Instagram - Page 6 of 25

Twitter now lets you add stickers to Fleets

Twitter is adding stickers to its ephemeral, Snapchat Stories-like Fleets, the social media company announced on Wednesday. Stickers are available for users on both Android and iOS.

When you’re making a Fleet, you’ll be able to add stickers by tapping the smiley face icon on the bottom row of your screen. When you do, you’ll see a collection of Twitter-made animated stickers and emoji (the latter of which Twitter calls “Twemoji”). And if you search for something in the search bar at the top of the screen, Twitter will pull up GIFs sourced from Tenor and Facebook-owned Giphy.

Your Fleets just got an upgrade.

Now you can express yourself in the conversation with stickers. Add GIFs and Twemojis to a Fleet by tapping the icon, on Android and iOS. pic.twitter.com/Ihh9ZZh70a

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 31, 2021

If you’ve ever used stickers on Snapchat or Instagram, this new feature should feel quite familiar to you. That said, the feature might feel so familiar because both Snapchat and Instagram have offered it for years. But Twitter is still in early days with Fleets, which only became available to everyone back in November, so perhaps stickers are just a first sign of more additions to come.

Instagram launches its own TikTok Duet feature called Reels Remix

Instagram Reels already mimics TikTok in multiple ways, and now, it’s getting one more feature from the popular video app: duets. On Instagram, users can now “remix” a reel, meaning they can upload a video next to another user’s, building on top of the original clip. The feature is already popular on TikTok, often for dance challenges, under the “duet” function.

To remix a reel, tap the three dot menu on a reel and select “Remix this Reel.” From there, you can record your reel or upload pre-recorded footage. You can also control the volume for the original audio or your recorded audio, and add a voiceover, along with other editing functions. Only new reels will have remixes enabled automatically, but if you already have a reel that you want people to be able to remix, you can manually turn that on by tapping that three dot menu on your own video and selecting “Enable Remixing.” If you want to turn off remixing on all your reels, you can do so via your broader profile settings.

Reels launched in August last year and initially, Instagram seemed open to having people repurpose their TikToks on the platform. But as the months have gone by, Instagram has added more TikTok-like features while also deemphasizing any content that’s been recycled. The company is clearly serious about making the short-form video content a mainstay. It added a Reels button to its home screen and even ensured the videos made the cut for its global Lite app. It’s just getting closer and closer to resembling TikTok exactly.

Belkin’s iPhone 12 stand will follow you with face tracking (but not during video calls)

Belkin has a new iPhone stand that’s useful enough to be interesting but annoyingly limited.

The company’s “Magnetic Phone Mount with Face Tracking” works with the iPhone 12’s MagSafe feature, clipping your phone into place using the device’s built-in magnets. It then uses face tracking to follow you around the room, rotating so it’s always facing you.

The catch is that this feature doesn’t work with video calls on Zoom, FaceTime, or any other similar service — surely one of the biggest potential use cases in a pandemic. In fact, judging by the product description, the tracking feature only works when recording video through Belkin’s own iOS app. That would mean you can’t even use the stand to make sure your phone is always facing you as you follow along with an exercise video or recipe. We’ve reached out to Belkin to double check this and will update this article when we know more.

You can track yourself recording video but not watching it.

Image: Belkin

Being able to record video that tracks you will definitely be useful to some people, and Belkin says its iOS app can connect directly to social media accounts (including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and others) to make posting easy. But it still means the mount is more of a specialist tool than a device that could help more consumers.

Other relevant specs: the mount works in landscape and portrait orientations, can be tilted vertically from -15 to 30 degrees, rotates horizontally through 360 degrees, and is powered by three AA batteries. And of course, because it uses MagSafe to attach to your phone, it only works with the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. The mount will sell for $65, but it’s only listed as “coming soon” on Belkin’s website.

The Resident Evil tall lady comes to life thanks to a former Olympian’s cosplay

Resident Evil Village is coming on May 7th, but if you have been keeping up with the news surrounding the game, you may have heard about Lady Dimitrescu, a very tall woman who has become very popular on the internet. There have been a few cosplayers who’ve attempted to re-create the iconic villain, but the most recent cosplay from Yekaterina Lisina is arguably the best yet.

