Media Perception Of Social Workers

It’s been more than two years since Elon Musk officially took over as the owner of Twitter — now X — and while a lot of platforms rushed in to try and be the next big microblogging service, many haven’t survived. Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky have all proven to be viable alternatives, but places like Pebble (formerly T2) and Post News didn’t make it. Threads is perhaps the likely successor, having reached 275 million monthly users as of October 2024, and it seems committed to fediverse integration by building features around the ActivityPub protocol. Bluesky, which relies on its own decentralized AT Protocol for social networking, continues to grow and saw a surge of users after the 2024 election, though with somewhere north of 14.5 million use rs , it’s still well behind Threads. Mastodon, which also uses the ActivityPub protocol, was already well-established by the time Musk bought Twitter but has struggled to grow its active user ba...

Nearly everyone seems to be suddenly freaking out about the rise of DeepSeek. Meta isn’t worried, though. That was CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s message to investors during his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. During the Q&A portion of the call with Wall Street analysts, Zuckerberg fielded multiple questions about DeepSeek’s impressive AI models and what the implications are for Meta’s AI strategy. He said that what DeepSeek was able to accomplish with relatively little money has “only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing to be focused on.” Zuckerberg noted that “there’s a number of novel things they did we’re still digesting” and that Meta plans to implement DeepSeek’s “advancements” into Llama. DeepSeek caused a massive sell-off in AI stocks due to fears that models will no longer need as much computing power. Zuckerberg tried to dispel concerns that the billions of dollars he’s spending on GPUs will go to waste: “I continue to think ...

Meta is making sweeping changes to its content moderation policies , including abandoning third-party fact-checks in favor of X’s crowd-sourced “Community Notes” approach and loosening restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity. Under the updated Hateful Conduct policy, for example, calling gay and trans people “mentally ill” is now allowed, while an explicit ban on referring to women as “household objects” has been removed . Policy chief Joel Kaplan says that in pursuit of “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes,” Meta will focus more on preventing overenforcement of its content policies and less on mediating potentially harmful — but technically legal — discussions on its platform. The company is also ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement appeals to many of the new administration’s talking points . Zuckerberg, who has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago multiple times since the election and attended the inauguration, ha...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta is widely launching the ability for its AI chatbot to “remember” certain details about you, such as your dietary preferences or your interests, the company said in a blog post on Monday . It will then use your past conversations, in addition to details from Facebook and Instagram accounts, to provide more relevant recommendations. Meta first started rolling out a memory feature for its AI chatbot last year, but now it will be available across Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp on iOS and Android in the US and Canada. Though you can tell Meta AI to remember certain things, like that you love traveling, it will also “pick up important details based on context.” For example, if Meta AI provides you with a recipe that contains meat, and you respond that you’re vegan, the chatbot will adjust its future responses to account for your preference. Image: Meta Along with these “memories,” Meta AI on Fa...

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge Earlier this week, several posts on the Instagram page of Aid Access, an abortion pill provider, were inaccessible to the public. Some images were blurred out, with no option to click through and view the post. Others appeared simply as a gray square with nondescript alt text, as if the image didn’t load. Aid Access connects patients with doctors who provide abortion pills via telehealth appointments, and the posts that were blocked from being viewed included instructions for performing at-home abortions using pills. The issues on Instagram — first reported by Jessica Valenti — also reportedly made it difficult to find the Aid Access account using the app’s search function. By Thursday evening, Meta had restored a handful of Aid Access posts, though some appear to still be missing. This latest incident is just another example of how Meta has restricted abortion information online for years. It also comes in the midd...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is bringing back one of its more chaotic features , now reworked for the short-form video era. A new tab in the Reels feed will serve up videos that a user’s friends have liked or added commentary to, Instagram leader Adam Mosseri announced in a video message today. Users will be able to see which friends have liked a video — a callback to the old Instagram “activity” feed that was killed in 2019. “We want Instagram to not only be a place where you consume entertaining content, but one where you connect over that content with friends,” Mosseri says. In the new feed, you’ll be able to see which friends have liked a post and which have left a temporary “note” on a Reel. Image: Meta Be careful what you like, I guess? That sounds nice in a ideal world, but given the way that the previous “activity” feed was scrutinized, I’m willing to bet a lot of users actually don’t want their frien...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is taking advantage of TikTok’s absence from app stores by offering creators large cash bonuses to exclusively post Reels on the platform, according to a report from The Information . The bonuses reportedly range from $10,000 to $50,000 per month and require creators to post their short-form videos on Instagram before publishing them to other platforms, like TikTok. In a statement to The Verge , Meta spokesperson Paige Cohen confirmed that the company has launched a Breakthrough Bonus program that lets TikTok creators earn up to $5,000 over three months for posting Reels to Facebook and Instagram. “Over the coming months, we’ll also offer some TikTok creators content deals to help grow their communities on Instagram and Facebook,” Cohen said. Meta has boosted payouts for creators to compete with TikTok in the past — but the big bonuses don’t seem to last. In 2021, Instagram launched a Reels bonus program , bu...

Instagram’s logo for Edits. | Image: Meta Instagram head Adam Mosseri just announced a video editing app called Edits. Mosseri said the app is meant to rival CapCut, a video editing app that went offline along with TikTok . Edits is available for preorder on the iOS App Store . “There’s a lot going on right now, but no matter what happens, it’s our job to provide the best possible tools for creators,” Mosseri said in a video posted to Instagram. He goes on to describe the app: Edits is more than a video editing app; it’s a full suite of creative tools. There will be a dedicated tab for inspiration, another for keeping track of early ideas, a much higher-quality camera (which I used to record this video), all the editing tools you’d expect, the ability to share drafts with friends and other creators, and — if you decide to share your videos on Instagram — powerful insights into how those videos perform. Image: Meta This is what Edit...

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram will now let you upload Reels that are up to 3 minutes long, doubling the 90-second limit the platform had in place before, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced today . He credits today’s change to users’ feedback saying that the 90 seconds “is just too short.” That’s a big turnaround for Mosseri, who said in July last year that the platform wouldn’t pursue longform videos because it could compromise the platform’s “core identity to connect people with friends.” It also comes as TikTok, which started allowing 3-minute videos in 2021 , is gearing up to go dark on Sunday in response to an imminent US ban. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) Instagram has been slow to bump the length of Reels — it’s been more than two years since it started allowing minute-and-a-half videos. The company has tested extending the limit to as much as 10 ...

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram’s profile grids will display content as rectangles instead of squares as part of a change rolling out “over the weekend,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in an Instagram Story on Friday. “I know some of you really like your squares. And square photos are sort of the heritage of Instagram. But at this point, most of what’s uploaded, both photos and videos, are vertical in their orientation,” Mosseri said. It’s a “bummer to overly crop them,” he added. Mosseri recognizes that the change might be a “bit of a pain,” but he thinks that it’s a “transitional” pain. “I think people will, over the long run, be excited that more of their photos and more of their videos are actually visible as intended in the profile as opposed to aggressively cropped,” Mosseri said. Mosseri’s justification is pretty similar to what he said in August when Instagram confirmed it was conducting a “limited test” of the change . Insta...

Laura Normand / The Verge Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are ditching third-party fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes program inspired by X, according to an announcement penned by Meta’s new Trump-friendly policy chief Joel Kaplan . Meta is also moving its trust and safety teams from California to Texas. “We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see.” Meta said. “We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.” The Community Notes feature will first be rolled out in the US “over the next couple of months” according to Meta, and will display an unobtrusive label indicating that there is additional information available ...