Action has been taken by a group of cross-party US lawmakers to introduce legislation against ByteDance which would force the company to divest its dominant social media platform TikTok or risk a ban in the United States.

The move is driven by fears over national security concerns emanating from TikTok’s Chinese ownership and its links to the Beijing government. It follows previous efforts in Congress to address perceived risks from the video-hosting app with a ruling in late 2022 banning federal employees from using the platform on government-issued devices.

Now, Mike Gallagher, Republican chair of the House of Representatives China select committee has joined with leading Democrat figure, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi to face down ByteDance.

“This is my message to TikTok, break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users,” Gallagher stated.

“America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States.”

What is the response to the US action against TikTok?

If approved, the bill would instruct the Chinese tech giant to divest TikTok within 165 days, otherwise, action could be taken to make it unlawful for Apple, Google and other app store providers to offer it to the market.

The seriousness of the confrontation is underlined by the 170 million active users of the app in the US, but ByteDance has slammed the proposed legislation.

“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it,” a company spokesperson said on Tuesday.

“This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”

Conversely, a White House National Security Council spokesperson welcomed the bill as “an important and welcome step” commenting that the Biden administration would work together with Congress “to further strengthen this legislation and put it on the strongest possible legal footing.”

Whether anything meaningful comes to fruition in the coming weeks and months remains to be seen in what is election season in the states, and is further clouded by President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign joining TikTok last month.

Image credit: Ideogram

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CrowdTangle has confirmed that, despite its widespread use by academic researchers, journalists, and others, Meta will be phasing out the data tool.

The public insights tool from the social media giant made it easy to follow, analyze, and report on what’s happening with public content on online networking platforms.

However, Meta has said it would decommission it by August 14, 2024, instead replacing it with a system called the Meta Content Library.

The firm confirmed to ReadWrite that the five-month notice period “should give people time to complete any current projects they are using it for and, if eligible, to get up to speed with our new research tools, Meta Content Library and API, or others that serve their needs.”

The company added that researchers will be able to apply for access to the tools with the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. It aims to provide near real-time public content from Facebook and Instagram. However, it did not elaborate on whether news outlets will get access to the feature.

According to CrowdTangle’s website, news organizations can only continue to use Insights within Meta’s Business Suite, and they may choose to partner with third-parties who have social listening capabilities built on top of Meta’s APIs.

The platform explained that it was originally created to help organize social causes on Facebook, while showcasing what social content overperformed on Facebook Pages.

In 2019, CrowdTangle then added research, academic and fact-checking partners, and built tools to help these partners study how public content spreads across Facebook and Instagram.

Citing the company, the Wall Street Journal said that Meta has already started taking applications for its new content library and that it would be an upgrade over its previous version.

Meta facing backlash from news outlets

Meta announced that the Facebook News tab will be removed for U.S. and Australian users earlier this month. The section was already shut down last year in the UK, France, and Germany as the company shifted its focus towards providing content that people “want to see more of on the platform.”

However, the Australian government threatened action against Meta, after the California-based social media company said it would stop paying local media companies this year for using their content.

It is also set to stop promoting political content across the company’s social apps, adding that AI would play their part in considering “personalized signals, like survey responses, that help us understand what is informative, meaningful, or worth your time” on Facebook.

In a statement made of Thurday (March 14), the company pledged that it would “continue to gather feedback from researchers and add new features and data sets over time.”

Featured image: Canva

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Elon Musk has abruptly pulled the plug on Don Lemon’s upcoming talk show on the X platform, after a tense inaugural interview between the former CNN anchor and the billionaire.

Lemon said Musk texted him to say “contract terminated”. He then shared a post and a video on X discussing the interview and the outcome. “Elon Musk is mad at me,” he said. “His commitment to a global town square where all questions can be asked and all ideas can be shared seems not to include questions of him from people like me,” he elaborated.

Elon Musk canceled #TheDonLemonShow

Watch on YouTube and listen everywhere on Monday March 18. pic.twitter.com/AAhnvcY0ny

— Don Lemon (@donlemon) March 13, 2024

“Throughout our conversation, I kept reiterating to him that although it was tense at times, I thought it was good for people to see and hear our exchange, and that they would learn from our conversation,” he said in the video.

Why did Elon Musk cancel the Don Lemon show on X?

Musk, who owns X, posted on the site about the decision, and the company’s official account stated: “after careful consideration, X decided not to enter into a commercial partnership with the show.”