Lisina, a former Olympian-turned-model, recently shared some content on Instagram of her cosplaying Lady Dimitrescu, even going so far as to re-create a parody of one of the trailers for the game. But don’t take my word for it, just check out the video she shared on her Instagram page:

Lisina stands at 6 feet, 9 inches tall — which, fun fact, is the inverse height of the actual character, according to the game’s art director. This isn’t the only content we’ve seen from Lisina cosplaying as the character: she also posted a TikTok a few days ago of her in the outfit. Outside of cosplaying as the latest Resident Evil antagonist, Lisina also cosplayed as Princess Peach from the Super Mario series.

And now, I shall patiently wait to see if someone on the Resident Evil Village development team notices Lisina’s cosplay because I really want to know what their reaction is.

Facebook shorted video creators thousands of dollars in ad revenue

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Due to a ‘technical issue’

Britain Lockhart never knows what he’ll find when he scuba dives for treasure. Neither do his viewers on Facebook who tune in for a surprise reveal. His page, Depths of History, has been steadily growing on the social network since he started posting videos there about two years ago. He now has 70,000 followers on his page, which has started generating thousands of dollars a month in ad revenue.

“I really didn’t think it would be that profitable at all, but Facebook has such a variety of users on their interface that don’t even use YouTube, but they’ll be on Facebook,” he says, adding that he’ll post his YouTube videos on Facebook to make ad revenue on both.

His income varies, although he says he’ll typically make between $2,000 and $3,000 per month through Facebook. But in 2021 so far, that income has unexpectedly dried up. The January payout was only $931, leaving him thousands of dollars short. In February, it was even lower, coming in at just $664. He double-checked his creator backend, and the numbers didn’t make sense there, either. Facebook’s revenue estimation tool projected that he should have received $3,397 for January and $1,747.52 for February. When the checks came in, he ended more than $4,000 short

“It was like a slap in the face,” Lockhart says. “I was looking forward to buying more camera gear to increase my business, buying things that could prolong me working with Facebook and me working with YouTube.”

And he’s not the only one who hasn’t been entirely paid out. The Verge spoke with two other Facebook video creators, all of whom say the company shorted them on cash and ignored their requests for help. The creators had no reason to initially question the amount they were paid since Facebook’s estimated revenue tool almost always mirrored their actual payouts. Usually, they’d be short only a couple hundred dollars. But after their revenue seemed off two months in a row, the creators say they looked into the issue. All three say the problems began in January, around the time Facebook transitioned to its new Pages experience and made updates to how creators can monetize.

The sudden change is particularly alarming because of Facebook’s ambiguous approach to revenue-sharing in general. The company’s core business has always been direct, targeted advertising, but Facebook now sees an opportunity in sharing revenue with video creators, along the lines of YouTube or Twitch. Facebook has courted all sorts of creators — gamers, writers, and video hosts — through broader monetization options, like in-stream ads, shopping, and even subscription newsletters. It’s still unclear how many creators are on Facebook, but the strategy seems to be somewhat working. Facebook says there are more than 1 million shops across its app and Instagram, and that from 2019 to 2020, the number of content creators on Facebook earning the equivalent of $10,000 USD per month grew 88 percent, and creators earning $1,000 per month grew 94 percent.

But these creators say Facebook only cares about advertisers, leaving them with no one to turn to when their payments are unexpectedly short. They reached out for help, but the company gave them no feedback on what could be wrong.

After The Verge reached out for comment, however, Facebook said it “resolved a technical issue that prevented a small number of video creators on Facebook from receiving their full in-stream ads payouts.”

“We’re notifying these partners that they’ll receive those remaining in-stream payments during the April payout cycle, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

It’s good news for the creators getting a rebate but still an alarming precedent — holding thousands of dollars back for months with little explanation or guarantee the same problem won’t pop up again in the future.

Volodymyr Popkov, the creator of the page Painting Inspiration, which demos acrylic paint art tutorials, suggests that Facebook doesn’t value the creators who make the platform thrive. “They have live chat Facebook support for the people who spend money for the ads, who bring [Facebook] their money, but for people who are like us, the creators, they owe us money right now, and they’re not doing anything,” he says.

