Earlier this year, Meta previewed Movie Gen, an AI video editing tool that looked impressively realistic (at least in the sample clips it released). At the time, though, Meta said it was still a research project with no immediate plans to make the features available to users.
But it now seems that Movie Gen could arrive on Instagram sooner than later. Instagram’s top exec Adam Mosseri posted a short video previewing the kind of seamless AI edits that will eventually be possible, saying that the company is “hoping to bring this to Instagram next year.”
In the clip, Mosseri says that Meta is “working on some really exciting AI tools” for video creators. “You should be able to do anything you want with your videos,” he says. "You should be able to change your outfit, or change the context in which you're sitting, or add a chain — whatever you can think of.”
During the short clip, Mosseri’s backdrop and outfit changes several times, including a brief shot where he looks like a Muppet-inspired character. Throughout the clip, the transitions look pretty seamless without obvious AI artifacts. Of course, that won’t necessarily be the case once Movie Gen is actually available and videos of its abilities aren’t entirely controlled by Meta. But if it works anything like Mosseri’s teaser video, it could open up some interesting possibilities for Instagram creators.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Meta is teasing the feature just days after OpenAI released its video generation model to subscribers. Meta has repeatedly said it wants its AI assistant to be the “most used” in the world and in an update that was also published today, the company said Meta AI has “nearly” 600 million monthly users.
Unfortunately, Mosseri didn’t indicate exactly when Movie Gen features may actually arrive on Instagram, other than some time in 2024. But he did say that there would be “more to come” from the company.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/metas-ai-video-editing-features-are-coming-to-instagram-next-year-191501418.html?src=rss
Another day, another new Threads feature. Meta’s app will “soon” be rolling out a feature that allows users to re-share photos and videos to their timelines with credit to the original poster but without the original post attached.
Once available, users will need to long press on a photo or video from their feed and select “use media.” They’ll then be able to draft a new post with the image of the clip attached, with a watermark from the original poster showing in the top left corner. “This is a quick, easy way to add your creative takes to trending images and clips without quote posting,” Threads chief Adam Mosseri wrote in a post.
The feature is presumably meant to make it easier for people to reshare other users’ work with some credit for its original creator. Mosseri has fielded a number of complaints on Threads from frustrated users who see their work ripped off without credit. In a post last month, Mosseri said that Meta was “trying to shift more distribution from aggregators to creators on both Instagram and Threads,” though he acknowledged it can be “very difficult to do so” when the original post was lifted from a non Meta-owned platform. On Instagram, the company recently tweaked its algorithm in an attempt to boost creators over aggregators.
Judging by some of the reactions to Threads’ latest update, however, a number of creators are still unhappy with Meta’s approach. “It just seems like blatant content theft,” one photographer replied. “Quoting the post is a far more effective way of sharing someone's content with your own comments while crediting the creator,” another user said.
In a separate post, Meta noted that individual creators are able to disable media reuse in their app’s settings, so it is possible to block your posts from being shared this way. (There are also settings to prevent others from quote posting entirely.) However, for those worried about accounts straight up ripping off their posts in the interest of engagement farming, there’s still little any user can do to prevent less scrupulous accounts from copying their content with screenshots or other means.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-new-use-media-feature-is-its-latest-attempt-to-fight-stolen-memes-and-engagement-farming-224119483.html?src=rss
Threads is previewing yet another significant new feature before the end of the year. The app will “soon” begin testing the ability for users to schedule posts ahead of time, according to an update from Meta exec Adam Mosseri.
Mosseri shared a screenshot of the upcoming feature, which shows a simple tool to set a date and time for a post to go live in Threads’ post editor. Interestingly, Mosseri said that users will only be able to schedule new posts, not replies to existing posts because the company wants to continue to prioritize “real-time conversation.” Though he didn't give any indication of when the tool may roll out more broadly, he said that the feature had been in the works “for months,” so it’s likely Meta plans on releasing it more widely at some point.
The ability to schedule posts will be particularly useful for brands, creators and others who use the service to manage professional accounts. Though there are already third-party tools that enable post scheduling, many require a paid subscription.
Post scheduling is the latest sign that Meta is looking to add more features geared toward brands, businesses and other social media professionals to the 300 million-user app. The service also began testing post analytics earlier this month. Both features could come in handy when Meta decides to flip the switch on advertising for the platform — a change rumored to be coming next month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-is-working-on-scheduled-posts-215537909.html?src=rss
Meta’s Threads app has now grown to 300 million users, with more than 100 million people using the service each day. Mark Zuckerberg announced the new milestone in a post on Threads, saying “Threads strong momentum continues.”
