X will soon be moving the ability to live stream behind its premium paywall, the company announced. The change will make X the only major social platform to charge for the feature, which is currently free on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch and TikTok.
“Starting soon, only Premium subscribers will be able to livestream (create live video streams) on X,” the company said. “This includes going live from an encoder with X integration,” an apparent reference to X’s game streaming capabilities.
X didn’t offer an explanation for the change. The company has used additional features, like post editing, longform writing, and ad-free feeds to lure users to its paid subscriptions, but hasn’t typically moved existing, widely available, features behind its paywall. X Premium subscriptions start at $3/month for the "basic" tier, and rise to $8/month for Premium and $16/month for Premium+.
There are, however, other signs that the Elon Musk-owned platform wants to charge for other simple features. The company introduced a $1 annual charge for new accounts to have posting privileges in New Zealand and the Philippines. Though the company still describes the scheme as a test, Musk has suggested he wants to expand the fees to all new users.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-is-making-live-streaming-a-premium-feature-185151147.html?src=rss
Spotify has a new plan for US subscribers that keeps you on the old $11 monthly pricing — as long as you don’t mind ditching audiobooks. The new Basic tier includes the music and podcast content you get from Premium but without 15 hours of audiobook access, a recently added feature we suspect many subscribers don’t care about anyway. Spotify said earlier this month it would hike Premium prices to $12 per month, beginning in July.
The Basic plan echoes one it rolled out in the UK last month. That one costs £11 per month compared to £12 for Premium with audiobook content.
Some have suspected Spotify’s audiobook push has nefarious motives. Earlier this month, the National Music Publishers’ Association asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the move, going as far as calling the company’s audiobook integration “a scheme to increase profits by deceiving consumers and cheating the music royalty system.” The NMPA complaint claims Spotify will pay about $150 million less in music royalties over the next year because of its audiobook fusion. Spotify told Engadget it did nothing wrong and rejected the accusations.
Spotify has been penny-pinching in other areas. It was reported last year that the company planned to overhaul its royalty model. One alleged part of that plan was to demonetize tracks earning less than five cents per month, pushing out some indie artists without established audiences.
Spotify also laid off around 9,000 employees late last year, citing “the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs.”
You can switch to the audiobook-free tier (which is now live) by navigating to your account page, then “Manage your plan” and “Change plan” and picking Basic. If you’re a new subscriber, you can choose the Basic option when signing up.
Update, June 21, 2024, 2:36 PM ET: This story has been updated to note that the ability to sign up for the Basic plan is now live.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotifys-basic-plan-returns-to-11-a-month-by-cutting-audiobooks-163804267.html?src=rss
Instagram is recommending Reels with sexual content to teenagers as young as 13 even if they aren't specifically looking for racy videos, according to separate tests conducted by The Wall Street Journal and Northeastern University professor Laura Edelson. Both of them created new accounts and set their ages to 13-years-old for the tests, which mostly took place from January until April this year. Apparently, Instagram served moderately racy videos from the beginning, including those of women dancing sensually or those that focus on their bodies. Accounts that watched those videos and skipped other Reels then started getting recommendations for more explicit videos.
Some of the recommended Reels contained women pantomiming sex acts, others promised to send nudes to users who comment on their accounts. The test users were also reportedly served videos with people flashing their genitalia, and in one instance, the supposed teen user was shown "video after video about anal sex." It took as little as three minutes after the accounts were created to start getting sexual Reels. Within 20 minutes of watching them, their recommended Reels section was dominated by creators producing sexual content.
To note, The Journal and Edelson conducted the same test for TikTok and Snapchat and found that neither platform recommended sexual videos to the teen accounts they created. The accounts never even saw recommendations for age-inappropriate videos after actively searching for them and following creators that produce them.
The Journal says that Meta's employees identified similar problems in the past, based on undisclosed documents it saw detailing internal research on harmful experiences on Instagram for young teenagers. Meta's safety staff previously conducted the same test and came up with similar results, the publication reports. Company spokesperson Andy Stone shrugged off the report, however, telling The Journal: "This was an artificial experiment that doesn’t match the reality of how teens use Instagram." He added that the company "established an effort to further reduce the volume of sensitive content teens might see on Instagram, and have meaningfully reduced these numbers in the past few months."