Facebook estimated that Popkov would get $13,000 in January, he says, but he only received $4,600. In February, he was estimated to receive $29,000 but made only $6,400. He knows the number is just an estimate, but he says he hasn’t seen any change in the numbers of viewers on his videos — at least not enough to explain a $32,000 shortfall. It’s a particular problem because Popkov employs artists to make artwork for the page. His Facebook income serves as payroll for them, along with his revenue from YouTube.

Another creator, Erik Reed, of the Outdoors With Erik page, says he’s owed over $10,000, going off the estimate tools. He specifically joined Facebook because other creators told him the monetization options and engagement levels were worthwhile.

Facebook has a long history of shoddy metrics causing problems for partners. Earlier this month, court documents showed that Facebook provided advertisers with “inflated and misleading” metrics for years on how many people their ads were reaching. The company apparently knew that the reach of these ads was amplified by fake and duplicate accounts, but chose not to delete them. A Facebook spokesperson told The Verge at the time that this reach tool provided only “an estimate,” although Facebook allegedly knew advertisers based decisions around the metric. The company also previously faced a lawsuit that claimed it knowingly overestimated how much video content users watched. Facebook settled the suit in 2019.

The creators who spoke with The Verge have all diversified away from Facebook to avoid being overdependent on one platform; they all run YouTube channels along with their Facebook Pages as well as with other social pages. For the revenue-sharing model to work, Facebook needs creators to stay happy and posting. But increasingly, creators are skeptical of the company’s incentives.

“Working with platforms is hard,” Popkov says. “And you’re not working on your [own] platform, so it’s not like I can trust them.”

Apple picked a truly embarrassing time to wrongly reject a simple app update

Apple has a rocky relationship with some iOS developers because of its seemingly arbitrary decisions over what gets published and when — and now, because of a dumb miss, it’s being accused of putting profits ahead of human rights in Myanmar by the founder of ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, even though that’s probably not what happened.

Proton founder Andy Yen writes that Apple blocked an important security update to the company’s privacy-protecting ProtonVPN software simply because Apple didn’t like the app’s description, specifically this line:

Whether it is challenging governments, educating the public, or training journalists, we have a long history of helping bring online freedom to more people around the world.

If you’re having a hard time finding anything objectionable there, you’re not alone — but Apple told Proton it wasn’t okay to encourage “users to bypass geo-restrictions or content limitations.”

The context here is that VPNs have become a critical tool for protesters in Myanmar to sidestep an huge internet crackdown during the country’s ongoing, bloody military coup. One researcher told Bloomberg that VPN use has increased 7,200 percent since early last month, when the government blocked Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I’m with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on this: I highly doubt Apple made a conscious decision to deny ProtonVPN to Myanmar — the company’s smart enough to know how that would look, and it’s not like the app was blocked, just a security update. Yen is an outspoken critic of the App Store now, having told Congress (and The Verge) last year how he’d been strong-armed by Apple.

But the fact it’s just a security update makes the rejection extra dumb, because Apple explicitly said last year that it’d no longer hold up bug fixes because of these arbitrary guideline violations.

Regardless, Apple comes off looking a little like the bad guy here, especially now that ProtonVPN has taken the high road and ceded to Apple’s demands. “Due to the emergency situation in Myanmar, we removed the language about challenging governments which Apple found objectionable, and the app was finally approved,” Yen tells The Verge. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

That perception seems like it’s going to be increasingly hard to fight, now that antitrust scrutiny of Apple’s App Store has been heating up in Congress and the courts, with the Epic App Store trial set to begin May 3rd.

It doesn’t help when Apple is seemingly caught breaking its own rules and needing to apologize, particularly when it could be seen as retaliation against an app developer (Yen) who’d previously spoken out. Last year, many other developers weren’t willing to come forward and admit they’d been forced to add in-app purchases to their apps, specifically because they feared retaliation.

