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 still undergo a national security review by federal officials, but any outright ban, or pressure to sell to an American company, will not be a priority of the Biden White House. -
CEOs, influencers, even the White House Chief of Staff are turning to this audio-only social media app to chat with a select few. But questions over the rules of engagement have stirred controversy.
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NPR's Bobby Allyn speaks with Rob Monster, who sees his domain-registrar company Epik as a counter to Big Tech. He welcomes views banned on most other parts of the internet.
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John Matze was ousted as the social media company struggles to find a way back online, with Big Tech companies cracking down on the site after the riot at the Capitol.
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We meet two followers of the Reddit thread WallStreetbets, who helped push stock of struggling retailer GameStop to new heights.
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U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein sided with Amazon, which argued that Parler would not remove posts from its site that threatened public safety in the wake of the Capitol riot.
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The social media site Parler went dark after Amazon's web-hosting services pulled the plug. This highlighted the often invisible Internet infrastructure that makes using the Internet possible.
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As federal investigators begin to launch criminal cases against some of the perpetrators of the violence, a growing chorus of advocates and lawmakers say tech companies bear some responsibility, too.
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Major social media platforms have banned President Trump, citing a risk of violence. Meanwhile, tech giants say some alternative sites aren't doing enough to stop violent speech.
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Twitter has permanently blocked the @realDonaldTrump account after President Trump posted messages that violated the company's rules.
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More than 600 Google workers have joined a union in a move that is a rarity in Silicon Valley. The group says it hopes to change both workplace culture and the company's role in society.
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The move is the most severe punishment any social media company has taken in response to Trump, who used online platforms to encourage the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.
