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Social media companies, here are some free theme park ideas to comply with Florida’s deplatforming law

The Verge is deeply invested in doing service journalism; we report on companies’ misdeeds, we review expensive products to tell you whether they’re worth your hard-earned money, and speak to industry leaders to get their insights on the issues affecting their companies and their customers.

It is in that vein that we brainstormed some ideas for social media theme parks in Florida.

See, the Sunshine State passed a law this week that blocks social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from “knowingly” deplatforming politicians and even algorithmically ranking content, with fine ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 per day (The law, which is a mish-mash of broad speech regulations, has already been challenged in court by the tech companies’ trade organizations, which called it “a frontal assault on the First Amendment.”)

But there’s an easier way. The law has a hilariously corrupt exemption for any company that owns or operates a theme park or large entertainment complex in the state of Florida. Republican state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia said that exemption was included so that the Disney Plus streaming service “isn’t caught up in this.” The Disney World park in Orlando brings in significant tax revenue for Florida, of course, a state which relies heavily on tourism dollars.

So all Twitter, Facebook, TikTok et al have to do to comply with the law and avoid the knotty First Amendment issue of government speech regulations is build their own Floridian theme parks.

Here are our suggestions for the parks including some ideas for appropriately themed rides that the venues might offer:

Twitterland

Has a secret nightclub called Slides
Sells drinks called Canoes
The Ratio is a dunk tank where you get dropped into water for your bad takes
Whac-A-Mole is instead Block-A-Troll
A water-themed ride where you’re sailing along and random guys try to pull you into the water: Reply Guys, the ride
Rollercoaster goes sideways

The only problem with Twitterland is that it keeps opening amazing rides and then letting them completely fall apart.

Facebook World

All the rides suddenly pivot to video without warning
A haunted house attraction called Facebook Moderation
Instagram and WhatsApp once had separate parks, but they have been annexed into the main Facebook park and turned into shopping malls
The water park has a slide into radicalism
If you get detained by security, they put you in the Racist Uncle Time Out Room
An Instagram hall of mirrors that features mirrors that give you an Insta-ready body with lighting made for photos and then leaves you feeling terrible when you come to the last mirror, which has heavy shadows for lighting and no body editing whatsoever

TikTokLand

A hall of mirrors that shunts you through random rides with absolutely no information or warning, gradually tuning your experience using the sophisticated biometric monitor in your admission wristband
Alternately, the whole park is just the set from the Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show where a Backyardigans song plays on a loop

Pinterest Park

It’s just a bunch of themed photo booths that produce those little photo strips, but you have to wait in line and read 200 words before you can ride the Recipe Rollercoaster.

The GooglePlusPlex

A giant haunted house which closed eight years ago but high school kids still break into at night
The entire park littered with discontinued Google products

Clubhouse Clubhouse

It’s just one big infinity room where you enter and hear men talking at you and over each other about Bitcoin.

Reddit Faire

A Renaissance fair that ended up sharing its property lease with a prison, thanks to an awkward misunderstanding in the C-suite. Many guests are incredibly devoted cosplayers in delightful historically accurate costumes. Many are petty criminals. A few are serial killers. Try to guess which ones!

YouTubeLand

Has a ride where you appear to climb higher and higher forever, but then perilously fall to Earth after a botched apology
To enter the park you have to smash the like button
The Thumbnail Ride promises nonstop conflict but is really just a pretty chill afternoon
Every ride is at least 10 minutes long so it can include a midroll break
If you make a wrong turn at the bathrooms, you’ll occasionally run into an off-brand superhero ride that ends in a spike pit. No one knows who paid for or designed these rides, but children find them inexplicably compelling
You can’t leave unless you ring a bell, and then you will be sent notifications reminding you to return to YouTubeLand for the rest of your life
Really big and expensive and in many ways the gold standard for all the other parks, but no one appears to be in charge at all?