It’s not your imagination — that vaccination site really is crawling along

On paper, using a website to schedule your vaccine appointment seems like an easy way to gain access to much needed COVID-19 immunizations. But a new investigation from The Markup shows that state-run vaccine websites are slow to load on mobile devices, compounding what can be an already intimidating sign-up experience for people who are less comfortable online.

The Markup conducted its performance tests using Google’s open-source Lighthouse tool, in this case relying on the tool’s ability to measure the time it takes for a site to load and be functional. For this test, The Markup focused on the performance of the mobile version of sites on the Chrome browser and conducted the tests from three separate locations (New York, Texas, and California). Nevada’s state vaccine site was the slowest to load, taking 15.7 seconds to fully load in comparison to the fastest (Puerto Rico) at 1.4 seconds, and the average (Colorado) at 5.9 seconds.

The spread of state vaccine site loading times.

Image: The Markup

The causes for these slowdowns vary, but in the case of the Nevada site, The Markup suggests that an abundance of interactive, embedded content could be contributing to the slowness:

Nevada’s vaccination page features several embedded YouTube videos and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts that offer public health information, featuring health professionals answering common questions in both English and Spanish. Our tests show that Nevada’s page has the lowest average performance score of all the sites we examined.

All of that extra information is great, but I think the confusion also arises for less web-literate people because these sites don’t work like scheduling a traditional doctor’s appointment over the phone. Being presented with a bunch of links from the original site out to other vaccine provider’s websites was intimidating for my grandparents — who often worry about getting “lost” online — and I imagine it would be for many others.

The situation is reminiscent of other times government organizations have been tasked with building out essential online infrastructure, like the rollout of healthcare.gov. The federal site’s issues have since been resolved, and state health departments are working at a much smaller scale, but some of the problems are similar. It’s not that these departments are incapable of making a website, it’s that time and resources are stretched thin, and many of them have never really been tasked with a project so huge. “They’ve never required the infrastructure that they do now,” Ohio State University health services professor Tory Hogan tells The Markup.

Third-party solutions have sprung up in response to these inadequacies, from startups focused on connecting people with leftover vaccine doses like Dr. B, to independent vaccine hunters booking appointments for strangers. But there’s no one solution, at least not until President Biden’s promised vaccine finding website launches on May 1st. Here’s hoping that website works better.

Facebook’s F8 developer conference will return on June 2nd in low-key virtual format

Facebook’s F8 developer conference is returning this year as a one-day virtual event on June 2nd. Like so many big gatherings, last year’s F8 was canceled over concerns regarding coronavirus. But the world’s largest social network evidently wants to keep its sizable community of developers engaged and is bringing the conference back in 2021.

In a blog post, Facebook’s VP of platform partnerships, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, said the new format, dubbed F8 Refresh, would return the event “to its roots: a place to celebrate, inspire and help developers grow.” He added: “Our virtual stage will be open to developers across the world and live streamed on our Facebook for Developers page on June 2nd.” Interested developers can sign up here to be notified when registration opens.

One big difference to previous years is that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg won’t be speaking, according to TechCrunch. Instead, Papamiltiadis will deliver the opening presentation, which TechCrunch says is expected to “provide some updates on new launches for the platform” including new product tools for Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, and WhatsApp.

Without Zuckerberg at the helm, though, we can probably expect fewer big consumer-facing announcements, as we’ve seen in previous years. Facebook still has a lot to talk about, though, and potential topics could range from ongoing challenges like platform moderation to the company’s big bets in augmented reality and virtual reality. From the hints Facebook is dropping, though, it seems F8 Refresh will be a low-key affair.

How to watch the OnePlus 9 series launch event

Android phones by OnePlus have a considerable set of fans, and if you count yourself among their number, you will probably want to be in on this year’s launch of the company’s latest line: the OnePlus 9 series.

What’s in store? Well, in its videos, OnePlus is touting Fluid Display 2.0, an OLED panel which is supposed to have a really fast refresh rate while still (according to the company) maintaining an impressive battery life. There is the possibility of three models — OnePlus 9, 9 Pro, and 9R — and perhaps a new watch.

For more information, the best thing to do is to attend the event. Here’s how:

WHEN DOES THE ONEPLUS EVENT START?