When pressed for a specific reason, the 52-year-old himself stated that he believed Lemon was taking the wrong approach.

“His approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media’, which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying. And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity. All this said, Lemon/Zucker are of course welcome to build their viewership on this platform along with everyone else,” said his post.

He clarified that Don Lemon is welcome to share and host the show on X, but there will be no commercial agreement between the entities.

is welcome to monetize on this platform, just like everyone else.

What we aren’t going to do is guarantee minimum payments to him, as he was demanding, which would be going beyond everyone else!

Unfortunately, all wants to do is rehash the dying CNN business model “but…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024

The talk show was announced in January as part of a way to encourage advertising revenue back to X after significant ad revenue losses. The interview with Elon was intended to be the first episode of the new venture. Don Lemon has stated that the show will be available across platforms including YouTube and X on Monday, March 18, and will include the interview with Musk, despite the dissolution of the partnership.

With news that X is coming to TVs, this seems like a serious blow to Musk’s plans to expand the platform.

Featured Image: midjourney

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As US lawmakers approve a bill that could see TikTok banned, China warns that such a ban would “come back to bite” America.

March 13 saw the House of Representatives voting on a bill that could result in TikTok being banned in the US within six months, unless the Chinese-owned app severs its ties with China. The US is the country with the largest TikTok audience by far as it stands, with almost 150 million users engaging with the popular social video platform – a substantial audience that the company, Bytedance, will not want to lose.

Concern around TikTok from US officials has been a long-standing issue, with fears around data protection and child safety on the app at the forefront. However, Bytedance has always defended the app’s safety regulations.

What happens next with the TikTok bill?

The bill, under the official name of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support. It will now head to the Senate and, if it has enough support there, go on to President Joe Biden in the White House to sign it into law.

Before the House of Representatives vote, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin maintains that the US has “never found evidence that TikTok threatens national security.”

“This kind of bullying behavior that cannot win in fair competition disrupts companies’ normal business activity, damages the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, and damages the normal international economic and trade order,” Mr Wang stated.

“In the end, this will inevitably come back to bite the United States itself.”

Ironically, as with other global social media platforms, TikTok is banned in China. Chinese users can access a similar app called Douyin, however, only available in China and subject to monitoring and censorship by the government.

Featured image: Ideogram

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Elon Musk has confirmed X is on its way to your smart TV, in the next stage of the social media platform’s ambition to develop into an app for everything.

It appears the Tesla billionaire has Netflix, Amazon Prime and other streaming services in his sights with the rollout of the new medium for X. In recent days, Musk replied “Coming soon” to a post indicating you will soon be able to watch long-form X videos on a TV app.

A report has suggested the launch will first be hosted on Samsung TVs as well as Amazon’s Fire TV platform.

Coming soon https://t.co/JlnlSL7eS9

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2024

What will X TV look like?

X on TV will not be rivalling the heavyweight streamers with its offerings immediately but it is likely to have some similarities to those platforms, with an initial focus on video hosting like YouTube, whilst it could aim to later bid for live events and other forms of entertainment, as found on Netflix or Amazon Prime to establish itself within the market.

In the ongoing diversification of X, since Musk completed his takeover of Twitter, it was announced in December 2023 that his Grok AI chatbot would be opened up to premium subscribers on the app. It also has Twitch in its crosshairs with the hosting of monetized live streams.

X has also introduced audio and video calling, now available to all users on Android and iOS. Any user of the social media platform can receive a call but only paid users can make a call.

This targeted upscaling is likely to be influenced to some extent by WeChat, the Chinese app which acts as a one-stop shop combining social media and instant messaging with a mobile payment functionality and more.

Musk has frequently remarked on his intentions to deliver “the everything app,” when he acquired Twitter.

He stated, “In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.”

Featured image: Ideogram

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Facebook’s stock has fallen sharply after former President Donald Trump went on a rant on two separate occasions about the American technology company.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg was caught directly in the cross-fire too, with Trump writing on Truth Social: “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People.”

The 45th U.S. President then went on CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box,’ and further criticized Facebook when speaking about a bill going through the House of Representatives to regulate competitor TikTok. He said: “I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size…

“And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”

On both the day of the social media post and after the interview, the stock of Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, dropped.

Meta saw the lowest closing figure since last July, Forbes reported. The shares dropped by about 4.5 percent to just under $484 on Monday, after the CNBC feature.

