Author Archives: Karissa Bell

Meta is testing a trending topics feature on Threads

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Meta is testing a new feature that will allow Threads users to see what kinds of conversations are trending on the platform. The app has begun testing “today’s top topics” in the United States, Mark Zuckerberg shared in a post on Threads.

The feature will surface “timely topics that others are discussing” and will appear in search and interspersed between posts in the app’s For You feed, according to Meta. Specific trends will be “determined by our AI systems based on what people are engaging with right now on Threads,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said.

Interestingly, Threads will surface trends related to politics and elections. The company said last week that it would no longer suggest political content in its recommendations unless users choose to opt-in. But Meta has confirmed that restriction won’t apply to its trending feature. “Political content can be a topic,” a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. “We will only remove political topics if they violate our Community Guidelines or other applicable integrity policies.”

The addition of trends has been a long-requested update for many Threads users hoping to make the service more usable as a source for real-time information and updates. The feature was previously spotted in an employee version of the app, but it was unclear if Meta would roll it out more broadly considering Mosseri’s desire to avoid “encouraging” conversations about “politics and hard news."

Though AI will determine much of what is surfaced, it sounds like the Meta does plan to do some curation of what appears as a “top topic.” A team of “content specialists” will “ensure that topics do not violate our Community Guidelines or other applicable integrity guidelines, and that topics are not duplicative, nonsensical, or misleading” a Meta spokesperson said.

For now, “today’s top topics” is only a “small test” but Zuckerberg said the feature would arrive in more countries and languages “once we get it tuned up.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-is-testing-a-trending-topics-feature-on-threads-201812349.html?src=rss

Instagram and Threads will no longer recommend political content

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Meta will no longer recommend political content to users on Instagram or Threads, according to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri. He said that users will still see political content from accounts they follow, but the apps will no longer “proactively amplify” such posts.

The change, which will be rolling out “over the next few weeks,” will apply to public accounts in places where Meta’s recommendation algorithms suggest content or posts, like Instagram’s Reels and Explore, and suggested users on Threads.Mosseri didn’t elaborate on how Meta will determine what counts as “political,” but a Meta spokesperson said it would include election-related topics and social issues. 

“Our definition of political content is content likely to be about topics related to government or elections; for example, posts about laws, elections, or social topics,” the spokesperson said. “These global issues are complex and dynamic, which means this definition will evolve as we continue to engage with the people and communities who use our platforms and external experts to refine our approach.”

Instagram's setting for opting opting in to political content.
Meta

While Meta will limit its suggestions related to these topics by default, those who do want to see such content will be able to opt-in via Instagram and Threads’ settings. The company said the update won’t affect how people see posts from accounts they’ve chosen to follow. “Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite for it,” Mosseri said.

The change is the latest way Meta has tried to discourage Threads users from discussing topics it considers potentially problematic. The company blocks “potentially sensitive” topics, including vaccine and covid-related terms, from search results in Threads. Mosseri has also said that Meta doesn’t want to “encourage” users to post about “politics and hard news” in the app.

But the change could also cause a new backlash among users and creators, some of whom already believe Meta unfairly suppresses certain types of content. Meta said that people with “professional” accounts on Instagram can use the “account status” feature to check if their posts are currently considered eligible for recommendations.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-and-threads-will-no-longer-recommend-political-content-180521125.html?src=rss

Bluesky has added almost a million users one day after opening to the public

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Bluesky, the open source Twitter alternative, has seen a surge in new users just one day after opening its platform up to the public. The service has gained more than 850,000 users bringing its total sign-ups to just over 4 million.

The service had been in an invitation-only beta for about a year and had grown to just over 3 million users when it officially opened to the public. It currently has close to 4.1 million sign-ups, according to an online tracker. “Things are rolling over here,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber wrote in a post on X.

The surge in new users suggests that there is still ample curiosity about the Jack Dorsey-backed platform that began as an internal project at Twitter in 2019. It also indicated that Meta hasn’t entirely cornered the market for a text-based Twitter alternative. The company’s Threads app has grown to 130 million monthly users, Meta announced last week.

Graber has said that Bluesky intended to grow at a slower pace so that it could build it the platform, and the underlying protocol, without the added pressure sudden surges in growth can cause. Some of those concerns were borne out over the last day as the spike in activity led to some technical issues on the site, including problems with the app’s custom feeds and a brief outage overnight. The outage was resolved within a couple hours, according to the company.

Much of Bluesky’s future success will hinge on whether it can maintain new growth and keep the interest of all its new users. Threads also saw an initial spike in new users, only for it to drop-off before eventually rebounding.