Zuckerberg has repeatedly speculated that Threads has a “good chance” of becoming the company’s next billion-user app. Though it’s still pretty far off of that goal, its growth seems to be accelerating. The app hit 100 million users last fall, and reached 275 million in early November. Elsewhere, Apple revealed that Threads was the second-most downloaded app in 2024, behind shopping app Temu, which took the top spot in Apple’s rankings.
The coming weeks could see some major changes for Threads as Meta looks to capitalize on that growth. The company reportedly has plans to begin experimenting with the first ads for threads in early 2025, according to a recent report in The Information.
Threads isn’t the only app trying to reclaim the “public square” as some longtime users depart the platform now known as X. Bluesky has also seen significant growth of late. The decentralized service nearly doubled its users base in November, and currently has just over 25 million users. (The company has never revealed how many of its users visit the site daily.) Though still much smaller than Threads, Meta seems to have taken inspiration from some of Bluesky’s signature features in recent weeks, including its take on starter packs and custom feeds.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/metas-threads-has-grown-to-300-million-users-234138108.html?src=rss
After a federal court last week denied TikTok’s request to delay a law that could ban the app in the United States, the company is now turning to the Supreme Court in an effort to buy time. The social media company has asked the court to temporarily block the law, currently set to take effect January 19, 2025, it said in a brief statement.
“The Supreme Court has an established record of upholding Americans’ right to free speech,” TikTok wrote in a post on X. “Today, we are asking the Court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the First Amendment.”
The company, which has argued that the law is unconstitutional, lost its initial legal challenge of the law earlier this month. The company then requested a delay of the law’s implementation, saying that President-elect Donal Trump had said he would “save” TikTok. That request was denied on Friday.
In its filing with the Supreme Court, TikTok again referenced Trump's comments. "It would not be in the interest of anyone—not the parties, the public, or the courts—for the Act’s ban on TikTok to take effect only for the new Administration to halt its enforcement hours, days, or even weeks later," it wrote. Trump's inauguration is one day after a ban of the app would take effect.
TikTok is now hoping the Supreme Court will intervene to suspend the law in order to give the company time to make its final legal appeal. Otherwise, app stores and Internet service providers will be forced to begin blocking TikTok next month, making the app inaccessible to its 170 million US users.
Update December 16, 2024, 1:30 PM PT: Updated with details from TikTok's court filing.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-asks-the-supreme-court-to-delay-upcoming-ban-211510659.html?src=rss
TikTok logo displayed on a phone screen is seen in this illustration photo taken in Poland on December 15, 2024. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Snap is changing up its program that allows creators to make money from shortform videos. The company announced a new monetization program that will allow the app’s influencers to make money from Spotlight videos that are one minute or longer by earning a share of their content's ad revenue.
The change will streamline Snap’s monetization features across Spotlight, its in-app TikTok competitor, and Stories, where Snap first launched its revenue sharing feature. It also means the company will end its Spotlight Reward Program, the creator fund-like arrangement that paid creators directly. That program will be discontinued January 30, 2025, with the new monetization arrangement taking effect February 1.
Snap announced the update as TikTok moves closer to an outright ban in the United States. The ByteDance-owned service is currently facing a January 19, 2025, deadline to sell or be banned f the Supreme Court doesn’t intervene. In its announcement, Snap notes that Spotlight viewership is “up 25% year-over-year” and that “there is a unique and growing opportunity for creators to monetize this format in the same way they do with Stories.”
Under the new “unified” program, creators are eligible to earn money from Spotlight videos or Stories if they meet the following requirements:
-Have at least 50,000 followers.
-Post at least 25 times per month to Saved Stories or Spotlight.
-Post to either Spotlight or Public Stories on at least 10 of the last 28 days.
-Achieve one of the following in the last 28 days:
-10 million Snap views
-1 million Spotlight views
-12,000 hours of view time
Some of those metrics are a bit higher than Snap’s previous requirements for Stories, which set the bar at only 10 Story posts a month. But, as TechCrunchnotes, the new threshold is much higher for Spotlight creators, who could previously earn money from the company’s creator fund with only 1,000 followers and 10,000 unique views. The change also pushes creators to make longer content for Spotlight as they can no longer be paid for videos shorter than one minute.