The shares dropped by 1.2 percent after the social media post went live on the Friday before.

On Tuesday 12 March, Donald Trump once again took to the site Truth Social to share a news article link with the title ‘Meta’s stock drops twice after Trump calls Facebook ‘an enemy of the people.’

What does Donald Trump think of TikTok

Much of Donald Trump’s scathing comments against Facebook then pivoted to give support of the video app TikTok.

This comes after the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously voted to advance legislation that would force ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to divest ownership of the app.

The reason for this is that ByteDance is a Chinese company, which has led to fear among Americans over their user data security.

While Trump now seems to be in favor of the app which took the world by storm, it wasn’t always that way. In August 2020, when he was still president, he said he intended to ban TikTok and even signed an executive order banning U.S. companies from transactions with ByteDance.

Featured image: Generated by ideogram

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Elon Musk’s X continues its battle with legacy media and traditional websites with its launch of long form articles, which vastly expands the possibilities open to writers on the platform.

Announced in a post on X yesterday (March 7), the feature expands the previous character limit from 25,000 by around four times, up to 100,000 characters. It also allows for media embedding, including images, videos, and of course, X posts.

However, currently, the editor is basic. While it can do basic text formatting like bold, italic, strikethrough, and bullet point and numbered lists, it lacks a markdown reader and can’t handle code blocks, something X users have already been requesting.

I've been using articles, and they're fantastic! It would be beneficial to incorporate something like markdown for easier editing. One significant challenge I've encountered is the inability to include code snippets in my articles. I've had to resort to taking screenshots of my…

— storm (@snowcra5h) March 8, 2024

When a user has written an article, it will appear in a new tab on their profile alongside their replies and media tabs. When reading an article, users have the option to full-screen the page for a cleaner, distraction-free interface, which is a nice addition.

Articles behave like normal X posts, with the ability to reply, repost, and like any article post.

Who can write articles on X/Twitter?

‘Articles’ is a feature that is only available to Premium + subscribers on X. While a Premium account costs around $130 annually, Premium + is double that at around $260 – more if you pay monthly instead of annually.

Presently, it is unclear what the uptake will be for this feature. Under Elon Musk, X has become increasingly hostile to journalists and people who create content off-platform. It notably suppresses Substack links, and removed headlines from links to external content, minimizing the capacity for creators to reach their audiences.

Musk has previously discussed his plans to take on live streaming platform Twitch, owned by Amazon, and bring monetized live streaming directly to X. X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino also encouraged Rockstar Games to upload the trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 directly to X rather than sharing a YouTube link. They did so, but more than 24 hours after sharing the link to the YouTube video.

His goal seems to be to minimize the reasons users would ever leave the site by gradually adding features that have been siloed across different services and rolling them into one huge X ecosystem that charges a fee and keeps users on-site, endlessly scrolling through a variety of content types. Whether he will be successful remains to be seen.

Featured image credit: MatiMango via Pexels

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Facebook and Instagram have reportedly gone down, suggesting a widespread outage affecting the platforms of their parent company, Meta.

Users reported receiving error messages and were subsequently logged out of both the app and the desktop site, preventing the feeds from refreshing.

Has Facebook and Messenger logged you out and then rejects your password?

Don't panic, you're not alone, LOADS of people seem to be experiencing this right now.

I guess we just gotta wait and see what the heck this is pic.twitter.com/YiQz17AeXR

— Talha Ali (@TalhaAli781) March 5, 2024

According to Downdetector, there were more than 250,000 reports of outages on Facebook and 45,000 reports on Instagram. WhatsApp had almost 1,000 incidents, and Threads was also encountering some issues.

Reports indicate that the impact has been felt in multiple countries worldwide.

ReadWrite has approached Meta for a comment. The tech giant’s own status page shows that a number of products, including some of the developer tools and business platforms, were experiencing some disruptions.

In a statement on their site, it said: “We are aware of an issue users are having logging into our platforms. Our engineering teams are aware and are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

“We are currently recovering from an earlier outage affecting the ability to log in to our platforms. Services are in the process of being restored. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused,” it later updated.

However, some users report that Facebook has resumed its services, while Instagram remains down.

A Meta spokesperson told ReadWrite: “Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Update: Services definitely seem to be returning for some, but others are still unable to get in with their existing passwords, so it seems things are not quite back to normal.

