important normative change will be invaluable to parents and young people alike – creating friction or a check in the online ecosystem that previously did not exist.&#8221;
To support its move, the Australian government cited a <a href="https://www.esafety.gov.au/research/the-online-experiences-of-children-in-australia/snapshot-content-associated-with-harm">study</a> that it commissioned earlier this year, which found that more than 70% of children between 10-15 who use social media are exposed to harmful content. The government says that harmful online content includes &#8220;sexist, misogynistic or hateful content, content depicting dangerous online challenges or fight videos, or content that encourages unhealthy eating or exercise habits.&#8221;
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The first-of-its-kind law is already receiving some strong pushback.
Melugin told The Daily Wire that she has some major concerns about the new law.
&#8220;We live in a digital world. That&#8217;s how you are going to maybe find your partner one day. It&#8217;s probably how you&#8217;re going to find a job one day, maybe how you promote yourself or your business, maybe how you keep in touch with friends and pursue your interests,&#8221; Melugin said.
She added that the law could create a &#8220;false sense of security&#8221; for parents, who she argues would take a step back from monitoring their children&#8217;s social media. &#8220;They think, &#8216;Well, the government has now stepped in with its magic wand and silver bullet and now everything is safe,&#8217; which certainly won&#8217;t be the case,&#8221; Melugin added.
Melugin argued that the best way to keep children safe online is for parents to keep having conversations with their kids on &#8220;how to keep yourself safe online, how to avoid making mistakes online.&#8221;
Australia&#8217;s exclusions for Roblox, Discord, Steam, and other platforms have also come under scrutiny. Roblox, an online gaming platform marketed toward children, has been criticized for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-problem/">allowing</a> adults to use the platform alongside children, and even the Australian government has acknowledged that Roblox has given pedophiles an open door to &#8220;groom children.&#8221;
Roblox was also sued by Texas last month, with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton calling the children&#8217;s gaming platform “a habitual destination for child predators.”
An Australian government official told The Daily Wire that &#8220;gaming and messaging services were excluded under the legislative rules.&#8221; The official also directed The Daily Wire to a press release from September, showing that Roblox <a href="https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/roblox-commits-to-lift-game-to-protect-kids-from-online-grooming-under-australias-world-leading-online-safety-codes-and-standards">committed</a> to introduce new safety measures for its site in response to concerns raised by the Australian government.
“We know that when it comes to platforms that are popular with children, they also become popular with adult predators seeking to prey on them. Roblox is no exception and has become a popular target for pedophiles seeking to groom children,&#8221; Inman said at the time. “We’ve been engaging with Roblox on this issue for several months to make it clear to the platform that under Australian law they are required to take meaningful action to prioritize the protection of children.&#8221;
Discord has also faced scrutiny for allowing child sex predators, extremists, and terrorists who <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/discord-messages-server-dhs-terror-extremist-charlie-kirk-fbi-patel-rcna232377">target</a> children.
Some of the social media giants affected by Australia&#8217;s new law have blasted the government&#8217;s strategy. Meta argues that families, not the government, should &#8220;decide which apps teens can access.&#8221;
“To comply with Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Law, teens under 16 will begin losing access to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads next month. While we’re committed to meeting our legal obligations, we’ve consistently raised concerns about this law,&#8221; a Meta spokesman told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Experts, youth groups, and many parents agree that blanket bans are not the solution—they isolate teens from online communities and information, while providing inconsistent protection across the many apps they use. There’s a better way: legislation that empowers parents to approve app downloads and verify age allows families—not the government—to decide which apps teens can access.&#8221;
Meta believes its &#8220;teen accounts,&#8221; which were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-introduces-teen-accounts-with-built-in-privacy-settings-to-better-support-parents">introduced</a> last year, are effective at keeping children safe online by putting parents in control and limiting who can contact children on social media.
Australia&#8217;s new law is already facing a legal challenge brought on behalf of two 15-year-old Australians who argue that the law robs them of their right to free speech, according to the BBC.
&#8220;We shouldn&#8217;t be silenced. It&#8217;s like Orwell&#8217;s book 1984, and that scares me,&#8221; said 15-year-old Macy Neyland.
Noah Jones, the other 15-year-old pushing back against the law, added, &#8220;We are the true digital natives and we want to remain educated, robust, and savvy in our digital world. &#8230; They should protect kids with safeguards, not silence.&#8221;
The Daily Wire reached out to the prime minister&#8217;s office for comment.
Following Australia&#8217;s move to ban some social media for kids, Malaysia introduced a similar ban. In the United States, Utah passed a law last year requiring social media platforms to verify a user&#8217;s age and obtain parental consent. Parts of the Utah law, however, have been temporarily <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/utah-law-restricting-youth-social-media-use-blocked-by-judge-2024-09-11/">blocked</a> by a federal judge.

Social Media

Australia’s Novel Social Media Ban For Kids Sparks Debate As Some Platforms Get A Free Pass

Australia

Children

Instagram

Social Issues

World

YouTube

The European Union fined Elon Musk&#8217;s X $140 million on Friday as the bloc targets American social media companies under its expansive internet accountability regulations.
The European Commission, which is the European Union&#8217;s executive branch, <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2934">accused</a> Elon Musk&#8217;s company of deceiving its users, failing to meet advertising transparency requirements, and failing to give researchers access to the platform&#8217;s data. The commission argues that X violated its Digital Services Act, regulations put into place in 2022 that are designed to clamp down on what it views as illegal content and misinformation on social media.
Before the fine was officially announced, Vice President JD Vance ripped the European Union for planning to impose the penalties against X.
&#8220;Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,&#8221; Vance <a href="https://x.com/JDVance/status/1996701953372704921">wrote</a>.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio <a href="https://x.com/SecRubio/status/1996974377003319667">added</a>, &#8220;The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments. The days of censoring Americans online are over.&#8221;
The European Commission&#8217;s top complaint against X on Friday is that the social media company allows any user to &#8220;obtain the ‘verified&#8217; status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account, making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with.&#8221; The commission said that the Digital Services Act does not require platforms to verify users, but added that the regulation &#8220;clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.&#8221;
&#8220;Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,&#8221; said Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice president for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy.&#8221; DSA protects users. The DSA gives researchers the way to uncover potential threats. The DSA restores trust in the online environment. With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability.&#8221;
Musk also responded to the commission&#8217;s complaint, writing on X that his goal with X&#8217;s verification system &#8220;was to democratize verification, rather than have it be controlled by a group of biased elites!&#8221;
The European Union&#8217;s move against X was condemned by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, with FCC Chair Brendan Carr saying that Europe is &#8220;taxing Americans.&#8221;
&#8220;Once again, Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company,&#8221; Carr <a href="https://x.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1996945925822939407">said</a>. &#8220;Europe is taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations.&#8221;
Conservatives have argued that the Digital Services Act is a way for Europe to clamp down on free speech, even for Americans.
“The DSA can impact anyone, can impact content creators and influencers and preachers and political dissidents and any kind of content online can be regulated by the DSA through its architecture,” Dr. Adina Portaru, a senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom International, told <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/europe-union-ignored-free-speech-concerns-plows-ahead-with-global-censorship-regime">The Daily Wire</a> earlier this year.
X was given 60 days to inform the European Commission of how it plans to address the issues laid out by the bloc. The social media platform has 90 days to submit an &#8220;action plan&#8221; to the commission, and the Board of Digital Services will then have one month to issue its opinion and another month to release its final decision.

