Maren Morris just celebrated her second Christmas with her son, Hayes, who’s old enough to enjoy gifts this year — but not necessarily the gifts his mom thought he’d like.
“Went to Texas for Christmas and my son got so many gifts I thought he’d love,” she wrote on Twitter this week. “[H]is preference?” Climbing in and out of a dog crate for 2 hours. I give up.”
The singer didn’t share any photos or video of Hayes enjoying his “toy.” Since early on in his life, she’s put a pretty strict limit on photos she posts of her son, after facing negativity from mommy-shamers who picked out criticisms of her parenting style whenever she shared snapshots of her family life.
But Maren does share little snippets of life with Hayes now and again: Back in October, the singer’s Twitter followers got to see a glimpse of Hayes yelling “moo” at a procession of horses.
“ATTN: My son thinks horses say ‘moo’ and it’s here to brighten up your doom scrolling,” the singer wrote in the caption of the post.
In recent weeks, Maren also teased exciting musical news on the horizon, hinting that she’s got big plans for new releases in 2022. She’s also nominated at January’s Grammy Awards ceremony, thanks to “Chasing After You,” her duet with her singer-songwriter husband, Ryan Hurd.
Went to Texas for Christmas and my son got so many gifts I thought he’d love… his preference?
Climbing in and out of a dog crate for 2 hours. I give up.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for Bonnaroo Arts And Music Festival
Phish has announced a New Year’s Eve livestream concert to make up for the band’s postponed New Year’s run at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, which was pushed back due to surging COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant.
The virtual event, which will consist of three full sets, will premiere December 31 at 8:30 p.m. ET. You can watch for free via the Phish YouTube channel or on LivePhish.com.
The show will be part of Phish’s ongoing Dinner and a Movie streaming series, which also provides unique food recipes for those watching. The NYE’s meal will be lemon-themed, and includes recipes for a whole roasted chicken with lemon, a vegetarian lemon pasta, and lemon bars for dessert.
The Dinner and a Movie series has also been raising money for various non-profit organizations amid the pandemic through the band’s WaterWheel Foundation.
Rush is set to be immortalized as a pinball machine.
A silver ball game dedicated to the Canadian prog legends is about to be released. Manufacturer Stern Pinball will debut the Rush machine during a virtual event at the 2022 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, taking place January 5-8, after which it’ll be coming to an arcade near you.
You can watch a teaser video for the Rush pinball machine, which promises that it’ll be “traveling soon,” now on YouTube.
Stern has also created machines inspired by bands including Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Aerosmith, AC/DC and KISS. To find a Stern pinball game in your area, visit SternPinball.com.
In addition to your local arcade, you can also hear Rush’s music live on tour next year, albeit played by Primus. The “My Name Is Mud” outfit will be launching a 2022 leg of their A Tribute to Kings tour in April, during which they perform Rush’s 1977 album A Farewell to Kings in its entirety.
Killing Eve is gearing up for its fourth and final season.
A new teaser was released Tuesday, giving a glimpse into the complex relationship between Jodie Comer’s trained assassin, Villanelle, and Sandra Oh’s British intelligence agent, Eve Polastri.
A voiceover from Fiona Shaw’s Carolyn Martens hints we’re probably in for a dark ride. “People like us aren’t made for happy lives or happy endings,” she says.
The clip ends with Eve riding a mobility scooter and coming up alongside Villanelle. “Want a ride?” she asks. It then cuts to Villanelle riding on the same scooter — alone.
Season four of Killing Eve debuts Sunday, February 27 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BBC America. Episodes will also air on AMC beginning Monday, February 28 at 9 p.m. ET/PT and will stream a week early on AMC+, starting Sunday, February 20.
Katy Perry‘s Las Vegas residency at Resorts World, PLAY, kicks off tonight. In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, she gave fans of preview of what to expect.
“Yes, a lot of my shows have been, you know, figuratively larger than life. But I play a doll in this show, so everything is like, three times the size of me,” Katy laughed. “It’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Pee-Wee’s Playhouse on CBD.”
