Digital Trends Live: Facebook’s news tab, TikTok investigated, and more

By Todd Werkhoven October 25, 2019

On this episode of Digital Trends Live, hosts Greg Nibler and Drew Prindle dig into the biggest-trending tech stories of the day, including Facebook’s new “news” tab, senators’ investigation of TikTok, lasers that shoot down drones, news that HBO subscribers may get HBO MAX free next year, and more.

We then go to Ken Yeung, technology editor at Flipboard, for our weekly Tech Briefs segment, where we recap the biggest tech stories of the past week, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Libra testimony and more.

Keely Wachs, head of impact and sustainability at Zume, later discusses a partnership with Pizza Hut and its new eco-friendly pizza box.

Jeremy Kaplan, editor-in-chief at Digital Trends, then joins us from New York to talk about the IBM Food Trust, and how it uses blockchain to improve seafood sustainability.

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Todd Werkhoven's work can be read at numerous publications and he co-authored a personal finance book called "Zombie…

Social Media

New feature shows that even Twitter wants to be like TikTok now

Twitter's new full screen feature for videos on the mobile app.

Is TikTok the new queen bee of social media? It appears so as even Twitter couldn't resist copying TikTok. Twitter's latest feature announcement seems to be yet another indication that the viral video app sensation is clearly the new leader among its peers. After all, TikTok is setting trends and its competitors are all following them.

On Thursday, Twitter announced two new video-focused features for its app and one of those features bears a strong resemblance to TikTok. That feature (known as the "immersive media viewer") allows users to open videos in a vertical "full-screen mode" -- just like TikTok -- and continue to view more videos by swiping up (also just like TikTok).

Social Media

You can now downvote comments on TikTok videos

The TikTok app on a smartphone's screen. The smartphone is sitting on a white table.

TikTok has a new feature and this time it's for the comment section of its short-form videos.

On Friday, TikTok announced via a tweet that it was globally releasing a new dislike button feature for TikTok video comments. The tweeted announcement offered up a few details about what to expect and an image of the new feature:

Social Media

TikTok is banning campaign fundraising on its app

A person's hand holding a phone with the TikTok app on it.

As we get closer to the U.S. midterm elections, TikTok and other social media platforms have been ramping up changes to their apps and their policies in an effort to curb misinformation and clean up other problems plaguing their platforms. And now, TikTok is issuing a few more changes to its policies that are specifically targeted at political party, politician, and government TikTok accounts. The biggest change? It plans to ban campaign fundraising on the app.

On Wednesday, TikTok published a blog post in which it announced a ban on campaign fundraising and mandatory verification for certain political accounts (in the U.S.).