Back in January, Meta introduced significant privacy updates related to teen user protection and automatically placed teen users into its most restrictive control settings, which they can't opt out of. The Journals' tests were conducted after those updates rolled out, and it was even able to replicate the results as recently as June. Meta released the updates shortly after The Journal published the results of a previous experiment, wherein it found that Instagram’s Reels would serve "risqué footage of children as well as overtly sexual adult videos" to test accounts that exclusively followed teen and preteen influencers.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-is-reportedly-recommending-sexual-reels-to-teens-as-young-as-13-121626058.html?src=rss
YouTube is borrowing a page from X (Twitter) and adding a community notes feature ahead of the 2024 US election. The company wants the short viewer-created blurbs to add relevant context to videos, such as pointing out misinformation or old footage passed off as new.
Notes will roll out initially as a pilot program for “a limited number of eligible contributors,” who will receive an invitation via email or Creator Studio. The invited participants will need to have an active YouTube account in good standing.
During the pilot phase, “third-party evaluators” will rate notes’ helpfulness to help train the system. YouTube says it wants to launch notes gradually to test and fine-tune the feature before making it more widely available. Look no further than YouTube’s often toxic video comments to see why that’s necessary.
Once the feature is calibrated and widely available, you’ll see them under videos “if they’re found to be broadly helpful.” Viewers will be asked to rate notes as “helpful,” “somewhat helpful” or “unhelpful” — and tell them why (for example, it cites good sources or is written clearly).
Note ratings will be determined by a bridging-based algorithm, which looks for connections among disparate groups. For example, if people who have historically rated things differently agree on a particular note’s helpfulness, that one will more likely appear. It sounds like the system could still be abused, especially considering how many online tribes today share an unflinching belief in the same debunked misinformation. But hey, we’ll reserve judgment until we see it in action.
The feature is awfully similar to one that was rolled out initially under the Jack Dorsey era of Twitter and expanded globally after Elon Musk bought the company in 2022. At the time, Musk described the feature as “a gamechanger for improving accuracy on Twitter.” X, as it’s known today, isn’t exactly known for its accuracy, but YouTube apparently saw something worth copying in the crowd-sourced context.
As for when you will see community notes, YouTube says the pilot will launch on mobile in the US first. The company anticipates mistakes during this test phase as it tweaks its algorithms. Everyone else in the US can expect to see notes appear “in the coming weeks and months.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtubes-community-notes-feature-rips-a-page-out-of-xs-playbook-162145673.html?src=rss
Last year, LinkedIn began experimenting with AI-powered tools for job seekers on its platform. Now the company has added a bunch of new capabilities for its premium subscribers who are #OpentoWork, including personalized resumé, AI-assisted cover letters and more conversational job searches.
The changes are meant to speed up some of the most tedious aspects of looking for a new role. For example, the revamped job search feature now allows you to look for roles with queries like “find me a marketing job that’s fully remote and pays at least $100,000 a year,” or “find business development roles in biotech.” Those are all relatively simple descriptions but anyone who has searched for jobs on LinkedIn (without the help of AI) knows that it can often be a struggle to narrow down job listings with keywords.
Once you find a role you’re interested in, the built-in assistant can give you feedback on your qualifications and help with your application. You can upload a copy of your current resumé and LinkedIn’s AI will provide tips on what to update based on the job description. This can include suggestions on specific experiences to highlight or the ability to rewrite entire sections of the document. Likewise, LinkedIn can generate cover letters based on your experience and the job you want to apply for.
LinkedIn
The company gave me a preview of these tools and I thought it did a surprisingly decent job for a first attempt at a cover letter. It incorporated specific details from my profile and the tone didn’t feel as robotic as much of the AI-written text I’ve encountered. Of course, as a journalist, I like to believe I can still write a better cover letter than an AI. But, I can see how the tool could be useful for people applying to dozens of jobs at once, especially since many companies use AI software to whittle down applications anyway.
LinkedIn product manager Rohan Rajiv says that these tools are meant to be more of a jumping off point for users rather than an all-in-one solution. “What we want to do is make it easy for folks who have a difficult time telling their story, have a difficult time staring at a blank screen trying to put something together to at least get started,” he tells Engadget.
But he also notes that the company is still in the relatively early stages of its AI push and it could eventually automate more of the job application process. “The next horizon is going to be … can you just do that for me,” he says. “You can almost imagine people thinking about it from an agent standpoint, and helping you get things done.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/linkedins-ai-job-coach-can-write-your-cover-letters-and-edit-your-resume-130033553.html?src=rss
Pew Research and the Knight Foundation just put out a pair of lengthy reports on how Americans are experiencing news and politics on social media. There are a number of noteworthy stats in the research but, for me, it mostly underscores that news distribution is kind of a mess.