If TikTok does end up being banned, Snap will be one of several platforms trying to lure creators to its product. And while the app is known primarily for its private messaging features, the company says that the number of people posting publicly has “more than tripled” in the last year, and that it will be “evolving and expanding the total rewards available to creators” going forward.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snap-will-expand-ad-revenue-sharing-to-creators-on-spotlight-193029473.html?src=rss
Doha , Qatar - 28 February 2024; A general view of the Snapchat logo during day two of Web Summit Qatar 2024 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center in Doha, Qatar. (Photo By Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile for Web Summit Qatar via Getty Images)
A federal court has denied TikTok’s request for a temporary pause of a law that could result in a ban of the app next month. The ruling, which came in response to an emergency injunction filed by TikTok earlier this week, is the latest legal setback for the company as it tries to avoid a total ban of its app in the United States.
In its request for a delay in the law taking effect, TikTok indicated that it planned to appeal to the Supreme Court. The company’s lawyers also cited the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump may want to take a different approach given some of Trump’s past comments about the app. But in a brief order, a panel of three judges denied that request, writing that such a pause was “unwarranted.”
TikTok’s future now depends on the Supreme Court, though there’s no guarantee the court will agree to hear the case. "As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech,” the company said in a statement. “The voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world will be silenced on January 19th, 2025 unless the TikTok ban is halted."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-loses-its-bid-to-pause-the-law-that-could-ban-it-next-month-004200884.html?src=rss
The logo of TikTok is seen during the China International Textile and Garment Supply Chain Expo in Hangzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province on December 5, 2024. (Photo by AFP) / China OUT (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Reddit is taking down posts linking to the manifesto of the suspected shooter of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The company says it’s enforcing a longstanding policy, but its actions have angered and frustrated some users.
Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old who was arrested and charged with murder earlier this week, has been the subject of widespread fascination online since New York police first released images of the suspected killer. Small excerpts of the 261-word manifesto were published by the New York Times, while journalist Ken Klippenstein obtained and published it in its entirety on his Substack Tuesday. Links to Klippenstein's newsletter containing the manifesto began to disappear off Reddit, with some being removed by individual subreddits' community moderators and some being taken down by Reddit staff.
In a widely viewed post in r/popculturechat, a moderator explained that Reddit had instructed them to remove posts of the manifesto. “We have officially been notified by Reddit that we must adhere strictly to their site-wide rules regarding violent content,” moderator clemthearcher wrote. “Specifically, Reddit has told us that we are not allowed to post Luigi Mangione’s manifesto, even if it is reported neutrally.”
Reddit removed a post linking to the manifesto in r/interestingasfuck, which had nearly 20,000 upvotes, which was later detailed in a lengthy post in r/subredditdrama. Posts were also removed from other subreddits, including r/witchesVsPatriarchy and r/antiwork. Engadget confirmed that the site now automatically blocks posts attempting to link to the Substack post with the manifesto.
Though the move has angered many Redditors, the company says it’s not a new policy. A Reddit spokesperson confirmed that “manifestos related to violent acts” violate the company’s violent content rules, which state:
Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual (including oneself) or a group of people; likewise, do not post content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals. We understand there are sometimes reasons to post violent content (e.g., educational, newsworthy, artistic, satire, documentary, etc.) so if you’re going to post something violent in nature that does not violate these terms, ensure you provide context to the viewer so the reason for posting is clear.
The policy further refers to posts “containing mass killer manifestos or imagery of their violence” an example of violating content (Magione has not been accused of mass murder). The Reddit spokesperson confirmed that Redditors are permitted to discuss the manifesto, including news coverage of it, as long as they don’t violate other aspects of the company’s rules.
While it’s not unusual for social media users to accuse a company of “censorship” amid disputes over content moderation, Reddit’s actions come at a time when many online commentators have expressed sympathy for Mangione, who has become something of a “folk hero” in some corners of the internet. His actions have also put the American healthcare system under renewed scrutiny as people have shared their experiences with insurance company denials in the wake of the shooting.
“I’m sure Reddit’s admins find themselves far more aligned with the class of people like Brian Johnson (sic) than they do with the rest of us," one commenter wrote in response to moderator clemthearcher’s post in r/popculturechat, "so the only violence they care to moderate is that against Brian Johnson (sic) - not misogyny, racism, homophobia, or the rampant greed of our healthcare industry which has killed or caused the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/reddit-is-removing-links-to-luigi-mangiones-manifesto-210421069.html?src=rss
With a TikTok ban in the United States looking more and more likely, a new report from Pew Research on teen social media use underscores just how influential the app is among its youngest users. Not only is it one of the most-used social media services by teens, 57 percent of 13 to 17-year-olds scroll TikTok every single day, Pew reports.
