TikTok - Page 4 of 10

TikTok will warn users before posting ‘inappropriate or unkind’ comments

TikTok is rolling out a pop-up today that’s designed to warn users before they post a comment that might be “inappropriate or unkind.” The new feature is one of two being announced that are designed to “promote kindness” on the service. The other is Filter All Comments, so that they only appear once individually approved.

The new unkind warning appears if TikTok believes a comment might violate its community guidelines. “Would you like to reconsider posting this?” the pop-up box reads, before encouraging users to “Edit” it, or “Post anyway.”

Prompts like these have been explored by other social networks to cut down on bullying and harassment. Instagram rolled out similar prompts back in 2019, Twitter announced it was testing them last year, and they’ve also been spotted on Facebook. Instagram later reported that results from introducing the prompt had been “promising” and that it found “these types of nudges can encourage people to reconsider their words when given a chance.”

The new Filter All Comments feature can be enabled in the Comments filters menu, which already allows users to filter spam and offensive comments, or filter based on specific keywords. Once enabled, creators have to manually approve individual comments before they appear under their videos.

As part of today’s announcement, TikTok has also announced it’s partnering with the Cyberbullying Research Center as it works on more anti-bullying initiatives.

Instagram will relaunch its Lite app in 170 countries with support for Reels

Instagram launched its smaller Lite app in 2018 only to pull it from the Play Store in spring of last year. Now, the app’s getting a relaunch with new features and a slightly larger file size. Instagram announced today that the app will start rolling out on Android to 170 countries, including the US, through the Play Store, and that the new app requires only two megabytes, compared to the regular Instagram app’s 30MB. (The original Lite app only required 573 kilobytes, however, so it’s definitely larger than that.) No iOS version is planned for now.

This bigger size allows for new features, though, including the ability to send direct messages and record and post videos. It also prominently features the Reels tab on the homepage while forgoing the shopping tab.

In a briefing, Instagram Lite product manager Nick Brown said the team has “no plans” to bring shopping to Instagram Lite, but that Reels had “a lot of engagement” in India, which is why the team decided to keep that tab in this iteration of the Lite app. (TikTok is banned in India currently and has reduced its team there, so Reels has had a chance to blossom without the competition.) Users won’t be able to make their own Reels from the app, however. They also can’t use augmented reality face filters, although the team is “absolutely” exploring it. Other, less data-intensive creation tools, like stickers, GIFs, and text can still be applied.

For now, the app doesn’t have ads, although Brown tells The Verge that the team is “committed to offering the full suite of monetization tools.” He and the team want to “take the space and time — that everything we launched in Lite we can fully support and that it is just as good of an experience as it is in the regular Instagram.”

Many companies have launched smaller, pared-down versions of their apps for users around the world who might share phones or use older devices with less storage. Facebook launched its Lite app in 2015 while TikTok launched its version in 2019. For companies that need to be global in order to grow, a smaller app is one way to bring new users on board.

Making fanfiction beautiful enough for a bookshelf

The only thing more beautiful than the red cloth stretched across the cover of Sarah Lesure’s handcrafted book is the swirling font filling up the pages inside. Each page is meticulously crafted to feel luxurious, like an expensive tome tucked on a back shelf in a little book shop. Lesure spends hours making sure each book looks unique and regal, but she has to be careful not to use any specific imagery that could land her in trouble.

That’s because the books Lesure crafts contain works of fanfiction, and she’s found an entire community of avid readers looking to turn their unauthorized digital favorites into physical treats.

Nothing about the process is simple. There are “literally hundreds of moments where I could do something wrong and everything falls to shambles,” Lesure, a student who started bookbinding during a gap year in 2019, told The Verge. Her process includes typesetting, redoing the typesetting, doing that again and again until it’s right, printing, folding, sewing, making the cover, and finally putting it all together.

Fanfiction has traditionally been confined to online sites like Archive of Our Own (AO3) and FanFiction.Net, but some of the most prolific artists within the space have found a way to help people enjoy their favorite titles in new ways: binding the stories into physical novels designed to read better and stand out on bookshelves. The crafts have helped bring some of the most popular unofficial stories set in Harry Potter, Star Wars, and other universes onto shelves where they can sit right alongside their authorized counterparts.

Bookbinding fanfiction has seen an uptick in recent months particularly, thanks to TikTok, according to a number of bookbinders The Verge spoke to. And as new fans come across their work, artists have started opening their DMs to commissions.

