Experts have expressed deep concerns that the practice runs afoul of the fourth amendment’s right to privacy

Federal prosecutors have declined to say whether they secretly obtained phone records for the journalist Don Lemon using an unusual administrative summons, his lawyers said in a Monday court filing, highlighting concern about a controversial legal authority the government has claimed to gather information as it charged Lemon and dozens of others with civil rights crimes in connection to a January protest at a church in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

In January, officials served Verizon with an administrative summons for a log of Lemon’s phone records between 19 December and 20 January. The subpoena did not come from a grand jury, as is typical in criminal investigation, and also was not a court-approved search warrant. Instead, it was a unilateral request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which said it was requesting the information under 19 USC 1509 – an obscure law that gives the department power to investigate records related to customs issues. Experts say the government is abusing that authority to gather records on journalists, activists, unions, non-profits and online critics, and have expressed deep concerns that the practice runs afoul of the fourth amendment’s right to privacy.

Yesterday a16z published an article in which NYU Professor of Design, AI and Media Theory Ruby Thelot argued that “enshittification,” or the concept that technology platforms get worse after they lock in users, isn’t real. In reality, Thelot says, people use social media more than ever and report that they are satisfied with it. 

Thelot argues that, enshittification, a term coined by Cory Doctrow which has become one of the stickiest ideas of our era to explain the current state of technology and capitalism, is a misdiagnosis of what he describes as “platform narcissism.” The idea is that people, namely older people like Doctrow and western geratric millennials who used to get a lot of value out of Facebook, selfishly think platforms should continue to cater to their needs even though they aged out of them and should be focused on raising their kids. The platforms are actually popular and well liked, but by younger people who are using Instagram and deriving value from it in a way older people can’t understand, or by people in other countries and contexts than their own. Additionally, Thelot argues, the theory of enshittification allows users who should log off an excuse to stay on platforms that it is fashionable to hate. They spend time there, but say they hate it and can’t leave because they are trapped. 

“Perhaps the reason why the platform seems worse is because your life has changed,” Thelot says. “Over the same period of time, your goals have changed, and they no longer fit with the platform’s new features. Why the hell would a fifty-five year-old be watching Reels? Go take care of your kids.”

The indisputable fact of Thelot’s argument is that various social media platforms have more users and are more profitable than ever. This data is readily available from reliable market surveys, polls, and quarterly earning reports from the companies themselves. It’s important to note that companies like Meta have a history of juking the numbers, and that despite this it recently reported its first ever decline of 20 million users, but Thelot’s point stands: Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are massively popular. 

I will also cosign Thelot’s advice that people should log off. There are many reasons why some people can’t, present company included, but it’s never not good advice and even if you have to be on social media you can probably reduce your time scrolling. 

Thelot’s argument falls apart when he tries to prove people are actually satisfied with their time on these platforms. To prove this, he points to research from American Customer Satisfaction Index, a private company which surveys customers’ satisfaction with various products and services. In its ACSI Entertainment Study 2026 it surveyed 30,886 customers and found that overall satisfaction with social media rose by 1 percent to a score of 75 out of 100. If satisfaction with social media is rising instead of falling and doesn’t have a terrible score, it’s doing the opposite of enshittifying and people don’t actually hate it, he argues.

Kudos to Thelot for finding data that appears to contradict the human civilization-wide backlash to social media and nearly the only political issue that a deeply divided country can agree on, but this is cherry picking. 

Here are the type things customers are asked to evaluate with a score of 0-100 in the survey this rising satisfaction score for social media: “Quality of mobile app, reliability of mobile app (minimal down time, crashes, lags), loading speed and reliability, ease of navigation, ease of using the site on different devices, speed and reliability of video clips, variety of services and information, freshness of content, relevance of content, ability to use site without disruption, personal relevance of ads seen.”

Customers scored all these aspects of social media highly (between 68 and 84), and I agree with their evaluation. Instagram loads really fast. I can scroll videos on TikTok very quickly. I watched one YouTube Short about Warhammer 40,000 lore, and then was served more than a dozen other YouTube Shorts about Warhammer 40,000 lore that were both fresh and relevant. I do not contest any of this and I don’t think that is why both my friends in the DSA and my Trump supporting family members agree that Instagram is bad. 

If we wanted to find out why Americans have negative feelings about social media or why we think these platforms are enshittifying, we might ask questions like: Does using Instagram make you feel good? Do you think children younger than 13 should have unlimited access to TikTok? Has Facebook been a net positive for your family?

