In what's marked as an EU first, the French government has blocked TikTok in its territory of New Caledonia amid widespread pro-independence protests. Politico reports: A French draft law, passed Monday, would let citizens vote in local elections after 10 years' residency in New Caledonia, prompting opposition from independence activists worried it will dilute the representation of indigenous people. The violent demonstrations that have ensued in the South Pacific island of 270,000 have killed at least five people and injured hundreds. In response to the protests, the government suspended the popular video-sharing app -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and favored by young people -- as part of state-of-emergency measures alongside the deployment of troops and an initial 12-day curfew. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal didn't detail the reasons for shutting down the platform. The local telecom regulator began blocking the app earlier on Wednesday. "It is regrettable that an administrative decision to suspend TikTok's service has been taken on the territory of New Caledonia, without any questions or requests to remove content from the New Caledonian authorities or the French government," a TikTok spokesperson said. "Our security teams are monitoring the situation very closely and ensuring that our platform remains safe for our users. We are ready to engage in discussions with the authorities." Digital rights NGO Quadrature du Net on Friday contested the TikTok suspension with France's top administrative court over a "particularly serious blow to freedom of expression online." A growing number of authoritarian regimes worldwide have resorted to internet shutdowns to stifle dissent. This unexpected -- and drastic -- decision by France's center-right government comes amid a rise in far-right activism in Europe and a regression on media freedom. "France's overreach establishes a dangerous precedent across the globe. It could reinforce the abuse of internet shutdowns, which includes arbitrary blocking of online platforms by governments around the world," said Eliska Pirkova, global freedom of expression lead at Access Now.

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After shutting down its awards system last July, Reddit announced that it is bringing it back, with much of the same and some new features. There'll be "a new design for awards, a new award button under eligible posts and a leaderboard showing top awards earned for a comment or a post," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The company sunset its awards program last year along with the ability for users to purchase coins. At the same time, Reddit introduced "Golden Upvotes," which were purchased directly through cash. In a new post, the company said the system wasn't as expressive as awards. "While the golden upvote was certainly simpler in theory, in practice, it missed the mark. It wasn't as fun or expressive as legacy awards, and it was unclear how it benefited the recipient," the social network said. Users who want to give awards to posts and comments will need to buy "gold," which kind of replaces coins. On a support page, the company mentioned that, on average, awards cost anywhere between 15 to 50 gold. Gold packages in Reddit's mobile apps currently start at $1.99 for 100 gold. Users can buy as much as 2,750 gold for $49.99. The company is also adding some safeguards to the awards system, such as disabling awards in NSFW subreddits, trauma and addiction support subreddits, and subreddits with mature content. Additionally, users will be able to report awards to avoid them being used for moderator removals.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt, written by Mike Masnick: If you're a fan of chaos, well, the TikTok ban situation is providing plenty of chaos to follow. Ever since the US government made it clear it was seriously going to move forward with the obviously unconstitutional and counterproductive plan to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or have the app effectively banned from the U.S., various rich people have been stepping up with promises to buy the app. There was former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with plans to buy it. Then there was "mean TV investor, who wants you to forget his sketchy history" Kevin O'Leary with his own TikTok buyout plans. I'm sure there have been other rich dudes as well, though strikingly few stories of actual companies interested in purchasing TikTok. But now there's another billionaire to add to the pile: billionaire real estate/property mogul Frank McCourt (who has had some scandals in his own history) has had an interesting second act over the last few years as a big believer in decentralized social media. He created and funded Project Liberty, which has become deeply involved in a number of efforts to create infrastructure for decentralized social media, including its own Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSTP). Over the past few years, I've had a few conversations with people involved in Project Liberty and related projects. Their hearts are in the right place in wanting to rethink the internet in a manner that empowers users over big companies, even if I don't always agree with their approach (he also frequently seems to surround himself with all sorts of tech haters, who have somewhat unrealistic visions of the world). Either way, McCourt and Project Liberty have now announced a plan to bid on TikTok. They plan to merge it into his decentralization plans. "Frank McCourt, Founder of Project Liberty and Executive Chairman of McCourt Global, today announced that Project Liberty is organizing a bid to acquire the popular social media platform TikTok in the U.S., with the goal of placing people and data empowerment at the center of the platform's design and purpose," reads a press release from Project Liberty. "Working in consultation with Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets business of Guggenheim Partners, and Kirkland & Ellis, one of the world's largest law firms, as well as world-renowned technologists, academics, community leaders, parents and engaged citizens, this bid for TikTok offers an innovative, alternative vision for the platform's infrastructure -- one that allows people to reclaim agency over their digital identities and data by proposing to migrate the platform to a new digital open-source protocol. In launching the bid, McCourt and his partners are seizing this opportunity to return control and value back into the hands of individuals and provide Americans with a meaningful voice, choice, and stake in the future of the web."

