As Donald Trump considers banning TikTok, his political campaign has started running ads on Facebook and Instagram accusing the China-based platform of "spying" on its users.

More than 100 iterations of ads were launched Friday encouraging Facebook users to sign a petition banning TikTok in the US. The ads, first spotted by New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, come as the US government threatens to instate a country-wide ban on the viral video-sharing app over its ties to China.

Facebook removed one version of the anti-TikTok ad on Friday evening. The ad in question includes a graphic with "yes" and "no" checkboxes, which appears to be a violation of Facebook's policy against ads with "nonexistent functionality." Facebook did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Another anti-TikTok ad tells users: "Protect our kids from China." 

TikTok's roots in China — where the app's parent company, ByteDance, is located — have long raised questions from US lawmakers and security experts about how much access and influence the Chinese government is afforded over user data and content moderation. Concerns over the TikTok-China connection have skyrocketed in recent weeks after India decided to instate its own ban on the app earlier this month.

The campaign's political ads also claim that "TikTok has been caught red-handed by monitoring what is on your phone's clipboard." The accusation is based on research from March showing how apps are able to access content stored on the clipboard — the copy-and-paste feature — of users' iPhones and iPads. TikTok was only one of the dozens of the apps caught spying on iPhone clipboards, including LinkedIn and Fox News. ByteDance has since said it will stop accessing clipboard content.

In recent weeks, the Trump campaign has also taken out ads against Twitter and Snapchat, claiming they're "attempting to silence" the president.

In early July, both President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly said they were considering a TikTok ban in the US: Trump said the ban would be a way to punish China over its role in the coronavirus pandemic, while Pompeo cited national security concerns. On Thursday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters he expected TikTok to "pull out of the holding company which is China-run and operate as an independent American company."

Since TikTok launched in the US in 2018, the app has successfully been able to brush off lawmakers' calls for investigations and national security experts' warnings. Most recently, TikTok launched a content advisory council to guide policy changes and appointed a US-based CEO in June to show it was distancing itself from its Chinese roots.

But TikTok has also run afoul of the Trump campaign for reasons beyond its ties to China. Swarms of TikTok teens and K-pop fans were credited last month with signing up en masse for tickets to a major Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Instead of the big comeback that the Trump campaign advertised, attendance at the rally was considerably lacking.

TikTok's reported influence on the Tulsa rally demonstrates how the app has grown into a social media powerhouse, establishing itself as a staple of internet culture and social interaction for Generation Z. The app has more than 2 billion global downloads, and an estimated US userbase at as high as 80 million. It outperforms US-based apps with younger audiences such as Snapchat and Instagram in both new downloads and time spent. 

The imminent threat of TikTok disappearing from the US has already signaled panic among users and creators, and has led attempts by tech companies to capitalize on the chaos to lure the app's loyal following to their competing platforms.

Let me tell you about my first pickup truck.

It was a 1980s-vintage Mazda B2200. It had a five-speed manual, a single plastic bench seat, crank windows, and an AM/FM radio.

High luxury it wasn't. But it was my truck, and I loved it. I used it for ... well, you name it. Hundreds of miles driving back and forth to college, cleanup jobs, camping trips, helping friends move. The I gave it to my brother and he drove the wheels off.

Fast-forward a few decades and the world has changed. Pickups were utilitarian vehicles when I was a youngster. You found them on farms and ranches, not in the driveways of homes in the well-heeled communities. 

These days, a full-size pickup from the Detroit Big Three can easily hang with a sedan from Audi, BMW, or Mercedes when it comes to luxury appointments. That's a good thing for pickup truck makers, as all those extras have led to historically high transaction prices for vehicles that already sell in the millions of units annually. A top-line Ford F-150 can go for more than $70,000, and the entire F-Series brings in over $40 billion in annual revenue for the Blue Oval.

That has translated into historic profits since the financial crisis, enabling General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to fill their coffers with cash.

Let's take a closer look at the markets' current roster of full-size pickups and review some of their more luxurious features, from interiors to exteriors, from infotainment systems to cool extras:

Ten years ago this week, the scandal now known as "Antennagate" game to a head. 

Weeks earlier, Apple's latest iPhone, the iPhone 4, had gone on sale worldwide, leading to lines around the block and excited customers showing off their new purchase. But almost immediately, those same excited customers started noticing something strange: The phone seemed to lose its network connection and drop calls when you held it in your left hand. 

What seemed like an odd fluke quickly turned into one of the biggest scandals in Apple's history. 

Now, 10 years later, we look back on how the issue arose and how Apple responded.