In her walk-through with Good Morning America, Katy showed off the giant props that will be used in the show: a massive toilet and plunger, a huge bathtub, super-sized mushrooms and snails, and a bedazzled bag of garbage that Katy calls “Trashion.” She also gave viewers a peek at her many, many sequined outfits.
“We know what our audience is. People are here to have fun, people are here to let loose. People are here to just, you know, go on this trip!” Katy laughed.
Katy has previously said that one reason she’s choosing to do a Vegas residency now is because it’ll allow her to spend more time with her daughter, Daisy Dove. Noting that this will mark her first time back onstage in front of an audience since March of 2020, Katy told GMA, “Between then and now, I was able to have a baby, which changed my life, and brought me balance, and perspective, and priority, and so much joy.”
She added, “Everything I was looking for, I really found when I met her.”
On Instagram, Katy also revealed the hit-packed set list for PLAY, which features 19 songs, including her new single, “When I’m Gone,” and what appears to be a cover of Whitney Houston‘s “The Greatest Love of All.” Here it is — spoiler alert:
“E.T”
“Chained to the Rhythm”
“Dark Horse”
“It’s Not the End of the World”
“California Gurls”
“Hot ‘n Cold/Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”
“Waking Up in Vegas”
“Bon Appetit”
“Daisies”
“I Kissed a Girl”
“Lost/Part of Me/Wide Awake”
“Swish Swish”
“When I’m Gone/Walking On Air”
“Never Really Over”
“Teenage Dream”
“Smile”
“Roar”
“Greatest Love of All”
“Firework”
(LONDON) — France this week became the latest European country to tighten its coronavirus restrictions, with nations across the continent posting record numbers of COVID-19 infections in an omicron-fueled surge.
On Dec. 21, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Kluge, warned that the omicron variant — believed by scientists to be far more transmissible than delta — was set to become the dominant variant on the continent following confirmation that it already had in Denmark, Portugal and the U.K.
Since then, the rate of infection has increased, with France, Italy, the U.K. and Spain posting historic record numbers of COVID infections in recent days. Infections, according to Kluge, are 40% higher than during the same period last year.
In France, where nearly 90% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, from Jan. 3 there will be an obligation to work from home for three days a week and mask mandates in outdoor city centers. Several countries announced prior to Christmas that they would be introducing restrictions for after the holiday weekend.
In Germany, that means that nightclubs will have to close, large-scale events such as soccer games cannot occur with a live audience and the sale of fireworks is also banned and large-scale events for New Years’ Eve are prohibited.
The Netherlands, meanwhile, is already in an effective lockdown to combat COVID-19 infections, with schools, non-essential stores, bars and restaurants closed until Jan. 14. In the U.K., Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have reintroduced social distancing restrictions not seen since before the summer, while England has introduced health passports for mass gatherings and reintroduced mask mandates for public transport and outdoor settings.
However, England has been a notable outlier in that Boris Johnson’s government, encouraged by data that indicates the risk of hospitalization is lower from omicron than the delta variant, has not announced any new restrictions for the New Years’ period — despite the U.K. posting record numbers and more than 100,000 daily infections on several days last week.
Despite relatively high vaccination rates — around 68% of the European Union’s population has been fully vaccinated — there are concerns that not enough has been done to institute a booster drive across the continent which officials say is needed to drive up resistance against omicron.
For interstate European travel, the European Commission announced that their EU Digital COVID Certificate will only be valid for 9 months, meaning that boosters will be required for certificates to be renewed.
In several countries, life is set to become far more difficult for the unvaccinated. This month, Germany has placed major restrictions on access to public life for unvaccinated people — with only those who have been vaccinated or recently recovered allowed entry into non-essential stores, leisure facilities, bars and restaurants.
France meanwhile is set to change its COVID “health pass” into a “vaccine pass” from next month — now it is only valid with vaccination, rather than vaccination or proof of a negative test.
Several European officials have indicated that mandatory vaccinations are likely to become a fact of life in the future. Austria from February will institute a monthly fine on people who do not take up the offer of a vaccine. EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen has suggested vaccine mandates could be welcome, with concern that the estimated 150 million Europeans still unvaccinated are the group driving increases in hospitalizations.