E.U./X/JD Vance

‘Engaging In Censorship’: European Union Hits Elon Musk’s X With Massive Fine, Draws White House Ire

'Engaging In Censorship': European Union Hits Elon Musk's X With Massive Fine, Draws White House Ire

Elon Musk

European Union

JD Vance

Pete Hegseth is going to war — but not with the Venezuelans.
No, the Secretary of War is locked in a battle with Canadian publisher Kids Can Press. Over a meme.
On Sunday, Hegseth posted a fake book cover showing Franklin, a cartoon turtle, shooting rocket-propelled grenades at narco-terrorists from the landing skid of a military helicopter.
&#8220;For your Christmas wish list,&#8221; Hegseth wrote along with the book, titled &#8220;Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists,&#8221; which is billed as &#8220;A Classic Franklin Story.&#8221; The cover image features Franklin seated in the open bay door of a helicopter, aiming an RPG launcher at narco-terrorists in their boats in the water below.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
For your Christmas wish list… <a href="https://t.co/pLXzg20SaL">pic.twitter.com/pLXzg20SaL</a>
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) <a href="https://twitter.com/PeteHegseth/status/1995291042346852861?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Less than 24 hours later, Kids Can Press issued a statement in response, condemning Hegseth&#8217;s use of the &#8220;beloved&#8221; character.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<a href="https://t.co/uYUF68eDyI">pic.twitter.com/uYUF68eDyI</a>
— kidscanpress (@KidsCanPress) <a href="https://twitter.com/KidsCanPress/status/1995629217506312197?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity,&#8221; the post read. &#8220;We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin&#8217;s name or image, which directly contradicts these values.&#8221;
The statement marks the first time Kids Can Press has posted on X since a mid-January announcement declaring a shift to posting more on other platforms like Bluesky.
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The most recent thing in the publisher&#8217;s timeline was a <a href="https://x.com/FoldKids/status/1975253649220903410">repost</a> advertising a workshop for kids called &#8220;An Indigenous History Lesson on Fascism&#8221; and featuring Gord Hill, the author of &#8220;The Revised &amp; Expanded ANTIFA Comic Book.&#8221;
In addition to triggering Kids Can Press, Hegseth also got a rise out of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
&#8220;I have never seen someone so unserious, so childish, and so obviously insecure serving as Secretary of Defense as Pete Hegseth. The man is a national embarrassment,&#8221; the senator <a href="https://x.com/SenSchumer/status/1995632033843085429">posted</a>.
Former &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; host <a href="https://x.com/chucktodd/status/1995563637126418845">Chuck Todd</a> was also clearly upset by the meme, saying Hegseth was &#8220;literally mocking the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Congress and humiliating and embarrassing America worldwide with this childish tantrum.&#8221;

NATO Defense Ministers Meeting in Brussels

Woke Canadian Publisher Whines About Pete Hegseth’s Franklin The Turtle Meme

Woke Canadian Publisher Whines About Pete Hegseth's Franklin The Turtle Meme

Canada

Children's Books

Military

narco-terrorism

Pete Hegseth

Politics

President Donald Trump laid into a radical left congressional candidate from Tennessee on Sunday, blasting Democrat Aftyn Behn as &#8220;a woman who hates Christianity, will take away your guns, wants Open Borders, Transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, and openly disdains Country music.&#8221;
Trump delivered the verbal smackdown in a <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115640171509477265">Truth Social post</a> — in which he also threw his full support behind her opponent, Republican Matt Van Epps — over a viral audio clip in which she&#8217;d declared her hatred for Nashville, bachelorettes, and even country music. His post comes just ahead of the special election in Tennessee&#8217;s 7th Congressional District on Tuesday.
&#8220;I am asking all America First Patriots in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, who haven’t voted yet, to please GET OUT AND VOTE on Election Day, Tuesday, December 2nd, for a phenomenal Candidate, Matt Van Epps,&#8221; Trump&#8217;s post began. &#8220;Matt is fighting against a woman who hates Christianity, will take away your guns, wants Open Borders, Transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, and openly disdains Country music. She said all of these things precisely, and without question — IT’S ON TAPE!&#8221;
Trump warned voters that they needed to get to the polls, adding, &#8220;Do not take this Race for granted. The Radical Left Democrats are spending a fortune to beat one of the best Candidates we’ve ever had, Matt Van Epps! You can win this Election for Matt. GET OUT AND VOTE FOR MATT VAN EPPS, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!&#8221;
Behn raised eyebrows with her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/embattled-tennessee-dem-aftyn-behn-offers-proof-she-doesnt-hate-nashville">anti-Nashville</a> rant: &#8220;‘I hate the city, I hate the Tennessee bachelorettes, I hate pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all the things that make Nashville … I hate it.&#8221;
She tried to do a little damage control after the audio clip went viral, claiming on the &#8220;Breaking Points&#8221; podcast that she could not possibly hate country music.
&#8220;So, I’m going to say something I haven’t said,” Behn told the hosts. “And I think it’s funny, I hope my parents don’t kill me, but I do not hate country music. I was conceived after a George Strait concert, so … I feel personally attacked.&#8221;
Behn also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessee-dem-candidate-aftyn-behn-i-dont-want-children-i-want-power">made headlines</a> with another audio clip of herself describing a recurring dream in which she stood up in a crowded cafeteria full of women and shouted, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want children, I want power!&#8221;

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Meets With Donald Trump At The White House

Trump Mocks Tennessee Radical Aftyn Behn Over Nashville Hate: ‘IT’S ON TAPE’