Though Bluesky may look a bit like Threads or X, it’s a fundamentally different kind of platform and part of the growing movement for decentralized social media. Its open-source protocol functions like a “permanently open” API, according to Graber, and the site already has dozens of developers building their own experiences. Bluesky also offers more customization features for users, with features like custom algorithms and the ability to choose your own content moderation settings.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bluesky-has-added-almost-a-million-users-one-day-after-opening-to-the-public-004854186.html?src=rss

Meta’s Threads app is getting a bookmarking feature to save posts

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Threads is beginning to test a bookmarking feature to allow users to save posts, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri. The update is beginning as a “limited test,” but the “heavily requested” feature will eventually have a permanent place on the service, the company said.

According to screenshots shared by Meta, the “save” button on Threads will look very similar to Instagram’s version of the feature. Users will be able to access their bookmarked posts from the “save” section of the app’s settings.

While the ability to save posts may not seem like the most exciting update, it will help bring a little more organization to the app. threads currently lacks direct messaging, search filtering, lists and a number of other features often requested by power users looking to replace the functionality of Twitter (now known as X).

Threads recently introduced searchable tags, but Meta has so far resisted adding chronological search or trending features. Mosseri has said chronological search could be easily gamed by spammers, though an “internal prototype” of the feature was recently spotted in the wild. Meta employees have also been spotted sharing images of a feature that looks a lot like trending topics, though it’s unclear what the company’s plans for it may be.

In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company “will continue listening to community feedback for ways to improve the Threads experience.” The app has climbed to 130 million monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg revealed last week. He has said that the app has the potential to be the company’s next billion-user service.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-threads-app-is-getting-a-bookmarking-feature-to-save-posts-194149279.html?src=rss

Bluesky is ditching its waitlist and is now open to everyone

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Bluesky, the open-source Twitter alternative, is getting rid of its waitlist and opening its decentralized platform to everyone. The service, which opened in beta last spring, currently has a little over 3 million users, though that number could rise quickly now that prospective users don’t need an invitation to join.

It’s a significant moment for Bluesky, which began as an internal project at Jack Dorsey’s Twitter (Bluesky ended its association with the entity now known as X after Elon Musk’s takeover, though Dorsey is on Bluesky’s board.) The company is part of a growing movement for decentralized social media, which proponents say could address many of the shortcomings of centrally-controlled platforms like Facebook, X and TikTok.

“We really believe that the future of social is, and should be, open and decentralized,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber tells Engadget. “This is something that we think is good for the public conversation overall.”

For those who missed Bluesky’s first hype cycle last spring, the service is functionally similar to X and Threads. Its posts — lovingly referred to by some early users as “skeets” — default to a chronological timeline, though users can also follow numerous other algorithmic feeds created by fellow users. Soon, the company will take a similar approach to content moderation, allowing third-parties to create their own “labeling services” for Bluesky content.

The service is still much smaller than most of its counterparts and doesn’t yet have a direct messaging feature. But it has become a haven for a number of once high-profile Twitter users and others looking for more Weird Twitter vibes and less Elon Musk.

Much like how Mastodon and other services in the fediverse are built on the ActivityPub protocol, Bluesky runs on its own open-source standard called AT Protocol.Right now, the only Bluesky is the version of the service created by Bluesky, the company. But that will soon change, as the company plans to start experimenting with federation, which will allow other developers and groups to create their own instances of Bluesky.

“The protocol is like an API that's permanently open,” Graber says. “And that means that developer creativity can kind of go wild.”

Of course, the world of Twitter alternatives looks considerably different since Bluesky first launched. Meta’s Threads app has grown to 130 million users since last summer. Meta has also started to make some Threads posts available on Mastodon, the first step toward making it compatible with the rest of the fediverse.

But while Threads may be showing some support for open-source protocols, that’s not the same as decentralization, Graber argues. “If they integrate with ActivityPub, you would still be on a Facebook-owned app with this little window into a more open world, and it wouldn't be as easy to leave. We hope that the AT Protocol universe lets people get in between different apps, different services a lot easier.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bluesky-is-ditching-its-waitlist-and-opening-to-everyone-140026198.html?src=rss

Maliciously edited Joe Biden video can stay on Facebook, Meta’s Oversight Board says

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The Oversight Board is urging Meta to update its manipulated media policy, calling the current rules “incoherent.” The admonishment comes in a closely watched decision about a misleadingly edited video of President Joe Biden.