One of TikTok and Twitter’s most popular fanfiction bookbinders started out by gifting a physical copy of her favorite work to the original author in March 2020. Known for her intricate detailing, Sam, who goes by @omgreylo on Twitter and TikTok, has since created more than 150 books.

“When I actually started, I worked on the bedroom floor with my infant on the bed and nursery rhymes playing on TV,” Sam told The Verge.

Bookbinding started as a way to pass the time in quarantine for many of the crafters The Verge spoke to, letting them learn a new skill and feel connected at a time when the entire world feels isolating. TikTok is crowded with memes about twenty- and thirty-somethings returning to fanfiction, something they haven’t done in years. Salina Li, an Etsy seller who learned about bookbinding from her older sister, said her “whole life has revolved around Harry Potter,” adding that “everything I could think of doing it is related to it.”

To make every book, creators have to decide on an assortment of physical details, like the margin size and how to start a new chapter. They’ll work with customers to figure out what colors and designs they would like to see in the finished product, and which designs they don’t want at all. It’s as much a business and a science as it is an art.

Different creators hate different parts of the process. Sam loathes the literal printer process; watching the pages come out, making sure that everything looks right and the printer doesn’t run out of ink. Lesure hates typesetting. She relied on DIY videos she found scrounging through YouTube, and nearly came close to quitting the first few times because of the difficulty. Graphic design students learn the skill in school, but without a teacher guiding a newcomer to the art form, like Lesure, it can be a daunting and exhausting task.

When Lesure finally finished her first book, it wasn’t long until her business took off. “I handcrafted the first few books just for my friends, and when we tweeted about it, it quickly picked up traction and random people would come up to me and ask if I’d take commissions,” Lesure told The Verge. “It all snowballed to where I am today — 30 books currently in process and orders up to April.”

When selling a book, Lesure and Sam recoup costs for materials and shipping, but neither says they make a profit off their work out of concern for the legalities surrounding fanfiction.

Fanfiction by definition toes the line of copyright law, with advocates arguing that most freely available stories technically fall under “fair use” provisions. For decades, nonprofit groups like the Organization for Transformative Works have spent time defending sites like AO3 from studios, publishers, and other groups that have tried to use copyright laws as a way to have works taken down. But bookbinding poses further issues since there’s usually an exchange of money between two parties.

“There’s virtually no law on whether recouping costs qualifies as commercial or not,” Betsy Rosenblatt, a professor of intellectual property law at the University of California Davis and a member of the Organization for Transformative Works, told The Verge. “And when I say virtually no law, I mean no law. It just hasn’t come up. The reason it doesn’t come up is because if somebody is only recouping costs, they’re unlikely to generate a lawsuit.”

One of Sarah Lesure’s books.

Photo by Sarah Lesure

Fan-inspired works can be tricky to market online. Bookbinders and fanfiction writers join other artists who sell unauthorized merchandise and face the threat of takedown notices. Li, a new fanfiction binder who operates an Etsy shop where she sells other artwork, said the legal consequences are rarely world-ending. “I’m just really hoping that they’ll look at me and be like, ‘Gosh, she barely gets anything, it’s fine,’” Li said.

Crafts that were listed for purchase on Li’s Etsy shop have been taken down because of copyright violations, she told The Verge. “It’s one of those guessing games you have to look out for, especially when you’re a small business owner,” Li said. She primarily charges for supplies and shipping of her bound fanfiction, she said, because “it isn’t my work.” She got permission to bind Harry Potter stories from an author named Sonia, but likewise, “Harry Potter isn’t hers either.”

Members of the fanfiction bookbinding community are also aware of another issue that lies just outside their tiny, innocuous world — self-printing shops. Artists like Sam and Lesure have publicly decried people using shops like Lulu or resorting to self-printing tools in stores like Barnes & Noble because of the increased legal risk that comes with it. Sam has heard fanfiction readers excuse using Barnes & Noble to print fanfiction, because “they have permission from the author.”

In those instances, she’ll remind people that “the fanfic author doesn’t have the right to say it’s fine,” trying to educate members of the community that the “material still belongs to Warner Bros., Scholastic, Disney or whatever.” A Barnes & Noble representative told The Verge, “We prohibit and rigorously enforce against the use of Barnes & Noble Press to post or print any content that infringes on copyrighted work.”

“I regularly get sent TikToks of teenagers bragging about illegally receiving their favorite fic from Barnes & Noble, and explaining to people how to do it,” Lesure said. “I love the enthusiasm for the concept of fanfiction as books, how crazy people go over it; it’s absolutely great. But especially on TikTok, the lack of legal understanding is very scary.”

