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[chelseanyu]

Facebook uses AI face scanning for Facebook Dating

According to an article by Social Media Today, Facebook announced that they will use an AI face scanning tool to verify if users are over 18 for Facebook Dating. Users that want to join Facebook Dating can confirm their age by either submitting a picture of their ID or submitting a selfie video in which Facebook will share with a third-party company, Yoti. Yoti then uses facial features to estimate a user’s age. According to The Verge, Yoti claims their estimations are extremely accurate, with its rate of identifying 13-17 year olds as under 23 years old as 99.65 percent accurate. 

However, Yoti isn’t equally accurate for all people, with the accuracy being worse for females and darker complexions. “Researchers have flagged concerns over how facial recognition and analysis software perform differently for people along age, race, and gender lines”, according to The Verge.

A lot of the time, platforms that require a minimum age can be dangerous or harmful to children. If AI facial scanning is accurate amongst all backgrounds, it would be a great way to counter the rising number of underage users on platforms and apps that require users to be over 18.

[chelseanyu]

Facebook may remove news from the platform if Senate passes the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.

Facebook is threatening to ban news from their platform if the U.S. Senate passes the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act according to an article by The Verge. This act could require Facebook and other platforms to compensate publishers for the distribution of their content. Facebook has been strongly against this new bill, with Andy Stone, Meta’s head of policy communications, writing to Twitter that Facebook will remove all U.S. news if the bill ends up being passed. Stone goes on to say that Facebook brings value to news outlets by increasing their traffic and subscriptions, that the news that publishers put on Facebook benefits their bottom line, not Facebook’s. According to Business Insider's article, Facebook has faced similar problems with other countries wanting to pass similar bills such as Australia. In 2021, Facebook took down all news distributed by Australian media companies when Australia proposed a similar bill forcing platforms to pay news outlets for their content. When Facebook banned news, it blocked critical news for emergency services, food banks, fire departments, etc.. Australia ended up amending the bill, which gives publishers two months to strike a deal or else be forced into arbitration. If Congress ends up passing the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, we could soon see Facebook escalate matters and remove all news distributed by U.S. media companies. Users that rely on Facebook for their news could end up missing out on critical information.

[chelseanyu]

Meta employees bribed to abuse account recovery tool

Meta has recently fired or disciplined over a dozen of their employees for misusing the account recovery tool. According to an article by The Verge, Meta employees have access to an account recovery tool called “Online Operations”, a tool that helps the account recovery process to be a lot shorter that was designed for acquaintances of Meta employees. However, Meta employees were reported to be abusing the tool by taking bribes of thousands of dollars to help both hackers and users to gain access into Facebook or Instagram accounts. In CNBC’s article, the article discusses the documents viewed by the Journal, which showed that Meta employees have accepted thousands of dollars from hackers to gain access or compromise user accounts. There was an internal investigation within Meta and several employees were fired. According to CNBC’s article, Allied Universal contractors providing security for Meta facilities were given access to the online operations tool, and some of these contractors were amongst the workers that have been fired after the internal investigation. 

However, according to The Verge's article, the problem partially stems from Meta’s inadequate customer service. Since Facebook and Instagram are huge companies with millions of users, there has been a history of bad customer service and difficulty in getting contact with someone who works at Meta directly when having problems with accessing or recovering your account. Meta has only recently in April 2022 established a customer service division. I think that Meta needs to step up their customer service, as they are one of the biggest technology and social media companies in the world. I have had friends and acquaintances who lost access to their Instagram accounts and were unable to speak to anyone directly about the issue.

[chelseanyu]

Apple Store may remove Twitter from the App Store

Tensions between Apple and Twitter have been building up this past year since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter. According to an article by The Verge, Elon Musk says Apple has ‘threatened to withhold Twitter’ from the App Store, Elon Musk has come out stating that Apple has threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store with no explanation. Elon Musk tweets “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why” in a tweet on November 28. In The Washington Post’s article, Elon Musk says Apple threatened to remove Twitter from App Store, it states that Apple was previously one of the top advertisers on Twitter, spending 48 million on ads on Twitter in the first quarter. However, in addition to claiming that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the App Store, Elon Musk says that Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter with no explanation. Elon Musk also referred to Apple’s App store fees as a ‘secret 30 percent tax’ in another tweet, “Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store”. According to the article by the Verge, Twitter has been testing the limits of Apple’s app store, being one of the only huge platforms to allow adult content on the app. Apple has previously revoked platforms from the app store that violated securities policies or have problematic content. If Apple really does remove Twitter from its app stores, it means that Apple users can no longer download the app onto their devices and users that already have the app can no longer update Twitter. The effects of Apple removing Twitter from their app store can be detrimental to Twitter as the user population could reduce significantly. 