Trump Mocks Tennessee Radical Aftyn Behn Over Nashville Hate: 'IT'S ON TAPE'

2025 elections

Aftyn Behn

Donald Trump

Elections

Executive

Tennessee

President Donald Trump was busy on Sunday night sharing numerous social media posts — many from anonymous accounts — that accused six Democratic lawmakers of sedition over their calls for military members to disobey &#8220;illegal orders.&#8221;
After two Democratic senators and four representatives appeared in a video <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-urge-military-to-disobey-orders-from-trump-admin-trigger-accusations-of-insurrection">urging</a> military members to refuse unlawful orders, Trump suggested that their action could be viewed as &#8220;SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!&#8221; Trump later clarified that he was not calling for the Democrats to face the death penalty, saying, “In the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death.”
Trump, however, appears to believe that the Democrats should be punished in some form. On Sunday night, he shared an AI-generated video depicting the six Democrats in <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115601863709910309">prison</a>. In another <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115601898049338376">post</a> shared by Trump, an anonymous social media user argues that the Democrats&#8217; plea is the &#8220;literal definition of sedition and they literally put it on video!!!!&#8221;
The president also <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115601867440120506">shared</a> multiple posts that argued that the Democrats are guilty of violating <a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title18-section2387&amp;num=0&amp;edition=prelim">18 USC 2387</a>, which makes it a crime to &#8220;interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States.&#8221; Those who violate the U.S. code face up to ten years in prison. Trump shared yet another post that <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115601883571083274">called</a> for bypassing the &#8220;corrupted&#8221; justice system by holding military tribunals.
The video that caused an uproar and resulted in accusations of treason was made by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), and Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO). In the video, the Democrats accuse the Trump administration of &#8220;pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.&#8221;
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“Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” they said in the video, adding, “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
Another <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115601862810818001">post</a> shared by Trump on Sunday night suggests that Slotkin is using her training and knowledge from working at the CIA to &#8220;invoke a rebellion.&#8221; Slotkin, who worked for the CIA and the then-Defense Department in the early 2000s, defended the Democrats&#8217; video, arguing that it is lawful to disobey illegal orders and that the Founding Fathers wanted &#8220;to ensure our military upholds its oath to the Constitution — not a king.&#8221;
On Sunday, Slotkin was asked by &#8220;This Week&#8221; host Martha Raddatz on ABC whether any of Trump&#8217;s orders have been unlawful.
&#8220;To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal, but certainly, there are some legal gymnastics going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related to Venezuela,&#8221; Slotkin <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-11-23-25-sen-elissa-slotkin/story?id=127763059">said</a>.
She added that she is also concerned about &#8220;the use of U.S. military on American shores &#8230; in our cities and in our streets.&#8221;
Another post <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115600871102876776">shared</a> by Trump came from one social media user, who stated, &#8220;Get all of those traitorous sons of b*tches for sedition at the very least. Those pompous traitorous communities should be impeached and prosecuted.&#8221;

Trump Amplifies Claims That Dem Lawmakers Committed Sedition Against America

Congress

Democrats

U.S. Military

Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a class action by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.
In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said.
Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company.
Privately, however, staff assured Nick Clegg, Meta’s then-head of global public policy, that the conclusions of the research were valid.
“The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.”
Despite Meta’s own work documenting a causal link between its products and negative mental health effects, the filing alleges, Meta told Congress that it had no ability to quantify whether its products were harmful to teenage girls.
In a statement Saturday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the study was stopped because its methodology was flawed and that it worked diligently to improve the safety of its products.
“The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens,” he said.
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The allegation of Meta burying evidence of social media harms is just one of many in a late Friday filing by Motley Rice, a law firm suing Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat on behalf of school districts around the country. Broadly, the plaintiffs argue the companies have intentionally hidden the internally recognized risks of their products from users, parents and teachers.
TikTok, Google and Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Allegations against Meta and its rivals include tacitly encouraging children below the age of 13 to use their platforms, failing to address child sexual abuse content and seeking to expand the use of social media products by teenagers while they were at school. The plaintiffs also allege that the platforms attempted to pay child-focused organizations to defend the safety of their products in public.
In one instance, TikTok sponsored the National PTA and then internally boasted about its ability to influence the child-focused organization. Per the filing, TikTok officials said the PTA would “do whatever we want going forward in the fall… (t)hey’ll announce things publicly(,), (t)heir CEO will do press statements for us.”
By and large, however, the allegations against the other social media platforms are less detailed than those against Meta. The internal documents cited by the plaintiffs allege:
1. Meta intentionally designed its youth safety features to be ineffective and rarely used, and blocked testing of safety features that it feared might be harmful to growth. 2. Meta required users to be caught 17 times attempting to traffic people for sex before it would remove them from its platform, which a document described as “a very, very, very high strike threshold.&#8221; 3. Meta recognized that optimizing its products to increase teen engagement resulted in serving them more harmful content, but did so anyway. 4. Meta stalled internal efforts to prevent child predators from contacting minors for years due to growth concerns, and pressured safety staff to circulate arguments justifying its decision not to act. 5. In a text message in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg said that he wouldn’t say that child safety was his top concern “when I have a number of other areas I’m more focused on like building the metaverse.” Zuckerberg also shot down or ignored requests by Clegg to better fund child safety work.
Meta’s Stone disputed these allegations, saying the company’s teen safety measures are effective and that the company’s current policy is to remove accounts as soon as they are flagged for sex trafficking.
He said the suit misrepresents its efforts to build safety features for teens and parents, and called its safety work “broadly effective.”
&#8220;We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions,” Stone said.
The underlying Meta documents cited in the filing are not public, and Meta is opposing their unsealing.
A hearing regarding the filing is set for January 26 in Northern California District Court.
(Reporting by Jeff Horwitz in San Francisco; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

FILE PHOTO: Illustration shows Meta logo

Meta Buried ‘Causal’ Evidence Of Social Media Harm, U.S. Court Filings Allege

Courts

TikTok

U.S.