The issue might never truly be solved, considering that what constitutes fair use of copyrighted material is determined on a case-by-case basis. But those fears shouldn’t stop fanfiction writers and bookbinders from creating, Rosenblatt said. Creators should “be aware, but they shouldn’t be scared,” she said.

“They’re engaging in something that’s too important to let fear stop them,” Rosenblatt said. “This kind of self-expression is too important, for finding meaning in life and for self-actualization and for building community, to let fear shut down something that is doing way, way more good than harm.”

TikTok is making it easier for creators to answer their fans’ questions

TikTok has officially launched a new Q&A feature that’s designed to help creators answer questions from their fans. It’s available on both pre-recorded and live videos, and works by having viewers mark their comment as a question. Creators can then either answer questions via a text comment or video reply.

In live videos, presenters can select questions from a dedicated menu, and then choose to highlight them during live responses. In video replies, Q&A comments can be added as stickers, which link back to the video where the question was originally asked. A new section in a creator’s profile aggregates all their Q&As into one place as well as serving as another place for viewers to ask questions.

TikTok says the feature is available for Creator Accounts, which anyone can switch to via the “Manage account” option in settings. “To turn on Q&A, go to your settings and privacy page, select Creator, tap Q&A and hit the “Turn on Q&A” button to activate the feature,” the company says.

The Q&A feature was being tested earlier this year as an opt-in feature to Creator Accounts with over 10,000 followers. Now, it’s available worldwide to anyone who wants to opt-in.

Far-right news and misinformation received the most engagement on Facebook during 2020 US election

In the weeks before and after the 2020 US election, Facebook content from far-right sources of news and misinformation received more engagement than other sources elsewhere on the political spectrum, a new study from New York University has revealed.

The findings suggest that far-right pages have an advantage energizing followers on the world’s biggest social network. “My takeaway is that, one way or another, far-right misinformation sources are able to engage on Facebook with their audiences much, much more than any other category,” Laura Edelson, a researcher at NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy initiative who helped compile the report, told CNN. “That’s probably pretty dangerous on a system that uses engagement to determine what content to promote.”

Researchers looked at some 8.6 million public posts shared by 2,973 “news and information sources” from August 10th, 2020 to January 11th, 2021, categorizing the political slant and verisimilitude of their output based on evaluations by independent outlets like NewsGuard and Media Bias/Fact Check. The study measured how often Facebook users engaged with this content — sharing, commenting, or responding with reactions.

Data from NYU’s study shows far-right sources of news and misinformation outperforming other parts of the political spectrum.

Image: NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy

Their findings showed that far-right sources generated the highest average number of interactions per post, followed by far-left sources, then more centrist pages. Looking specifically at far-right sources, they found that pages spreading misinformation performed best. “Far-right sources designated as spreaders of misinformation had an average of 426 interactions per thousand followers per week, while non-misinformation sources had an average of 259 weekly interactions per thousand followers,” write the researchers.

Notably, the study showed that while spreading misinformation meant less engagement for sources on the far-left, left, center, and right wing of the political spectrum, it actually seemed to be an advantage for sources on the far-right. “Being a consistent spreader of far-right misinformation appears to confer a significant advantage,” said the authors.

The study is yet more evidence against the claim made by conservative politicians that Facebook is biased against right-wing sources. It also casts doubts on the efficacy of Facebook’s efforts to limit the spread of misinformation in the run-up to the US 2020 election.

The researchers behind the study note that their findings are limited, too. Although they were able to measure and compare engagement from different sources on Facebook, they couldn’t check how many people actually saw a piece of content or how long they spent reading it. Facebook simply doesn’t provide this data, leaving an incomplete picture.

“Such information would help researchers better analyze why far-right content is more engaging,” write the researchers. “Further research is needed to determine to what extent Facebook algorithms feed into this trend, for example, and to conduct analysis across other popular platforms, such as YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Without greater transparency and access to data, such research questions are out of reach.”

Los Angeles’ creator community is starting to move out

Logan and Jake Paul moved to Los Angeles in 2014, at the height of Vine’s heyday, and not long after found themselves crammed into an apartment at 1600 Vine Road with other young creators hoping to make it big in America’s entertainment epicenter. Over the next few years, they became world-renowned celebrities (often for the wrong reasons), moved into gigantic mansions, and threw the types of obnoxious parties high school kids worshipped and neighbors dreaded. Now, years after they both moved into their own mansions in the wealthiest part of the city, the brothers have independently decided to leave the place they’ve called home.

