Bobby Allyn
Bobby Allyn is a business reporter at NPR based in San Francisco. He covers technology and how Silicon Valley's largest companies are transforming how we live and reshaping society.
He came to San Francisco from Washington, where he focused on national breaking news and politics. Before that, he covered criminal justice at member station WHYY.
In that role, he focused on major corruption trials, law enforcement, and local criminal justice policy. He helped lead NPR's reporting of Bill Cosby's two criminal trials. He was a guest on Fresh Air after breaking a major story about the nation's first supervised injection site plan in Philadelphia. In between daily stories, he has worked on several investigative projects, including a story that exposed how the federal government was quietly hiring debt collection law firms to target the homes of student borrowers who had defaulted on their loans. Allyn also strayed from his beat to cover Philly parking disputes that divided in the city, the last meal at one of the city's last all-night diners, and a remembrance of the man who wrote the Mister Softee jingle on a xylophone in the basement of his Northeast Philly home.
At other points in life, Allyn has been a staff reporter at Nashville Public Radio and daily newspapers including The Oregonian in Portland and The Tennessean in Nashville. His work has also appeared in BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
A native of Wilkes-Barre, a former mining town in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Allyn is the son of a machinist and a church organist. He's a dedicated bike commuter and long-distance runner. He is a graduate of American University in Washington.
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Tech platforms have stepped back from many of the more aggressive measures they took to curb the spread of election rumors and falsehoods four years ago. But some platforms still have safeguards. -
Leading up to the 2020 election, online platforms were policing misinformation. Now, days before the election, social media companies are taking a more hands-off approach -- particularly X.
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Ads seemingly advocating for Vice President Harris on Facebook are really part of an effort by a dark money group to mislead voters. The messages have been viewed millions of times. -
It's been nearly two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X. He has turned the platform into a megaphone for himself and, increasingly, for former President Donald Trump. -
Elon Musk's X seems to be trying get its cases litigated in the court of one particular Texas judge -- who appears to be a Tesla shareholder.
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The judge, Reed O’Connor, in Fort Worth, Texas, has rejected calls for him to step down from the high-profile case Musk filed against Media Matters, a watchdog group. -
New internal documents reveal that TikTok has known about the app's potential dangers to teenagers and pre-teens.
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A trove of secret documents show teens’ increasing reliance on TikTok and how executives were acutely aware of the potential harm the app can cause young people, but appeared unconcerned. -
Two senators, who have pushed online child safety legislation in Congress, demanded that TikTok executives share all materials the company has about the dangers kids may encounter on the wildly popular service. -
In communications newly revealed, TikTok executives discuss being aware of the harms caused by their app. TikTok officials were warned of the app’s dangers to minors.