Snapchat Studios

Rides disappear after you go on them once
All the vending machines sell Spectacles, but no one buys them
Unfortunately the park’s been kind of struggling because all its best rides get cloned by Facebook World within six months
Temporarily closed because it accidentally opened another racist ride

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2021) review: victory lap

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Acer has made three significant upgrades to the best-in-class Chromebook Spin 713. The first is that the device now has Intel’s newest 11th Gen processors. The second is that the USB-C ports both support Thunderbolt 4. And the third is that it now has an optional fingerprint reader.

These aren’t the most revolutionary spec bumps in the world. The rest of the Spin 713 remains the same: it has a fantastic 3:2 touch display, a good backlit keyboard, a smooth touchpad, and good value for its premium components. But the changes add up. And they serve to push the Spin 713 even further ahead of its competition than it was before. It’s very much still the Chromebook to buy.

The Spin 713’s standout feature is its 2256 x 1504 panel. It’s one of the best Chromebook screens I’ve ever used. Colors really pop, details are crisp, and it gets plenty bright. Though the screen is glossy, I rarely saw glare, and what I did see didn’t hinder my work.

But my favorite aspect of this display (and of this Chromebook as a whole) is the 3:2 aspect ratio. You get noticeably more vertical space than you would from a standard 16:9 display of a similar size. Less scrolling, less zooming out, more room for all your tabs and apps. I’m a fan of 3:2, and I’ve been happy to see more laptop models taking it up over the past year.

Screeeeeeeeen.

Another strength (which Acer has strengthened with this model) is the port selection. This is the first Chromebook to support Thunderbolt 4 — many premium Chromebooks don’t even support older Thunderbolt standards. There are not one, but two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side of the Spin. This makes the Spin 713 one of the most affordable machines in the world to include Thunderbolt 4.

The USB-C ports also support USB 3.2 Gen 1, DisplayPort, and 5V charging. Elsewhere, you get an HDMI port and a microSD reader, in addition to a headphone jack and a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1. The Spin also supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.

Flip it around in tent or tablet mode.

The fingerprint reader also helps put the Spin 713 above premium competitors; the lack of biometric authentication was one of our very few knocks against the last model. The sensor lives on the deck, beneath the arrow keys. It’s the same color as the Spin’s finish and is nicely camouflaged.

The Spin’s keyboard and touchpad are also quite good. The keyboard is comfortable and backlit, though I wish the keys didn’t feel quite so plasticky. The touchpad is smooth, accurate, and quite large.

Like its predecessor, this Spin 713 has two main drawbacks. The first is that its audio is thin, and I heard a bit of distortion at maximum volume. The second is that the Spin’s aesthetic is utilitarian. The finish is somewhat drab, and the screen bezels are chunky. I wouldn’t call it ugly, but it’s something that would fit in on a school laptop cart.

That said, the Spin is also fairly sturdy, with an aluminum chassis, and feels better made than many plasticky devices you’ll find at this price point. The 360 hinge is easy to flip around, and I only saw a tiny bit of screen wobble while I was typing.

Performance is the other area where the new Spin 713 is supposed to have gotten major upgrade. My review model is $699.99 for a Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. This is the primary configuration that Acer will be selling to start, but more will be coming in August with pricing to be announced.

The Spin is the first Chromebook to be certified through Intel’s Evo program, which is meant to recognize the best portable Intel laptops on the market. The Spin did everything I needed it to, including editing big batches of photos and running multiple demanding apps at a time on top of Zoom calls and Spotify streams, quite fast and without any performance issues.

That was also true of last year’s Spin 713. What’s new this year is that I’m hearing the fans. Last year’s model was very quiet, but the fans were almost constantly spinning in this model. The noise wasn’t always annoying, but it was often audible. This makes me anxious about the Spin 713’s ability to cool a Core i7, so even if Acer sells a Core i7 model later this year, I’d recommend that most people stick with a Core i5 model unless you know you need an i7. (The Core i5’s performance here is going to be enough for 90 percent of people.)

I didn’t feel much heat in the keyboard, so the fans were doing their job.

