Posts

The vertical video takeover is here

Image
This is The Stepback , a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things vertical video, follow David Pierce . The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here . How it started For a while, every social and media platform had its own identity. YouTube was for clips of TV shows and movies, and the home of so many members of a burgeoning creator community. Instagram was mostly pictures. Netflix was trying to be the on-demand HBO. Facebook was about friends. Twitter was about news. Snapchat was a messaging app. All these apps did have one important … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here
Post a Comment
Read more

Instagram will let users endlessly swap the audio on old posts

Image
There's a symbiotic - and sometimes frustrating - relationship between social media sites and the creators that depend on them. Platforms need influencers' and creators' content to keep consumers on their apps; the creators, in turn, need to be able to reach those audiences to justify creating their content in the first place. Creators want a seamless way to make and disseminate their content while being able to make money; audiences want a bottomless feed of entertaining things to look at. And platforms need to keep both parties relatively happy. Over the last few months, Instagram has added a slew of features that are helpful for creator … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here
Post a Comment
Read more

Instagram and Facebook will likely require a redesign after EU rules they’re ‘addictive’

Image
Meta is in breach of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), a preliminary investigation has found, over the "addictive" design of Instagram and Facebook. It's likely to be forced to redesign both apps and could face a fine of up to $12 billion. The European Commission said Meta "did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults." It singled out features like personalized recommendations, autoplay, and infinite scroll, arguing that they "fuel the user's urge to keep scrolling and shift the brain into 'autopilot mode.'" The report also criticizes th … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here
Post a Comment
Read more

Instagram’s Adam Mosseri: If you don’t like AI, ‘then you shouldn’t have it in your feed’

Image
Though Instagram head Adam Mosseri doesn't want to filter out AI content on the platform, he argues that you "shouldn't have it in your feed" if you don't like it. "I don't think we should filter out AI content," Mosseri said during an interview on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast . "I think we should let you know if content is AI content or not." At the same time, Mosseri seems to be drawing a distinction between content-based sorting and banning AI from the platform entirely. In fact, he believes people who love AI content "should be able to have a feed that's just AI town." Instagram, like many other platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, and Fac … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here
Post a Comment
Read more

Meta turns off the Instagram feature that let users make AI deepfakes of public accounts

Image
Following significant backlash, Meta is turning off the feature it announced this week that let users generate AI images based on content from public Instagram accounts just by tagging them. The feature, as originally set up, meant that content from any public Instagram account could be used in AI creations without the account owner's permission. "Earlier this week, we announced that one way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by @-mentioning public Instagram accounts that they want to reference," Meta says in an update to a blog post about its new Muse Image AI model. "Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give pe … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here
Post a Comment
Read more

Meta’s new Muse Image model can pull other Instagram users into AI photos

Image
Meta is launching the first AI image generation model made by its Superintelligence Labs division. The Muse Image model now powers the image-making tools across the Meta AI app, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and it's coming soon to Facebook and Messenger, according to an announcement on Tuesday . It's part of the growing Muse family of AI models that replace Meta's Llama lineup. Alexandr Wang, who Meta hired to head up its Superintelligence Labs last year, says on Threads that Muse Image is "agentic," meaning it works with its Muse Spark large language model "to reason through your prompt, search the web, and plan before it generates." Meta is al … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here
Post a Comment
Read more

Instagram wants to monopolize your attention

Image
This week, Instagram launched a series of new features for its smart TV app that are all designed to get people to spend more time on the platform through the biggest screens in their homes. In addition to vertical Reels , Instagram for TV - which is currently available for Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and Samsung Smart TVs - users can now watch disappearing Stories and horizontal videos with aspect ratios similar to what you typically see on YouTube. And soon, Instagram will make a big push for longform, episodic content and TV-focused "live creator experiences." This foray into the TV space feels very different from the Meta-owned company's … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here
Post a Comment
Read more