The report underscores the impact a ban would have on teens. Sixty-three percent of teens report “ever” using the app, while 57 percent say they log on at least once a day. TikTok also has the highest percentage of teens reporting that they use the service “almost constantly,” with 16 percent. A little more than a third report checking the app “several times a day.”
Pew Research Center
Pew’s report arrives as TikTok is running out of options to avoid a ban in the United States. The company lost its initial legal challenge to a law requiring that parent company ByteDance sell the app or face a total ban in the country. TikTok has asked the courts for a temporary delay of the law, which is currently scheduled to take effect January 19, while it looks to take its next appeal to the Supreme Court.
Should the ban actually happen, Pew’s report suggests that YouTube and Instagram are best-positioned to benefit. YouTube was once again the most-used app among teens, with 90 percent of 13 to 17 year-olds saying they use the service and 73 percent reporting daily use. Meta’s Instagram, which ranked just below TikTok with 61 percent of teens, is another likely successor, though only half of teens said they check the app daily.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/most-us-teens-still-use-tiktok-daily-as-ban-looms-150002335.html?src=rss
The TikTok app logo is seen in this photo illustration taken in Warsaw, Poland on 18 November, 2024. The Canadian government has ordered the social media giant to wind down its business operations in the country. The decision, announced on Nov. 7, is based on national security concerns tied to TikTok's Chinese ownership and follows a year-long review of the app's Canadian operations. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Video creators on Instagram now have a new way to test out content. The app is introducing “trial Reels,” which allows creators to publish Reels that bypass their followers’ feeds and are instead recommended to non-followers.
Given that so many Instagram creators complain about Meta not showing their content to their followers, this may seem like an odd feature. But in a blog post, the company said that trial Reels was created in direct response to feedback from creators who “feel nervous” about posting videos that may not perform well. Meta said the new feature is meant to make it easier for creators to experiment with different genres and “easily get a gut check on how your content might perform.”
Now, creators will be able to select a “trial” toggle before publishing a video. These Reels won’t show up on a creator’s grid and will be recommended to accounts that aren’t followers (Meta notes that it’s impossible to guarantee a follower won’t come across a particular video somewhere else in the app, like their DMs.)
After 24 hours, creators will be able to revisit the video and see metrics about how it performed, including the total number of views, shares, likes and comments. While Meta says that this type of “trial” content can take longer to gain traction than other posts since it won’t be shown to an account’s followers, it could still be useful for creators that want to post in a more low-pressure format.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-will-let-video-creators-make-trial-reels-for-non-followers-160016725.html?src=rss
TikTok is beginning its last-ditch legal challenge to avoid a ban in the United States. The company filed an emergency injunction in federal court Monday, asking for a delay in the law that would ban the app from taking effect so it could have time to mount a Supreme Court challenge.
The new court filing comes just three days after the company lost its initial court challenge to the law, currently set to take effect January 19, 2025, that requires app stores and internet providers to block TikTok if ByteDance doesn’t sell the app. In their ruling, a panel of three appeals court judges wrote that the US government had “persuasive national security justifications that apply specifically to the platform that TikTok operates.”
TikTok has argued the law is unconstitutional and that it would unjustly hurt creators and businesses that rely on its service. “Estimates show that small businesses on TikTok would lose more than $1 billion in revenue and creators would suffer almost $300 million in lost earnings in just one month unless the TikTok Ban is halted,” TikTok said in a statement Monday.
In its latest filing, TikTok notes that President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “save” the app and that temporarily halting the law would allow “the incoming Administration to evaluate this matter.” Right now, the law is slated to take effect the day before Trump’s inauguration.
The company requested a decision by December 16. Even if the injunction isn’t granted, it’s still not quite the end of the line for the company’s legal challenges. If the Supreme Court ends up taking on the case, TikTok would have another opportunity to try to get the law overturned.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-asks-court-to-delay-the-law-that-would-ban-its-app-next-month-192427139.html?src=rss
Earlier this year Reddit cracked down on AI companies and some major search engines, saying that companies would not be allowed to scrape its site unless they struck licensing deals with the company. Now, the “front page of the internet” is introducing its own AI-powered search feature.
Called “Reddit Answers,” the feature provides summaries of conversations and posts from across the site in a “conversational interface.” Relying on content from all public, SFW subreddits, the goal is for Reddit to be able to directly provide relevant results for queries that people may otherwise find via Google searches, where it’s become increasingly common to append “Reddit” to queries.