Our successors 1,000 years into the future will be able to access data from what was the world's largest network of open-source software at the start of the 21st century.

The GitHub team just had a full archive of all current public repositories safely tucked into a decommissioned coal mine in the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen on the archipelago of Svalbard.

Named the GitHub Arctic Code Vault, the project was originally introduced in 2019 and was finally carried out in early July "to preserve open-source software for future generations by storing your code in an archive built to last a thousand years," according to a company blog post on Thursday. 

On February 2, GitHub took a snapshot of all active public repositories on the site. In computing speak, snapshot refers to a copy of a system captured at a particular point in time. So GitHub is archiving all of its code to-date, similar to how you'd back up a disk drive to ensure your files are more secure.

According to the blog post, GitHub teamed up with Piql, a Norway-based computer services company that specializes in data preservation, to write 21TB (terabytes) of repository data onto 186 reels of digital photosensitive archival film. The boxes of film reels, emblazoned with GitHub's Octocat logo, were then shipped to Longyearbyen, a town of more than 2,000 people.

The code was officially stashed not only inside the mine but even further inside a chamber "deep inside hundreds of meters of permafrost."

The stored data will be near the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a large storage facility of a wide variety of plant seeds that was installed in 2008.

Image Credits: Ilsa Calderon

Examples of ads I ran. (Image Credits: Ilse Calderon )

Last year a controversial movement that advocates a toxic bleach — chlorine dioxide — as a miracle cure was finding its ability to promote the substance being cut off. 

After years of inaction, social media platforms were moving to remove and ban people advocating for and selling the substance, which many call "Miracle Mineral Solution."

The substance, the Food and Drugs Administration says, is dangerous to consume. The agency has received reports of "severe vomiting, severe diarrhea, life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration and acute liver failure after drinking these products."

YouTube last summer changed its policies to explicitly ban material promoting it, after a Business Insider investigation. Facebook also removed some of the largest groups pushing MMS as a cure for cancer, HIV/AIDS, and other illnesses. 

But the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the movement, with advocates of the bleach exploiting fears of the disease — and the absence of any proven cure — to push their substance to a massive new audience. 

Back in May, Business Insider exposed how advocates of MMS were regrouping around the pandemic.

On Telegram, the encrypted messaging app, advocates of the substance were selling to people worried about being infected by the coronavirus. Among them was Kerri Rivera, whose Facebook group had been banned but found a home on Telegram.

Google data on search trends, as Vice reported, points to a huge surge in searches for information about MMS around the time the coronavirus began to spread in early March. 

The movement got an unexpected boost in April, when President Donald Trump in a rambling series of remarks at a White House coronavirus task force briefing suggested that injecting disinfectant could cure the coronavirus.

Trump had not directly endorsed MMS, but its proponents seized on the comments, all the same, to claim vindication for their bogus cure from the White House.

Supporters of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, including conspiracy theorist Jordan Sather, have also promoted the substance to followers on Twitter. He has advanced the theory that pharmaceutical companies and "deep state" officials are working to discredit the substance, and suppress news of its effectiveness.

And in a shocking development in Bolivia on Tuesday, it became clear how successful advocates of the bleach there have been in exploiting the pandemic: Lawmakers in the national legislature ignored a warning from the country's own health ministry against taking MMS and legalized it as a treatment for COVID-19. 

Activists have told Business Insider that in Bolivia, where health services are struggling to cope with the pandemic and many people lack access to health care, the popularity of MMS has exploded in recent months. 

The substance has been pushed by local politicians and on social media, in a country where the government is widely regarded as powerless to contain the pandemic, and where suspicion of official sources of information is high. 

However, as well as giving the proponents of the substance a platform, the pandemic has also brought extra-legal pressure as authorities try to stop the spread of medical misinformation and fake cures. 

Last week, Mark Grenon, leader of US-based group Genesis II, was charged with federal crimes alongside three of his sons for allegedly producing and selling MMS as a COVID-19 cure.

According to court documents, Grenon's group had before the pandemic earned around $30,000 a month from selling the bleach, but the figure leaped to $120,000 as the pandemic took hold.

It remains unclear whether this kind of action will deter other MMS advocates as they pursue their biggest opportunity yet.

Elon Musk wants to give you free bitcoin — at least, that's what his Twitter account said on Wednesday.

Don't trust him.

The Tesla founder's account was one of numerous high-profile accounts on the social network that were compromised as part of a remarkable, far-reaching hack that attempted to scam people into sending payments in the bitcoin digital currency.