What’s also gotten a bit worse is battery life: I averaged seven hours and 29 minutes of consistent work with the screen at 50 percent brightness, running some trials with a bunch of Android apps and some trials just in Chrome. That’s about an hour worse than what I averaged on the previous model, though both results are respectable for this price. The battery took 55 minutes to juice from zero to 60 percent with light Chrome use, which is a bit slower than last year’s model (but close).

The Spin 713 runs Chrome OS, as all Chromebooks do. It supports all Android apps via Google Play. Everything ran smoothly on this system, in both clamshell and tablet modes. Many Chrome OS apps have improved since I used them on last year’s 713. Slack, for example, was crashing all over the place last year, and is technically usable now. That said, I still generally find that most of my preferred services (Messenger, Slack, Reddit, Instagram, the like) are equivalent or better experiences in browser form. I do like being able to offload distractions like Spotify and Twitter into their own apps so I don’t have them mixed in with my Chrome tabs, but that’s about as far as my typical use of Android apps on a Chromebook goes.

As was the case with its predecessor, the Spin 713 isn’t a perfect Chromebook. It’s also not cheap as far as Chromebooks go. But it offered unbeatable value last year, and its value has gotten even better.

To illustrate just how much this device is offering for its $699 price, look to the premium Google Pixelbook Go. To buy a Pixelbook Go with an 8th Gen Core i5 (which is now an old chip), 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage (half of what you get in this Spin configuration), you’d be paying $849. The Pixelbook does have some advantages over the Spin, of course: you’re getting better build quality, a lighter chassis, and slightly better audio. But the Pixelbook has no biometric authentication, it has very few ports and doesn’t support Thunderbolt 4, it’s 16:9, and it’s not a convertible. It’s miles behind in almost every other way.

In other words, if you don’t mind a laptop-cart look, the Chromebook Spin 713 is an incredible value. The more power-hungry processor has changed the calculus slightly, but so have the new features. And ultimately, the Spin still comes out on top.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge

Clearview AI hit with sweeping legal complaints over controversial face scraping in Europe

Privacy International (PI) and several other European privacy and digital rights organizations announced today that they’ve filed legal complaints against the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI. The complaints filed in France, Austria, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom say that the company’s method of documenting and collecting data — including images of faces it automatically extracts from public websites — violates European privacy laws. New York-based Clearview claims to have built “the largest known database of 3+ billion facial images.”

PI, NYOB, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, and Homo Digitalis all claim that Clearview’s data collection goes beyond what the average user would expect when using services like Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. “Extracting our unique facial features or even sharing them with the police and other companies goes far beyond what we could ever expect as online users,” said PI legal officer Ioannis Kouvakas in a joint statement.

Clearview AI uses an image scraper to automatically collect publicly available photos of faces across social media and other public websites to build out its biometric database. It then sells access to that database — and the ability to identify people — to law enforcement agencies and private companies.

The legality of Clearview AI’s approach to building its facial recognition service is the subject of a number of legal challenges globally. Authorities in the UK and Australia opened a privacy probe last year into the company’s data scraping techniques. In February, Canada’s privacy commissioners determined that Clearview’s face scraping is “illegal” and creates a system that “inflicts broad-based harm on all members of society, who find themselves continually in a police lineup.”

Swedish police were fined by the country’s data regulator for using Clearview’s offerings to “unlawfully” identify citizens. And in one case in Germany, the Hamburg Data Protection Agency ordered Clearview to delete the mathematical hash representing a user’s profile after he complained.

In the US, Clearview was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union in the state of Illinois in 2020 for violating the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act. The results of that lawsuit contributed to the company’s decision to stop selling its product to private US companies. Clearview also faced legal action in Vermont, New York and California.

Privacy International say regulators have three months to respond to the complaints. In the meantime, you can request any data Clearview might have on you via the email and forms provided on its site and ask that your face be omitted from client searches.

Facebook plans to bury users who regularly share misinformation

In Facebook’s protracted efforts to be remembered as something other than the largest misinformation megaphone in history, it’s employed a number of strategies, from spinning its own misleading PR narratives to actual UI changes. Today, it announced a new tactic: not only will posts with misinformation in them be made less visible, but so will the individual users who share them.