While that sounds a lot like a Reddit-based search engine, VP of product Serkan Piantino says that Reddit Answers isn’t necessarily trying to come up with a singular answer the way you might expect with a Google search. Instead, the tools surfaced a handful of bullet points pulled directly from relevant threads on Reddit. Those conversations are linked directly in the interface, as are relevant subreddits where users can dive deeper into similar topics. “A big theme is that it does sort of guide you towards the content itself, instead of trying to represent an answer on its own,” Piantino tells Engadget.
Reddit
Reddit gave me early access to the feature and the current version looks a bit like Meta’s AI search suggestions in Instagram, with a few dozen suggested queries and accompanying emoji. The responses, however, are detailed and link directly to highly-upvoted comments from various subreddits where Redditors have previously weighed in on similar topics. That’s helpful because some of the results may not make sense without the broader context from the thread (like in the answer screenshotted adobe that references an image of Price Harry).
I also noticed that many of Reddit’s built-in suggestions centered around product questions, like “best robot vacuum” or “best vitamin C serum.” While that’s not necessarily surprising — many people already turn to Reddit forums for buying advice — it also raises questions about whether the company could potentially monetize the new search feature. “It's something that we've thought about at a high level, but we have no immediate plans for monetization,” Piantino said when I asked him about it.
For now, he said, the feature is still in beta and will be rolling out slowly. As of today, Reddit Answers is making its way to a “limited number” of users in the US on web and iOS, with a broader rollout expected sometime next year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/reddit-introduces-ai-powered-reddit-answers-search-feature-140028655.html?src=rss
Meta’s aggressive push to make its AI assistant a ubiquitous presence in its apps continues to pay off. Meta AI is on the verge of passing its next major milestone, with “nearly” 600 million monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg shared in an update. Meta AI, which debuted last fall, passed 500 million users back in October.
The update came alongside the release of Meta’s latest Llama 3.3 70B model. According to Meta, the latest text model has “similar performance to the Llama 3.1 405B model,” but comes “at a fraction of the cost.” Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta posted a chart on X that showed Llama 3.3 scored higher on several benchmarks compared with Google’s Gemini Pro 1.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-4o.
Introducing Llama 3.3 – a new 70B model that delivers the performance of our 405B model but is easier & more cost-efficient to run. By leveraging the latest advancements in post-training techniques including online preference optimization, this model improves core performance at… pic.twitter.com/6oQ7b3Yuzc
Zuckerberg also briefly teased the next major release. “The next stop is Llama 4,” Zuckerberg said in a video shared on Instagram, after noting that the 3.3 release was the “last big AI update of the year.” Zuckerberg has so far has been fairly tight-lipped about what’s in store for Llama 4, though he's offered some hints. The CEO said earlier this year that the model was being trained on a cluster of more than 100,000 H100s with an expected release of one of the “smaller” Llama 4 models “sometime early next year.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-ai-has-nearly-600-million-monthly-users-184512693.html?src=rss
ANKARA, TURKIYE - OCTOBER 2: A phone screen displaying the logo of 'Meta' is seen in Ankara, Turkiye on October 2, 2024. (Photo by Didem Mente/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Threads’ latest test could help creators and others understand more about how their posts are performing on the platform. The company is testing an expanded version of its analytics feature, which will show users stats for specific posts, Adam Mosseri said in an update.
Up to now, Threads has had an “insights” feature, but it showed aggregated stats for all posts, so it was hard to discern which posts were performing well. Now, insights will be able to surface detailed metrics around specific posts, including views and interactions. It will also break down performance among followers and non-followers.
“Now that your posts will be shown to more people who follow you, it’s especially important to understand what’s resonating with your existing audience,” Mosseri wrote. Threads recently updated its highly criticized “for you” algorithm to surface more posts from accounts you follow, rather than random unconnected accounts.
The change could also address criticism from creators on Threads, who have said they often don’t understand how the app’s algorithm works. More detailed analytics could also help Meta entice more brands to the app as the company reportedly is gearing up to begin running ads on the service as soon as next month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-is-testing-post-analytics-203548697.html?src=rss
Meta is expanding its feature that helps users avoid “Facebook jail.” Earlier this year, the company began allowing Facebook creators to complete in-app “educational training” for first-time rule violations in order to avoid strikes on their accounts. Now, the company is expanding the feature to all Facebook users and opening it up to creators on Instagram.
As Engadget noted back in August, the idea of the feature is a bit like going to traffic school. People who violate one of the company’s rules for the first time will have the option to complete a “a short educational program” in Facebook or Instagram’s app in order to avoid a “strike” on their account and any restrictions that may come with it.
Users will be able to take advantage of the process once in a 12-month period for most first-time offenses. The process to “remove the warning” on an account will be available to anyone on Facebook, as well as creators on Instagram (a broader rollout for Instagram is expected “soon,” according to the company.) Meta won’t allow people to remove strikes for more “serious” offenses, including posts about sexual exploitation or drug sales.
