Democratic Senate hopeful John Fetterman’s campaign to troll Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz into defeat has dominated Facebook and Twitter over the last few weeks.But on Thursday, the campaign announced it is launching an official TikTok account to expand the reach of its already viral videos.
The campaign formally launched the TikTok account with a video of Fetterman wearing his signature black hoodie and speaking directly to the camera. In the short video, Fetterman makes an expected jab at Oz and the festering controversy over the authenticity of the Trump-endorsed candidate’s Pennsylvania roots.
“I’m on TikTok now. Woo hoo!” Fetterman says at the end of the video.
The campaign’s decision to join TikTok comes on the heels of a series of viral social media videos attacking Oz. Earlier in the week. Twitter users dug up an old video of Oz shopping at a Redner’s grocery store in Pennsylvania. While the video was intended to criticize the increase in inflation under the Biden administration, Oz was quickly mocked by Twitter users and the Fetterman campaign for his use of the word “crudité” and for seemingly conflating the names of two state supermarkets, Redner’s and Wegmans, into “Wegners.”
Responding to the video, Fetterman said, “In PA we call this a… veggie tray.”
The Fetterman campaign announced on Tuesday that it had raised more than $500,000 just one day after Oz’s crudité gaffe went viral.
TikTok began to gain traction in the US in 2018, and it wasn’t until the 2020 cycle before politicians and their campaign arms started creating accounts and investing in the platform. This year, more politicians than ever are active on TikTok, but Democrats and left-leaning candidates have been the quickest to adapt.
“As this campaign has since the start, we will continue to meet voters wherever they are at and have a whole lot of fun doing it,” Joe Calvello, spokesperson for the Fetterman campaign, said in a statement to The Verge on Thursday.
Pennsylvania is a must-win seat for Democrats hoping to secure a Senate majority following the midterm elections. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by little more than 1 percent, effectively marking it as a toss-up this cycle. With only a few months before the November elections, the youth vote in Pennsylvania could be more necessary than ever if Democrats plan to win the state. A recent study by Tufts University in Massachusetts found that Pennsylvania is one out of only a handful of states in which the youth vote could disproportionately decide the winner.
That outsized youth impact is a particular focus for Fetterman’s team. Speaking to The Verge on Tuesday, Calvello said that the Fetterman campaign’s TikTok account would be run by a Gen Z-aged staffer with around 25,000 on her personal account. By placing the account in a young person’s hands, the campaign hopes to create content that feels natural for the platform.
Still, the Fetterman campaign touts a commanding lead against Oz in recent polls, including a Fox News survey that showed Fetterman leading by 11 points.
While coming under fire for failures to address harmful election misinformation, political campaigns still view social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter as powerhouses for fundraising. In an interview with The Verge on Tuesday, Alex Kellner, managing partner director at Bully Pulpit Interactive, an online strategy firm, said, “There’s still a lot of money being spent on Facebook, but maybe it’s more for acquisition, fundraising, and communicating with your existing supporters to get them to volunteer and to be excited.”
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is based in Beijing, and the app’s potential to leak sensitive US data to the Chinese government has been cause for alarm amongst Republicans and Democrats. Earlier this summer, the Biden administration banned the app’s use on White House or federal government devices for security reasons, as first reported by Politico.
Fetterman’s online jabs at Oz have hit a sweet spot on social platforms like Facebook, which increasingly surface low-production video content on user feeds. With only a few seconds to grab a voter’s attention as they scroll, experts say more authentic content tends to receive greater engagement than highly produced campaign ads.
As the Fetterman camp sees it, that gives them a rare advantage on social platforms that are often seen as slanted toward extreme views and reactionary politics. “John’s followers will see brand new content specifically for TikTok, and they can expect to keep up with John as he meets people across the Commonwealth,” Calvello said. “John is a unique candidate whose real, authentic message resonates on social media, as TikTok users will see in his posts.”
The college student who ran the now-banned @ElonJet Twitter account that used public information to track Elon Musk’s private jet has resumed his activities on Twitter under a new username. As noted by Insider, Jack Sweeney, 20, has created a new account called @ElonJetNextDay — which now tracks Musk’s private jet with a 24-hour delay to circumvent Twitter policy restrictions.
Sweeney’s original ElonJet account was suspended from the platform last week following accusations from Musk that it violated Twitter rules by revealing his live location. Twitter updated its policy to forbid publishing a person’s real-time location on the same day it suspended ElonJet. Sweeney said in an interview with Insider that he will be “posting manually” for now while he works on the framework to fully automate the account.