For several years, the social giant has plugged away at fact-checking partnerships meant to disincentivize the spread of viral misinformation, using the results of those checks to label offending posts rather than removing them. In some cases, it’s taken small steps toward hiding things that are found to be false or polarizing — ending recommendations for political groups, for instance, during the 2020 election. Users, however, were free to post whatever they wanted with no consequences to speak of. No longer!

Image: Facebook

“Starting today, we will reduce the distribution of all posts in News Feed from an individual’s Facebook account if they repeatedly share content that has been rated by one of our fact-checking partners,” the company wrote in a press release. While demonstrably false posts are already demoted in the News Feed rankings, users who share misinformation regularly will now see all of their content pushed down the dashboard’s endless scroll.

It remains to be seen exactly what the tangible impact of this expanded enforcement will be. While individual Facebook users were previously immune to this sort of scrutiny, Instagram users were not. Nevertheless, vaccine misinformation has proliferated on the photo-sharing app. No matter how sophisticated its systems, as I’ve argued before, Facebook is simply too large to monitor.

You can now hide like counts on Instagram and Facebook

You can now hide like counts on Instagram and Facebook. After years of testing on both platforms, Facebook and Instagram have settled on an opt-in experience for hiding like counts to allow people to disable seeing them across all posts and an option to hide their own public like counts from others.

Instagram is enabling this feature after years of tests and pressure from experts to make changes to its platform. The service was ranked as “the most detrimental to young people’s mental health and wellbeing” in a 2017 study by the Royal Society for Public Health UK. Experts have argued that removing a like button or like counts could help reduce anxiety and social pressures for some Facebook and Instagram users.

“We tested hiding like counts to see if it might depressurize people’s experience on Instagram,” says an Instagram spokesperson. “What we heard from people and experts was that not seeing like counts was beneficial for some, and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense for what’s trending or popular, so we’re giving you the choice.”

How to hide Facebook like counts.

Image: Facebook

You’ll now be able to toggle an option to hide all like counts on all posts in your feed on both Instagram and Facebook today. A separate option will let you hide your own like counts to others. You can also hide like counts on a per-post basis on Instagram, so there’s a little more flexibility to allow people to focus on the content of posts rather than the like counts. Facebook will get these same per-post controls in the next few weeks.

Facebook first started testing hidden like counts in September 2019 as an experiment to see if the change would improve the experience of using the platform. Instagram has also been testing a variety of ways to hide like counts in recent years, with a test for this same optional feature just last month.

WhatsApp sues Indian government over new rules it says break encryption

Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is suing India’s government over new internet rules it claims are unconstitutional and will “severely undermine the privacy” of its users, The New York Times reports. The Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, which was introduced in February and comes into effect today, contains a requirement that messaging apps identify the “first originator of information” when asked. But WhatsApp, which boasts nearly 400 million users in its largest market of India, argues that doing so would require it to trace every message sent on its service, violating users’ right to privacy.

“Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to “trace” private messages would break end-to-end encryption and lead to real abuse,” a spokesperson for the service said in a statement. “WhatsApp is committed to protecting the privacy of people’s personal messages and we will continue to do all we can within the laws of India to do so.”

WhatsApp’s warnings about “traceability” are backed of many of the world’s biggest technology firms and digital rights groups including Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Center for Democracy and Technology. In a statement about a similar plan to mandate traceability in Brazil, the EFF said that implementing traceability “will break users’ expectations of privacy and security, and would be hard to implement to match current security and privacy standards.”

Responding to efforts by India and other countries to force it to trace messages, WhatsApp has published an FAQ on its website. It argues that this traceability requirement would force it to break the end-to-end encryption for everyone on its service, because there’s no way for it to proactively know what message a government might want to investigate ahead of time. “A government that chooses to mandate traceability is effectively mandating a new form of mass surveillance,” WhatsApp’s FAQ says.