[chelseanyu]

Elon Musk reinstates Donald Trump amongst other controversial figures

According to the Vox, Elon Musk has reinstated Donald Trump on Twitter after Musk released a poll on Twitter asking Twitter users to vote to “reinstate former President Trump”. Over 15 million users responded to Musk’s poll, 52 percent voting in favor and 48 percent voting against. Shortly after the poll was released, Trump was reinstated on Twitter and his old tweets are now available on Twitter. According to an article by CNN, Trump was banned on Twitter in January 2021. Near the end of Trump’s term, he was tweeting increasingly misinformation about the 2020 presidential election, putting out claims of election fraud. Following the US Capital riot on January 6, 2021, Twitter announced that Trump was banned permanently due to the risk of his tweets causing a further incitement of violence. Twitter states that Trump's tweets violated the company’s policy against the glorification of violence. 

Twitter has also reinstated the accounts of other controversial public figures that were previously banned on Twitter such as Kanye West, previously banned for his anti-semitic tweets against Jewish people; Andrew Tate, previously banned for tweeting that sexually assaulted women should bare responsibility; Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for violating Twitter COVID-19 misinformation policy. Musk’s decision to reinstate such controversial figures that were previously all permanently banned at his own discretion has brought on criticism. Musk has received criticism from users that feel that Musk is not serious about upholding a platform that is safe from hate, harassment and misinformation. According to the Vox, in the months after Trump was banned from Twitter, there was a huge drop in conversation on Trump across major social media platforms. That leads us to the question if Trump will actually return to Twitter, and if we will see an increase in conversation on Trump again. 

[chelseanyu]

Apple Music's subscription cost is getting more expensive, Spotify is debuting their Platinum Plan for $19.99

According to The days of cheap music streaming may be numbered by The Verge, the article discusses how streaming platforms are increasingly getting more expensive with monthly subscription costs rising. Apple Music’s subscription cost is now rising to $10.99 per month, more expensive than Spotify’s $9.99 per month and Amazon Music’s $8.99 per month. Apple states that there has been a recent increase in licensing fees, with 15.35 percent of the music revenue going to songwriters and publishing rights holders. 

Spotify is set to release a platinum plan with HiFi lossless music, “the audio stream contains exactly the same sonic detail as its source,” according to Tech Hive’s article, Spotify HiFi release date: When is Spotify’s lossless tier coming. The expected cost of the platinum plan is $19.99, twice as much as Spotify’s normal plan. 

Other streaming services have also seen an increase in their subscription costs. Netflix increased their prices in March, with the basic, standard and 4K tier plans all rising by $1-$2 according to another article by The Verge. Hulu has just raised their subscription prices on October 10th from $12.99 to $14.99 for the ad free version and Disney Plus is also jumping from $7.99 to $10.99 starting December 8th. As these streaming services grow increasingly popular, many streaming companies are growing their subscription costs. I expect to see the companies that have not yet increased their plan prices to follow suit soon.

[chelseanyu]

Twitch Now Testing "Elevated Chats"

According to The Verge, Twitch has started testing a new feature "Elevated Chat", where users can pay to boost their chat message during a stream. This means that their chat will be highlighted and their message will be visible in the chat for a longer period of time. There is a one time fee ranging from $5 to $100 depending on how long the user wants their chat elevated for (ranges from 30 seconds to 2 and a half minutes). Currently, the time period is not customizable. Tech Crunch states that streamers will get a 70/30 cut of the revenue from the elevated chats feature which gives the streamers/creators a higher revenue share than the typical 50/50 cut that Twitch takes from most creators. The elevated chat feature is only available on select channels currently and the testing period will run for 4 weeks. Tech Crunch did note that Twitch's elevated chats is similar to Youtube's "super chats", which has the same concept of users paying to highlight their message for a certain time period. This brings us back to my earlier blog post on different creator platforms copying each other on certain features that have been proven to be successful.

If elevated chats becomes a permanent feature, it will be a way for users to directly pay their favorite creators instead of buying Twitch's virtual currency, bits. Elevated chats can become a new method of Twitch bringing in revenue if the trial period is proven to be successful.

[chelseanyu]

Everyone is Copying BeReal

Social media platform, BeReal, has been rising in popularity in the past year. BeReal is an app that prompts users to take two photos with the phone’s front and rear camera within a certain time frame and share it with their friends. According to a recent article published by The Verge, TikTok has created a copycat app, TikTok Now, that is almost the same as the popular BeReal app. The app TikTok Now is separate from the TikTok app but the feature is built in for U.S TikTok users. The TikTok Now app has only been released on September 18th, and is already ranked in 39 countries in the top 10 social networking apps. Other social media platforms are following suit. According to the Washington Post, Instagram is working on something similar, IG Candid Challenges, and Snapchat just released a dual-camera mode feature which shares the same ability to take photos using the front and rear camera. It is common for social media platforms to copy or borrow similar ideas from their rivals to keep users to put more focus on their app. With bigger companies like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat seeing the potential to capitalize off the concepts in the BeReal app, will BeReal continue to grow to fight off the competition?

[chelseanyu]

My sector is social media and I will be following The Verge, Social Media Today and Vox.