Meta has described the strike-removal feature as part of its effort to reform its penalty system, which has long been frustrating and confusing for users who often get caught up in it unintentionally. In a blog post, Meta said that the in-app education features have already shown some signs of success with Facebook creators. “What we’ve already seen from our initial launch this summer has been promising — those who successfully removed their first strikes for violating a policy were more likely to say they understood Facebook’s policy decisions and became less likely to violate that policy again,” the company said.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-expands-its-strike-removal-feature-to-instagram-and-all-facebook-users-170056830.html?src=rss
Meta is taking another important step toward making Threads interoperable with the fediverse. The app now allows users to follow accounts from Mastodon and other fediverse apps directly from Threads, Mark Zuckerberg said in an update.
Since the early days of Threads, Meta has promised to bake-in support for ActivityPub, the open-source protocol that powers Mastodon and other decentralized services that make up “the fediverse.” Eventually, the goal is for Threads users to be able to seamlessly interact with other users on Mastodon or other sites that use ActivityPub.
With the latest change, Threads users who have previously opted into fediverse sharing in the app will now be able to view profiles and follow accounts from Mastodon and other services directly in Threads. The update is a significant move toward making Threads compatible with the wider Activity Pub ecosystem.
That said, there are still some significant limitations to Threads’ fediverse support. There’s currently no way to search for users on other servers, so the only way to find those accounts is to look for fediverse accounts that have followed you already or otherwise interacted with one of your posts.
Users are also still unable to reply to posts that originate on Mastodon or other ActivityPub services, so the interactions are still one way — at least for now. And an in-app disclaimer from Meta notes that fediverse sharing is still a beta feature and that some posts from other servers “may not be visible” in Threads. Adam Mosseri, however, said that “more interop features are on the way,” so hopefully fediverse enthusiasts won’t have long to wait to see deeper integrations.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-now-allows-users-to-follow-fediverse-accounts-directly-in-its-app-183517197.html?src=rss
Meta has confirmed its plans to use nuclear power to fuel US data centers. The company announced that it’s accepting proposals from nuclear energy developers to work on the project, with the goal of adding between one and four gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity “starting in the early 2030s.”
The company’s request for proposals states that Meta is seeking partners that have experience with “either Small Modular Reactors (SMR) or larger nuclear reactors.” Axios reports that the company is “geographically agnostic” about the location of potential nuclear sites. The company previously had plans to build a nuclear-powered data center, The Financial Timesreported earlier this year, but the plans were scuttled after the discovery of a rare species of bees near the site.
“As new innovations bring impactful technological advancements across sectors and support economic growth, we believe that nuclear energy can help provide firm, baseload power to support the growth needs of the electric grids that power both our data centers (the physical infrastructure on which Meta’s platforms operate) as well as the communities around them,” the company wrote in a statement.
Meta isn’t the only major tech company looking to nuclear power to help power its AI ambitions. Google recently announced a deal to build multiple reactors in the US, with the goal of adding 500 megawatts of nuclear power from SMRs. Microsoft also said this year it wants to revive the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to fuel its AI development.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-wants-to-use-nuclear-power-for-its-data-centers-225051671.html?src=rss
FILE - A car passes Facebook's new Meta logo on a sign at the company headquarters on Oct. 28, 2021, in Menlo Park, Calif. Big tech platforms say they are working hard to address misinformation about voting and elections ahead of the November 2022 midterms, but a look at their sites shows they are still struggling to contend with false claims from 2020. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File)
AI-generated content played a much smaller role in global election misinformation than what many officials and researchers had feared, according to a new analysis from Meta. In an update on its efforts to safeguard dozens of elections in 2024, the company said that AI content made up only a fraction of election-related misinformation that was caught and labeled by its fact checkers.
“During the election period in the major elections listed above, ratings on AI content related to elections, politics and social topics represented less than 1% of all fact-checked misinformation,” the company shared in a blog post, referring to elections in the US, UK, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, France, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the EU’s Parliamentary elections.
The update comes after numerous government officials and researchers for months raised the alarm about the role generative AI could play in supercharging election misinformation in a year when more than 2 billion people were expected to go to the polls. But those fears largely did not play out — at least on Meta’s platforms — according to the company’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg.
“People were understandably concerned about the potential impact that generative AI would have on the forthcoming elections during the course of this year, and there were all sorts of warnings about the potential risks of things like widespread deepfakes and AI-enabled disinformation campaigns,” Clegg said during a briefing with reporters. “From what we've monitored across our services, it seems these risks did not materialize in a significant way, and that any such impact was modest and limited in scope.”