“I think I got the bug that’s bit everyone leaving LA,” Logan Paul said on his podcast, Impaulsive, in February. “It’s the closing of one chapter and the beginning of a new one. There’s a lot of senior vibes around the house lately.”

They’re not the only ones, either.

YouTube is full of videos posted over the last several months of creators deciding to leave Los Angeles. Some are going back to cities and towns they grew up in to be closer to family. Others, like Logan, are finding entirely new places to live, like Puerto Rico. (Jake has yet to announce where he’s moving.) The exodus is similar to what’s happening in the tech sector, which is seeing employees at companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook move away from San Francisco to set up life elsewhere. Even YouTubers have found that, without a daily routine and places to be, there’s no reason to stay in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

“We came here on our visa a year-and-a-half ago,” Jasmine Saini, a YouTuber who moved to Los Angeles from Toronto with her husband, told The Verge. “The first six months were great. Then the pandemic happened. We just realized there’s literally no point of us being here; we can’t go anywhere, we can’t meet with anybody, we can’t network.”

Actors, directors, and writers have called Hollywood home for close to a century. But since the early 2010s, online creators have turned the city into their playground. Around 2014, the popularity of the shortform video app Vine helped convince a few future superstars to move to Los Angeles and start working with one another. Jake and Logan Paul (Ohio), David Dobrik (Chicago), Liza Koshy (Houston), Jenna Marbles (upstate New York), and other familiar names came together to collaborate and use the city to carve out their own space within the entertainment capital of the world. Certain areas, like the spot around Sunset and Vine — once referred to as Radio Row — attracted a sea of creators all hoping to become superstars.

By 2017 and 2018, creators weren’t just roaming down the streets of Los Angeles with Sony and Canon cameras attached to their hands; they were buying mansions and moving other personalities into their homes. Clout Gang, Team 10, and the Vlog Squad all started turning their lives in Los Angeles into an ongoing show for the internet to watch. More people moved to Los Angeles trying to ride the wave of internet stardom that people like the Paul brothers found just a couple of years prior. Then came TikTok, and hype houses became a staple. The messaging was clear: to become a superstar creator, chances are, you’d have to move to LA.

But over the past year, that’s changed. The pandemic has limited creators’ ability to collaborate, and going out to different locations to film — like a giant water park or hanging out with wild animals, anything that can be turned into an adventure — can be difficult. Creators say it’s removed their key reason to stay.

“It closed down any opportunity to work in LA, it changed the social life of LA, which is so much of what you pay for, and it’s very expensive to live in LA,” Brian Redmon, a YouTuber who originally moved to LA for acting, said in a November 2020 video. “I couldn’t hang out with my friends and so many of my friends were leaving LA.”

The feeling among some LA-based creators is similar to what many workers in the tech sector have been saying about why they’re leaving San Francisco for a remote-first life. Between March and November 2020, more than 80,000 people left San Francisco, according to SFCiti. That’s a 79 percent increase compared to the same period in the year prior. If there’s no office to go to every day, and working remotely works just as well, why spend the cash on expensive living arrangements away from family and friends?

Not everyone feels the same. James Rath was already contemplating leaving Los Angeles before the pandemic started and ultimately decided to move back home to be closer to family. But once everything is back to normal, he’s considering moving to New York City, which he thinks will be more accessible as a legally blind person. Ultimately, he still wants to be in a location with access to potential collaborators.

“Creators have adapted very well in this new remote-working world, but I think there is a longing for in-person collaborations and as soon as it’s safe to do so, either creative will return to the city or new ones will emerge looking for the same opportunities as before,” Rath told The Verge.

Not everyone is leaving Los Angeles, of course. David Dobrik just bought a $9.5 million mansion in Sherman Oaks. Los Angeles is still home to the entertainment industry, and there will eventually be a post-COVID world where things return to some form of normalcy. For people trying to break into the industry or find their place within that world, not being in Los Angeles can be career-ending. Almost every creator in videos watched by The Verge said the same thing: they could end up back in LA.

But for others, Los Angeles will always be a plane right away. Jasmine and Harjit Bhandal realized they could be home with their families in Toronto and fly out to LA when they needed to in a post-pandemic world. The decision to move was a little easier after three members of Harjit’s family came down with COVID-19, and two wound up really sick. With a built-in subscriber base and contacts already made in Los Angeles, this was the perfect time to go home.

“Collabs are happening less and less, and I feel like YouTube has definitely changed,” Jasmine said. “We’re paying a ridiculous amount of money for rent, where it’s just the two of us and our dogs. We don’t have anybody else. It just makes more sense to go home. Especially since everyone realized that you can really do anything online.”

