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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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.
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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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New internal documents reveal that TikTok has known about the app's potential dangers to teenagers and pre-teens.
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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.
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Kentucky is one of 14 states to sue TikTok for failing to protect kids on the app. Kentucky Public Radio and NPR have reviewed dozens of pages of the lawsuit that were blacked out from public view.
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Lawsuits filed by 14 attorneys general argue that TikTok knowingly worsens the youth mental health crisis and places profits over child safety.
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NPR investigated a crypto scam company known as SpireBit, which stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Russian-speaking seniors. Now, some of the victims are getting their money back after a lawsuit by Massachusetts authorities.
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The measure, known as SB 1047, was one of the nation’s most far-reaching regulations on the booming AI industry. It would have held AI companies legally liable for harms caused by AI and enabled a "kill switch" if systems went rogue.
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Once a hot $6 billion biotech company, 23andMe is now on the verge of collapse. What could happen to the DNA data of its 14 million customers?
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Meta has announced sweeping changes to how kids and teens use Instagram. The company today unveiled “Teen Accounts,” a series of new features aimed at boosting child safety.