Meta didn’t elaborate on just how much election-related AI content its fact checkers caught in the run-up to major elections. The company sees billions of pieces of content every day, so even small percentages can add up to a large number of posts. Clegg did, however, credit Meta’s policies, including its expansion of AI labeling earlier this year, following criticism from the Oversight Board. He noted that Meta’s own AI image generator blocked 590,000 requests to create images of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, JD Vance and Tim Walz in the month leading up to election day in the US.
At the same time, Meta has increasingly taken steps to distance itself from politics altogether, as well as some past efforts to police misinformation. The company changed users’ default settings on Instagram and Threads to stop recommending political content, and has de-prioritized news on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has said he regrets the way the company handled some of its misinformation policies during the pandemic.
Looking ahead, Clegg said Meta is still trying to strike the right balance between enforcing its rules and enabling free expression. “We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of free expression,” he said.” I think we also now want to really redouble our efforts to improve the precision and accuracy with which we act.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-says-ai-generated-content-was-less-than-1-precent-of-election-misinformation-130042422.html?src=rss
Bluesky is bigger than ever. But as the upstart social media service surges, the platform is facing some growing pains. Among them: The influx of new users has opened up new opportunities for scammers and impersonators hoping to capitalize on the attention — and Bluesky’s lack of a conventional verification system.
A recent analysis by Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security Trust and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech found that 44 percent of the top 100 most-followed accounts on Bluesky had at least one “doppelganger,” with most looking like “cheap knock-offs of the bigger account, down to the same bio and profile picture,” Mantzarlis wrote in his newsletterFaked Up.
Unlike many of its counterparts, which offer checkmarks and official badges to government officials, celebrities and other high profile accounts, Bluesky has a more hands-off approach to verification. Instead of proactively verifying notable accounts itself, the company encourages users to use a custom domain name as their handle in order to “self-verify.”
For example, my employer Engadget currently has the Bluesky handle engadget.bsky.social. But if we wanted to “verify” our account, we could opt to change it to Engadget.com. Some media organizations, like The New York Times, Bloomberg and The Onion have done this for their official accounts. Individuals are also able to verify by using a personal website.
But, the process is more complicated than simply changing your handle. It also requires entities to add a string of text to the DNS record associated with their domain. While in some ways it’s a clever solution to verification — only the actual owner of a website would be able to access the DNS record for a domain — it also has a number of drawbacks. It’s a manual process that’s not readily accessible to everyone who might wish to be verified. (Bluesky does sell custom domains for users who don’t already have one.)
Verification is even more complex for those wishing to verify multiple accounts associated with the same domain, which may explain why some outlets, like The New York Times and NPR have custom handles, but don’t extend that verification to their reporters on Bluesky. Even Bluesky’s own tutorial suggests organizations seek assistance from their IT departments.
There are other issues. Once you change your handle to match a domain you own, your old alias (engadget.bksy.social, for instance) becomes available again. So you’ll either need to set up a new account to “squat” on your old handle, or risk an impersonator scooping it up. And even if you add a custom domain, it doesn’t offer foolproof protection against impersonation. A dedicated scammer could use a lookalike domain and “verify” an imposter account.
Both accounts belong to AOC, but only the top one is "verified" under Bluesky's current system.
Screenshot via Bluesky
To make things more confusing, Bluesky itself gives no indication, other than the handle name, that an account has been “verified.” Verified accounts don’t have a visual indicator — like a check or a badge — that differentiates them from unverified ones,
To combat this, some Bluesky users are coming up with their own makeshift workarounds. Hunter Walker, an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo and early Bluesky user, has been proactively verifying journalists, celebrities and other high-profile accounts himself. So far, he’s verified more than 330 people, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Flavor Flav, Mark Cuban and Barbra Streisand.
“I have a pretty high standard for journalism and reporting, and everything I say, I like to triple check the sources,” Walker tells Engadget. “I like to make sure it's confirmed. And it became apparent to me, participating in Bluesky, that on a basic level, nothing was confirmed.”
Walker estimates he’s spent about 16 hours over the last couple weeks verifying accounts. He has different methods depending on the user, but it often involves communicating with someone from another account officially linked to them, like a company email address. For celebrities, their representatives are often able to confirm their official Bluesky handles.
“I’ve caught so many scammers and imposters, and it's not always who you would expect,” Walker says. “Regular journalists sometimes have three or four imposters.” He says he’s been inundated with requests for his unofficial verification, and notes that a number of people he’s verified also use a custom domain. “They want something else … because a domain is not verification of identity.”
