Author: wrowan

My guest today is longtime friend of the show Joanna Stern. You all know Joanna: she is the former senior personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a former Decoder guest host, one of my cofounders here at The Verge, and also just one of my very closest friends.I mention that because Joanna just left that lofty perch at The Journal to start her own media company called New Things. She’s starting with her new book about AI, called I Am Not a Robot, which is out this week on May 12th. You’ll hear us reference the fact that she and I have been talking about her big move…

TikTok is preparing to roll out a paid, ad-free version of its app in the UK. The new subscription announced today will be available to users over 18 “over the coming months,” according to TikTok’s announcement, and will cost £3.99 (about $5.40) per month. In exchange for that, TikTok will remove ads from the user’s feed, and promises to not use their data for undefined “advertising purposes”.This “pay or consent” model is likely in response to the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy laws that forbid companies from harvesting personal data for advertising…