The board ultimately sided with Meta regarding its decision to not remove the clip at the center of the case. The video featured footage from October 2022, when the president accompanied his granddaughter who was voting in person for the first time. News footage shows that after voting, he placed an “I voted” sticker on her shirt. A Facebook user later shared an edited version that looped the moment so it appeared as if he repeatedly touched her chest. The caption accompanying the clip called him a “sick pedophile,” and said those who voted for him were “mentally unwell.”

In its decision, the Oversight Board said that the video was not a violation of Meta’s narrowly-written manipulated media policy because it was not edited with AI tools, and because the edits were “obvious and therefore unlikely to mislead” most users. “Nevertheless, the Board is concerned about the Manipulated media policy in its current form, finding it to be incoherent, lacking in persuasive justification and inappropriately focused on how content has been created rather than on which specific harms it aims to prevent (for example, to electoral processes),” the board wrote. “Meta should “reconsider this policy quickly , given the number of elections in 2024.”

The company’s current rules only apply to videos that are edited with AI, but don’t cover other types of editing that could be misleading. In its policy recommendations to Meta, the Oversight Board says it should write new rules that cover audio and video content. The policy should apply not just to misleading speech but “content showing people doing things they did not do.” The board says these rules should apply “regardless of the method of creation.” Furthermore, the board recommends that Meta should no longer remove posts with manipulated media if the content itself isn't breaking any other rules. Instead, the board suggests Meta “apply a label indicating the content is significantly layered and may mislead.”

The recommendations underscore mounting concern among researchers and civil society groups about how the surge in AI tools could enable a new wave of viral election misinformation. In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company is “reviewing the Oversight Board’s guidance and will respond publicly” within the next 60 days. While that response would come well before the 2024 presidential election, it’s unclear when, or if, any policy changes may come. The Oversight Board writes in its decision that Meta representatives indicated the company “plans to update the Manipulated Media policy to respond to the evolution of new and increasingly realistic AI.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/maliciously-edited-joe-biden-video-can-stay-on-facebook-metas-oversight-board-says-110042024.html?src=rss

20 years later, Facebook is a supporting character in the Mark Zuckerberg universe

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It’s been 20 years since Mark Zuckerberg first brought thefacebook.com online from his dorm room. What happened next has been endlessly documented: the Harvard-only social network took over college campuses and, eventually, the world.

The social network occupies an increasingly awkward space in Meta’s “family” of apps. A majority of American adults still use the service, but three out of four believe Facebook — perhaps because it fueled a global misinformation crises and promoted genocidal hate speech — is “making society worse.” Facebook still generates billions of dollars in ad revenue for Meta, but user growth has slowed to the point where the company just announced it will no longer share how many people use it.

“Amen spam” regularly appears in Facebook’s list of most-viewed posts. The most prolific users on its game-streaming service are spammers. Faced with increased pressure from TikTok, Meta rejiggered its feed, yet again, to emphasize recommendations over posts from people you know. But the shift hasn’t made Facebook feel like TikTok as much as a strange window into what Meta’s algorithms deem most engaging and least offensive.

My own Facebook feed is inundated with posts from groups I don’t belong to dedicated to anodyne topics like home remodeling, cast iron pan enthusiasts and something called the “Dull Men’s Club.” I haven’t shared anything to my own page in more than a year, despite logging in almost daily. I’m hardly an outlier. A majority of adults now say they are “pickier” than they used to be about what they post on social media.

Unsurprisingly, teens have almost no interest in the social network of their parents and grandparents. Just 33 percent of US teens report “ever” using the service, compared with 71 percent in 2015. These dynamics, in which Facebook’s user base is aging faster than its product, has led some academics to conclude that the social network will one day have more profiles for dead people than alive.

Today, Facebook has more than 3 billion users and remains the workhorse of the Mark Zuckerberg cinematic universe, even if it's no longer the title character. Instead, it’s just one of his company’s “family” of apps. In 2021, it was formally demoted when Zuckerberg rebranded the company as Meta. "Our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can't possibly represent everything that we're doing today, let alone in the future," Zuckerberg said of Facebook. "From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first."

Whether Meta has succeeded in becoming a “metaverse-first” company is, at best, debatable. But few would argue it’s anything close to “Facebook-first.” More recently, Zuckerberg has tried to pitch Meta as a metaverse company and an AI company, joining the race to create human-level superintelligence.

At the same time, the only reason Zuckerberg’s ambitions are even possible is because of Facebook’s success. Meta has lost tens of billions of dollars on its metaverse investments, and expects to lose even more for the foreseeable future. The company also plans to spend billions more on AI infrastructure (AGI doesn’t come cheap).