It’s not that news has disappeared from X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, but the way that most users are encountering news content is vastly different from platform to platform. And much of what people say they are seeing is not coming from journalists and media organizations but influencers other unconnected accounts.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found that most people aren’t on social media to follow news. A minority of TikTok (41 percent), Instagram (33 percent) and Facebook (37 percent) users reported that “getting news” was a “major or minor” reason they used the platform. X, as Pew points out, was a notable exception, with 65 percent of people reporting news as a reason they use the service.
That may not be especially surprising, given Twitter’s long-running reputation as a news source and Meta’s more recent shiftaway from the media industry. And even though majorities of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok said they didn’t seek out news, most people reported that they see some kind of news-related content on the platforms.
But when you dig into the kind of news participants say they see, the top categories were opinions and “funny posts” about current events. Look at the breakdown below: opinions and funny posts were significantly more prevalent than news articles or “information about a breaking news event” on every platform. (Again, the only exception was X, where people said they see articles at roughly the same rate as “funny posts” about the news.)
Pew research
It’s also striking to consider the sources for news-related posts reported by the study's participants. On every platform except X, the top source of news and news-related content is not journalists or media orgs. On Facebook and Instagram, it’s friends and family, and on TikTok it’s “other people.” The “other people” category is also quite high for X, with 75 percent saying they see news from these accounts. This suggests that much of the news content people see on X and TikTok is being driven by those platforms’ recommendation algorithms.
Pew Research
While Pew typically repeats the same sorts of studies at regular intervals, allowing readers to extrapolate trends over time, this study is brand new, so unfortunately, we don’t have historical data to compare all these stats to. But they do broadly reflect what many in the media industry have been experiencing over the last few years. Publishers are getting far less traffic from social media, and news is increasingly filtered through influencers, meme creators and random algorithmically-surfaced accounts. It’s also worth noting that for every platform, most people said that at least “sometimes” they see inaccurate news. And for X, which had the biggest share of news consumers and people seeing journalistic content, 86 percent of participants reported seeing news that “seems inaccurate.”
The report’s authors don’t draw a conclusion about what this all means in general, let alone in an election year when there is increasing anxiety about the spread of AI-fueled misinformation. But the report suggests that finding reliable and accurate news on social media is far from straightforward.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/news-on-social-media-is-a-fractured-mess-pew-study-indicates-140001507.html?src=rss
Thanks to X showing what its users "like" on its platform, politicians and public personalities have been caught looking at salacious and unsavory tweets in the past. Now, the platform formerly known as Twitter is making likes mostly private, and according to company chief Elon Musk, it's an important change so that people can "like posts without getting attacked for doing so." The company originally launched the ability to hide the likes tab as a perk for X Premium subscribers last year. "[K]eep spicy likes private," X said when it announced the new feature.
This week we’re making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy.
– You will still be able to see posts you have liked (but others cannot).
– Like count and other metrics for your own posts will still show up under notifications.
In a new tweet, X's Engineering account has revealed that the social network is making likes private for everyone this week. Users will no longer be able to see who liked someone else's post, which means likes on the platform will no longer cause PR crises for public figures who like sexual, hateful and other unpalatable posts in general. They can still see who liked their tweets, however, along with their like count and other metrics for their own posts.
This rollout kills one reason for getting a premium subscription, though. The company's advertising revenue took a nosedive last year, and it launched two new tiers for its subscription service to help solve some of its financial woes. The Premium+ tier costs users $16 per month and removes ads from their timelines, while the cheapest tier costs users $3 a month and doesn't come with the website's blue checkmark.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-is-officially-making-likes-mostly-private-for-everyone-035837613.html?src=rss
Meta will now let you create massive community chats on Messenger with people you aren't connected to in any way. Back in 2022, the company launched community chats for Facebook Groups, giving people belonging to the same groups an easy way to talk in real time. While that community feature is tied to groups on the social network, this one isn't — it will let use Messenger like Discord to connect with as many as 5,000 random people using the app.
The company didn't post an announcement, but it confirmed the new feature's rollout to TechCrunch. All community chats will be displayed in one place inside the Messenger app, with each one having a "Home" space where administrators can post updates and announcements. According to Meta's Help page for the feature, it's "not available to everyone or on all platforms at this time." You'll know if you're part of this rollout if you see the option to create a new community in the left menu of your Messenger app on mobile.