Meta’s previous outages

It’s not the first time Meta has experienced an outage. In 2019, there was a worldwide disruption where Facebook’s services and servers encountered technical issues, particularly affecting Europe, some parts of the US, and Asia. This occurred just one month following another significant outage.

At the time, Facebook posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) a short statement blaming their issues on a server configuration change. 

Featured image: Pexels

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Meta has announced that the Facebook News tab will be removed for U.S. and Australian users. The section was already shut down last year in the UK, France, and Germany as the company shifted its focus towards providing content that people “want to see more of on the platform.”

The section had provided news content since 2019, as a way to “bring people closer to the stories that affect their lives.” However, following the rise of TikTok, the company has shifted its resources toward short-form video content through its Reels feature.

“As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on things people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including short-form video,” its corporate blog post said. “The number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. has dropped by over 80% last year.”

The social networking giant stated that despite shuttering the feature, users will still be able to view links to news articles on Facebook, while news publishers will continue to have access to their Facebook accounts and Pages, “where they can post links to their stories and direct people to their websites.”

The update will not affect the existing Facebook News agreements that Meta holds with publishers in Australia, France, and Germany. The company highlighted that similar news-related agreements “have already expired in the US and the UK,” as stated in the blog post.

Australia threatens action against Meta over Facebook News

Amid the changes, the Australian government threatened action against Meta, after the California-based social media company said it would stop paying local media companies this year for using their content. 

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed that he was “very concerned” about the repercussions of Meta’s decision. His administration announced its commitment to “work through all available options under the News Media Bargaining Code.”

Speaking to an Australian newspaper, Albanese said, “We know that it’s absolutely critical that media is able to function properly and be properly funded. Journalism is important and the idea that research and work done by others can be taken free is simply untenable.”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland wrote on X that “Australian news publishers deserve fair compensation for the content they provide,” whilst Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones called it a “dereliction” of their commitment to Australian media.

This decision removes a significant source of revenue for Australian news media businesses.

Australian news publishers deserve fair compensation for the content they provide. pic.twitter.com/lIdYZEndyU

— Michelle Rowland (@MRowlandMP) March 1, 2024

The Albanese Government is deeply disappointed in Meta's decision to no longer pay for news content in a number of jurisdictions.

It represents a dereliction of commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media.

Our Government is backing Australian journalism. pic.twitter.com/oOKT9TOqxg

— Stephen Jones MP (@StephenJonesMP) March 1, 2024

According to the Guardian, Jones added, “Nobody should be under any doubts about the government’s resolve to ensure that we have a viable media industry in this country.”

As a result, the ministers stated that the government is consulting with the Treasury and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for guidance on the forthcoming steps, which will be determined promptly.

Featured image: Canva

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Threads is introducing a new feature to allow users to store posts for later access in a move that brings it in line with other platforms.

The Meta-owned social media network is rolling out Save on Threads, a similar function to bookmarking posts on Instagram, as well as rival platform X.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has been a prominent voice on Threads through its formative stage and with his close involvement in developing the app, he confirmed yesterday the new feature would “broadly” be available immediately.

If you want to check if you can use it yet, you will be able to store content by tapping on the three-dot menu in the top-right corner. From here, the Save button will bookmark the post to be used at a later point.

If you cannot see these options, your profile will soon have access.

It effectively works in the same way as Instagram and X (still colloquially known as Twitter) with the exception that there is no bookmark icon underneath posts.

What improvements have been made to Threads?

Coming from the same parent company, Threads is closely related to Instagram, including a similar design appearance, but the save function on Instagram benefits from its depth. Collections is the place where you can store posts and reels in separate folders, whilst Collaborative Collections enables users to join forces with friends or colleagues to save content for a common purpose.

With Threads only just launched in July 2023, the platform is still in its fledgling phase and ahead of its first anniversary, there are various development works in action as Meta seeks to boost its appeal.

Head of Instagram Mosseri said they were working on two “most requested” features in the form of a native camera button and a ‘save post’ motion by swiping down on the screen.

Image: Julio Lopez/Pexels

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Elon Musk‘s Twitter takeover has been anything but simple. In fact, his $44 billion acquisition of the social media site — now rebranded as X — is the subject of an ongoing US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The investigation aims to ascertain whether the 52-year-old Space X and Tesla mogul followed the correct legal procedures when it came to filing the takeover paperwork or whether he deliberately misled anyone in the process of buying Twitter.