These investments will determine whether Zuckerberg’s bet on the future of social media is correct. And if he realizes his vision for an AI chatbot, metaverse-enabled future, it will have been possible largely because of the unparalleled financial success of the oldest and dullest part of his empire.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/20-years-later-facebook-is-a-supporting-character-in-the-mark-zuckerberg-universe-140044870.html?src=rss

Meta’s Reality labs had its best quarter, but still lost more than $4 billion

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Reality Labs, Meta’s division for AR, VR and the metaverse, just had its best quarter yet despite continuing its multibillion-dollar losing streak. Reality Labs generated more than $1 billion in revenue during the final quarter of 2023 thanks to its Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

While crossing $1 billion in revenue is a new milestone for the company’s metaverse group, it’s still expected to continue racking up massive losses for the foreseeable future. Reality Labs lost $4.6 billion in the quarter, and more than $16 billion in 2023. Meta CFO Susan Li said that these losses are expected to “increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”

The fourth-quarter, which encompasses the holiday shopping season, has typically been when reality does the best. During a call with analysts, Mark Zuckerberg suggested that the company’s smart glasses had done particularly well, saying that Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica was “planning on making more [smart glasses] than we'd both expected due to high demand.” He added that both Quest 2 and Quest 3 were “performing well,” calling Quest 3 the “most popular mixed reality device.”

Reality Labs aside, Meta had a strong quarter, reporting $40.1 billion to close out 2023, bringing its total revenue for the year to just under $135 billion. Facebook’s user base also grew to 2.1 billion daily active users (DAUs). Meta CFO Susan Li said that the company was “transitioning away” from sharing the metric and would no longer report on Facebook’s daily or monthly active users or its “family monthly active people.”

The company had shared that it would eventually stop reporting user numbers back in 2019 as Facebook’s growth began to slow. But the change shows how Facebook’s position in the company’s “family of apps” has changed in recent years. A report from Pew Research earlier this week found that Instagram is continuing to grow in the US while Facebook use remains flat.

Meta’s newest app, Threads, is still growing, however. Zuckerberg said the service has 130 million monthly users, up from “just under” 100 million last fall. “Threads now has more people actively using it today than it did during its initial launch peak," Zuckerberg said, referring to the app’s initial, but short-lived, surge in growth.

Zuckerberg also talked more about his newly-stated ambition to create artificial general intelligence, or AGI at Meta, saying it would be the “theme” of the company’s product work going forward. “This next generation of services requires building full general intelligence,” he said. “It's clear that we're going to need our models to be able to reason, plan, code, remember and many other cognitive abilities in order to provide the best versions of the services that we envision.”

The Meta CEO also indicated the company would be unlikely to offer any of its apps in alternative app stores in Europe, following Apple's controversial new developer policies. "The way that they've implemented it, I would be very surprised if any developer chose to go into the alternative app stores," he said. "They've made it so onerous, and I think so at odds with the intent of what the EU regulation was, that I think it's just going to be very difficult for anyone, including ourselves, to really seriously entertain."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-reality-labs-had-its-best-quarter-but-still-lost-4-billion-231135719.html?src=rss

Snap is recalling its Pixy drone after battery fire

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Snap is recalling all of its Pixy drones after four reports of its batteries overheating, according to the company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The company says it will issue refunds to all drone owners who return the device.

“Snap, in cooperation with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is recalling the battery that comes with the Pixy Flying Camera because the battery can overheat, posing a fire hazard,” the company writes on its website. According to the CPSC, battery issues have caused one “minor” fire and one “minor” injury.

The company has detailed instructions for returning the flying camera — without their batteries — on its website, and says all Pixy owners are eligible for a refund of the purchase price, even if they received it as a gift or no longer have a receipt. Snap says that anyone with a Pixy drone should participate in the recall even if their device appears to be working properly.

The Snapchat maker introduced the mini drone in April 2022, but abandoned the project just four months later as Snap shifted resources away from hardware projects. The company never shared how many drones sold, but the CPSC says the recall affects about 71,000 devices.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/snap-is-recalling-its-pixy-drone-after-battery-fire-173731938.html?src=rss

Senate tells social media CEOs they have ‘blood on their hands’ for failing to protect children

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The CEOs of Meta, Snap, Discord, X and TikTok testified at a high-stakes Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child exploitation online. During the hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, Jason Citron, Linda Yaccarino and Shou Chew spent nearly four hours being grilled by lawmakers about their records on child safety. 