If you do create a community, you'll get the power to remove someone from the chat, report or remove content and delete the chat altogether. All members can issue shareable invites, though, so communities have the potential to grow big beyond the initial participants' circle. The fact that this flavor of Facebook chats is meant for public conversations, however, also means that you'd have to be more careful of what you share. It's not just current members who'll be able to see what you've said, but also future members other people invite.
As TechCrunch notes, you could use the new option to make chats for schools, organizations, neighborhoods and other groups with a large number of potential members. It could also be a more convenient and better option than WhatsApp's similar community chats feature, since the app needs to be connected to a phone number.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/messengers-new-community-chats-dont-need-to-be-connected-to-facebook-groups-131511680.html?src=rss
Twitch has entered into a first-of-its-kind partnership with all of the major record labels that will force DJs who monetize to pay a fee to use songs in livestream sets. The actual percentage being paid out to these labels is being kept under wraps and varies according to the chosen monetization method, but the DJs and Twitch will reportedly split these fees 50/50. The company also says that it'll cover more than 50 percent at first, but didn't get into numbers.
Twitch will also be offering a one-year subsidy to select DJs to help cover the difference between earnings and money paid to labels. The company didn’t announce how it would award these subsidies or if it would cover all of the required licensing fees. It did say that the subsidy amount would reduce over time as the program increases in popularity. There are thousands upon thousands of DJs on Twitch, so it’d be nice to get a little bit of clarification here. We’ve reached out to the company and will update this post when we hear back.
🎉 Attention DJs on Twitch! 🎉
We're launching a new DJ Program that will let you stream the vast majority of popular music in a new DJ Category launching later this summer.
🎧 Made possible by a first-of-its-kind partnership with hundreds of companies, including all major… pic.twitter.com/qblcnS7BTR
There’s a sliver of good news here. This move is only for DJs who monetize their streams. If you’re an amateur record spinner, you won’t have to pay out of pocket. The labels will still get money from these streams, because non-partnered channels still contain ads, but Twitch will cover the costs. It remains to be seen just how long the company will continue this act of altruism.
Why did Twitch do this in the first place? The company says the previous model, which didn’t pay out to labels or artists, was “not sustainable,” calling out a “variety of copyright issues that need to be considered that vary across regions.” Twitch says it's trying to avoid DMCA takedown notifications and copyright penalties. Up until this point, DJs have been personally responsible for dealing with these issues.
The program officially goes live this summer, along with a new DJ category for streamers. As a note, the aforementioned deal is with the record labels and not the actual artists. I’m sure these labels will fairly distribute funds to the creators in a timely fashion. That was sarcasm.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/record-labels-will-start-reaching-into-the-pockets-of-twitch-djs-180621639.html?src=rss
When you think of the 20-year-old social network that is Facebook, its popularity among “young adults” is probably not what comes to mind. Naturally, Meta wants to change that and the company is once again telling the world it intends to reorient its platform in order to appeal to that demographic.
In an update from Tom Alison, who heads up the Facebook app for Meta, he says that the service is shifting to reflect an “increased focus on young adults” compared with other users. “Facebook is still for everyone, but in order to build for the next generation of social media consumers, we’ve made significant changes with young adults in mind,” he wrote.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Meta executives have been trying to win over “young adults” for years in an effort to better compete with TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg said almost three years ago that he wanted to make young adults the company’s “North Star.” And Alison and Zuckerberg have both been talking about the Facebook app’s pivot to a discovery-focused feed rather than one based on users’ connections.
That shift is now well underway. Alison said that the company’s AI advancements have already improved recommendations for Reels and feed, and that “advanced recommendations technology will power more products” over the next year. He added that private sharing among users is also on the rise, with more users sharing video (though no word on the once-rumored plan to bring messaging back into the main app).
Notably, Alison’s note makes no mention of the “metaverse,” which Zuckerberg also once saw as a central part of the company’s future. Instead, he says that “leaning into new product capabilities enabled by AI” is a significant goal, along with luring younger users. That’s also not surprising, given that Meta and Zuckerberg have recently tried to rebrand some of the company’s metaverse ambitions as AI advancements.
But it’s also not clear how successful Meta will be in its efforts to win over young adults. Though Alison says Facebook has seen “five quarters of healthy growth in young adult app usage in the US and Canada,” with 40 million young adult daily active users, that’s still a relatively small percentage of the 205 million daily US Facebook users the company reported in February, the last time it would break out user numbers for the app.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-says-the-future-of-facebook-is-young-adults-again-203500866.html?src=rss