However the Indian government argues the rules are required to track the origins of misinformation. In comments reported by Reuters, a government official argued that WhatsApp isn’t being asked to break its encryption, just to track where messages originate from.

But WhatsApp says tracing messages like this “would be ineffective and highly susceptible to abuse,” and risks punishing people for being the “originator” of content just for re-sharing information they found elsewhere. According to Reuters, WhatsApp argues that the new rules fail the tests established by a 2017 Supreme Court ruling. Namely, that privacy must be preserved except when legality, necessity, and proportionality require its infringement. WhatsApp argues that the new law lacks explicit parliamentary backing.

The lawsuit is the latest heightening of tensions between the Indian government and big tech companies. In recent months officials have ordered social media networks including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to remove posts critical of their handling of the pandemic. The NYT notes that social media companies have complied with many of these requests by blocking posts within the country, but keeping them visible elsewhere. While the government argues these posts could incite panic, critics say it’s using the new rules to silence detractors.

In another incident, police in India raided Twitter’s offices over a “manipulated media” label applied to a tweet from a government official.

While WhatsApp has been accused of facilitating the spread of misinformation around the world, the problem has been particularly acute in India. Since 2017, the service has been linked to a series of lynchings in the country after users on the service spread misinformation about child abductions. WhatsApp responded by placing new limits on message forwarding in an attempt to stop such accusations from going viral.

Sony’s AI subsidiary is developing smarter opponents and teammates for PlayStation games

In 2019, Sony quietly established a subsidiary dedicated to researching artificial intelligence. What exactly the company plans to do with this tech has always been a bit unclear, but a recent corporate strategy meeting offers a little more information.

“Sony AI […] has begun a collaboration with PlayStation that will make game experiences even richer and more enjoyable,” say notes from a recent strategy presentation given by Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. “By leveraging reinforcement learning, we are developing Game AI Agents that can be a player’s in-game opponent or collaboration partner.”

This is pretty much what you’d expect from a partnership between PlayStation and Sony’s AI team, but it’s still good to have confirmation! Reinforcement learning, which relies on trial and error to teach AI agents how to carry out tasks, has proved to be a natural fit for video game environments, where agents can run at high speeds under close observation. It’s been the focus of heavy-hitting research, like DeepMind’s StarCraft II AI.

Other big tech companies with gaming interests such as Microsoft are also exploring this space. But while Microsoft’s efforts are tilted towards pure research, Sony’s sound like they’re more focused on getting this research out of the lab and into video games, pronto. The end result should be smarter teammates as well as opponents.

Tom Holland will be starring as Nathan Drake in the upcoming Uncharted movie adaptation — part of Sony’s ongoing ambitions to expand its franchises into TV and film.

Image: Tom Holland via Instagram

This tidbit was just one point in the presentation, though, in which Sony laid out numerous plans for its future growth. Here are some of the other ambitions mentioned:

Expand Sony’s first-party titles and franchises to mobile. “PlayStation has a huge catalog of diverse first-party IP that can transition to smartphone gaming and complement our AAA games or live service games,” say the notes. (Though it’s worth noting Sony established a subsidiary dedicated to making smartphone games in 2016, and it hasn’t had a huge impact yet.)
Make more Sony games into movies and TV shows. This will be done through the company’s PlayStation Productions subsidiary. Sony gives the example of the upcoming Uncharted film, starring Tom Holland as Nathan Drake.
Grow the PlayStation Network, PlayStation Now, and PS Plus networks. The company says it currently connects to about 160 million users but would like to grow that number to 1 billion (I mean, sure, who wouldn’t want more customers?). Getting there will mean growing the company’s various online services and subscriptions, including PlayStation Plus, which has seen steady, but not explosive, growth. It’s interesting to compare this to Microsoft’s huge push in subscription gaming through Xbox Game Pass.

Sony’s PS Plus network has seen steady but not explosive growth.