The Twitter Files fallout continues

But one thing that really threw a spanner in the works was something dubbed “the Twitter Files.” In short, the Twitter Files result from Musk making internal documents and Slack messages available to journalists like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. These internal documents detailed numerous content moderation decisions made by Twitter over the years before Musk’s takeover, such as the removal of Donald Trump’s account and the banning of Kanye West.

Yet, the thing concerning the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) isn’t the content of these files themselves but the extent of access granted to third parties like journalists and the data protection implications.

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, the FTC chair Lina Khan divulged how “Elon Musk had reportedly directed staff to grant an outside third-party individual ‘full access to everything at Twitter […] No limits at all’.”

Unsurprisingly, as the letter points out, these lofty claims spurred the FTC to investigate whether direct access had actually been given to these third parties. But it turns out direct access to these documents wasn’t given to journalists, despite Musk’s orders for them to be so.

“Based on a concern that such an arrangement would risk exposing non-public user information in potential violation of the FTC’s Order, longtime information security employees at Twitter intervened and implemented safeguards to mitigate the risks,” the letter confirmed.

According to Khan, these long-time Twitter staff had the “right to be concerned given that Twitter’s new CEO had directed employees to take actions that would have violated the FTC’s Order.”

So, without Musk even realizing it, these employees saved him from what would have been a serious data protection headache.

Featured Image: Generated by Midjourney

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Elon Musk has hinted at a possible partnership between X and the popular artificial intelligence (AI) image generator Midjourney, to transform the user experience on the social media platform.

The billionaire Tesla CEO was involved in an X Spaces conversation hosted by @mysteriouskat when he responded to a question posed to him by another user, @MishaFitton, with the audio available below.

“I’m wondering if you, and X overall, have thought about developing features within for generative AI, image and video creation, or possibly partnership with Midjourney to make it easier for artists and creators to leverage AI to enhance their content on X?”

The response from Musk was concise but affirmative:

“We are in some interesting discussions with Midjourney and something may come of that. One way or another, we will enable AI generation on this platform (X).”

On @mysteriouskat’s X Space, I asked Elon Musk about AI art, including a possible partnership with Midjourney.

"We are in some interesting discussions with Midjourney and something may come of that, but either way, one way or another, we will enable AI art generation on the X… pic.twitter.com/Ooj6dCVty3

— Misha Turtle Island (@MishaFitton) February 20, 2024

Massive impact of AI-generated content

AI-generated content is everywhere, including social media.

It is not uncommon to find imagery added to posts which has been produced using the new technology but any working relationship between the platform, still known colloquially as Twitter, and an AI developer would be transformational.

It would likely provide every user with the capability to produce something out of the ordinary and further blur the lines between human and machine creativity. Would the images accompany the text, or the other way around, on X?

Musk is known to be warm to the idea of developing X as an app for everything, diversifying into areas such as e-commerce, streaming and more. The introduction of generative AI for content creation would appear to be an extension of this.

It would potentially allow Musk to steal a march on his competitors by establishing X at the forefront of AI integration within social media, with a possible enlarged space for his Grok chatbot, currently available under beta testing for X subscribers.

Featured image: Generated by midjourney

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After the success of a pilot in Australia and New Zealand which saw Tinder users receiving more matches, verification is to be rolled out across the UK and US.

Announced today (Feb. 20) on the Tinder Newsroom, the infamous matchdating app will be adding the additional step of having users confirm the authenticity of profiles. The aim is to have this feature available in the US and Mexico by summer and in the UK and Brazil by spring.

While the focus is on improving safety measures, the pilot showed that users who completed the ID verification option saw a 67% increase in matches than those not verified.

The feature requires a video selfie and a valid Driver’s Licence or Passport. The app’s technology then checks to see whether the face in the video selfie matches both the photo on the ID and the person’s profile photos.

Users who complete the full Tinder verification process will see a blue checkmark added to their profile.

This marks a move to protect the user experience. CEO of domestic and sexual violence foundation NO MORE Pamela Zaballa explains what this means via the press release: “People want to feel safe and confident when connecting and communicating with their matches, and we applaud Tinder for giving users this additional option to help confirm their match is the person in their profile.”

At this time, there isn’t a requirement for people to carry out the full checks. People who submit photo verification only will receive a blue camera icon badge, while users who only complete the ID portion will see a blue ID icon badge.

Tinder partnership to improve user safety 

In recent years, the dating company has worked closely with the domestic and sexual violence foundation NO MORE to address concerns and promote positive dating behaviors. The two first partnered in 2022 with the launch of a healthy dating guide series. 