Let’s look at some other data. A recent survey from The Searchlight institute found that voters “overwhelmingly believe social media has a negative impact on society.” Last year, anEmerson College poll found that Americans have low confidence in information they get from social media and that social media platforms are most responsible for the creation of “fake news.” In 2021, the Cato Institute found that 75 percent of Americans don’t trust social media to make fair content moderation decisions. In August, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that three in five Americans support stronger oversight of social media companies. 35 percent said social media stressed them out. 52 percent said they spend too much time on social media. A Pew poll in July found that 6 in 10 Americans supported a social media ban for kids under 16. 

These opinions, especially as they relate to the impact social media has on younger people, has nothing to do with how fast videos load on Instagram or how effective the ads are. The apps function well technically and the ads are making money, this is self-evident and the reason we have a problem. The reason people feel like social media is enshittifying is that these companies promised to connect people across the world but in reality have chased engagement, catering to basest the human urges to hold our attention. Kids especially feel socially pressured to use these apps because that’s what every other kid is doing and where they feel their community is. It is such a clearly awful and obvious result of the way these apps have enshittified that in August Meta agreed to pay $17 billion dollars in penalties and finally curb the most dangerous aspects of its platforms over claims it endangered children. 

People need to be on Linkedin to find jobs. Municipalities and news organizations share important updates on social media first. You might be pulled onto Facebook or WhatsApp against your will because your local school or community of parents congregate there. That doesn’t mean they like it. It is possible to hate something with your entire being and still participate in it.

There are Warhammer and cute cat videos, but every scroll is a spin of a slot machine that cycles between hate, fear, jealousy, disgust, and horniness. We all see it and no amount of pro big tech propaganda, funded by the same firm that invested in these companies is going to convince anyone otherwise. 

The president’s call for the FCC to scrutinize Kristen Welker’s innocuous remarks is a sign of desperation

With his approval ratings tanking, the crucial midterm elections looming, and his war with Iran turning into a quagmire, Donald Trump has entered full freak-out mode.

It’s not hard to tell. Just look at what happened this week when he lashed out at Kristen Welker, the well-respected host of NBC’s Meet the Press, and one of the best-known journalists in the nation.

• CBS analyst was arrested in July after traffic stop

• Former QB has been absent from CBS duty

CBS NFL analyst and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo has pleaded no contest to a charge of operating while intoxicated and has apologized for the actions that led to his July arrest.

Romo was arrested on 23 July following a traffic stop in Wisconsin. CBS has since placed him on leave from his role as its lead NFL analyst.

Exclusive: Two congressmembers respond to revelations of government snooping on journalists, non-profits and unions

Two congressional Democrats asked a government watchdog on Tuesday to investigate the Trump administration’s use of an obscure law to secretly collect records on journalists, non-profits and unions without judicial oversight.

The request from the Oregon senator Ron Wyden and the representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington seen by the Guardian comes amid mounting scrutiny over the way the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently used its power to issue administrative summonses related to customs matters to make extraordinary unilateral demands for information. They sent their request to the government accountability office (GAO), the non-partisan congressional watchdog.

Girls Gone Bible is on tour in the US, touting a regressive ideal of femininity through discussions of abstinence and mental health struggles

At first glance, the crowd gathering outside a music venue in Red Bank, New Jersey, could have passed for a group of sorority rush hopefuls – or Ella Langley fans on their way to the country star’s show. Most of them were under the age of 30. They wore cowboy boots, maxi sundresses and soft, bouncy blowouts, scrolling on their phones outside the doors as they waited for friends to arrive.

But one accessory gave them away: the Bibles they toted. These women were there to pray.

The president is lashing out at an NBC host. As the agency’s former chair, I can only hope it stands up for free speech

Will the FCC chairperson again abuse his authority over broadcast licenses to put a Band-Aid on Donald Trump’s thin skin?

Since the opening days of the Trump presidency, Brendan Carr has acted as the president’s attack dog to coerce broadcasters to say things that please his client. Only days after taking office in January 2025, Carr revived a previously dismissed complaint against CBS for the editing of 60 Minutes that tracked candidate Trump’s specious lawsuit on the matter. At the time, the FCC was considering the transfer of CBS licenses to Skydance, a decision that did not come until after CBS agreed to pay $16m to settle with Trump. In September, after Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk, Carr urged broadcasters to take action, saying “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” – an attack even the senator Ted Cruz said sounded “right out of Goodfellas”. In March 2026, he threatened broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war after the president complained on Truth Social. In April, he ordered Disney’s eight ABC-owned television stations to submit their licenses for premature review, even though most aren’t even halfway through their license term (Disney, ABC and the stations are suing).