Image: Sony

For more details you can check out Sony’s presentation for yourself here. Though, be prepared to wade through some absolutely incredible corporation-speak. We particularly liked the opening declaration that the company has now “implemented structural reform that liberated us from a loss-making paradigm.” In other words: they changed things so that Sony makes money instead of losing it! Got to dress that up somehow, I guess.

Netflix is holding a week-long ‘geek’ event in June about The Witcher, The Sandman, and more

Netflix is announcing a new week-long virtual event, “Geeked Week,” where it will share information about upcoming titles like The Witcher, The Sandman, and The Cuphead Show. During Geeked Week, you can expect to see “a wide array of exclusive news, new trailers, live art, drop-ins from your favorite stars and much more.” And fortunately, you won’t have long to wait: Geeked Week is taking place in just a couple weeks, from June 7th through the 11th.

If you want a preview of what’s to come, check out Netflix’s poster below, which also mentions The Umbrella Academy, Resident Evil (unclear if this is referring to the upcoming anime or the live-action series), Sweet Tooth, and Cowboy Bebop.

Netflix’s poster for Geeked Week

Image: Netflix

During the event, can keep track of what’s announced on GeekedWeek.com and by following the @NetflixGeeked social channels on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch and Facebook.

The week of June 7th is shaping up to be a huge one for news, with Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference also staring on June 7th, the Geoff Keighley-hosted Summer Game Fest kickoff event debuting on June 10th, and the all-virtual E3 beginning on June 12th. Keep it locked to The Verge for all of our coverage of the big events.

India reportedly orders social media platforms to remove references to “Indian variant” of COVID-19

India’s government has sent notices to social media platforms ordering them to take down content that refers to an “Indian variant” of the COVID-19 virus, Reuters reported. The letter from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent Friday was not made public, but was viewed by several news outlets.

It was not clear which social media outlets received the letter, but India’s government has recently ordered Twitter to remove tweets and Facebook and Instagram to take down posts that were critical of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“There is no such variant of COVID-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO). WHO has not associated the term ‘Indian Variant’ with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in any of its reports,” the letter states, adding that the phrase is “completely FALSE.”

A variant of the coronavirus first detected in India last year, B.1.617 is believed responsible for the latest wave of COVID-19 cases in south Asia. The World Health Organization has classified it as a variant of global concern, with some evidence that it is more contagious than other strains of the virus.

But while India’s approach to censoring information about the coronavirus and variants is extreme, WHO and other health organizations and scientists are critical of the practice of referring to viruses and variants with geographic nicknames, since it can be stigmatizing and inaccurate. The WHO’s 2015 guidance for naming infectious diseases discourages using place names, human names, or animal species names.

However, as National Geographic notes in its very good explainer about how virus variants get their names, the current naming conventions are cumbersome and confusing, making them difficult for non-scientists to grasp or remember. National Geographic reports that WHO is working with virologists to create a new way of naming viruses.

How to create an Instagram carousel

Whenever we use an app continuously, any change to the UI of that app can cause stress — and during these stressful times, who needs more? For example, in a recent update, Instagram tweaked the way it asks its users to create carousels (groups of up to 10 photos or videos that rotate through a single post), and this is apparently causing a bit of confusion.

This new method was pointed out in the Instagram account Digital Mums, where you can find some great tips on how to use various features of Instagram.

If you’d prefer some text instructions on how to navigate the change, here you go:

In your Instagram app (iOS or Android), select the “Add Post” icon (the plus icon on the top line)
You’ll see a selection of your photos. You can change the source of your photos if you wish by clicking on the source name (Recents, Videos, etc.) and then choosing a different one.
Press and hold the first photo or video you want to include in your carousel until the number 1 appears in the corner of the photo.
If you’re using Android, there will be a “Select Multiple” icon above your photo gallery. If you want, you can perform the same task by tapping on the first image you want to include, and then tapping on the “Select Multiple” icon. (The iOS version doesn’t include that icon, so you’re stuck with “press and hold.”)

