Actress Ivana De Maria Aims to Restore Empathy to Social Media with StoryPlace
*By Chloe Aiello*
Social media and empathy don't exactly go hand-in-hand these days, but actress and producer Ivana De Maria wants to change all that with her new social media platform, StoryPlace.
"Stories have a lot of power, but then you add the word 'true' to it. A true story has so much potential to teach, to impact," De Maria told Cheddar on Friday.
De Maria describes StoryPlace as an "egoless story-sharing platform," designed to encourage empathy by giving a voice to ordinary people with stories to tell. Launched in mid-December, the app enables people to share true stories in various subjects, geotagged to where the stories happened.
"StoryPlace truly aims to connect people by showing people everyone has a story to tell, that every story has a lesson to teach, and that it's important to share truth out there," De Maria said.
De Maria knows a little something about storytelling. Alongside actress Salma Hayek, she helped produce "Monarca,"a Spanish-language show scooped up by Netflix ($NFLX) in 2018. She produced Los Angeles-based portions of the show, which centers around the corruption and scandal of a family-run Mexican tequila empire.
StoryPlace's launch came at the close of one of the roughest years to-date for social media and technology more broadly. Facebook's stock suffered as scandal after scandal ー from data privacy compromises to foreign political interference and allegations [the platform was used to incite genocide](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html) ー rocked the company and eroded public trust. CEO Mark Zuckerberg went from reportedly [mulling a presidential run](https://cheddar.com/videos/cheddar-awards-mark-zuckerberg-and-sheryl-sandberg-are-2018s-biggest-losers) in 2017, to struggling to repair his company's reputation and stock pricing and the end of 2018.
"Empathy is lacking almost entirely from social media. Social media is a very powerful tool that can promote connection ... but if not handled properly and responsibly, it can also be very dangerous," De Maria said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/actress-ivana-de-maria-introduces-storyplace-app).
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