It starts today, March 23rd, at 10AM ET / 7AM PT / 2PM BST.

WHERE CAN I WATCH THE ONEPLUS EVENT?

We will have the live stream video embedded up top, so you can stick around here to watch when it begins. Otherwise, head to these links:

OnePlus is streaming the event live on its website and on YouTube
Follow @verge on Twitter
Keep an eye on @verge on Instagram for live updates

YouTube is testing automatic product detection in videos

YouTube is always running experiments. One of its latest: testing an automated list of products detected in videos uploaded to the site. As of March 22nd this year, that test is being expanded to “people watching videos in the US,” according to YouTube. (An early version of the feature was tested midway through last year, though that test was very small, reports 9to5Google.)

In one of its blogs, a YouTube representative gave a little more detail about how this particular feature will be deployed:

We are experimenting with a new feature that displays a list of products detected in some videos, as well as related products. The feature will appear in between the recommended videos, to viewers scrolling below the video player. The goal is to help people explore more videos and information about those products on YouTube.

Presumably, it’s a move intended to give Google its own piece of the incredibly lucrative affiliate link market, while also tying commerce directly to video uploads. These lists could function as a second recommendation algorithm, with YouTube serving videos that feature similar products. It would also put YouTube in the same shopping space as other social platforms (like Instagram). Who knows! As with most experiments, it’s a little up in the air — at least until the results come in.

Watch this amazing footage of a drone flying right through an erupting volcano in Iceland

Last Friday, the Fagradalsfjall volcano near Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik began erupting for the first time in 800 years after the island nation was hit by thousands of small earthquakes. Thankfully, the eruption was small and has not put anyone in danger. Instead, it’s gifted the world with some awe-inspiring views of lava flowing from the ground.

The sight has been best captured by Icelandic drone pilot Bjorn Steinbekk, who took the straightforward approach of flying right through the eruption. We spotted the footage from Steinbekk (above) via Twitter, and it seems he flew several sorties through the airborne lava — a daring feat that makes us wonder how his drone survived the high temperatures.

Það er bara ein fokking regla og það er að negla!!!!

Posted by Bjorn Steinbekk on Saturday, March 20, 2021

If the eruption of Fagradalsfjall looks relatively minor for a volcano, that’s because it is. “The eruption is considered a small one and the eruption fissure is about 500-700 metres (1640-2300 feet) long,” said the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) in a statement. “The lava is less than 1 square kilometre (0.4 square miles) in size.”

You can get a better sense of the scale of the thing in these images taken on Sunday below. They show crowds of hikers admiring the eruption, which is located around 40 kilometers west of the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik.

Hikers admire the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano.

Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP via Getty Images

This video below also shows you a before and after of the eruption site, which is nestled in a small valley in an uninhabited region of the country. News reports say there’s been no ash fall created by the eruption, but residents living downwind of the volcano have been told to close their windows due to possible gas emissions.

None of that has stopped Steinbekk from getting up-close-and-personal with Fagradalsfjall. And if you want to see more of his fantastic videos and images of Iceland from the air, you can check out his official Instagram. There are some truly wonderful shots to admire.

Twitter will set up a legal entity in Turkey to comply with controversial social media law

Twitter is planning to establish a legal entity in Turkey to continue operating there under the country’s controversial internet law that took effect last year, the company announced late Friday. Under the law, social media companies that have more than 1 million users must store Turkish users’ data in the country.

Such companies also are required to designate an official representative in Turkey, who must answer requests to take down content that violates privacy within 48 hours. If the companies refuse to comply, they could face fines, advertising bans, and eventually bandwidth reductions that could make the platforms unusable.

“We remain committed to protecting the voices and data of people in Turkey who use Twitter. We will continue to be transparent about how we handle requests from government and law enforcement,” Twitter said in its statement.

Authorities in Turkey fined Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok 40 million liras (about $5.1 million) each in 2020 for failing to appoint the required local representative. Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube have since established the required legal entities in the country. Earlier this year, Twitter was among the social media companies that received a ban on advertising in Turkey under the new law.