Press and hold the first image you want to include, and then select the rest

In the Android version, there is also a “Select Multiple” icon you can use

Continue to select the images you want to include. They will be numbered in the order in which you select them. In order to change the order, you’ll have to tap on the numbers on the images you want to re-order, and then add them back in their correct order.
Once you’ve got all your photos selected and in the correct order, choose the “Next” arrow in the top right
Now you can edit or apply a filter to one or all of your photos. You can then go on to the final “New Post” screen that lets you write a caption, tag people, post to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Easy-peasy — until, of course, the next time Instagram decides to alter its interface…

Tinder will ask daters to think before they send potentially offensive messages

Tinder’s newest safety feature attempts to reduce the number of hateful messages sent on its platform. The company plans to start rolling out Are You Sure?, a feature that uses artificial intelligence to automatically detect offensive language. If found, the program will ask users if they’re positive they want to send that message, forcing them to pause before doing so.

The company’s been testing the feature and says people who saw the prompt were less likely to be reported for inappropriate messages over the next month, which Tinder takes to mean that they’re adjusting their behavior over the long-term.

Other companies have employed similar technology, including, most notably, Instagram, which rolled out warnings for potentially offensive captions in 2019. The company also automatically hides comments its AI determines are offensive and recently expanded the system to block words that might be purposely misspelled to avoid people’s comment filters. Although Tinder isn’t outright blocking messages, at least not yet, it’s pushing people to reconsider whether their message might be enough to make the app at least somewhat safer and more welcoming.

Slack will let you list your pronouns right under your job title

Slack is now rolling out a new field for profiles that will let you list your pronouns right under your name and job title. Once filled out, your pronouns will appear both on the mini-profiles you see when you click on someone’s name and in their full profiles.

Note that your Slack profile may already have a pronouns field, if an administrator created a custom field for your company’s employees. (When I went to check The Verge’s Slack, I found we already had one.) Slack says administrators can continue using that custom field or choose to turn on this new one, though the new dedicated pronouns field has the benefit of appearing more prominently in your profile.

Here’s how your pronouns will appear in Slack.

Image: Slack

This new field will be hidden by default, however — Slack administrators will have to flip it on for everyone in a Slack workspace. If you’re an administrator and want to do that, here’s a quick guide from Slack.

Slack joins a few other apps in letting people add pronouns to profiles, such as Instagram (which just got them last week), OkCupid, and Lyft.

Spotify enters the virtual concert business, starts selling $15 tickets to events

Spotify is entering the virtual concert business, just as in-person concerts are becoming more of a possibility. The company announced today that people can now buy tickets to five different concert streams, which will air throughout May and June. Initial artists include The Black Keys, Jack Antonoff of Bleachers, and Leon Bridges. The streams all are prerecorded but can only be viewed at a given time through the web browser. The shows aren’t available on demand, and they aren’t accessible through the Spotify app.

Tickets cost $15, and viewers must have a Spotify account to watch the show. (Viewers can set up a free Spotify account during the ticket-buying process if they don’t already have one.) You can check out the FAQ page for more details, but notably, tickets are tied to individual users’ accounts, so they’re non-transferable, and if you end up missing the show, you can’t get a refund. (Spotify says each artist’s recording will air at four different times to account for the world’s various timezones, so buyers have to select their preferred time.)

Spotify previously participated in the concert ecosystem by allowing artists to list shows through its app and link out to ones from specific partners, like Eventbrite. In 2017, the company said it generated more than $40 million in ticket sales through its Fans First program, which gives fans extra perks, like early access to tickets. It also hosted its own in-person events tied to its playlist branding, including Rap Caviar and Viva Latino.

During the pandemic, the company started listing virtual concerts, too. Fifteen dollars for these prerecorded concerts feels a bit steep, especially because it isn’t much different than live sets you can likely find from late-night shows or other specials for free on YouTube or Instagram Live, but it seems like Spotify is trying to find a new revenue stream and way to keep fans engaged during a time when most have been disconnected from the idea of live music. It’s unclear if the company intends to keep up the virtual concert series. For now, these five shows are all the commitment we’ve seen.