Walker maintains “starter packs” of journalists and other prominent accounts he’s verified. Recently, he took it a step further, working with another user to create a custom labeling service that will append different emojis to accounts he’s verified to make his “verification” more prominent. Users who subscribe to the service will see a 😎 next to celebrities and public figures, and a 🌐 next to journalists.
The labeling service that uses emojis to show accounts verified by Walker.
Screenshot via Bluesky
While these kinds of efforts can act as a stopgap, Walker won’t be able to verify every notable account on Bluesky himself. He’s suggested that other communities, like university researchers, could undertake a similar ad hoc verification effort. But, without help from Bluesky or a third-party identity service, he expects impersonation to remain an issue.
And widespread impersonation can often lead to bigger problems for a platform like Bluesky. “Sloppy verification is an early signal of broader deception and catnip for organized disinformation actors,” Cornell Tech’s Mantzarlis wrote, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris “at one point had 20 impersonator accounts” on Bluesky even though she’s never had an official presence on the platform.
On its part, Bluesky has acknowledged that impersonation is an issue. In an update this week, the company said it had seen “a predictable uptick in harmful content” that coincided with its recent growth. In a statement to Engadget, Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said the company had “quadrupled” its moderation team, which would help ensure reports of impersonation are handled more quickly. Liu also said that Bluesky was working on “easier visual signals we could use for verification so it's a better user experience,” though it’s not yet clear what form that might take.
But Bluesky, which currently has just 20 full-time employees, seems reluctant to consider other approaches to verification outside of custom domains. “We've been working behind the scenes with official organizations and high-profile individuals like celebrities and elected officials to get their accounts verified on Bluesky with their website,” Liu said. “With domains as verification, we want to put the tools of verification in each org's hands, instead of making Bluesky the company the sole arbiter of who deserves to be verified on the network.”
Bluesky’s hesitation to play the role of verifier is in many ways understandable. Verification has a long and messy history on other platforms. On Twitter, a symbol that was originally created to fight impersonators quickly morphed into a sometimes divisive status symbol. On Instagram, verification has often been exploited by scammers. Now, both companies allow users to buy blue checkmarks, though both platforms also proactively verify certain types of accounts, like those belonging to government officials.
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, however, has signaled that she’s potentially open to alternate approaches to verification. In a livestream on Twitch this week, she said the company “might at some point” become a “verification provider.” TechCrunch, which reported the remarks, said that her comments suggested a future system in which there are multiple “providers” of verification. Graber added that she’s “not sure when” such a scenario would play out.
Walker, who repeated several times his firm belief that “Bluesky has the juice,” hopes that his verification project might be able to nudge Bluesky to take a different approach. “I'm really hoping that people pay attention to the question of trust and the question of identity. The cool thing about the open source nature of it all, is we have a chance to build things on this and make it how we want it.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-has-a-verification-problem-190047733.html?src=rss
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 22: In this photo illustration, the Bluesky social media platform logo is displayed on an iPhone on November 22, 2024 in London, England. The social media app Bluesky has seen its user base increase by over 5.5 million since the U.S. Presidential elections as some people leave rival X, which is owned by Elon Musk. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
Meta’s Threads is pushing out another test that could address a major long-running complaint about the service. The company is experimenting with allowing users to set the non-algorithmic “following” feed as the default, Mark Zuckerberg shared in a post.
The change, according to Zuckerberg, will allow users to select any feed as their default, including the newly announced custom feeds. But longtime Threads users will likely be relieved to finally have the ability to make “following” their default view. Up until now, Meta has pushed users to its “for you” algorithmic feed, which has long been criticized for its problems with engagement bait and its uncanny ability to push a mix of bizarre posts from total strangers to the top of users’ feeds
As part of the test, Meta will also make the ability to change your feed “more visible” in the app. Zuckerberg didn’t share how many users would be part of the test or how long it might take for the feature to become official. “Interested to see how and if people use this,” he wrote.
The update is the latest in a series of changes Meta has pushed over the last couple of weeks as it has faced surging growth from rival Bluesky. Bluesky, which has seen an influx of new users since the election, defaults to a feed of content from accounts you follow and doesn’t have a centralized algorithmic feed, though it’s had custom feeds for more than a year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-latest-test-will-finally-let-you-make-the-following-feed-the-default-180857332.html?src=rss
POLAND - 2024/04/16: In this photo illustration, a Threads logo is displayed on a smartphone with a META symbol in the background. (Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