(STATESVILLE, N.C.) — A North Carolina mom is celebrating after losing over 200 pounds, half of her original weight.
Tiesha Robinson, of Statesville, North Carolina, said she lost the weight even after struggling with it for her entire life.
“I can’t think back of when I haven’t had to lose weight or when I wasn’t trying to lose weight,” Robinson, 35, told Good Morning America. “Obesity runs in my family and then also I made a lot of wrong food choices.”
The push to lose weight came on strong for Robinson after she experienced two family tragedies, the death of her beloved aunt in 2016 and then the death of her son’s father in 2018.
“I didn’t want my son to have to go through that pain again if I could prevent it,” she said. “So that was kind of my motivation to save myself so that I could be here for my son.”
Speaking of her aunt’s death in 2016, Robinson said: “My aunt was kind of like everyone’s hero, like the backbone, so to watch her struggle to live was a turning point. It really made me realize that even though I’m strong and I try to be here for everyone, I have to show up for myself because if I’m not here, then I can’t help anyone.”
In 2017, one year after her aunt’s death, Robinson said she hit her highest weight of 416 pounds.
In 2019, after her son’s father died, Robinson began tracking her food using WW, formerly known as Weight Watchers.
“I didn’t know that I would be as successful as I am, but I knew I had to try,” she said of WW. “I knew I couldn’t give up because if I gave up on me, it would be like I’m giving up on my son, and that wasn’t an option, so I just had to throw away all the excuses and all the distractions.”
Robinson said WW’s method of tracking food showed her how to balance what she was eating and “now just indulge in everything that I wanted in one day.”
“I was able to balance healthy choices and just learn a new healthy lifestyle,” she said. “It saved my life by just learning how to eat healthy, be healthy, stay active.”
In the past two years, Robinson said she has lost 208 pounds and changed her life. Her weight loss transformation is featured in People magazine’s 2021 “Half Their Size” issue, available on newsstands now.
She said she is now more “mindful” and in control of her diet, and has taken up hobbies like Zumba, walking and writing poetry that she turns to instead of food.
Robinson said she and her son, now 15, joined a gym together just before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but she has since learned to love working out at home, which she said helps her eliminate any excuses.
“I learned to exercise at home and that way I don’t have no excuse,” she said, noting she takes Zumba classes on YouTube or plays a dance game on an Xbox. “If it’s too late, I’m in my house so I can exercise. If it’s early and I have energy, I have the opportunity to exercise.”
Through her weight-loss journey, Robinson said she has learned to “set goals, not limits,” which is the advice she gives to others.
“I will say just refuse to give up on yourself,” she said. “Refuse to give up, learn to adapt and if you mess up, don’t make that an excuse to give up.”
Robinson said she has also learned the importance of celebrating her own accomplishments on her weight-loss journey, instead of waiting for other people’s approval.
Her most important advice, she said, is to just start out on the journey, saying, “In order to finish, you have to start, so just get started and keep going.”
(SPOILERS AHEAD)Star Wars fans get to unwrap a late Christmas gift today: the first episode of The Mandalorian spinoff series The Book of Boba Fett on Disney+.
Written by The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau and directed by Robert Rodriguez, who brought his boyhood bounty-hunting idol back into the Star Wars universe in The Mandalorian season 2, Temuera Morrison again plays Fett both in flashback and in the present, as he’s trying to rebuild the crime syndicate run by Jabba the Hutt, who was killed by Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. At his side is Ming-Na Wen‘s master assassin character Fennec Shand, from The Mandalorian.
But grabbing Jabba’s throne does not go unchallenged. “Lord Fett” is both lauded by by local underworld figures — including Jennifer Beals‘ Garsa Fwip — and also set upon by assassins.
We also learn just how Boba Fett escaped his apparent inglorious end in the belly of a Sarlacc, the giant desert-dwelling creature that ate him in Return of the Jedi. Suffice it to say he was discovered and rescued by Tatooine’s scavengers, the Jawas, who also strip him of his legendary armor suit and hold him captive.
Harvesting water for the Sand People, Boba Fett earns their respect — and presumably his freedom — when he saves one of their own, and himself, from a sand-dwelling alien’s attack.
