Social

FTC report on predatory social media data hoarding hints at future regulations

A new FTC report on how social media and streaming sites collect and monetize their hoards of user data doesn’t really feature a lot of surprises for anyone who’s followed the space. It’s more helpful to consider this part of a paper trail the agency is laying down in order to justify new regulations in […]

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YouTube launches Communities, a Discord-like space for creators and fans to interact with each other

At its Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, the company announced a new dedicated space for creators to interact with their fans and viewers. The space, called “Communities,” is kind of like a Discord server built into a creator’s channel. With Communities, YouTube is hoping creators won’t need to use other platforms like Discord or

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YouTube Studio now lets creators brainstorm video ideas with the help of AI

At its Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, the company announced that creators can now brainstorm ideas for videos with the help of AI right within YouTube Studio. YouTube will also soon start letting creators create AI-generated thumbnails and quickly respond to users with new AI-assisted comments.  After beta testing the ability for creators to

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Patreon launches features to automate away creators’ administrative workload and help them make more money

Patreon is rolling out new automated features for creators to convert free members to paid ones. Last year, Patreon introduced e-commerce features and free memberships, which allow fans to subscribe to a creator’s public posts without having to pay for paywalled content. Now that creators have become more accustomed to these tools, Patreon is adding

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Mozilla exits the fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December

Mozilla is exiting the fediverse. Though the concept of the open social web, also known as the fediverse, has been picking up momentum ever since Meta last year introduced its first-ever federated app, Instagram Threads, Firefox maker Mozilla on Tuesday announced it would be ending its experiment in running a server on the fediverse. The

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Snap’s new AI feature lets you create Snapchat Lenses by simply describing them

Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, is expanding its suite of AI tools for creators. At this year’s Snap Partner Summit in Santa Monica, Snap announced a new feature, Easy Lens, that translates plain-English descriptions into Lenses, Snap’s brand of augmented reality (AR) objects, 3D effects, characters, and transformations for photos and videos. Available in Snap’s developer

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SocialAI offers a Twitter-like diary where AI bots respond to your private posts

Are we at peak social media yet? It’s an interesting question to ponder after the launch of an iOS app offering a social media experience just for one (i.e. you). At a glance, SocialAI — which is billed as a pure “AI Social Network” — looks like Twitter but there’s one very big twist on

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Mammoth’s founder returns with new iOS app for Mastodon, Saturn

After founding and selling the popular Mastodon client Mammoth, developer Shihab Mehboob is returning to compete with it with the launch of his new app, Saturn. Not to be confused with the social calendar of the same name, Mehboob’s Saturn works with the decentralized social network Mastodon and specifically offers a unique “Highlights” feature that

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