The hearing was the first time Spiegel, Citron and Yaccarino testified to Congress. Notably, all three were subpoenaed by the committee after refusing to appear voluntarily, according to lawmakers. Judiciary Committee Chair Senator Dick Durbin noted that Citron “only accepted services of his subpoena after US Marshals were sent to Discord’s headquarters at taxpayers’ expense.”

The hearing room was filled with parents of children who had been victims of online exploitation on social media. Many members of the audience silently held up photos of their children as the CEOs entered the room, and Durbin kicked off the hearing with a somber video featuring victims of child exploitation and their parents.

“Discord has been used to groom, abduct and abuse children,” Durbin said. “Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote a network of pedophiles. Snapchat’s disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially extort young victims. TikTok has become a quote platform of choice for predators to access, engage and groom children for abuse. And the prevalence of CSAM on X has grown as the company has gutted its trust and safety workforce.”

During the hearing, many of the senators shared personal stories of parents whose children had died by suicide after being exploited online. "Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us — I know you don't mean it to be so — but you have blood on your hands," Senator Lindsey Graham said in his opening remarks. The audience applauded. 

While years of similar hearings have so far failed to produce any new laws, there is growing bipartisan support in Congress for new safety regulations. As Tech Policy Press points out, there are currently more than half a dozen bills dealing with children's online safety that have been proposed by senators. These include the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require platforms to create more parental control and safety features and submit to independent audits, and COPPA 2.0, a revised version of the 1998 Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act, which would bar companies from collecting or monetizing children’s data without consent.

Senators have also proposed a number of bills to address child exploitation, including the EARN IT Act, currently in its third iteration since 2020, and the STOP CSAM Act. None of these have advanced to the Senate floor for a vote. Many of these bills have faced intense lobbying from the tech industry, though some companies in attendance said they were open to some bills and some aspects of the legislation.

Spiegel said that Snap supports KOSA. Yaccarino said X supports the STOP CSAM Act. Shou and Citron both declined to specifically endorse the bills they were asked about, but said they were open to more discussions.

Zuckerberg suggested a different approach, saying he supported age verification and parental control requirements at the app store level, which would effectively shift the burden to Apple and Google. "Apple already requires parental consent when a child does a payment with an app, so it should be pretty trivial to pass a law that requires them to make it so parents have control anytime a child downloads an app,” Zuckerberg said.

Meta has come increased pressure in recent months following a lawsuit from 41 states for harming teens’ mental health. Court documents from the suit allege that Meta turned a blind eye to children under 13 using its service, did little to stop adults from sexually harassing teens on Facebook and that Zuckerberg personally intervened to stop an effort to ban plastic surgery filters on Instagram.

Unsurprisingly, Zuckerberg came under particular scrutiny during the hearing. In one awkward exchange, Senator Graham asked Zuckerberg if the parents of a child who died by suicide after falling victim to a sextortion scheme should be able to sue Meta. Zuckerberg, looking uncomfortable, paused and said “I think that they can sue us.”

Later, Senator Josh Hawley pressed the Meta founder on whether he would personally apologize to the parents in the hearing room. Zuckerberg stood up and faced the audience. "I’m sorry for everything you have all been through," he said. "No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer."

Spiegel was also asked to directly address parents. “Mr. Spiegel, there are a number of parents who have children who have been able to access illegal drugs on your platform, what do you say to those parents,” Scenario Laphonza Butler asked the Snap founder. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

As with many past hearings featuring tech CEOs, some lawmakers strayed off topic. Multiple senators pressed Chew on TikTok’s relationship with China, as well as its handling of content moderation during the Israel-Hamas war. Senator Tom Cotton repeatedly asked TikTok's CEO about his citizenship (Chew is Singaporean). 

There were also some bizarre moments, like when Senator John Kennedy asked Spiegel if he knew the meaning of “yada yada yada” (Spiegel claimed he was “not familiar” with the phrase). “Can we agree … what you do is what you believe and everything else is just cottage cheese,” Kennedy asked.

During the hearing, many of the companies touted their existing safety features and parental controls (Meta launched several updates in the lead-up to the hearing). Yaccarino, who repeatedly claimed that X was a “brand new company” said X was considering adding parental controls. “Being a 14-month-old company we have reprioritized child protection and safety measures,” she said. “And we have just begun to talk about and discuss how we can enhance those with parental controls.”

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 or you can simply dial 988. Crisis Text Line can be reached by texting HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK). Wikipedia maintains a list of crisis lines for people outside of those countries.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/senate-tells-social-media-ceos-they-have-blood-on-their-hands-for-failing-to-protect-children-170411884.html?src=rss