The second episode of The Book of Boba Fett debuts January 5 on Disney+.
(NEW YORK) — Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah has declined to pursue criminal charges against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for allegations made by two women that he kissed them on the cheek.
While her investigators found “credible evidence” that the alleged conduct had occurred, Rocah said the actions did not meet the requirement to be prosecuted as a criminal act.
“Our investigation found credible evidence to conclude that the alleged conduct in both instances did occur,” Rocah wrote in a statement. “However, in both instances, my Office has determined that, although the allegations and witnesses were credible, and conduct concerning, we cannot pursue criminal charges due to the statutory requirements of the criminal laws of New York.”
Rocah’s investigation, which began after the release of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ report on Cuomo, examined the accusations made by a state trooper on Cuomo’s security detail and by a woman who alleged Cuomo gave her an unwanted kiss during an event at White Plains High School.
The trooper alleged that she was on duty at the governor’s home in Mount Kisco when he asked if he could kiss her. She said that she said “sure” because she was afraid of the ramifications of saying no. He allegedly kissed her on the cheek and “then said something to the effect of, ‘oh, I’m not supposed to do that’ or ‘unless that’s against the rules,'” according to the attorney general’s report.
The second woman alleged in the report that Cuomo grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him to kiss her on the cheek.
Rocah is the second prosecutor in recent weeks, after Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith, to decline to prosecute Cuomo based on his actions not meeting the statutory requirements for a criminal act. Smith made similar comments as Rocah, saying she found the allegations “credible, deeply troubling, but not criminal under New York law.”
Editor’s Note: This story originally said charges were not pressed because they were outside the statute of limitations. It has been updated to say that charges were not pressed against Cuomo because they did not meet the statutory requirements of the law, not because they were outside the statute of limitations.
(NEW YORK) — Over the past year, routine space tourism emerged from science fiction to reality, digital art you can’t even touch auctioned for millions at Christie’s, and malicious attacks emanating from cyberspace crippled real-world critical infrastructure in the U.S.
The technology industry unceasingly shaped the way Americans lived in 2021, embedding its brands and tools into intimate parts of daily life as the ongoing pandemic further normalized virtual work, school and socializing.
The promises of tech’s ability to make our lives easier and more efficient continued to drive U.S. economic growth in the shadow of the relentless health crisis, but also exposed new pitfalls as more Americans lived their lives in a digital world where misinformation on everything from elections to vaccines thrives. This manifested off-the-screen in ominous ways during 2021, including an unprecedented post-election riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and an “anti-vax” movement that has prolonged the suffering wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The gatekeepers of Big Tech saw their net worth surge over the past year, but also endured a year of major shakeups: from Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon CEO, to a scandal-plagued Facebook rebranding as Meta, to Jack Dorsey resigning from Twitter. The mounting power of tech giants also came under renewed scrutiny — albeit accompanied by little action — from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Despite the wild 12 months where Americans watched, seemingly in real time, as technology transformed society in good and bad ways, experts are holding onto hope that the lessons we’ve learned in 2021 can inform us going forward.
“I’m trying desperately to be optimistic,” Karen Kornbluh, the director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund, and a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development during the Obama administration, told ABC News of the tech industry’s past year. “This has been a learning year. We didn’t need another learning year — but I do think a lot of people learned a lot about how this all works and how entrenched it is and how dangerous it is.”
Still, Kornbluh argues that the tech sector is “so innovative and creative and allows people to do so many things we never could have imagined before.”
“We can’t lose our sense of wonder about it all, and because there are these new opportunities, I do think the industry is going to try to put a lot of these problems behind it before we move into this new era,” she said.
Here is a look at the year in tech, lessons the industry has learned and what to expect looking forward into 2022.
Jeff Bezos becomes an astronaut and routine space tourism blasts off
While it used to take the backing of entire nations to launch humans into space, that has all changed in the past year as the new billionaire-backed corporate space race officially blasted off to new heights.
A record-high 13 human spaceflights were launched in 2021, more than triple the number launched in 2020. Eight of them were launched with the backing of private industry and one more carried a Japanese millionaire tourist as a passenger.
