Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey floated a compelling possibility on Wednesday: He wants to put together a team to explore decentralizing Twitter. Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately…

On this episode of Digital Trends Live, hosts Greg Nibler and Drew Prindle discuss the biggest-trending topics in tech, including Facebook denying backdoor access, Jack Dorsey’s push for decentralized social media, Pirate Bay’s decision to allow streaming, cow manure energy, a junk-collecting space robot, and more.

YouTube’s updated anti-harassment policy now includes implied threats, as well as insults based on a person’s race, gender, expression, or sexual orientation. The new policy has been extended to all users, including YouTube creators and public officials that use the platform.

At a Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday — no, not the one with the impeachment and such — Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-Illinois) asked Jay Sullivan, Facebook’s product management director for privacy and integrity in Messenger, whether Facebook collected any data from its Messenger Kids app. It was the exact same question, Durbin said, he had posed…

A social media influencer who resorted to extreme measures in a bid to secure a domain name was this week given a 14-year jail term for his efforts. The offender, Rossi Lorathio Adams II, 27, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ran a social media company called State Snaps that he founded while a student at Iowa…