A 13-year-old western Quebec boy accused of harassing and threatening another child online is facing four charges and conditions restricting his internet activity.

In a news release issued Friday, police in the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais said the alleged victim’s parent filed a complaint after being “subjected to the suspect’s wrath for several months.”

Police said they went to the accused’s home on Sunday to arrest him, but had to return with a warrant the following day after his parents initially refused to co-operate.

The 13-year-old was arrested Monday evening and detained. He was formally charged on Tuesday with criminal harassment, uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm, distributing child pornography and unauthorized possession of an unspecified restricted weapon.

Among his release conditions, the boy can’t access social media and can’t use the internet without adult supervision.

Police didn’t offer details about the alleged threats or where the youth lives. The municipality includes the communities of Chelsea, Quyon, Val-des-Monts and Wakefield.

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I don’t generally believe in life hacks. As much as I’d love to imagine that one easy tweak could resurface my life like it’s a cracked tennis court, time and experience have shown me that positive change usually comes slowly and incrementally.

But there is one hack I fully believe in. It’s fast and free, and will instantly change your life for the better: just mute people who annoy you on social media.

The process is different for each platform – typically, you go to the offending poster’s profile page or one of their posts and tap “mute”, “snooze” or “unfollow” – but then that’s it! This digital dusting leaves your social media spick-and-span, or at least less grimy than before. They’re gone from your timeline, and so are the various minor irritations they brought. And, unlike unfollowing or blocking someone, the muted party has no idea they’ve been silenced, so you don’t risk any awkwardness or drama.

I have a handful of people muted. A couple of them are people I don’t want to unfollow. Others I have unfollowed, but I’ve also muted them because someone else might repost them and sully my pristine timeline. One is a semi-famous person who was rude to me many years ago about a work thing; another was rude to my friend. There’s also an ex and someone who constantly humble-brags in a way that makes me want to bang my head against something hard.

These individuals brought out the worst in me. When I saw their posts, I felt angry, petty and small. I wondered how much it might cost to buy billboard signs along major highways printed with bullet points detailing how, actually, they are terrible.

Fortunately, I almost never think of these individuals anymore because I’ve muted them across all platforms. Unless someone brings them up in conversation, I usually forget these people exist. They have been weeded from the lush garden of my brain.

But don’t just take my word for it.

“Muting accounts that repeatedly upset you is putting in digital boundaries to create a healthier digital environment,” says Bailey Parnell, founder and president of the Center for Digital Wellbeing. It allows you to avoid distressing content without severing connections, she says – a solution for those perplexing situations in which a relationship with someone is important to you, despite their bothersome online presence.

“This can preserve your mental wellbeing while maintaining social or professional networks,” she says.

This might seem like obvious advice. Yet it can be hard to follow. The irritation we feel when seeing someone’s bad posts can come with a satisfying rush: look at them! Being annoying!

“There can be a dopamine kick that comes on the back end of big emotions,” says Monica Amorosi, a licensed trauma therapist in New York City. We may come to crave the adrenaline spikes that accompany content that makes us feel shock, rage or disgust.

“If we have mundane lives, if we are understimulated, if we are bored or underwhelmed, then consuming this material can become a form of entertainment or distraction,” Amorosi says.

Amorosi emphasizes that it’s important not to create a “space of ignorance” on our feeds by avoiding different perspectives or troubling news about current events. But this does not mean that social media should only be a place to access upsetting information. Our feeds “can be utilized for healthy, positive education, connecting with like-minded people, seeing nuance and variety in the world, fact-checking information, learning new hobbies or ideas”, she says.

As such, muting is perhaps most effectively deployed against those who irritate you in a bland, quotidian way – a pompous co-worker, for instance. Not seeing a humble bragger pretend to be embarrassed about another professional success isn’t going to limit my worldview. Instead, I am regaining five to 10 minutes I might have wasted taking a screenshot of their post and complaining to my friends about it.