The hack underscored the vulnerability of social media services like Twitter, which are used by world leaders and government agencies to communicate with the public. The breach was so serious that Twitter was forced to briefly disable all tweeting from verified accounts on Wednesday.

The FBI has launched an investigation into the incident and Congress wants answers from Twitter's management.

As of writing on Friday afternoon, here what we do and don't know about what happened.

Who's been hacked?

Lots of famous people. And some companies.

Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Apple's official account, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Uber, Wiz Khalifa, Floyd Mayweather, Cash App, MrBeast, XXXTentacion, parody account TheTweetOfGod ... the list goes on and on.

The hackers targeted high-profile accounts that had the potential to spread the scam as far as possible. 

130 accounts were targeted, Twitter said in a statement on Thursday, though not all of them were compromised.

How did they get hacked?

The hackers got access to Twitter's internal tools, then used them to wreak havoc. 

Late Wednesday evening, Twitter said it had uncovered "what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools." Those with access to those tools, "ostensibly Twitter employees," have the ability to reset email addresses associated with accounts, as TechCrunch reported.

What do the hacked messages look like?

Like this:

What steps has Twitter taken in response?

As the hack escalated, Twitter took the unprecedented step on Wednesday of blocking all verified accounts from tweeting temporarily, as it worked to secure its services.

It has also locked the affected accounts until their owners can satisfactorily identify themselves and take back control. Its data download feature has also been temporarily disabled.

"We have also been taking aggressive steps to secure our systems while our investigations are ongoing," Twitter said on Thursday. "We're still in the process of assessing longer-term steps that we may take and will share more details as soon as we can."

CEO Jack Dorsey also chimed in on the incident in a tweet on Wednesday evening, calling it a "tough day for us at Twitter." He wrote: "We all feel terrible this happened. We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."

What's the scam?

Generally, the compromised accounts posted a tweet saying they're feeling generous (or some other similar motivation), and falsely claiming that if people send them bitcoin to their address, they'll resend them double back. 

Should I send them bitcoin?

No.

Who's behind the hack?

The identity of the hacker(s) are still unknown, but more details are slowly coming to light. 

In a New York Times report on Friday, individuals who claimed to be involved alleged that a figure going by the name "Kirk" first gained access to the internal Twitter tools and then told others about it. He is purported to have obtained login details to the tools from an internal Twitter Slack channel he gained access to.

"Kirk" began by selling access to coveted "OG" usernames, before things escalated to the bitcoin scam that attracted international attention.

Were any countries involved? 

People are not currently suggesting that the hack was the work of a nation state, as some previous attacks on tech companies and digital infrastructure have been. Well-respected cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs reported that at least one of the figures involved may have been a 21-year-old man from Liverpool, England — though there has yet to be any official confirmation, arrests, or attribution from Twitter or other authorities. 

What was the fallout?

A lot of people are demanding answers. 

The FBI is investigating, as is New York state, and Congress wants a briefing from Twitter about what went down. Meanwhile, the company is still trying to understand the full extent of the damage, and repair user trust that was damaged by the most extensive (known) hack in its history.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), standard email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

In 2010, Elon Musk said he would "rather stick a fork in my hand than write about my personal life."

But the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is a fascinating figure, and over the years, he's opened up here and there about his childhood, his parents, and his relationships.

Musk got uncharacteristically candid for perhaps the first time in an in-depth Rolling Stone interview by Neil Strauss published in November 2017. He spoke of his breakup with ex-girlfriend Amber Heard, expressing his heartbreak over their parting. Musk also touched upon his estranged relationship with his father Errol, calling him a "terrible human being."

These days, Musk is dating the musician Grimes — the pair debuted their relationship in May 2018, and just had their first child together.

Here's a look at Elon Musk's personal life over the years.

Elon Musk has had quite the car collection over the years. 

Some got totaled, others inspired certain design elements in the cars Tesla makes today. Either way, each says a little bit about what Musk looks for in a car.

These days, Musk is usually seen cruising around in a Tesla Model S — unless, of course, he takes the upcoming Tesla Cybertruck out for a spin.

Here's a closer look at Musk's car collection over the years. 

Danielle Muoio contributed to an earlier version of this article.

Twitter users began to notice some apps and websites, including those of food delivery service Postmates, were down Friday.

Discord, a group chat app, tweeted Friday that "users are currently having trouble disconnecting to Discord due to an upstream internet issue. We've got all engineers on deck investigating the issue."

The outage appears to have been caused by problems with Cloudflare, a cloud technology that supports many websites and apps. Cloudflare tweeted that it was investigating the issue shortly after the outage was reported by some users.