If you didn&#8217;t see Tucker Carlson&#8217;s recent segment on Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old man who nearly assassinated Donald Trump live on national television during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year, there are a few important revelations you should know about.
The first revelation — which isn&#8217;t remotely controversial — is that the FBI has clearly been hiding relevant information about Thomas Crooks from the general public. And by itself, that&#8217;s a national scandal that justifies completely gutting the FBI, from the highest levels on down. Even if you firmly believe that Thomas Crooks was a lone gunman, and even if you believe that the Secret Service was merely incompetent (as opposed to complicit) — the fact remains, our government has been withholding important details about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump&#8217;s life, without any justification whatsoever.
We should not have to rely on Tucker Carlson, or any podcaster, to tell us that Thomas Crooks left a lengthy trail of comments on YouTube, in which he openly called for political violence for several years.
These calls were so overt, and so disturbing, that one user wrote in response to Crooks:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1003085 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-1024x158.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="158" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-1024x158.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-300x46.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-768x119.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1.jpg 1520w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
<blockquote>You&#8217;re on YouTube threatening to shoot government officials. I sure hope the FBI is monitoring social media for violent nutcases.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s almost too on-the-nose to be real. But that comment is still available on YouTube, to this day. Thomas Crooks&#8217; account has been suspended, and all of his comments have been hidden. They&#8217;re only accessible using the Internet archive website. But the replies are still there. And yet, more than a year after the assassination attempt in Butler, we have to rely on Tucker Carlson to tell us about any of this. That is completely, overwhelmingly, unequivocally unacceptable. It shouldn’t fall to anyone in the media to tell us what Thomas Crooks was saying online — and how people were reacting to his comments.
We also shouldn&#8217;t have to rely on podcasters to tell us that Thomas Crooks decided, sometime during the COVID lockdowns, to completely reverse his political views, and to begin openly attacking Donald Trump and his administration on social media. And we certainly shouldn&#8217;t have to rely on podcasters to tell us that Crooks was in contact with a mysterious person — who remains unidentified, beyond the online alias &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; — who openly encouraged Crooks to commit acts of violence.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1003091 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1024x204.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="204" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1024x204.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-300x60.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-768x153.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1536x305.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
At one point, Willy Tepes wrote to Crooks, 
<blockquote>&#8230;authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun. We have more guns than they do. There is no way we can avoid a war at this point, so you better just get used to the idea.</blockquote>
In common parlance, this is known as &#8220;fed posting.&#8221; Willy Tepes is almost being too obvious about it. He understands that Thomas Crooks is a radical who&#8217;s prone to violence. He sees that Crooks is posting about acts of violence against political officials — and that Crooks wrote, at one point, that even the White House could be overwhelmed if enough Americans took up arms. Willy Tepes is aware of all this. And instead of expressing concern, he encourages Crooks to go to war.
Is it possible that this is just some random internet troll? Of course it is. It&#8217;s also possible that &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; was working with a government agency or a terror cell — either in this country or some other country — to groom potential assassins. In fact, given how weird &#8220;Willy&#8217;s&#8221; comments were — and to be clear, he replied to Crooks multiple times — it seems very likely that he was trying to groom Thomas Crooks. So what has the FBI done to investigate Willy Tepes? What have they done to figure out his identity? Why is Tucker’s show the first time — literally, the first time — that anyone in this country has heard the name &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221;?
That is inexcusable, for about a million different reasons. It&#8217;s not the FBI&#8217;s job to determine what information is worth sharing to the public, or what information they deem is &#8220;important.&#8221; When it comes to the near-assassination of the leading presidential candidate, no detail is irrelevant. If Thomas Crooks went bowling every week, we should know that. If Thomas Crooks loved the film &#8220;Good Will Hunting,&#8221; we should know that. And certainly, if he was in regular communication with an anonymous person who sounded a lot like a fed, we should know that, too. At the very least we should know something about this guy. But if the feds had their way, we would know nothing at all. And that’s what we knew — nothing — until this week.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1694-tucker-carlson-reveals-shocking-details-about-thomas-crooks?"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-976065 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And on top of that, beyond the transparency issues, it would obviously help the government&#8217;s investigation to raise awareness about these posts. Maybe someone, somewhere, knows who &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; is. And as long as Willy Tepes isn&#8217;t the alias for a CIA agent or something like that, then you&#8217;d think your government would want someone to come forward and identify him immediately. But that&#8217;s not possible if they bury his identity, and all information about him.
And then there&#8217;s the fact that Crooks&#8217;s PayPal account, for one reason or another, uses the name of an ex-FBI agent who worked in Pennsylvania, and who investigated the Las Vegas mass shooting — the one where no motive has ever been established. What exactly is going on there? We have no idea, because again, this is the first time anyone&#8217;s hearing about any of this. Our government — under both the Biden administration and the Trump administration — made the conscious decision to hide all of this information from us. The only reason we&#8217;re hearing about it now is that a random source got in contact with Tucker Carlson&#8217;s team, and tipped him off to Crooks&#8217; online history. And because this information remains uncontested by the FBI, several days after Tucker Carlson&#8217;s broadcast, we can assume it&#8217;s all true.
So let&#8217;s pause for a minute here, and zoom out. Let&#8217;s really think about what&#8217;s happened here. This is the official narrative. Last summer, Thomas Crooks — supposedly an untrained 20-year-old with an angry, inconsistent social media history — managed to outwit the Secret Service and gain access to a roof 500 feet away from Donald Trump. 
And he wasn&#8217;t particularly subtle about it. As you can see here, he was clearly visible, running along the rooftop as Trump spoke.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