Key players in the emerging space tourism sector — including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic — all flexed their muscles over the past year in a series of launches that sought to prove humanity’s new capability of routine spaceflight.
The industry took heat from some as simply a new playground for the ultra-wealthy, as pandemic-battered Americans watched billionaires including Bezos and Branson blast off on back-to-back joyrides to the edge of space this past summer and initial seats sold for up to $28 million. While economic inequality and environmental concerns compounded animosity towards this new arena, experts have argued that private sector involvement in the new space race has saved money for NASA and driven new innovations that can improve everyday life back on Earth.
For Star Trek actor William Shatner, who became the oldest person to go to space this past October at the age of 90 on a Blue Origin flight, the new technology that allows humans to take a quick trip to the edge of space instilled a deep sense of awe.
“What you have given me is the most profound experience. I am so filled with emotion,” the actor, who spent his career pretending to cruise the cosmos, told Bezos immediately upon landing. “I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it. I am overwhelmed.”
“Everybody in the world needs to do this,” Shatner added.
NFT craze goes mainstream, upending the art world and headlining Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade
Over the course of 2021, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) went from an obscure buzzword among blockchain insiders to an inescapable craze that even headlined the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
NFTs, or one-of-a-kind digital artifacts that use blockchain technology (the same digital ledger system that supports cryptocurrency) to prove ownership and individuality, exploded in popularity over the past year in a craze that has left some scratching their heads.
In February, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold the first-ever tweet (a 2006 social media post that reads “just setting up my twttr”) as an NFT for some $2.9 million. In April, a collage made by digital artist Mike Winklemann (also known as Beeple) fetched a whopping $69 million when it was auctioned by Christie’s.
The sum at which Beeple’s art sold especially raised eyebrows for some. The artist has been known to upload his digital artwork for free on Instagram and his website, leading many to question what is driving the value of him now selling it in the form of an NFT. More perplexing for some, viral memes and gifs that were once sources of free and seemingly useless entertainment online are also fetching huge sums of cash when sold as NFTs. The so-called “nyan cat” meme, a digital image of a pixelated feline flying on a rainbow, racked in nearly $600,000 when it was sold as an NFT in February.
It’s estimated that total NFT sales are expected to generate a staggering $17.7 billion in 2021 alone, according to research compiled by crypto industry outlet Cointelegraph.
Despite some skeptics calling the craze a bubble, many experts don’t see demand for NFTs dwindling anytime soon — especially as the world increasingly shifts online and with the mainstream launch of the metaverse.
“They’re here to stay,” Christian Catalini, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Cryptoeconomics Lab, told ABC News of NFTs. “Because they do represent a fundamentally novel way to design all sorts of interactions.”
“I think we’re still in a very embryonic phase and I would assume as the space matures, that’s when actually these things will become more useful,” Catalini added.
“Often with technology, we tend to overestimate how quickly it can change our lives in the short term, or we also tend to underestimate how much it will change them in the long term,” Catalini said. “With all of these technologies, there’s a lot of potential in the long run, and there’s a lot of things that need to be figured out in the immediate term — and I think that’s all happening live, right now.”
The rise of ransomware
The widespread adoption of new technology also led to new threats emerging from the cyber world. A spate of high-profile cyberattacks, many involving ransomware, revealed new potential dangers for businesses and even critical infrastructure as attackers seemingly grew more brazen with their targets in 2021.
A cybersecurity attack in May on Colonial Pipeline, operators of one of the largest fuel conduits in the U.S., led to a multi-day shutdown of the pipeline that provides nearly half of all fuel used on the East Coast — by hospitals, schools, and much more. The company ended up paying the hackers some $4.4 million in cryptocurrency, some of which the Department of Justice eventually seized back. Just weeks later, the world’s largest meat processor, JBS, revealed it was also hit by a cyberattack involving ransomware.
Experts say use of this malicious technology surged over the past year due to a confluence of factors, including the rise of harder-to-trace cryptocurrency and a work-from-home boom that has resulted in novel IT vulnerabilities for many firms.
“Ransomware attacks are becoming more prevalent, and especially with more enterprises in a semi-remote environment,” tech industry analyst Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told ABC News, “and the ransomware attacks, we expect they could be up another 50%, going into 2022.”