Tom Wheeler was chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017

The non-profit Leaving Maga is built on the premise that abandoning the Trump-built movement is like fighting a disease or breaking an addiction

Stephania Messina kept birthing boys. In the Quiverfull conservative Christian church she belonged to outside Detroit, Michigan, that made her a community celebrity. Your quiver, as the church taught it, is your womb, meant to be filled with as many arrows – a metaphor for children – as you can shoot unto the Lord. She shot five. “They treated me like I was Mother Mary, like I was this gift to the church,” she said.

But while she was quickly pushed into leading worship and Bible study groups for women and children, she wasn’t permitted to talk about politics.

‘Alt-right’ agitator and former Trump backer deported from US is said also to be too extreme for Reform

As he arrives back in the UK after being deported from the US by the Trump administration, the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos may be wondering what lies ahead for him in his native country.

The “alt-right” agitator, 41, made his name in the US by promoting Donald Trump and associating with his allies before the 2016 election.

Even after judges rejected the same ploy, the Trump administration is going directly to social media and telecommunications companies

The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight.

In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said in court papers.

The site once paired news and scores with distinctive voices. Its overhaul under Sinclair Media is the latest sign that serious tennis writing in the US is becoming endangered

A few weeks ago, as I often do, I went to the Tennis.com site to get an update about a match and to check out the commentary from my fellow tennis journalists. I was taken aback when, instead of the usual colorful graphics and info, I was greeted with a rudimentary-looking homepage that displayed only scores and rankings.

At first I thought it was a glitch of some sort. But sadly, no. As it turns out, Tennis.com, originally the online site of Tennis Magazine, is under a complete overhaul and will no longer be the home of esteemed writers such as Steve Tignor and Pete Bodo, robbing fans of unique and personal takes on the sport. It appears the longest running American tennis-specific publication is no longer alive in any form.

Three employees of Stars and Stripes, a government-funded news service, allege they were fired after reporting on USS Abraham Lincoln

Three journalists who were fired by the Pentagon from a US government-funded news outlet sued the Department of Defense in federal court on Thursday, arguing their dismissals were illegal and violated their first amendment rights to free speech.

The three journalists were all employees of Stars and Stripes, which their court filing calls “the U.S. military’s independent news source since the Civil War with a long history of editorial independence, free from news management or censorship by military command”.

One wonders when, if ever, a US broadcast can win the same plaudits presenting the English league with a more American voice

There they were again, signaling with their unchanging faces and voices and their unchanging studio backdrop that another Premier League season had begun. On Friday afternoon, and again on Saturday and Sunday morning, Rebecca Lowe welcomed American viewers to what is somehow already the 14th season of the world’s most popular sporting circuit to air on NBC.

She was flanked, as ever, by her merry band of pundits, her gang of fellow British expats. The Robbies and the other ones. Also, Tim Howard as the token American, albeit one who spent 13 seasons of his goalkeeping career in the Premier League, deemed sufficiently English by osmosis to join the crew.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now. He teaches at Marist University.

As the US president struggles to end his Iran war, and approval ratings hit new lows, he leans on a familiar gambit

Donald Trump knows the power of an image – of himself, with everyone from Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un to Kim Kardashian. How about George Washington?

As the US president struggles to end his war with Iran, and with his approval ratings hitting the lowest levels of his second term, he has in recent weeks posted a series of AI-generated images of himself alongside key historical American figures.

Victoria Hicks, mother of Alexandra Hicks, told reporters that she feels 'justice is possible' after Meta settled in its US trial over teen addiction. On 26 August in a Oakland, California, federal courtroom, Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenagers and pay up to $17bn. Dozens of US states had accused the tech giant of addicting and harming children with dangerous products

• Raducanu’s 2021 win played role in Sky interest

• Sky’s tennis audience in 2025 was 60% female

Sky Sports is close to agreeing a new deal to extend its live coverage of the US Open. The three-year contract extension, which is expected to be announced when the singles draw from Flushing Meadows begins next week, will keep the tournament live on Sky until 2030.

Under the terms of the new deal, Sky will broadcast more than 12 hours of live tennis each day across the extended three-week tournament, including the new mixed-doubles event which is taking place this week.

Stanley Druckenmiller said he was ‘proud of using it’ as wider media grapples with parameters around AI use

Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire investor, said he used artificial intelligence to pen his viral Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he sharply criticized the interference of Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, in the US bond market.