The company's CEO, Matthew Prince, later posted a tweet acknowledging the issue, tracing it back to a router in Atlanta. 

"We isolated the Atlanta router and shut down our backbone, routing traffic across transit providers instead," Prince said on Twitter. "There was some congestion that caused slow performance on some links as the logging caught up. Everything is restored now and we're looking into the root cause."

The company implemented a fix Friday evening and said it is "monitoring the results."

A Facebook bug caused a similar outage last week, with Spotify and Tinder among the apps that crashed for many users. The issue was traced to a glitch with Facebook's software developer kit, or SDK, that is embedded in some of those apps. The problem was later resolved.

Federal law-enforcement officers detaining protesters and others in Portland, Oregon, and whisking them into unmarked cars on Wednesday did so while wearing military camouflage uniforms and other military-style gear.

Much of what the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents were wearing, or apparel like it, is available to the public online, making it easier to impersonate law-enforcement agents — an issue that military officials and civilian authorities have warned about, particularly amid nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

The nature of the arrests led observers to question their legality, including Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who described it as "unmarked federal agents ... pulling protesters off the street and jailing them without charge."

Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, who was in Portland overseeing the effort, characterized the protesters as "violent criminals attempting to tear down federal property" and alleged some assaulted officers with lasers and frozen water bottles.

On his social-media accounts, Wolf posted pictures of himself with Homeland Security personnel wearing military fatigues and DHS patches. Though it was not clear who the officers in the videos were, members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit — an immediate-response force that operates under CBP, which is part of DHS — often wear military uniforms with CBP patches.

CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said in a statement on Twitter that his officers were "clearly marked as federal LEOs & have unique identifiers."

"You will not see names on their uniforms because these same violent criminals use this information to target them and their families, putting both at risk," Morgan said.

But the personnel in Portland had few identifiable patches or markings, which are normally worn by members of the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies. At least one officer had what appeared to be a nondescript Velcro patch on his left shoulder, standard for the military and some firearm enthusiasts, and a single "POLICE" patch on his tactical vest.

A variety of such patches are sold online, including ones marked "POLICE" and a near replica of the Department of Homeland Security's patch. Patches of law-enforcement agencies and specific military units are also available on the internet, often sold under the pretense of catering to enthusiasts and veterans.

One of the videos circulating online shows two people wearing the US Army's uniform, the Operational Camouflage Pattern, while detaining a protester and escorting them to a minivan. The OCP is the Army's latest variant of the workday uniform and readily available online and in military-surplus stores.

Other US military gear worn by the federal officers, or close replicas of it, is also sold online, such as the military's combat helmet. Some military-surplus stores also sell previous versions of the helmet, some of which are still in use by military units and law-enforcement groups.

The entire ensemble seen in the videos, down to the minivan, is readily available to consumers, making it exceedingly difficult to discern between a legitimate authority and a provocateur masquerading as one.

Several people were arrested after they were accused of posing as members of the military and law enforcement in June during protests.

In Los Angeles, Gregory Wong was taken into custody after he wore similar attire to a National Guard member, ABC7 reported, citing sources. Wong, who was armed with an AR-15-type rifle and a pistol, was spotted by actual National Guard members after he fell into formation with them, the outlet said.

At a protest in Las Vegas, Zachary Sanns was charged with false impersonation of a federal officer, 8 News Now reported. Prosecutors said he stood on alongside police officers while armed with an AR-15-type rifle and wearing tactical gear, the outlet reported.

Both Wong and Sanns are veterans.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has highlighted concerns about members of law enforcement dressing like members of the military while responding to protests, saying there needs to be clear "visual distinction" between the two organizations.

"You want a clear definition between that which is military and that which is police, in my view," Milley said during a congressional hearing on July 9. "Because when you start introducing the military, you're talking about a different level of effort there."

But civil-rights groups are sounding the alarm about federal officers patrolling Portland while in military gear, most of which is available online.

"What is happening now in Portland should concern everyone in the United States," Jann Carson, the interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, said in a statement.

"Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping," Carson added. "The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered."

Ryan Pickrell contributed reporting.

Flipboard is an online news and culture delivery platform that you can curate the news to your interests. 

You can customize your Flipboard experience by identifying the types of stories you want to be delivered to your phone across various news categories, including politics, arts, and health. 

While you can access all of this through the Flipboard app, setting up a Flipboard widget on your phone's screen means you can see the latest stories without ever opening it. 