“That’s really going to catalyze more spending for cybersecurity,” he added. “We think cybersecurity spend is going to skyrocket over the next year given the amount of threats facing enterprises, as well as governments, around the world.”
Tech fuels a ‘green tidal wave’ in autos
Also over the course of 2021, it became undeniable that the auto industry as a whole was reaching an inflection point and shifting away from the gasoline-burning combustion engines that have been used for generations and toward electrification.
Nearly every major car producer — from General Motors to Ford to Toyota — announced massive new investments into electrification of vehicles over the past year, and the Biden administration unveiled the goal of half of all new car sales in the U.S. to be electric vehicles by 2030.
“It’s really a green tidal wave that’s taken hold in terms of more consumers wanting to purchase electric vehicles,” Ives told ABC News. “Today, only 3% of automobiles in the world of EVs. We think that that goes to 6% by 2022 and 10% by 2025, and this green tidal wave we view as a $5 trillion market over the next decade.”
“You’re also seeing a blurring of lines between technology and autos” Ives said. “I think that’s going to be a big theme as companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon focus more and more on electric vehicles.”
In the shadow of scandal and scrutiny, Big Tech pivots toward the metaverse
In the wake of multiple scandals plaguing his beleaguered tech giant, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this year that he was changing the company’s name from “Facebook” to “Meta” to reflect a shifting focus on the metaverse.
The three-dimensional digital world created by augmented and virtual reality products and services, will be “the successor to the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg said during his keynote at Facebook’s Connect conference in late October. The chief executive’s vision for the metaverse will be a place where people meet, socialize, work and shop — all via a digital avatar of themselves and VR hardware.
2021 marked the year the metaverse took “center stage of growth, as more investors realize this is not just about the gaming sector,” Ives told ABC News.
“It’s going to take time for the metaverse to ultimately form, to unleash the potential that many see for it today,” he added, but said ultimately, “the metaverse is going to be a trillion-dollar market over the next decade.”
It’s not just Facebook-turned-Meta that has its eyes on the new digital horizon either, Ives added, saying, “We believe Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook combined could spend $10 billion on the metaverse over the next two years.”
Public trust in tech giants to build a new digital world safely has dwindled over the past year, as whistleblower Frances Haugen accused Facebook of “choosing to prioritize its profits over people” in her opening statement while testifying before lawmakers in October. Haugen alleged blatant disregard from company executives for potential harms their services can cause to democracy and the well-being of young people.
Kornbluh, who has spent the past year working with policymakers and beyond on potential reforms for an industry that has been largely left unregulated, also testified alongside Haugen in front of a House panel at a separate hearing earlier this month.
“It’s been a year when sort of the collective ‘we,’ like the policymakers in general, came to a better understanding of the problem and solution set,” she told ABC News of the renewed focus out of Washington on Big Tech. Still, with partisan politics and a midterm election year, she said she’s skeptical we will end up seeing any actual law changes in the near-term.
“I think Congress has made a lot of progress in thinking about it, but I think it’s hard to imagine that they’ll come to some agreement in an election year,” she said of any new legislation.
Ives echoed her sentiments, saying that despite the new focus, investors don’t see law changes coming on the immediate horizon.
“It feels like there’s been a tipping point from a regulatory perspective, both in Brussels as well as the Beltway, focused on the antitrust, monopolistic nature of these businesses,” Ives told ABC News. “The lack of consensus within the Beltway continues to be the dividing issue to get law changes.”
Despite the apparent impasse, Kornbluh says with Facebook and tech giants “moving onto the metaverse, do they want to keep having all these same discussions about social media?”
“I think the platforms may want to move on, and realize it’s not going to fix itself,” she said, suggesting companies themselves have signaled they are more open to reforms related to internet regulation.
Despite the volatile past year, Kornbluh said she remains optimistic about the future of tech, and especially the metaverse.
“It’s going to open up all kinds of creativity and innovation and hopefully, because there are these new opportunities for new industry and new businesses, that that will clear up a lot of this underbrush that we learned about before we get there,” she said. “Hopefully this was like a run, and we’ll figure out what to do differently before we move on.”