CRAZY. This video is from James Copenhaver &#8211; one of the bystanders who was shot twice and critically wounded during the assassination attempt against Trump. It CLEARLY shows Crooks&#8217; head scurrying on the rooftop moments before the shooting.
Takeaway: Secret Service BLEW IT and… <a href="https://t.co/1rP6083ZFH">pic.twitter.com/1rP6083ZFH</a>
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) <a href="https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1818701467190165566?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @justin_hart/X.com
But the Secret Service didn&#8217;t notice him — even though random attendees in the crowd were suspicious, and notified law enforcement. Somehow the Secret Service didn&#8217;t have anyone on the roof — because it was too &#8220;sloped&#8221; — and somehow the Secret Service counter-snipers couldn&#8217;t see any of this. They only shot Thomas Crooks after he unloaded several shots at Donald Trump, including a shot that hit Trump in the head. And coincidentally enough, the rally in Butler was the first time that the Secret Service had deployed counter-snipers to a Trump rally during the 2024 campaign season. Yes, the Secret Service snipers made their debut at the Butler rally — just in time to neutralize Thomas Crooks after he got his shots off. 
So in a very tidy fashion, Thomas Crooks was quickly erased from the picture. No one could question him. No one could put him on trial. And then a funny thing happened. No one really investigated Thomas Crooks. No one told us anything about his social media posts, or his political views — beyond the claim that he was a Trump supporter, which was false. It took more than a year for us to learn that, in fact, Thomas Crooks was openly promising to commit violence on social media — and that someone was encouraging him to do so.
But the story gets even stranger from there. 
Less than 48 hours after Tucker&#8217;s reporting, out of nowhere, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/11/17/us-news/thomas-crooks-used-they-them-pronouns-had-obsession-with-violence-and-muscle-mommies-sources/">published</a> this exclusive information.
<blockquote>Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns and posted threats of political violence and violent art on his secret social media accounts before he attempted to assassinate President Trump, according to sources who shared the suspected messages with The Post. &#8230; .Crooks had two possible accounts on DeviantArt, a site that hosts fan art and has become notorious for its community of furries — people who identify as anthropomorphized animal characters and/or are sexually attracted to them. One of the DeviantArt accounts linked to Crooks shared just one post, a repost of a towering, muscular female bodybuilder and a slight man in his underwear.</blockquote>
Separately, the Post&#8217;s Miranda Devine reported that Crooks, &#8220;had an obsession with scantily clad cartoon characters sporting muscle-bound male bodies and female heads.&#8221;
This seems to be a clear case of yet another psychologically disturbed mass shooter — someone who had been indoctrinated into the LGBT cult — turning to violence. Which is not a particularly surprising development. As I&#8217;ve said repeatedly, the LGBT cult is the single greatest domestic terror threat this country faces. In just the past few years, trans-identifying terrorists have shot up multiple Christian churches and schools. &#8220;Non-binary&#8221; mass shooters have targeted high schools and bars. A Leftist living with a &#8220;furry&#8221; assassinated Charlie Kirk in front of thousands of people.
Put simply, trans extremism is an epidemic. And the pattern of trans and “non-binary” violence is not at all surprising, even though the media tries to cover it up. Any man who identifies as a woman or a “they/them” is mentally unstable by definition. It seems nearly certain that all of these people were on psychiatric meds and in some cases hormones. And there&#8217;s another common theme here as well, which is that all of these violent LGBT shooters all probably developed their “gender identity” from consuming hundreds of hours of porn. The gender stuff is the product of extreme nihilism and extreme perversion. A steady long term diet of pornography turns anyone into a nihilist pervert. It’s not a far leap to get from that to murderer.
That&#8217;s why it’s not exactly shocking to hear that Thomas Crooks was also a member of the &#8220;they/them&#8221; cult, who regularly consumed various degenerate forms of media. At this point, you almost expect the investigation to uncover something like this. Thomas Crooks is yet another violent LGBT-linked killer, to add to a very disturbing, and fast growing, list.
There were some concerns expressed by some commentators that perhaps this revelation was an intentional diversion. A targeted leak, intended to distract us from the investigation that Tucker Carlson just published. That does seem like something the FBI might try to do, but that’s not what happened in this case. Miranda Devine has made it clear that her source is the same as Tucker’s — the information didn&#8217;t come from the FBI. Devine also provided more information on the Willy Tepes character, who was first identified by Tucker Carlson. 
Here&#8217;s what Devine <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/11/17/opinion/fbi-secret-service-butchered-the-thomas-crooks-case-and-invited-conspiracies-we-deserve-the-truth/">wrote</a>.
<blockquote>One of the people Crooks interacted with online was &#8216;Willy Tepes,&#8217; a member of Norwegian neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement, which has since been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. In one comment on Oct. 5, 2025, more than a year after Butler, Tepes commented to another user that he had been contacted by both Russian and American intelligence. &#8216;People who ask you to contact them when they just as easily could contact you, are Feds. This is how they avoid entrapment. Both American and Russian intelligence does this. I have chatted to both.&#8217; Tepes said.</blockquote>
There are only two possibilities here. The first possibility is that we&#8217;re seeing a monumental, unforgivable failure by the FBI — a degree of incompetence that&#8217;s simply staggering. Maybe they missed all of these chats. Or maybe they didn&#8217;t think they were relevant, and just never got around to releasing them. So they&#8217;re left to respond with pathetic &#8220;rapid response&#8221; press releases when Tucker Carlson and Miranda Devine publish investigative reports a year later. That&#8217;s the best-case scenario. That is the absolute, best-case scenario we&#8217;re dealing with.
The worst-case scenario is almost too dark to say out loud. But I&#8217;ll try my best. The worst-case scenario is that the FBI has been hiding all of this information about Thomas Crooks for the same reason that the Secret Service — supposedly the most elite protective force in the entire world — failed to secure that slightly-sloped roof 400 feet away from Donald Trump, with a direct line-of-sight to his head. The worst-case scenario is that the leadership of our intelligence agencies want Donald Trump dead. And if that&#8217;s the case, then there&#8217;s no reason to think they&#8217;re going to stop trying to kill him.
It&#8217;s not my job, or your job, to decide between these scenarios. It&#8217;s the job of our government, out of an abundance of transparency, to absolve itself completely of any responsibility in the attempt to murder Donald Trump. They should be telling us everything they know, even if they don&#8217;t think the information is relevant. But our government has not done so. And for that reason, it&#8217;s not insane or paranoid to assume the worst, or at least to consider it a very real possibility. For one reason or another, we aren’t being told the whole story, or even an incomplete story. And it’s way past time for us to ask one question: why?

