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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TikTok will be asking the Supreme Court to strike down a law that could ban the app in a matter of days. The Justice Department says the law should be upheld, since it considers China a national security threat. TikTok's parent company is based in Beijing. The wild card is President-elect Donald Trump, who has asked the high court to not rule to allow him to cut a deal that would save the service.
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Lawyers for TikTok argued that banning the app will violate the free speech of 170 million American users. The Justice Department contended that the app is a national security risk. -
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of fact-checking on his social media platforms. Industry watchers say it's another sign Silicon Valley is trying to get in President-elect Trump's good graces.
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Trump has tapped Silicon Valley insiders to lead AI policy. There's talk of a "Manhattan Project" for military AI. Advocates are worried the risks and misuse of the technology will grow under Trump.
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CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the company's previous content moderation policies "censorship," repeating talking points from President-elect Donald Trump and his allies. -
Australia's top online internet regulator explains how the nation plans to roll out the world's first social media ban for kids under 16. -
The high court said Wednesday it will review a challenge submitted by TikTok asking for the overturn of a law that could ban the video-sharing app by Jan 19. -
The tech industry is courting President-elect Donald Trump. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son pledged a $100 billion investment in the U.S. over the next four years at an event at Mar-a-Lago.
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The donations are seen as the latest example of tech moguls' changing stance toward the incoming president. During his first administration, Trump clashed with Bezos and Zuckerberg. -
Two families are suing AI chatbot company Character.AI for allegedly encouraging harm after the kids became emotionally attached to the bots. One chatbot allegedly exposed a child to sexualized content.