Speaking in a press release on the NO MORE newsroom, the head of trust and safety product at Tinder Rory Kozoll said: “The safety of our members is a priority. As we introduce new safety features, we are continually looking to expert partners, such as NO MORE, to spearhead conversations and promote messages about safety and dating.”

Featured image: Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash 

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Instant messaging app WhatsApp is bolstering user privacy with the testing of a new feature that will block the ability to screenshot profile photos.

With ongoing safety concerns across digital media, this new component, which is in the pipeline, can provide an extra layer of security to prevent people from having their photos abused.

WABetaInfo.com today (Feb. 20) shared the news of the WhatsApp update which will be rolled out through the Google Play Beta Program.

Going forward, the attempt to screenshot a profile photo will be met with a black screen and a message stating ‘Can’t take a screenshot due to app restrictions.’

The feature of being able to block screenshots of profile photos is now available to some on the beta for Android version. Screenshot blocking will be available to more users over the coming weeks.

This could be the first restriction of this kind seen across a popular text, voice message, and video call tool. The alternative providers to the Meta-owned chat app don’t yet have this level of privacy.

This is an advancement from the previous announcement five years ago which removed the option to allow users to save others’ profile photos. While this prevented the unauthorized downloading and sharing of personal images without the owner’s consent or knowledge, this next roll-out adds further safeguarding to this issue.

How to hide your profile picture on WhatsApp

Users do have the option already to hide their profile picture from all other WhatsApp users or selected contacts. This is done through Settings -> Privacy -> Profile Photo, with the choice to select ‘everyone,’ ‘nobody,’ or ‘my contacts.’

Other attempts for data protection are being trialled and developed too. WABetaInfo announced on Monday (Feb. 19) that WhatsApp is developing a ‘secret code feature to protect locked chats for the web client, designed to provide an added layer of security and privacy for conversation.’ This isn’t yet readily available, but will likely appear in a future web version.

Featured Image: Photo by Dimitri Karastelev on Unsplash

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The European Union has confirmed it is investigating TikTok over an alleged failure to protect children against negative impacts online.

Under a new headline legislation, the Digital Services Act, the ByteDance-owned video-hosting platform has potentially contravened rules on “protection of minors, advertising transparency, data access for researchers, as well as the risk management of addictive design and harmful content.”

The probe will be conducted by a European Commission body, which forms part of the EU executive. It has concerns about the “rabbit hole” effect, when users are fed content based on an algorithm which can lead to further, dangerous exposure to other videos.

TikTok’s verification tools are also under the spotlight, with the European Commission statement indicating they “may not be reasonable, proportionate and effective”.

An initial risk analysis and request for more information on pertinent factors from the Chinese social media giant have led to a wider investigation into the potential DSA breach.

No effort spared

Under the DSA, TikTok was designated as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) on 25 April 2023, after it disclosed to having 135.9 million monthly active users in the EU. Within four months of this status, the video-sharing app has been obliged to adhere to the regulations set out in the DSA. This year, the user count has spiked beyond 142 million within the European bloc.

Thierry Breton, EU Internal Market Commissioner outlined the requirement to follow the legislation.

“As a platform that reaches millions of children and teenagers, TikTok must fully comply with the DSA and has a particular role to play in the protection of minors online,” he said.

Breton added, “We are launching this formal infringement proceeding today to ensure that proportionate action is taken to protect the physical and emotional well-being of young Europeans. We must spare no effort to protect our children.”

We have opened formal proceedings to assess whether TikTok may have breached the Digital Services Act in areas linked to:

the protection of minors
advertising
data access for researchers
risk management of addictive design
harmful content

More info ↓ #DSA

— European Commission (@EU_Commission) February 19, 2024

TikTok is now vulnerable to a significant sanction, with the DSA providing the framework to hit companies with a fine of up to 6% of their global revenue. In response, a spokesperson defended their actions and conduct in line with ongoing challenges.

“TikTok has pioneered features and settings to protect teens and keep under 13s off the platform, issues the whole industry is grappling with.”

“We’ll continue to work with experts and industry to keep young people on TikTok safe, and look forward to now having the opportunity to explain this work in detail to the Commission.”

Image: Geri Tech/Pexels.

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Reddit is allowing access to an “unnamed” artificial intelligence (AI) company ahead of the social platform’s initial public offering (IPO).

