An app that allows U.S. service members to anonymously post photos of the conditions in military barracks and dining facilities includes images of mold, mice, maggots, cockroaches, brown tap water and broken AC units, among other problems.
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“The TikTok bill gives Biden the power to ban websites & apps run by ‘a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity.’ Given that Biden routinely smears political opponents as being under the control of Putin, the danger should be obvious.”
That was entrepreneur David Sacks on X (formerly Twitter) on March 13 noting the fact that H.R. 7521, which has easily passed the House and is now on a fast track in the U.S Senate will give the President, right now it’s Joe Biden but also future presidents, can force divestiture of any website or application or else have it removed from hosting services if the President determines it is run by “a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity” including Russia, China, North Korea or Iran.
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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved a research grant in November for over $200,000 to create an app that helps men who identify as transgender sound like women.
The grant, first reported by The College Fix, was approved in November 2023 by the NIH’s Deafness and Other Communication Disorders department and will be run by Vesna Dominika Novak, a transgender associate professor at the University of Cincinnati. The NIH approved $213,878 in funding from December 2023 to November 2024 so Novak’s team can create a smartphone app to train biological males who identify as transgender “women” to speak like women, according to the project details.
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The top four downloaded applications in the past 30 days in the U.S. Apple App Store and Google Play Store are owned by Chinese-tied companies, according to data from Apptopia analyzed by Axios.
While these Chinese-tied apps are thriving in the U.S., American apps are typically not permitted to operate in China due to the country’s strict censorship, according to Axios. China has over one billion internet users according to Statista, so the U.S. is missing out on a massive market while China has exclusive access to it.
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The American Principles Project (APP), a national pro-parents rights organization that directly engages in campaigns and elections, has entered the Polk County, Florida school board election by providing four local candidates with $40,000 for ad campaigns.
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A family safety app used to track children’s movements is selling location data to several different data brokers, according to an investigation by The Markup.
Life360, which bills itself as a “family location sharing app” that purports to “simplify safety” for families, is selling customers’ location data to over a dozen data brokers including X-Mode, SafeGraph and Cuebiq, the Markup reported, citing interviews with two ex–Life360 employees and two former employees of major location data brokers.
Life360 is used by 31 million members, according to its website, and is intended to provide parents with the ability to track their children’s movements. The company discloses in its privacy policy that it sells “identifiers, Internet/Network information, Geolocation, Inferences, and Other personal information, including driving event and movement data” to third parties.
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Lyft reported 1,807 sexual assaults in 2019 in its first-ever safety report, released Thursday. The release mentioned that in 2019 the company received 156 reports of rape and 114 reports of attempted rape.
The rideshare company’s release listed categories of sexual assault ranging from “non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part” to “non-consensual sexual penetration.” Reports of all five categories of sexual assault included in the release increased from 2018 to 2019.
From 2017 to 2019, rape was reported in about one in 5 million Lyft rides, according to the release. There were 4,158 total reports of sexual assault in Lyft rides during those years.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered a sweeping but unspecified ban on dealings with the Chinese owners of consumer apps TikTok and WeChat, although it remains unclear if he has the legal authority to actually ban the apps from the U.S.
The twin executive orders — one for each app — take effect in 45 days. They call on the Commerce Secretary to define the banned dealings by that time. While the wording of the orders is vague, some experts said it appears intended to bar the popular apps from the Apple and Google app stores, which could effectively remove them from distribution in the U.S.
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