Candidly, I have done nothing with the time I’ve gained from not bad-mouthing the people I’ve muted. But how nice to have days that are at least five minutes more pleasant.

So, mute freely and often. And if you don’t agree with me? Just mute me. I’ll never know!

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Former President Donald Trump is on the cusp of scoring a major financial bonanza – at least on paper.

As long as Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price doesn’t spectacularly implode before Tuesday’s closing bell, Trump is on track to receive another 36 million shares as the owner of Truth Social.

This milestone is on track to be hit after the market closes on Tuesday.

Even though Trump Media is losing money and Truth Social is very tiny, those new shares Trump is in line to receive would be valued at about $1.3 billion at current prices.

Trump’s net worth has been on a roller coaster ride ever since his social media company finalized its deal to go public late last month. The former president is the dominant shareholder in a stock that has been called a “meme stock on steroids.”

Although Trump Media’s share price has been cut in half since peaking on March 27, it’s still trading comfortably above levels that would trigger certain performance provisions in the merger agreement.

According to SEC filings, Trump Media can issue additional shares to pre-merger shareholders such as the former president if the dollar volume-weighted average price equals or exceeds $12.50 for any 20 trading days within any 30 day trading period beginning on March 25.

The full earnout of 40 million shares would be triggered if that price metric equals or exceeds $17.50 over the same timeframe.

Tuesday marks the 20^th trading day and Trump Media’s share price has not traded below the $17.50 level at any point since the clock started on March 25.

“It seems almost certain to me that the earnout conditions will be satisfied at this point, given how high the share price has been,” said Michael Ohlrogge, an associate professor at the NYU School of Law.

Trump’s dominant stake

The merger agreement calls for Trump to receive 90% of those earnout shares, translating to 36 million additional shares.

That would give Trump an even more dominant stake of 114.75 million shares, amounting to 65% of the total outstanding shares, according to filings.

Of course, Trump Media’s share price is subject to extreme volatility, meaning the value of this stake can swing wildly.

There are also practical and legal restrictions that would likely prevent Trump from cashing in this stock anytime soon.

According to filings, the earnout shares Trump appears to be in line to receive are subject to the lock-up restrictions that prevent insiders from selling or borrowing against their stock for months after the merger closed.

Even if Trump was able to get around this lock-up agreement, experts say it would be practically difficult for him to sell a sizable chunk of his stake without causing a crash in the share price. After all, Trump is the largest shareholder, chairman and most popular user on Truth Social.

‘Grossly overvalued’

Even though Trump Media’s share price has retreated since spiking to $66 last month, experts warn it remains overvalued based on fundamental metrics.

One common way to value stocks is to compare its price relative to its revenue.

The average social media stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of roughly 10x, according to Matthew Kennedy, senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital. That peer group includes Facebook owner Meta, Pinterest, Snap, Reddit and Rumble.

By comparison, Trump Media is trading at north of 1,200 times sales, according to Kennedy.

“The stock appears to be grossly overvalued,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida.

Ritter, who has been studying IPOs for four decades, expects Trump Media’s share price to eventually plunge to just $1 or $2 per share.

Ohlrogge, the NYU professor, said Trump Media’s share price is “responding primarily to non-rational factors.”

For instance, Ohlrogge pointed to how the stock plunged last week after the company indicated it plans to register new shares.

“There should have been nothing surprising about that filing since it was just doing precisely what the company said it would do after it went public…There was no real rational reason to have a negative impact on the price,” he said, adding that the price reflects the “whims and sentiments of very uninformed traders, driving the price this way and that.”

In a sign that Trump Media is worried about its share price, the company took the unusual step last week of telling its shareholders how to avoid their stock from being loaned to short sellers betting against it.

Trump Media updated a FAQ section on its website to include the short-selling prevention tips.

“That is highly unusual,” said Peter Byrne, a securities lawyer at Cooley who focuses on companies going public. “We don’t typically see companies publish information like this.”

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