Musk tweeted on December 15th that “Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.” Twitter also explicitly states that “sharing publicly available location information after a reasonable time has elapsed, so that the individual is no longer at risk for physical harm” is not a violation of platform rules. Elsewhere in the policy, it notes that its definition of “live” location data means someone’s real-time or same-day whereabouts.
Most commercial and private aircraft are equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast technology (ADS-B) that transmits a unique code (tied to the airplane’s tail number) containing information such as altitude and GPS location. This information is publicly available and aircraft flying in the USA and Europe are required to broadcast it in order to prevent midair collisions.
In a statement back in November, Musk said he would not ban the original ElonJet account as part of his “commitment to free speech” despite claiming it was a “direct personal safety risk.” The automated ElonJet account posted publicly available information regarding the location of Musk’s 2015 Gulfstream G650ER, and had amassed over 540,000 followers before it was permanently banned on December 14th. Musk previously offered Sweeney $5,000 to have the account taken down.
Early in November, Twitter’s roughly 7,500 employees received a terse email from a generic address: “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force.” The note was signed “Twitter.” On Nov. 3, some people at the company received emails indicating they would be laid off the next day.
That night, Ms. Solomon, her husband and a few colleagues headed to Dots Cafe Portland, a lounge on Clinton Street. Phones were on the table, face up, she said. As the work friends talked, they tapped away at their phones, taking part in chats on the Signal app with colleagues in London, Seattle and San Francisco. Messages like “I got hit” were flying across screens, Ms. Solomon recalled. “You were seeing your co-workers drop like flies,” she said.
By the next afternoon her team of about 10 engineers was reduced to four. Ms. Solomon and her husband had survived the round of layoffs. The next week, she recalled, she awaited further direction from Mr. Musk or the new executive team. Nothing came, she said, except for an email alerting employees that remote work would no longer be permitted, with few exceptions.
Many employees learned of Mr. Musk’s priorities by watching his Twitter feed, where he posted frequently about company business to his more than 100 million followers. On Nov. 5, he complained about the platform’s search function: “Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in ’98! That will also get a lot better pronto,” he wrote. That same day, he tweeted: “Twitter will soon add ability to attach long-form text to tweets, ending absurdity of notepad screenshots.”
That was more than Ms. Solomon and many of her colleagues had heard internally. “Radio silence,” she said. She began to vent her frustration on Twitter.
One of her first tweets in this vein came on Nov. 6, shortly after Mr. Musk announced a new rule for Twitter users in a tweet: “Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark,” he wrote. He had posted that message after many people on Twitter had changed their names to variations on Mr. Musk’s name, most of them mocking.
Apple has removed the option to upgrade to the new HomeKit architecture on devices running iOS 16.2. The change follows multiple reports of issues and problems with the Home app after the upgrade was installed.
Apple spokesperson Emily Ewing confirmed the change in a statement provided to The Verge:
“We are aware of an issue that may impact the ability for users to share the Home within the Home app. A fix will be available soon. In the meantime, we’ve temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture. Users who have already upgraded will not be impacted.“
The new Home app architecture was one of the key features of iOS 16.2, with Apple claiming that the upgrade would be “more reliable and efficient.” MacRumors first discovered this week that the Home app in iOS 16.2 no longer offers the option to upgrade to the new architecture within the Home app settings. Several reporters at The Verge have also confirmed that the upgrade option is unavailable on their devices.
The new architecture was first introduced in the iOS 16.2 beta back in October as an optional upgrade before the iOS 16.2 public release on December 13th. Both the beta and public release required Apple devices logged into iCloud to be running the latest versions of iOS, macOS, and tvOS. The upgrade does not happen automatically when iOS 16.2 is installed on a phone, instead requiring a manual process through the Home app.
The update has caused issues with missing devices and adding multiple users for some
Reddit users who downloaded the optional upgrade prior to its removal have reported issues such as the app booting other members from a Home account and being unable to re-add them. Users on the MacRumors forum have reported being unable to invite users to share the Home, HomeKit devices being stuck displaying an “updating” status, and some accessories vanishing from the Home app entirely. Users who have already upgraded are unable to revert to the previous version of the app.
Update, December 23rd, 2022, 2:15PM ET: Added confirmation and statement from Apple spokesperson. Added links to Apple’s updated support pages.