Secret Service Says Trump Is ‘Safe’ After ‘Incident’ At Rally

Tucker Carlson Reveals Shocking Details About Thomas Crooks

assassination attempt

Butler

LGBTQ

Mass Shooting

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Pennsylvania

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Thomas Matthew Crooks

Tucker Carlson

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett raised eyebrows with a rap video she made for TikTok with Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist after endorsing him in his campaign for governor.
The <a href="https://x.com/garlin/status/1990443888046424553">video</a> begins with Gilchrist facing the camera — back-to-back with Crockett, who is barely visible behind him — lip-syncing to &#8220;What&#8217;s Up,&#8221; the 1993 smash hit by the 4 Non Blondes. Text on the screen reads, &#8220;POV you&#8217;re about to elect Michigan&#8217;s first Black governor.&#8221;
&#8220;And so I wake in the morning and I step outside. And I take a deep breath and I get real high. And I scream from the top of my lungs,&#8221; he mouths the words, and then the camera swings around to Crockett.
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@garlingilchristmi/video/7573480169638350093" data-video-id="7573480169638350093" data-embed-from="oembed" style="max-width:605px; min-width:325px;">
<section> <a target="_blank" title="@garlingilchristmi" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@garlingilchristmi?refer=embed">@garlingilchristmi</a> 
POV you’re about to elect Michigan’s first Black Governor @Jasmine Crockett <a title="mi" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/mi?refer=embed">#mi</a> <a title="politics" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/politics?refer=embed">#politics</a> <a title="blacktiktok" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/blacktiktok?refer=embed">#blacktiktok</a> <a title="dance" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance?refer=embed">#dance</a> <a title="jasminecrockett" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/jasminecrockett?refer=embed">#jasminecrockett</a> 
 <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - Garlin Gilchrist" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7573480236921326349?refer=embed">♬ original sound &#8211; Garlin Gilchrist</a> </section>
</blockquote>
 <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>
Crockett dives right into her impression of rapper Nicki Minaj, dancing as she lip-syncs, &#8220;Bit**es ain’t sh** and they ain’t sayin&#8217; nothin&#8217;, A hundred mothafu**ers can’t tell me nothin&#8217;, I beez in the trap, be-beez in the trap, I beez in the trap, be-beez in the trap.&#8221;
&#8220;Idiocracy was a documentary,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/VickieforNYC/status/1990595198465028592">observed</a> New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino.
&#8220;Can you imagine our founders watching this …&#8221; Robby Starbuck <a href="https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1990604192046809477">mused</a>.
Radio host Justin Barclay <a href="https://x.com/MrJustinBarclay/status/1990541102731178124">added</a>, &#8220;If one were seriously running for governor in Michigan, Jasmine Crockett wouldn&#8217;t be on your list to work with.&#8221;
&#8220;Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist just released this ridiculous gubernatorial campaign video featuring a sitting member of Congress. Gilchrist says: &#8216;Take it from Jasmine Crockett, Trump can’t tell me nothin’,'&#8221; Newsmax&#8217;s David Harris Jr. <a href="https://x.com/DavidJHarrisJr/status/1990818816465735847">said</a>.
The Gilchrist and Crockett video came just over two weeks after the White House posted a TikTok video using the same musical mashup.
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@whitehouse/video/7568669729519389966" data-video-id="7568669729519389966" data-embed-from="oembed" style="max-width:605px; min-width:325px;">
<section> <a target="_blank" title="@whitehouse" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@whitehouse?refer=embed">@whitehouse</a> 
The best to ever do it 🇺🇸
 <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - The White House" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7568669763774909197?refer=embed">♬ original sound &#8211; The White House</a> </section>
</blockquote>
 <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>
Gilchrist hosted a fundraising event featuring the Texas Democrat in Detroit over the weekend, and has also been endorsed by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). He is the first Democrat in a crowded primary field to state that the situation in Gaza is an active &#8220;<a href="https://www.wlns.com/capital-rundown/gilchrist-calls-situation-in-gaza-a-genocide-at-dearborn-convention/">genocide</a>.&#8221;

US Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

Jasmine Crockett Mocked For Bizarre Rap Promoting Michigan Democrat

Gretchen Whitmer

Jasmine Crockett

Media

Michigan

A Cloudflare outage early Tuesday sparked a ripple effect that took down multiple platforms, from social media platform X and music streaming service Spotify to the artificial intelligence assistant ChatGPT, impacting thousands of users.
Cloudflare is an American company that provides internet infrastructure and acts as a &#8220;gateway&#8221; — providing security for multiple websites and acting as a content delivery network (CDN) to make sure things run more smoothly and efficiently — so when Cloudflare went down, multiple websites and applications felt the impact.
The outages were first reported, according to tracking website DownDetector, just after 6 a.m. ET as users reported error messages across X and other platforms.
Reports of X outages peaked at over 10,000 users affected. OpenAI saw fewer reports — just over 1,800 — but those reports peaked in the same timeframe. A number of other applications and websites — from Shopify, Google, and Amazon to DoorDash, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom — also saw reports of outages and error messages that peaked during the same time.
Cloudflare posted an update a short time later:
<blockquote>Our support portal is currently experiencing issues, and as such customers might encounter errors viewing or responding to support cases. Responses on customer inquiries are not affected, and customers can still reach us via live chat (Business and Enterprise) through the Cloudflare Dashboard, or via the emergency telephone line (Enterprise). We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem.</blockquote>
After several hours and numerous updates stating that they were still working on the problem, a follow-up message stated, &#8220;A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.&#8221;
They warned that some users might still experience lagging outages or error messages, and assured that they were monitoring for further issues.

Elon Musk Changes Twitter Name And Logo To X

Cloudflare Outage Impacts Thousands As Ripple Effect Hits X, Spotify, And ChatGPT

ChatGPT

Internet

As Americans, we like to think our boys are tough and resilient. But online, they’re the most vulnerable — and the most overlooked.
The internet has become a digital trap for millions of young men and boys. The addictive features programmed into smartphones, social media, video games, and online pornography are intentionally designed to hook kids at an early age. 

Boys are now spending significant amounts of time gaming, scrolling, and chatting on platforms that were never built for their safety.
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination by suspected shooter Tyler Robinson, a Wall Street Journal columnist astutely <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/tyler-robinson-and-americas-lost-boys-16e1a64f?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAiDLHQk7XYUWCYadmUhnBP8_i51LLKSxIVs9t7s6dHSxgWLkTp53M4RQeaPdnc%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68c85e0f&amp;gaa_sig=FtIvSFrAOw7LAbNtikhsW7FZPGTE7FTBmqlB_6pOrJLWP67qk-WkTCu_mrS6z0uIn-HnujYpWDNNwlbyqQyFMw%3D%3D">noted</a>, “Political violence is a problem. But so is the atomized culture in which young men retreat into confused inner worlds and virtual realities, which can be as addictive and destructive as any drug.” 
 
Across America, young men are drifting into digital isolation — where algorithms, pornographers, sexual predators, and toxic role models, not parents or mentors, manipulate their mindsets and attitudes and ultimately shape who they become. 
 
Those algorithms are now even more powerful. A Common Sense Media <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/new-report-reveals-how-online-experiences-inform-adolescent-boys-development">survey</a> revealed that “algorithms, not user intent, are the primary driver of boys&#8217; exposure to posts about masculinity; 68 percent of boys who see such material online say it started showing up in their feed without them searching for it.” 
 
Toxic influencers online exploit boys searching for identity, feeding them anger, distorted ideas about women, and extreme behaviors amplified by social media algorithms. 
 
Social media, video games, and online pornography are engineered for compulsion, addiction, and control. They hijack attention and reward obsession — and boys are the biggest consumers. 
 
Violent video games can be especially problematic for boys, since they use the same first-person shooter technology used to train military and law enforcement to kill. 
 
