Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content (Teen Vogue)
BY FORTESA LATIFI
“Nothing they do now is going to take back the years of work I had to put in.”
Though TikTok is the latest iteration, sharing about children online isn’t new. Cam, 24, goes by softscorpio on TikTok, shares videos on the need for protection to her 160,000 followers. As a child, Cam says their mother posted personal information about them to around 10,000 Facebook followers. Once, when Cam was 12, they say they got home from riding bikes and got a message from a man who informed them he had seen them out with their friend. Cam started experiencing anxiety at the thought of leaving the house – what if someone else saw them who knew them from their mom’s Facebook page? To Cam, nothing seemed to be off limits. “It’s easier to tell you what my mom didn’t post,” Cam said. It got to the point where Cam didn’t want to tell their mom anything about their life because they knew it would be turned into content. When they met new people, they wondered if they had looked online at their entire life history. In high school, kids would text them “embarrassing photos” from their mom’s Facebook page. They no longer go by their legal name because they didn’t want people to be able to track their digital footprint. They recently testified in favor of Washington state’s HB 1627 which would aim to protect children of influencers, including granting them the right to, as NBC News reports, “request permanent deletion of their likenesses, names, or photos.” In their video testimony, Cam’s voice cracked with emotion as they implored the House members to pass the bill. “I plead [with] you to be the voice of this generation of children because I know firsthand what it’s like to not have a choice in which a digital footprint you didn’t create follows you around for the rest of your life.”
A loophole used by Shein and Temu to ship millions of packages to the US tax-free now faces more scrutiny (Business Insider)
BY MADELINE STONE
The provision, known as “de minimis,” allows importers to avoid paying duty and tax on shipments that are going to individual consumers and are worth less than $800 in total.
Shippers using de minimis also do not have to provide as much information to US Customs and Border Protection as shippers using more traditional methods would. Opponents of the rule argue it creates unfair competition, and the lack of in-depth screening could allow for the import of goods containing banned materials like cotton from Xinjiang, where forced labor is common.
An interim 2023 report from the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said that Shein and Temu “likely” account for more than 30% of all shipments made to the US under the de minimis provision. It added that almost 50% of all de minimis shipments to the US come from China.
TikTok test automatically identifies products in videos and offers purchase links (The Verge)
BY JON PORTER
Months after the TikTok Shop arrived in the US, the company is exploring ways to get e-commerce links into more videos.
TikTok Shop links could soon become a lot more common across the social media app. Bloomberg reports that the company is testing a new feature that automatically identifies products in the platform’s videos before offering a link to “Find similar items on TikTok Shop.” A spokesperson for the company was not immediately available to respond to The Verge’s request for comment, but it confirmed to Bloomberg that the feature is an early test.
This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen companies turn to technology in an attempt to automatically identify products and offer links to purchase them. Competing social media platform Pinterest, for example, has a shopping recommendation feature that invites users to “View similar products” on certain posts. Shopping has also been pitched as a key use case for Google Lens and the company’s more recent Circle to Search feature — both help people identify objects like fashion accessories and provide links to buy them.
Bayer ordered to pay $2.25 billion after jury links herbicide Roundup to cancer (The Washington Post)
BY Frances Vinall
John McKivison, 49, filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia against the company after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he said was due to using Roundup on his property for 20 years.
On Friday a jury returned a unanimous verdict, finding that Roundup was a cancer-causing product, that Monsanto was negligent and that Monsanto failed to warn about the dangers of Roundup, McKivison’s lawyers Tom Kline and Jason Itkin said in a joint statement.
A Botched Execution in Idaho Renews Scrutiny of Lethal Injection (NYT)
BY MIKE BAKER
Idaho attempted its first execution in 12 years on Wednesday, but medical workers could not tap into a vein on the inmate.
Gov. Brad Little of Idaho, a Republican, who supports the death penalty and last month said “justice has been delayed long enough” in Mr. Creech’s case, said the medical providers had been prepared for the possibility that they might not be able to access Mr. Creech’s vein. He said they “did the right thing in not moving forward with the execution.”
A growing number of states have banned the death penalty, while others have encountered troubles in maintaining their execution schedules because they have been unable to procure lethal drugs. Idaho was one of those states, although it was able to acquire the drugs after the Legislature passed a law in 2022 shielding the identity of those who supply them. Other states continue the method. On Wednesday evening, Texas executed a prisoner by lethal injection.
Texas farmers claim company sold them PFAS-contaminated sludge that killed livestock (The Guardian)
BY TOM PERKINS
Two ranches also allege biosolids with ‘forever chemicals’ ruined crops, polluted drinking water and left their properties worthless
A Texas county has launched a first-of-its-kind criminal investigation into the waste management giant Synagro over PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge it is selling to Texas farmers as a cheap alternative to fertilizer.
Two small Texas ranches at the center of that case have also filed a federal lawsuit against Synagro, alleging the company knew its sludge was contaminated but still sold it. Sludge spread on a nearby field sickened the farmers, killed livestock, polluted drinking water, contaminated beef later sold to the public and left their properties worthless, the complaint alleges.
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