The Flipboard widget works on both Android or iOS devices. The first step to getting it is to make sure you have downloaded the app and set up an account. If you don't already have a Flipboard account, you can sign up for Flipboard with email, Facebook, Google, and more to get the day's top headlines delivered straight to your phone. 

Once you've done that, here's how to add the widget to your phone. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $859.99 at Walmart)

How to add a Flipboard widget on Android

1. Tap a space on your home screen and hold down. 

2. Tap "Widget" from the options that appear on the screen.

3. Search until you find the Flipboard widget. Select it. 

4. Decide if you want the larger or smaller widget.

5. Now tap and hold the Flipboard widget you want and drag it to a free spot on the screen.

6. Once you've placed the widget, tap it to open Flipboard.  

How to add a Flipboard widget on iOS

1. On the iPhone (or iPad) home screen, swipe down to open Notifications.

2. Swipe left on your notifications screen until you see the screen with a Search Bar on top.  

3. Scroll down, then press "Edit."

4. Tap the plus (+) symbol beside it.

5. Press "Done." 

 

Zipping files is helpful for sending and storing documents — and it's easy to do so on your Chromebook.

And once you've zipped a file or received one that's been zipped by someone else, unzipping it only takes a few clicks.

Here's how to do both. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

HP Chromebook (from $249 at Best Buy)

How to zip files on your Chromebook

1. Open the Files app on your Chromebook. It's the icon that looks like a blue circle with a white folder inside of it in your bottom taskbar.

2. In Files, find the document or folder that you want to zip and right-click.

3. Right-click the selected files, and then click "Zip selection."

Password-security app Dashlane now has two group plans, Premium Family and Premium Family Plus plans. Each allows up to six users to share passwords and login information quickly with an approved group.

One of the great things about Dashlane Premium Family and Premium Family Plus plans is that while each family member has their own Dashlane account, all passwords and login information can be shared. This way, you don't have to chase anyone down for a Netflix password or credit card number. 

For this to work, each member of your family plan will need to create an individual Dashlane account if they do not already have one.

Here's how to set up your Dashlane Premium Family plan and share passwords among users. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $179.99 at Walmart)

How to set up Dashlane Premium Family

1. Create an account with Dashlane if you have not already done so.

2. Go to www.dashlane.com/plans, click on "Family," and click on the plan you wish to purchase.

3. On the next page, click "Next." 

4. Type in the email address affiliated with your Dashlane account in the blank field before clicking "Submit." 

5. You will then be prompted to type in your credit card information and complete your purchase. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg may be directly grilled by federal investigators looking at whether the social media giant has acted anticompetitively.

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal on Friday, the Federal Trade Commission is considering deposing the two top Facebook executives in its antitrust probe into the company.

Facebook dominates the social media landscape in the United States, and the FTC has been investigating since mid-2019 whether its practices fall foul of anti-monopoly laws. The company is known for aggressively buying up competitors — key business units Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus all started life as independent companies — and the FTC is looking at its past acquisitions as part of its investigation.

It's not immediately clear what the timeframe might be for Zuckerberg and Sandberg to give sworn testimony, if the FTC does decide to push ahead with this approach, or if Facebook might attempt to prevent it. 

Reached for comment by Business Insider about The WSJ's report, a Facebook spokesperson said the company was looking forward to an upcoming congressional hearing where Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear to discuss antitrust issues.

"We look forward to sharing our views about the competitive landscape, along with other technology leaders, during this month's Congressional hearing, while also demonstrating for enforcement agencies that our innovation provides more choices for consumers," they said in a statement.

An FTC spokesperson declined to comment.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), standard email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

One of Instagram stories newest interactive features is the challenges sticker. 

Challenges let users participate in group trends by attaching a sticker to their Instagram post and getting in on hashtag-based actions, such as #StayAtHome. You can also create your own challenges around fashion, workout, bingo, food, and more, before encouraging your friends to join and seeing how popular your challenge becomes. 

Keep in mind that when you do a challenge through the Instagram mobile app, anyone who can see your story will be able to tap the username of the person you've tagged and navigate to their profile.

If you want to get involved, or you want to use the feature to create your own challenges, here's how to do it. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $699.99 at Walmart)

How to add a challenge on Instagram stories

1. Open the Instagram app. 

2. Tap the camera icon to access the "Stories" section. 

3. Take your photo, or select or create the post. 

4. Tap the "Stickers" icon located toward the top-right corner of the screen

5. Scroll down and then select "Challenge."

6. Select an existing challenge from the ribbon of options that appears above your keyboard or search for existing ones using a keyword. 

7. Nominate someone by typing their username into the area below the challenge name text box. 

8. Tap "Done" when you're ready to post.