'TikTok may finally be entering its flop era'

Opinion, comment and editorials of the day

Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee
(Image credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images)

'TikTok is on the decline'

Nitish Pahwa at Slate

"TikTok is not anywhere near dead or dying," says Nitish Pahwa, but the short-video app has seen a "sharp slowdown in user growth over the past year." People are getting annoyed by "its ad-heavy push into e-commerce via the 'TikTok Shop'" and "its never-ending deluge of A.I.–generated spam and misinformation." And Universal Music Group yanked its "vast catalog," including Taylor Swift. It might be time to "start wondering what on earth might be coming for us next."

Read more

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

'The problem with Democrats bragging about the economy'

Perry Bacon Jr. in The Washington Post

President Joe Biden should talk less about the economy's strength and more about how he'll make it better for those left in the cold, says Perry Bacon Jr. We have low unemployment and shrinking wage gaps between white and Black Americans. But 44 million still "struggle to afford food." Biden has the advantage over Donald Trump because Democrats' values, "aligning with unions," families, and environmentalists, can help him "make the economy great — not because it already is."

Read more

'How Russians and the West failed Navalny'

Garry Kasparov in The Wall Street Journal

Russian President Vladimir Putin killed the jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, "but there is blame enough to go around," says Garry Kasparov. Joe Biden once threatened "devastating" consequences if anything happened to Navalny, and the U.S. president now faces an "excruciating test." But we, Navalny's fellow Russians, "failed to match" his courage in challenging Putin's "dictatorship and war." Navalny might still be alive "if we had been as brave as the Ukrainians were" when Putin came for them.

Read more

'Women aren't showing up to vote. It could lead to disaster in 2024 election.'

Sarah Chamberlain in USA Today

There are "troubling signs" that "women are losing the habit of voting in greater numbers than men," says Sarah Chamberlain. Only 44% of voters at the Iowa Republican caucuses and 48% in the New Hampshire GOP primary were women. That's surprising now that "policies directly affecting women are being decided in a post-Roe country." It also could drive further polarization by letting candidates focus on partisan "brand-building" instead of topics like health care, education, and child care.

Read more

Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.