Bluesky is adding a dislike button as a way to signal the kind of posts you don't want to see in your Discover feed. The experiment is part of several new ideas Bluesky is exploring to a improve conversations on its platform.

The new experiments Bluesky is running are primarily built around the notion of "social proximity." The company says it's aiming to build a system that maps your place in a "social neighborhood" of "people you already interact with or would likely enjoy knowing." By prioritizing replies and posts from the people in your general "neighborhood," the company believes it can make conversations "feel more relevant, familiar, and less prone to misunderstandings." Following that logic, the beta test of the dislike button (which sounds private, rather than public-facing) will "help the system understand what kinds of posts you’d prefer to see less of," but could also affect reply rankings in your threads and in the threads of other people in your social neighborhood. 

The social platform already offers a way to limit replies to only people who follow you, as Bluesky CTO Paul Frazee noted in a recent post, but the company doesn’t “want to make that the only option.” Bluesky is also experimenting with adjusting how the Reply button works by making you see the whole thread first when you tap the button, rather than dumping straight into a new blank post. Combined with a new model for detecting bad replies, the company thinks it’ll improve the general social climate.

Charitably, these tweaks sound like another way Bluesky is trying to give users more control over what they see on the platform, in the same way it does with things like notifications. Less charitably, you could read the "social neighborhood" concept as a way to entrench users in their "filter bubble" rather than address larger moderation issues.

Recently, Bluesky has been criticized by users for failing to remove the accounts of people who allegedly violate the company's community guidelines. Ensconced in a social neighborhood, those critics wouldn't necessarily see offensive posts, nor would a poster see their critics. That might lead to less conflict overall, but it could also impact more productive forms of disagreement in the process.

Social media conversations can be vastly more enjoyable when you pick and choose who you're talking with. Today, Threads is adding more controls that let users determine who can reply to their posts. 

One new feature is Reply Approvals, where the user will get a first look at responses before allowing them to appear publicly. The approval option can be turned on for individual posts rather than as a blanket policy for more granular control over replies. Threads is also adding new filters for viewing post replies. Now you can look at replies just from other Threads users you follow or sort them by mentions.

Threads has already had a busy week. Earlier this week, the social network introduced its take on ephemeral "ghost" posts, akin to the limited-time visibility features on Instagram Stories and many other platforms. According to parent company Meta's third-quarter earnings call, Threads has grown to 150 million daily active users.

Threads has grown to 150 million daily active users. Mark Zuckerberg shared the latest milestone for the company's text-based app during Meta's third-quarter earnings call. The company previously reported in August that Threads had reached more than 400 million monthly users.

Zuckerberg, who has mused that Threads could become Meta's next billion-person app, said that it was "on track to become the leader in its category." He also said that time spent in the app had increased by 10 percent, which he credited to improvements to the company's AI recommendation systems. 

On Wednesday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that Meta was also "exploring" algorithm personalization controls for Threads. The company is currently testing the ability to "tune" Instagram's algorithmic recommendations. 

As Threads has grown, Meta also confirmed that ads are ramping up on the platform. During the call with analysts, Meta CFO Susan Li said that "ads are now running globally" in the Threads feed. The company had previously brought ads to Threads users in 30 countries following a small test earlier this year. This week, the company also announced that it would expand the type of ad formats on Threads, including video ads. "We're following our typical monetization playbook of optimizing the ads formats and performance," Li said. 

YouTube is rolling out some updates aimed at making visuals look better on its TV apps, including automatic AI video upscaling. To begin with, YouTube plans to upscale videos that were uploaded in under 1080p to an HD resolution. It aims to support 4K upscaling in the future.

The platform will still retain the original files and video resolution options. Creators can opt-out of the AI upscaling feature, which it's calling Super Resolution, as well as automated audio adjustments. The platform says it's also working with select creators to test larger video uploads to allow for higher-quality footage.

Creators will soon be able to upload thumbnails in higher quality too. YouTube will increase the thumbnail file limit from 2MB to 50MB. 

As for viewers, it seems like YouTube saw those annoying automatic previews Netflix has had for the last decade and decided to copy that playbook. "Viewers will be able to see and flip through their favorite YouTube channels with immersive previews on the homepage, enhancing content discovery and engagement," Kurt Wilms, the senior director of product management for YouTube on TV, wrote in a blog post. 

Elsewhere, YouTube has added a contextual search function to its TV apps. When you search for something from a creator's channel page, videos from said channel will appear first in the results. That's a smart, logical idea.

With people watching YouTube on TV more than on mobile these days, it only makes sense for the platform to invest in improving the experience there.