“Modern military and law enforcement training to adults with discipline makes killing a conditioned response. And it works … we know video games can do the same thing to our kids. The term I use is ‘murder simulators.’ The flight simulators teach you to fly — the murder simulators teach you to murder,” Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, one of the world’s foremost experts on human aggression, shared on my <a href="http://youtu.be/vlnarQ9Na5k">podcast</a>. 
 
According to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/05/09/teens-and-video-games-today/">Pew Research</a>, 85% of U.S. teenagers play video games, with 67% of teen boys (compared to 22% of girls) playing daily. A UK <a href="https://ygam.org/news/teenage-boys-spend-more-hours-gaming-than-in-school/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">report</a> found that teenage boys (ages 15-17) spend almost 34 hours per week playing video games. Pew Research also <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/teens-and-social-media-fact-sheet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">indicates</a> that 93% of boys ages 13-17, compared to 87% of girls, watch YouTube. 
 
And when it comes to today’s online pornography, which often depicts violence against young women, the numbers are just as alarming. A national <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/new-report-reveals-truths-about-how-teens-engage-with-pornography">survey</a> found 73% of teens 13–17 have seen pornography online, and more than half saw it by age 13. Adolescents who view this toxic content are <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9853222/">more likely to engage</a> in risky sexual activities or have anxiety and depression. Boys are far more likely to have sought it out intentionally. 
 
The risks of any child or teen being online are not theoretical. Many parents who have lost children to social media challenges, like the TikTok “blackout challenge,” have said that their children were led into dangerous content by algorithmic design that favors engagement, extremes, and harmful viral trends. 
 
As boys spend time gaming online or scrolling social media feeds alone, they are left wide open to manipulation. 
The FBI has <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sacramento/news/sextortion-a-growing-threat-preying-upon-our-nations-teens">warned</a> that global financial sextortion — predators posing as teen girls to lure boys into sending explicit photos, then blackmailing them — is one of the fastest-growing crimes targeting children, in particular minor-aged boys. 
 
Tragically, dozens of boys have died by suicide after being trapped in these schemes. Gavin Guffey, 17, became <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/29/us/nigerian-extradited-guffey-sextortion-cec">a victim</a> of online sextortion and sadly took his own life. 
 
No parent should ever have to live through that nightmare. 
 
Congress must start holding Big Tech accountable by passing the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1748/text">Kids Online Safety Act</a> and other bipartisan legislation. Big Tech must ensure its products are designed with safety in mind, with default safety settings turned on, not off, and not as an afterthought once childhood innocence has been destroyed. The Department of Justice must start aggressively prosecuting the existing federal obscenity laws according to the 1997 Supreme Court ruling that determined “transmitting obscenity and child pornography, whether via the Internet or other means, is&#8230; illegal under federal law for both adults and juveniles.” 
 
Ensuring our boys and young men are protected from harm must be a shared responsibility in which Congress, Big Tech, communities, and ultimately parents, each do their part. 
 
Boys need fathers and mentors who model authentic masculinity — strength, responsibility, and courage. Positive role models can help them navigate the digital world and grow into men their families and our communities can rely on. 
 
If we lose our boys to screens, to rage, counterfeit sexuality, or despair, we lose the next generation of American men. If we want strong men tomorrow, we must start protecting and guiding our boys today. 

* * *
Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO of <a href="https://enough.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Enough Is Enough</a>, is an internationally known internet safety expert, author, speaker, media commentator, producer, and host of the Emmy Award-winning PBS Internet Safety series and host of the podcast, “<a href="https://internetsafety101.org/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Internet Safety, with Donna Rice Hughes</a>”. Under her leadership, EIE created the <a href="https://internetsafety101.org/">Internet Safety 101 Program</a> in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Playing Video Games

Boys Are Now Caught Under The Spell Of Predatory Algorithms

algorithm

Big Tech

Boys

Culture

Pornography

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When the news broke on Thursday that Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) had suffered a fall in his home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, the response on social media was immediate: conservatives flooded the platform with well wishes for the Democratic senator, and the lefties on BlueSky mocked him and complained that he&#8217;d lived.
Fetterman&#8217;s team announced that he&#8217;d simply suffered a &#8220;ventricular fibrillation flare-up,&#8221; and then fell because he&#8217;d felt light-headed. He sustained minor injuries to his face and is expected to recover. Fetterman himself seemed to be in good spirits, quipping, &#8220;If you thought my face looked bad before, wait until you see it now!&#8221;
Conservative commentator Steve Guest shared a screenshot showing a few of the posts from BlueSky responding to the news — and they ranged from simply mocking him to wishing he&#8217;d been unable to get up again.
&#8220;Blue Sky is an absolute cesspool right now in the wake of the news about John Fetterman&#8217;s fall,&#8221; he posted.
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Blue Sky is an absolute cesspool right now in the wake of the news about John Fetterman&#8217;s fall. <a href="https://t.co/fNKhvXEGuQ">pic.twitter.com/fNKhvXEGuQ</a>
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1989041566275760554?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Tragically, he&#8217;s expected to live,&#8221; one post read, and another said, &#8220;Karma is a bitch, ain&#8217;t it, Fetterman? Looks like he&#8217;s not getting enough oxygen to his brain, I could have told you that &#8230;&#8221;
Commenting on a headline about the injuries to Fetterman&#8217;s face, another asked, &#8220;How the f*** could anyone tell?&#8221;
&#8220;Damn, I hope the pavement is ok,&#8221; another posted.
Meanwhile, Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham offered well wishes via X. &#8220;Wishing Sen. Fetterman a full and speedy recovery. Health scares are no joke. Glad he’s doing well and under care,&#8221; she said.
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Wishing Sen. Fetterman a full and speedy recovery. Health scares are no joke. Glad he’s doing well and under care. <a href="https://t.co/E8ODdn7vUm">pic.twitter.com/E8ODdn7vUm</a>
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) <a href="https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1989055505390809113?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;I reached out to Senator Fetterman and Dina has spoken to Gisele. John is a tough Pittsburgher and is already on the mend. We are thinking of him, Gisele, and their entire family — looking forward to seeing my good friend in the coming days,&#8221; Senator Dave McCormick (R-PA) added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I reached out to Senator Fetterman and Dina has spoken to Gisele. John is a tough Pittsburgher and is already on the mend. We are thinking of him, Gisele, and their entire family — looking forward to seeing my good friend in the coming days.
— Senator Dave McCormick (@SenMcCormickPA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenMcCormickPA/status/1989068482194076112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Senator Lindsey Graham offered his thoughts as well, adding, &#8220;Like so many who know and appreciate Senator Fetterman, I’m wishing him a speedy and full recovery. Praying for John and his wonderful family.&#8221;
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Like so many who know and appreciate Senator Fetterman, I’m wishing him a speedy and full recovery.
Praying for John and his wonderful family. <a href="https://t.co/iuSsCwQakB">https://t.co/iuSsCwQakB</a>
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) <a href="https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1989092534094819786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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The decidedly meaner comments from the Left only served to back up what Fetterman said a day earlier during an interview with CNN&#8217;s Dana Bash, when he explained just how much more vicious the attacks from the Left had been compared to the attacks from the Right.
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🚨NEW: John Fetterman *STUNS* CNN&#8217;s Dana Bash by telling her how Left crueler than Right🚨
FETTERMAN: &#8220;The Right would say really rough things and names &#8230; but on the Left, it was like they want me to die or that &#8216;We&#8217;re cheering for your next stroke&#8217; &#8230; they even have a gif… <a href="https://t.co/iMRyVTssgs">pic.twitter.com/iMRyVTssgs</a>
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1988670736924336374?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;The Right would say really rough things and names,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;But on the Left, it was like they want me to die or that &#8216;We&#8217;re cheering for your next stroke.'&#8221;

