
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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The lab behind the artificial intelligence art tool is giving access to up to a million people on its waiting list, just as worries grow about possible abuse.
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The social media company is asking a Delaware court to force the world's richest man to follow through on his agreement to buy it for $44 billion.
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When law enforcement requests it, Google usually hands over location and search data collected through its smartphone apps. Will that now be used against people seeking abortions in some states?
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Search histories, geolocation and health data — or any digital breadcrumbs suggesting an illegal abortion was researched or sought — may be targeted by prosecutors in states with abortion bans.
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The Google computer scientist who was placed on leave after claiming the company's artificial intelligence chatbot has come to life tells NPR how he formed his opinion.
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BeReal asks users to post one candid unedited photo a day. It can't be "liked" or shared. There are no algorithms or ads. And teens are increasingly choosing a feed that is intentionally boring.
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A group of activists who have taken on some of the biggest right-wing personalities online have now launched a campaign to try to defund Fox News' online operation.
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BeReal asks people to post one candid, unedited photo a day. It can't be "liked" or shared. There are no algorithms. No ads. The feed of your friends' photos is intentionally boring and mundane.
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Over a 14 year career at Facebook, Sandberg was a pivotal figure in helping the social network become one of the most dominant social media platforms in the world.
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Federal regulators accuse the company of violating a 2011 agreement over the treatment of users' personal data, including phone numbers and email addresses.