Many news outlets, including the Guardian, covered the editorial, highlighting Druckenmiller’s rebuke of his former mentee, Bessent. As the story circulated online, some readers questioned rhetorical choices that resembled AI-generated text.

Arbitrator determined the Post improperly fired Karen Attiah, a union-protected employee, over social media posts

An independent arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to rehire the high-profile opinion columnist Karen Attiah, abruptly fired by the news organization last September over comments she made on social media about Charlie Kirk, the then recently killed conservative activist.

On Monday, an arbitrator ruled that the Post had violated her rights as a union-protected employee and ordered the newspaper to reinstate her and compensate her for lost wages.

The newspaper often uses the word to describe elections with progressive contenders, implying a previous whole destroyed by the left

“El-Sayed and Stevens Project Party Unity After Divisive Race,” announced the New York Times on 5 August, the day the progressive Abdul El-Sayed beat out his centrist Democratic rival, Haley Stevens, in the Michigan senatorial primary. “Divisive” is now the Times’s favorite attack word, deployed repeatedly to disparage and try to undermine the astonishing recent advances by progressive candidates.

Four days after that first story, the Times again landed “divisive” under “Obama and El-Sayed Discuss Unity After Ugly Michigan Primary.” El-Sayed, it asserted, had “narrowly prevailed in a divisive primary after campaigning on a progressive and anti-establishment platform”.

Max Lederer and Erik Slavin receive termination notices after publication reported on crew conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln

The Pentagon has fired the publisher and the editor of Stars and Stripes, the US military news outlet that has clashed with the Trump administration and armed forces brass over its partly taxpayer-funded reporting.

Publisher Max Lederer and editor Erik Slavin received termination notices, CBS News reported on Friday. The cause cited was insubordination, and they have been given five days to appeal against their dismissals.

• Kai Spears incorrectly linked to death of young mother

• Times says it had not lost libel case in more than 50 years

An Alabama jury has awarded $9.25m in damages after finding that the New York Times defamed a college basketball player by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting.

Kai Spears, who played for the University of Alabama men’s team, sued the Times in 2023 after it published a report, citing a person familiar with the investigation, that said he was a passenger in a car involved in the shooting. The Times reported that the person had spoken “on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.”

Max Lederer, longtime head of the US military news outlet, says his ‘philosophy of leadership’ differs from Pentagon’s

The long-serving publisher of Stars and Stripes could face an early dismissal just days after the taxpayer-funded military news outlet’s reporting revealed deteriorating conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, according to a news report.

Pentagon officials have discussed firing Max Lederer ahead of his scheduled retirement next month, according to CBS News, which quoted anonymous sources. Lederer, the publisher of the military daily for 19 years, had previously cited fundamental differences with the Trump administration for his decision to retire soon.

The former Sunday Night Football stalwart is now one step from a seat in the US Senate. And she could cause a shock in liberal Minnesota

As the third leg of NBC’s Sunday Night Football crew alongside play-by-play man Al Michaels and the tart-tongued analyst Cris Collinsworth, Michele Tafoya was a paragon of deference and neutrality for 11 years as an NFL sideline reporter, dutifully relating boilerplate tactics, talking points and injury updates when she wasn’t nodding along to softball interviews or fumbling through hammy production gimmicks for viewers who might have been too offline to get the bit. She was almost pathologically committed to not doing anything to draw attention to herself or her gender in an era when sideline reporting was a fast track to national celebrity. Even her football takes hewed to the middle. (“New Orleans doesn’t want to lose to Atlanta twice in a season …”) Anyone who says they saw the 61-year-old emerging as a rightwing firebrand was watching a different game.

And yet here we are. Last week, Tafoya was the decisive winner of Minnesota’s US Senate Republican primary, earning the party’s nomination for November’s general election. Even more striking: she beat back eight challengers, not least Adam Schwarze, the party-endorsed pro-gun, pro-military ex-Navy SEAL, and Royce White, the anti-leftist, anti-trans NBA flameout currently testing WNBA gender norms.

Donald Trump berated a CNN reporter at a press availability, insisting that she 'be quiet' after she asked about a reduction in US military exercises with South Korea. The CNN correspondent, Kristen Holmes, pressed Trump on whether Kim Jong-un had requested a reduction in military activities. When another reporter asked about the extensive accounts of deteriorating living conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln during its lengthy deployment in the strait of Hormuz, the president dismissed the complaints: ' It was fake news reporting from CNN'

• Trump dismisses USS Lincoln criticism and snaps at CNN reporter to ‘be quiet’