YOUNG WORKERS ARE LIVE-QUITTING ON TIKTOK
A growing number of young workers are real-time streaming their resignations and their videos are attracting millions of views online. So-called #quittok videos take different forms – filming workers’ departures on a live Zoom call, or documenting the moment they hand in a letter of resignation – but each clip captures the second when workers quit. California-based therapist and coach Tess Brigham says most young users on TikTok are digital natives, and as such have shared every kind of milestone online. “It's how this generation has experiences, it's how they've learned to be in the world,” she says. “If you grow up used to recording and sharing things, why wouldn't you share these larger, more significant moments in time?”
 
MUSK PUTS $20BN VALUE ON TWITTER
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has offered the social media platform's employees stock grants at a valuation of nearly $20bn, The Information has reported, citing a person familiar with an email Musk sent to Twitter staff. The reported valuation is less than half of the $44bn that Musk paid to acquire the company. The Information says the email is “a concrete acknowledgment of how much Twitter’s value has dropped since the deal—but it is still well above public market valuation levels for Twitter’s rivals.”
 
ONLINE ABUSE IS GROWING IN CHINA
A lack of pressure on social media companies in China to stamp out abuse has seen an upsurge in vicious trolling online. A poll of more than 2,000 social media users in China found that about four in 10 respondents have experienced some form of online abuse. It also found that 16% of the victims had suicidal thoughts. Almost half experienced anxiety, 42% insomnia, and 32% depression. Meanwhile, "A strong sense of collectivism in China can mean that cyberbullying, when perpetrated as a symbolic act of violence or aggression towards another in a public setting, may lead to drastic measures, such as suicide, to escape that sense of humiliation," says K Cohen Tan, a vice-provost at University of Nottingham Ningbo China.
 
MINSTREL TRADITION ENDURES ONLINE
CNN takes a look at so-called “digital blackface” - the racialized reactions that are mainstays in Twitter feeds, TikTok videos and Instagram reels where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions.Critics say digital blackface is wrong because it is a modern-day repackaging of minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment that was popular in the 19th and early 20th century.  Lauren Michele Jackson, a cultural critic who has written about the topic, advises: “If you find yourself always reaching for a black face to release your inner sass monster, maybe consider going the extra country mile and pick this nice Taylor Swift GIF instead.”
 
HUNDREDS OF AI TOOLS ARE BEING RELEASED
LinkedIn account Generative AI has posted the names of a just a small number of the AI tools that are now being released: “This week alone, more than 200 new AI tools were released . . . In 2023, you'd better use these tools.”


 


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