Sen. John Fetterman

Conservatives Rally Around Fetterman After Fall, Lefties Can’t Get The Knives Out Fast Enough

Conservatives Rally Around Fetterman After Fall, Lefties Can't Get The Knives Out Fast Enough

John Fetterman

Republicans

There was a time not so long ago when Americans debated ideas around dinner tables, not timelines. We wrestled with differences in living rooms, classrooms, and church halls. But now? We live in the age of &#8220;I don’t believe you. Prove me wrong.&#8221; The default mode of curious conversation has turned into combat.
Scroll through any comment section and you’ll see it: people don’t log on to learn, they log on to win. They enter digital arenas, not classrooms. Social media has turned intellectual inquiry into an Olympic sport of outrage where every disagreement demands a takedown, every nuance is flattened into a meme, and every opponent becomes an enemy. That shift—from curiosity to cynicism—is quietly dismantling the very foundation of a free society: Trust.
Once upon a time, conservatism—and really, American discourse as a whole—was built on questions. Our Founders argued fiercely, but the goal was understanding. Debate was an act of discovery, not destruction. “Teach me” was the posture of a citizen who loved truth more than tribe.
Today, that posture is rare. We’ve mistaken being informed for being inflexible. We say, “I’ve done my research,” but really mean “I’ve read five posts that agree with me.” We talk about “owning the libs” or “crushing the cons,” but what we’ve really destroyed is the middle ground where reason used to live. This new culture doesn’t seek understanding. Rather, it seeks affirmation. The tragedy is that the tools meant to connect us have been weaponized to divide us.
Let’s be honest: social media isn’t a modern-day marketplace of ideas. It’s a slot machine that rewards outrage. Every swipe and tap feeds a machine designed to give you more of what you already like. It’s not expanding your mind; it’s tightening your echo chamber.
As a capitalist, I have no problem with profit. Platforms are businesses, not ministries. Their product is attention—and they’ve mastered the art of keeping it. But when the free market of attention becomes the only market that matters, ideas become entertainment, and truth becomes whatever gets the most clicks. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re right—it cares if you’re riled up. It feeds you more of what you think you want instead of what you might need. It’s like a spiritual diet of junk food: easy to consume, but hard on the soul.
And look, I get it. I have social media, too. (<a href="https://x.com/GatesGarciaFL">Please follow me</a> before I sound too self-righteous.) But it’s time we’re honest about what these platforms are and what they aren’t. They aren’t designed to elevate ideas; they’re designed to amplify emotion.
At 40 years old, I still remember what life looked like before all this—before the dopamine hits, before algorithms knew our habits better than our parents did. I remember when you actually had to call someone to argue about politics, when disagreement came with a voice, a tone, a relationship. But we’re now raising entire generations that only know a world filtered through social media. And the ramifications of that are enormous. Kids are learning to form their identities in front of an audience instead of within a family. They’re measuring truth in likes, not logic.
The answer, though, isn’t to abandon social media altogether. Like any tool, it can build or destroy depending on who’s holding it. Used well, it’s the most powerful communications platform in human history. It can spread truth faster than tyranny, unify movements for good, and give a voice to people long ignored by legacy media.
That’s the paradox of our age: we have the means to hold the world’s largest conversation, yet we’ve reduced it to a shouting match. Free markets are supposed to thrive on innovation and exchange, but our digital marketplace has become a monopoly of emotion. And that’s not capitalism. That’s chaos.
As conservatives, we should be leading the charge to reclaim these platforms for dialogue, not diatribe. Free speech is more than the right to speak. It’s the responsibility to listen. We should want social media to be the world’s public square, not its virtual food fight.
Imagine if, instead of “prove me wrong,” we started from “help me understand.” Imagine a culture where humility was a virtue again, not a weakness. That’s not naïve—it’s necessary.
Before social media, you couldn’t just parachute into a conversation armed with rage and a Wi-Fi connection. You had to engage face-to-face. There were natural filters: manners, context, tone. You couldn’t just drop a bomb and vanish into anonymity. Those days weren’t perfect, but our debates had weight. They demanded patience, presence, and perspective. Today, our political culture is built for the opposite. Speed over thought. Visibility over virtue. Snark over substance.
We used to shake hands after arguments. Now we block people. That’s not progress. That’s paralysis.
The challenge before us isn’t simply to win elections; it’s to win back curiosity. To remind a cynical culture that disagreement isn’t dangerous—it’s democratic and that the purpose of argument is not annihilation but illumination.
If conservatives want to shape the next generation, we have to model what it means to seek truth, not just victory. We can defend principles and still learn from people. We can hold convictions without closing our minds.
There’s nothing “soft” about humility. Jesus Himself—who held the ultimate truth—still asked questions, still taught through dialogue, still invited people to understand. Maybe that’s the model we need again.
So, here’s my modest proposal: the next time someone says something you disagree with online, try answering with, “I don’t understand, teach me.” It won’t always work. Some people will still argue in bad faith. But if enough of us adopt that posture, we might just start rebuilding the bridges that algorithms have burned.
Because at the end of the day, a nation built on freedom depends on the free exchange of ideas. Not just the loud ones. The honest ones.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go post this on social media. And please—prove me wrong by following me there.
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast We The People. Follow him on IG and X @GatesGarciaFL
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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