The Turkish government says Internet Law 5651, as the legislation is called, is necessary to protect the rights of social media users in the country and to fight online criminal activity. But human rights organizations caution the law is censorship that risks access to information, in a country that the Associated Press notes has a history of restricting free speech.

TikTok banning some accounts in Myanmar in attempt to stop the spread of violent videos

TikTok says it has “aggressively banned” numerous accounts and devices in Myanmar, in an attempt to curb misinformation and the spread of violent videos on its platform.

Rest of World reported that government soldiers in Myanmar have posted hundreds of videos to TikTok since its military seized power in February. The videos ranges from traditional pro-government propaganda, to misinformation meant to confuse protesters, to threats from soldiers with weapons.

TikTok removed some of the videos earlier this month after media reports about the rise in hate speech and threats in the southeast Asian nation. But Rest of World reports that the short-form video platform admitted it had not moved swiftly enough to stop the spread of the threatening videos and other violent content.

As demonstrators continue to protest the February 1st coup, more than 200 people have been killed in Myanmar, Reuters reported.

“The promotion of hate, violence and misinformation has absolutely no place on TikTok,” a company spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The Verge. “When we identified the rapidly escalating situation in Myanmar, we quickly expanded our dedicated resources and further stepped up efforts to remove violative content. We aggressively banned numerous accounts and devices that we identified promoting dangerous content at scale.”

The spokesperson added that TikTok “will continue to make significant investment to respond to new threats in order to keep TikTok in Myanmar a safe platform.”

Activists and rights advocates told Rest of World that the use of TikTok to spread government propaganda in Myanmar bore similarities to the way the country’s military used Facebook to stoke violence and hate speech against the country’s Rohingya minority in the early 2010s.

In February, Facebook said it was banning the Tatmadaw—Myanmar’s military— and other state-controlled entities from both Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger are down for many

Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger are down for many right now. More than 123,000 users have reported issues with Instagram on DownDetector. More than 23,000 users have reported issues with WhatsApp on DownDetector, too, and the service is down for one Verge staffer’s family, who is based in Europe. Facebook Messenger seems to be affected as well, with more than 5,000 reports of problems on DownDetector.

When navigating to Instagram’s website, I saw a white page with the message, “5xx Server Error.” And when I re-downloaded Instagram to my phone and tried to log in, I hit an error there, too.

Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. The Facebook Gaming Twitter account acknowledged that “there are a number of issues currently affecting Facebook products, including gaming streams.” The account said that multiple teams are working on the issue.

There are a number of issues currently affecting Facebook products, including gaming streams. Multiple teams are working on it, and we’ll update you when we can.

— Facebook Gaming (@FacebookGaming) March 19, 2021

As you might expect, the memes about the outage are strong on Twitter (which, fortunately, seems to be hanging on):

This isn’t the only recent blip in Facebook’s services — Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs went down back in December. Facebook and Instagram also experienced big outages over Thanksgiving in 2019.

Developing…

ChilledCow puts channel name out to pasture with a rebrand to ‘Lofi Girl’

The hugely popular lo-fi music YouTube channel ChilledCow isn’t just known for its chill, cozy beats; the iconic animations of the girl sitting and working at her desk are instantly recognizable around the internet. (She’s even being turned into a one-foot-tall figurine.) And on Thursday, the channel’s sixth anniversary, ChilledCow fully embraced the icon by rebranding the channel to “Lofi Girl.”

“This was a very tough decision to make, but the driving force behind it is the fact that ChilledCow’s name was chosen many years ago, and is no longer reflective of what the channel is about anymore,” Lofi Girl said in a statement on Twitter.

The YouTube channel is indeed called Lofi Girl now, and the Facebook and Twitter accounts are @lofigirl. (The Instagram account is still @chilledcow_yt, but maybe that will change soon.) Otherwise, the channel remains the same — there is still a live stream of the soft electronic beats to work or relax to, as well as a second, mellower stream, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

“Don’t worry, this change won’t affect in any way the content on the channel but will instead pave the way for many exciting projects for you all in the future!” Lofi Girl said. “The channel has been and always will be about music, art and positivity only.”