The deal, reported by Bloomberg is worth “about $60 million on an annualized basis” for AI models to be given access to Reddit’s material.

The move to allow an AI company into the nuts and bolts of content could be seen as a way to hook in more investors ahead of the platform making moves to enter the public trading domain, as we reported last month.

Bloomberg’s insider has said the “San Francisco-based firm told prospective investors in its IPO that it had signed the deal, worth about $60 million on an annualized basis, earlier this year.”

The move is an example of how important content licensing is becoming to AI companies that use source material to essentially feed the algorithms that create their outputs.

Due to several high-profile arguments about the validity of source materials of AI’s outputs, more and more companies are seeking official partnerships with registered businesses that AI algorithms hope to provide expertise on.

What is happening with Reddit’s IPO?

Steve Huffman, the Reddit CEO spoke about the possibility of an IPO late last year and mentioned that people attempting to use the platform to launch businesses could be a core part of the need to expand.

“People are trying to start businesses on Reddit, but it wasn’t built for that,” said Huffman to Fast Company in an interview last year, “So just trying to flesh out that ecosystem, I think that’ll be very powerful.”

Bloomberg has reported that 16 banks are involved in the Reddit IPO that is led by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc and also include “JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.”

An IPO is the process of offering shares of a private corporation to the public after the company meets the requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is where the phrase “going public” originates from.

This stage of a company’s life cycle is where the early investors and shareholders agree that more money is needed to expand. So they lean on the expertise of banking institutions to take the share prices of a company into the public domain and the competitive seas of the stock market.

It helps these companies get better exposure and deals with loans and investments, but this also comes with increased transparency into accounting that must be disclosed publicly.

Image Credit:  Pexels.

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OpenAI, the company behind the large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT, has announced Sora, a new text-to-video AI.

Sora can “create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions,” according to OpenAI and it’s already got the internet talking.

Reactions online have been highly varied, with some X users being very enthusiastic, whereas some are a lot more wary.

Tech vlogger and reviewer Marques Brownlee, said in a Tweet with some videos from Sora “If this doesn’t concern you at least a little bit, nothing will.”

Gabor Cselle, who was a Director at Google for over six years, prepared a comparison between Sora and several other popular video generation tools, with Sora looking extremely promising.

.@OpenAI SORA vs @pika_labs vs @runwayml vs @StabilityAI Video.

I gave the other models SORA's starting frame. I tried my best prompting and camera motion techniques to get the other models to output something similar to SORA.

SORA's just much better at longer scenes. pic.twitter.com/TK7QR6jaUK

— Gabor Cselle (@gabor) February 16, 2024

Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI, didn’t specifically comment on the launch of Sora. However, he did share a screenshot of a user criticizing the company’s current CEO Sam Altman for making the formerly not-for-profit open-source company a closed-source profit-driven company. Make of that what you will.

Multiple people have highlighted the potential this tool has fo’r amateur filmmakers.

One user said: “2023 – ‘Hollywood is really overreacting, AI still very far from movie-like quality, look at those hands’ “2024 – ‘introducing Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video model’ “, while another shared the results of his experimentation with the tool, stating that “People aren’t taking the ‘everyone will be filmmakers’ seriously enough.”

A senior data scientist for Nvidia shared some insight into how he believes the tool might work and how it may have been trained.

If you think OpenAI Sora is a creative toy like DALLE, … think again. Sora is a data-driven physics engine. It is a simulation of many worlds, real or fantastical. The simulator learns intricate rendering, "intuitive" physics, long-horizon reasoning, and semantic grounding, all… pic.twitter.com/pRuiXhUqYR

— Jim Fan (@DrJimFan) February 15, 2024

What are the limitations of Sora?

OpenAI has admitted openly that Sora is not without limitations and there is plenty of room for improvement. There are two key limitations currently:

• Sora might miss out on details based on cause and effect. The example OpenAI gives is that Sora might be able to generate a video of someone taking a bite out of a cookie, but that cookie might not subsequently have a bite out of it.
• Sora might miss out on some finer spatial details like left and right, or specific camera directions.

How can I use Sora and is it free?

Currently, Sora is not available to the general public to use and OpenAI has not made any statement about whether it will be free to use when it does launch, or if there will be a tiered access approach such as with ChatGPT.

Sora is currently in a testing phase for safety and security. Cybersecurity experts are currently hands-on testing the tool. OpenAI is also working on ways to ensure Sora is not used maliciously, such as a detection tool that can tell if a video was generated by Sora. This will help to prevent the tool from being used to spread misinformation.

