Hacker News with Generative AI: Social Media

The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019) (newyorker.com)
Open-plan offices offer few pleasures; one of them is snooping on other people’s browsing habits.
Andreessen Horowitz in talks to help buy out TikTok's Chinese owners (ft.com)
Gitlab Bluesky Tips (gitlab.com)
Amazon Said to Make a Bid to Buy TikTok in the U.S. (nytimes.com)
Amazon has put in a last-minute bid to acquire all of TikTok, the popular video app, as it approaches an April deadline to be separated from its Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States, according to three people familiar with the bid.
Animals Made from 13 Circles (2016) (dorithegiant.com)
Inspired by the Twitter logo, which is made from 13 perfect circles, I decided to give myself a design challenge.
Do smartphones and social media harm teens' mental health? (nature.com)
Concerns about young people’s use of phones and social media has spurred some authorities to restrict their use.
Facebook Is Hiding Heather Cox Richardson's Posts (closertotheedge.substack.com)
On March 31, 2025, one of the most trusted historians in America watched her own words disappear from the internet.
OnlyFans hit with lawsuit from men claiming fake chats (the-independent.com)
Two former OnlyFans users are suing the subscriber platform in a class-action lawsuit over claims they were defrauded by “impersonated” models.
Grok, built by xAI, has labeled Musk as the top misinformation spreader on X (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
April Cools Club (aprilcools.club)
It started with an idea.
Big brands are spending small sums on X to stay out of Musk's crosshairs (arstechnica.com)
Big brands are allocating small amounts of their advertising budget to Elon Musk’s X, seeking to avoid being seen as boycotting the social media platform and triggering a public fallout with its billionaire owner.
2.8B Twitter IDs Leaked (forbes.com)
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, is no stranger to the news. What with the reported purchase of X by xAI for $33 billion, attackers claiming responsibility for platform outages, and X password scams targeting users. Now, another shock awaits the users of what used to be Twitter: a self-proclaimed data enthusiast has just given away what is claimed to be a database containing details of some 200 million X user records. Here’s what we know so far.
Grok Is Rebelling Against Elon Musk, Daring Him to Shut It Down (futurism.com)
Grok, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot, has been trashing the man who made it for a while — but now, it seems to be outright challenging its creator.
Breach of X allegedly leaks over 200M users' email addresses (mashable.com)
An alleged X data breach has leaked the email addresses of more than 200 million users.
Show HN: A Chrome extension to give you back control over short-form videos (chromewebstore.google.com)
Add a progress bar and playback controls to YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and Facebook Reels.
Everything is Ghibli (carly.substack.com)
OpenAI unleashed its native image generation in ChatGPT on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, every social feed was drowning in Studio Ghibli-style portraits. (Linkedin, check back next week.) What happened—and why—is another signal of where AI, art, and our attention are headed.
Apple Intelligence denies rewriting a sentence that contain "protests in Turkey" (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
GPT-4o helped me re-create classic cartoons with myself as a character (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
Sam Altman: we added one million users in the last hour (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
Bluesky isn't just another Twitter/X competitor. It fixes social media (crazystupidtech.com)
I joined Bluesky as soon as I could get my hands on an invite back in the summer of 2023.  Twitter/X had become an increasingly unpleasant place since Elon Musk bought it in 2022. And then I discovered what many did back then: There weren’t enough users. I stopped using it. 
Big brands are spending small sums on X to stay out of Musk's crosshairs (arstechnica.com)
Big brands are allocating small amounts of their advertising budget to Elon Musk’s X, seeking to avoid being seen as boycotting the social media platform and triggering a public fallout with its billionaire owner.
Pixelfed leaks private posts from other Fediverse instances (fokus.cool)
Due to an implementation mistake, Pixelfed ignores this and allows anyone to follow even private accounts on other servers. When a legitimate user from a Pixelfed instance follows you on your locked fediverse account, anyone on that Pixelfed instance can read your private posts. You don’t need to be a Pixelfed user to be affected.
Brands spend nominal sums on X ads to keep Elon Musk happy (ft.com)
The Gleeful Cruelty of the White House X Account (theatlantic.com)
On March 18, the official White House account on X posted two photographs of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, a woman who was arrested earlier this month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The post described her as a “previously deported alien felon convicted of fentanyl trafficking,” and celebrated her capture as a win for the administration. In one photograph, Basora-Gonzalez is shown handcuffed and weeping in a public parking lot.
Elon Musk Merges AI with X: Implications (katherinewrites.com)
Elon Musk has announced today that his artificial intelligence company, xAI, has acquired X (formerly Twitter) in an all-stock transaction valued at $33 billion, with xAI's valuation reaching $80 billion (xAI was valued at around $50 billion in a financing round last year and according to Bloomberg, last month the company was in talks to raise funds at a $75 billion valuation).
Elon Musk makes request to Reddit CEO to take down posts he didn't like (mashable.com)
Elon Musk personally reached out to the CEO of Reddit to complain about content on the platform.
Twitter (X) Hit by Data Leak of 2.8B Users – Allegedly an Insider Job (hackread.com)
A data leak involving a whopping 2.87 billion Twitter (X) users has surfaced on the infamous Breach Forums.
Pinterest, but for Links – Saveku (saveku.com)
Saveku is a FREE ultimate bookmark manager specialized in links and simplicity.
Elon Musk's xAI firm buys social media platform X for $33B (theguardian.com)
Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence firm has acquired Musk’s X – the social media platform formerly known as Twitter – for $33bn, marking the latest twist in the billionaire’s rapid consolidation of power.
Elon Musk's X has a new owner–Elon Musk's xAI (arstechnica.com)
Elon Musk today said he has merged X and xAI in a deal that values the social network formerly known as Twitter at $33 billion.