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Reddit reported its first results since going public in late March. Yahoo Finance reports: Daily active users increased 37% year over year to 82.7 million. Weekly active unique users rose 40% from the prior year. Total revenue improved 48% to $243 million, nearly doubling the growth rate from the prior quarter, due to strength in advertising. The company delivered adjusted operating profits of $10 million, versus a $50.2 million loss a year ago. [Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman declined to say when the company would be profitable on a net income basis, noting it's a focus for the management team. Other areas of focus include rolling out a new user interface this year, introducing shopping capabilities, and searching for another artificial intelligence content licensing deal like the one with Google. Bloomberg notes that already Reddit "has signed licensing agreements worth $203 million in total, with terms ranging from two to three years. The company generated about $20 million from AI content deals last quarter, and expects to bring in more than $60 million by the end of the year." And elsewhere Bloomberg writes that Reddit "plans to expand its revenue streams outside of advertising into what Huffman calls the 'user economy' — users making money from others on the platform... " In the coming months Reddit plans to launch new versions of awards, which are digital gifts users can give to each other, along with other products... Reddit also plans to continue striking data licensing deals with artificial intelligence companies, expanding into international markets and evaluating potential acquisition targets in areas such as search, he said. Meanwhile, ZDNet notes that this week a Reddit announcement "introduced a new public content policy that lays out a framework for how partners and third parties can access user-posted content on its site." The post explains that more and more companies are using unsavory means to access user data in bulk, including Reddit posts. Once a company gets this data, there's no limit to what it can do with it. Reddit will continue to block "bad actors" that use unauthorized methods to get data, the company says, but it's taking additional steps to keep users safe from the site's partners.... Reddit still supports using its data for research: It's creating a new subreddit — r/reddit4researchers — to support these initiatives, and partnering with OpenMined to help improve research. Private data is, however, going to stay private. If a company wants to use Reddit data for commercial purposes, including advertising or training AI, it will have to pay. Reddit made this clear by saying, "If you're interested in using Reddit data to power, augment, or enhance your product or service for any commercial purposes, we require a contract." To be clear, Reddit is still selling users' data — it's just making sure that unscrupulous actors have a tougher time accessing that data for free and researchers have an easier time finding what they need. And finally, there's some court action, according to the Register. Reddit "was sued by an unhappy advertiser who claims that internet giga-forum sold ads but provided no way to verify that real people were responsible for clicking on them." The complaint [PDF] was filed this week in a U.S. federal court in northern California on behalf of LevelFields, a Virginia-based investment research platform that relies on AI. It says the biz booked pay-per-click ads on the discussion site starting September 2022... That arrangement called for Reddit to use reasonable means to ensure that LevelField's ads were delivered to and clicked on by actual people rather than bots and the like. But according to the complaint, Reddit broke that contract... LevelFields argues that Reddit is in a particularly good position to track click fraud because it's serving ads on its own site, as opposed to third-party properties where it may have less visibility into network traffic... Nonetheless, LevelFields's effort to obtain IP address data to verify the ads it was billed for went unfulfilled. The social media site "provided click logs without IP addresses," the complaint says. "Reddit represented that it was not able to provide IP addresses." "The plaintiffs aspire to have their claim certified as a class action," the article adds — along with an interesting statistic. "According to Juniper Research, 22 percent of ad spending last year was lost to click fraud, amounting to $84 billion."

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