The tech company will also be engaging directly with policymakers, according to their blog. They acknowledge that while the tool likely has many beneficial effects that they cannot foresee, there are also probably many ways the tool could be abused that they can’t predict.

The race between AI video generation tools is really heating up and users will soon have a huge range of tools at various price points to choose from.

Featured image credit: Screenshot from a video generated by Sora

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Social media platform X has been accused of possibly breaking US sanction law by granting subscription perks to terrorist groups and others banned in the United States.

Campaigners from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) have claimed that Elon Musk‘s X gave blue check marks to accounts associated with Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group Hezbollah, among more than a dozen others sanctioned by the US government.

Blue check marks used to be free on Twitter, granted to accounts largely associated with journalists, world leaders, and celebrities to show that the social media site had verified the account. Under Musk’s leadership, it now costs $8 (£6.40) a month and comes with perks like longer posts and better promotion.

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Meta has removed several Facebook accounts that posed as US military families.

The fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram were aimed at US audiences and were all located in China, according to Meta’s security researchers.

Meta’s report stated that accounts mainly posted about ‘military themes’, including US air carriers; as well as critiquing the ‘US foreign policy towards Taiwan and Israel and its support os Ukraine’.

The group responsible also held accounts on YouTube and Medium and shared a petition online that claimed to be written by Americans – which was critical of the US support for Taiwan.

The Meta security team traced the groups to China, however stated that they were not tied to one enclave or group.

The breakdown of the accounts was somewhat small:

• 33 Facebook accounts
• 4 Instagram profiles
• 6 pages and groups on Facebook

Meta spots rise in China-based influence on Facebook

As reported in engadget, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, Ben Nimmo said:

“The greatest change in the threat landscape has been this emergence of Chinese influence operations.”

He also pointed out, Meta has taken down 10 CIB (Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior) Networks that were based in China since 2017. However, six of those 10 came in the last year. Last year, Meta located and shut down a large network comprised of thousands of fake accounts that sought to spread pro-China propaganda across Meta’s platforms.

Thus far, the groups spreading these messages have been unsuccessful in their goals of spreading pro-China and anti-US sentiment. The latest network was seized after only reaching 3000 Facebook accounts; whereas the Instagram accounts held zero followers prior to being shut down, Meta alleges.

However, given the looming 2024 US election Meta anticipates that the creation of these accounts will continue. With a Meta report warning of this prediction:

“Our threat research shows that, historically, the main way that CIB networks get through to authentic communities is when they manage to co-opt real people — politicians, journalists or influencers — and tap into their audiences,”

“Reputable opinion-makers represent an attractive target and should exercise caution before amplifying information from unverified sources, particularly ahead of major elections.”

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WhatsApp is set to introduce an expansion of its Chat Lock feature for full connectivity across all linked devices.

This enhancement will mean if you lock a chat on your mobile, it will stay that way on WhatsApp for web and Windows, breaking away from the current setup which treats non-mobile platforms as separate channels.

The information has been unearthed by WABetaInfo after it delved into the most recent Android beta.

In WhatsApp’s previous announcement in November, Secret Code was introduced as a way of enhancing the security and privacy of the Meta-owned messenger app. Soon, you will need the code to access chat logs across various linked devices, which can be made up of numbers, letters, special characters, or even emojis for an added touch of personalization.

This development can be described as an upgrade, given the extra assurance and security it brings.

WhatsApp becomes more secure as your chats can be instantly locked, if required, across different devices, whilst it saves the hassle of having to repeat actions, from smartphone to desktop.

Users will be eager to have this added feature at their disposal but it is not ready just yet. It is still under development with no imminent expectation for release but it shouldn’t be too long before it arrives on Android. There was no mention of iOS but it seems unlikely iPhones would be left behind.

Block and roll

WhatsApp has also added a handy tool for removing unwanted spam messages or phishing attempts, with the bonus of being able to do this directly from your phone’s lock screen.

Notifications will now be present with the Block option, in addition to Reply.

There was no official announcement of this useful feature, with Meta opting to release the information on the official WhatsApp Channel, leaving those on the outside, out of the loop.

Again, the block option will come to Android first, with the patch currently being rolled out. There has been no mention or indication of the tool coming to iOS at present, but more information should follow from Meta.

Featured image: Photo by Dimitri Karastelev on Unsplash 

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