How to watch the Google I/O 2021 keynote

It’s been over a year since Google last held I/O thanks to the pandemic, but with the COVID-19 outlook slightly more positive in 2021, the company is making its triumphant return to the (virtual) stage with an entirely online Google I/O developer conference. And with a year and some change between I/O 2019 and now, there’s plenty of room for interesting announcements when everything kicks off at 10AM PT (1PM ET) today.

Android 12 is expected to make its official debut, with rumors swirling that the new update will shake up the visual style of the mobile operating system, among other improvements. We’re also hoping to hear more about a less expensive version of the Pixel Buds and maybe more information about the Pixel 5A, after both products leaked in the lead-up to the event. There’s also a good chance there’ll be improvements to Google Assistant and possibly an introduction to the custom system on a chip Whitechapel that Google is rumored to be developing to compete with Apple’s A-series chips.

To stay on top of I/O’s exciting news, we’ve got all the ways you can watch and read alongside us below.

WHAT TIME IS THE GOOGLE I/O 2021 KEYNOTE?

The live stream starts at 10AM PT / 1PM ET on Tuesday May 18th or at the following times outside the US: London: 6PM / Berlin: 7PM / Moscow: 8PM / New Delhi: 10:30PM / Beijing: 1AM (May 19th) / Tokyo: 2AM (May 19th) / Melbourne: 3AM (May 19th)

Google will replay the keynote on its YouTube channel and the Google I/O website. If the last years are any indication, you’ll also be able to watch a recording of the event once it’s ended to catch anything you may have missed.

WHERE CAN I WATCH THE GOOGLE I/O 2021 KEYNOTE?

You’ll be able to watch the keynote live on YouTube and the Google I/O 2021 website. We’ll also embed the live stream at the top of the page if you want to stick around here.

Developer talks and more detailed walkthroughs of everything coming to Android, Chrome, and all of Google’s other products will also be available on the dedicated I/O 2021 site.

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Go read this look at how Clubhouse’s blocking system is problematic

Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes on social media can tell you that most platforms have plenty of trolls, reply-guys and other people who may just be unpleasant to interact with. On big platforms like Twitter, Faecbook, and Instagram, the option to block another user allows you to keep someone out of your feed. Blocking is far from a perfect solution, but at least it gives users a way to continue to use the platforms and avoid (some) nasty interactions.

But as Will Oremus writes for The Atlantic, the year-old audio chat platform Clubhouse has a different mechanism for blocking, one that affects more than just the blocker and the blockee (I know, but what would you call it?):

When you block someone on Clubhouse, it doesn’t just affect communications between the two of you, as it would on Facebook or Twitter. Rather, it limits the way that person can communicate with others too. Once blocked, they can’t join or even see any room that you create, or in which you are speaking—which effectively blocks them for everyone else in that room. If you’re brought “onstage” from the audience to speak, anyone else in the audience whom you have blocked will be kept off the stage for as long as you’re up there. And if you’re a moderator of a room, you can block a speaker and boot them from the conversation in real time—even if they’re mid-sentence.

So in essence, a “black badge” on Clubhouse can limit who speaks, where, and when on the platform. As Oremus notes, it’s a social act to block another person on Clubhouse, one that affects multiple interactions. And members of underrepresented groups said that blocking can be “weaponized” on Clubhouse, to squelch certain points of view or restrict conversations:

One, a Black woman in her 20s who’s studying medicine, said she has been barred from rooms discussing vaccination in Black communities, because one influential anti-vaxxer who frequents those rooms blocked her. She also found herself abruptly shut out of a weekly WandaVision watch-party club that had become her favorite experience on the app, evidently because one member had blocked her.

The buzz around Clubhouse— which attracted 10 million users in its inaugural year— has started to fizzle out a bit; it only recently released a version for Android devices, and new users can only join when invited by a current user. Add to that the rising popularity and superior accessibility of Twitter’s audio chat platform Spaces, and it seems Clubhouse may be in for a bumpy ride ahead. Go read this analysis of why its unusual blocking system may ultimately contribute to the platform’s decline.