Discovery Plus is the perfect background noise streaming service

The word discovery implies there’s something new to find, but I’ve spent the past few weeks steadily making my way through a show that’s been on the air for more than 20 years, thanks to Discovery Plus: House Hunters.

Thanks to House Hunters (and House Hunters International, alongside Tiny House Hunters) my days spent inside, working from home and doing nothing but watching TV, have transitioned almost exclusively to Discovery Plus. It exists as white noise in my apartment: the buzzing of couples arguing over whether to pay the full $560,000 for a house in the nice neighborhood closer to the cute bistro or take a chance on the $480,000 home that needs some work but is way under budget emitting from my TV set. From the time I start working until the second I’m beginning to wind down, House Hunters plays continuously on its dedicated channel housed within Discovery Plus.

“Our bet is when the world makes a full rotation, that the content people have chosen when they could choose anything on TV or cable, the content that they love and run home for — 90 Day, Fixer Upper, Property Brothers — they’re still going to love that,” Discovery CEO David Zaslav told The New York Times in a recent interview.

Discovery Plus, home to shows from networks like HGTV, TLC, Investigation Discovery, and the Food Network, launched at just the right moment, when ambient television was becoming a fixture in people’s homes during the pandemic. Author and journalist Kyle Chayka referred to ambient TV as something “you don’t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy but which is still seductive enough to be compelling if you choose to do so momentarily.” For Chayka, that was Emily in Paris. This reasoning is also what makes House Hunters, as well as 90 percent of the series on Discovery Plus, perfect ambient television.

Streaming also makes ambient TV possible in a way cable television can’t because there’s a total ad-free option. Loud commercials that play every seven minutes cease to exist. Functionally, I have the option to throw on a House Hunters channel that streams episodes of the show 24/7 and forget about it. Streaming services are designed to make viewing as effortless as possible and keep people’s attention once they’ve started watching TV.

So far, it’s working out better than expected for Discovery Plus. The company has signed up more than 11 million subscribers to the platform since it launched in early January. Discovery’s target audience is people between 25 and 54, a wide bracket but one with the most disposable income as of 2019, according to Statista. The disposable income of a household led by a person between the ages of 25 and 54 ranged between $69,700 and $91,400 in 2019, Statista reported. Add in that cord-cutting continues to happen at an accelerated rate and that millennials are one of the biggest groups to sign up for three or more streaming services, and Discovery Plus’ potential is obvious.

Zaslav chalked up the impressive initial signups as proof that “people really don’t change that much,” when talking to the Times. That’s probably true, but having an ad-free option that does for adults and college students what Frozen 2 on Disney Plus or Cocomelon on YouTube and Netflix repeats do for kids has become essential in my home. To quote a popular TikTok meme, House Hunters on Discovery Plus leads to “empty head, no thoughts.”

There’s another term for this: waiting room television. Like daytime TV talk shows or new soap opera episodes, shows like 90 Day Fiancé, House Hunters, and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives are just interesting enough to catch someone’s fleeting attention, but they’re monotonous enough to not become total distractions. They simply exist to keep people entertained if they want but can float into the background if someone would rather check in on Instagram or read a book instead — or, in my case, work.

Discovery Plus still has a long way to go. There are basic product features that need to be fixed (finding on-demand videos instead of 24/7 channels is more difficult than it should be), and I haven’t seen any new series or specials that have caught my attention. Discovery also has to ensure that it’s keeping the vast majority of those who do sign up. For now, Discovery filled a need I didn’t know I had while working at home — pure, ongoing, ambient TV that I don’t have to think about for hours the second I hit play.

Today I learned the iPhone’s excellent document scanner can be controlled from a Mac

The iPhone’s Notes app has a powerful document scanning feature built right into it, and today I learned that this scanner can be controlled directly from a paired Mac in a variety of apps. It’s an incredibly useful tip for Mac users as it cuts out the awkward middle steps of having to transfer it from phone to computer, or grabbing it from the Mac’s Notes app after it syncs. Shoutout to TikTok account @keyboardshortcuts for bringing it to my attention.

Besides Notes, the iPhone’s scanner can be accessed from a number of different Mac apps, including the Finder, Mail, Messages, and Pages 7.2 and later. To use it, control-click (or right-click) in the window you want to scan the document into, select “Import from iPhone or iPad,” and then click “Scan Documents.” The camera app will magically open on the linked mobile device, where a scan can be taken as usual — no wires required. Once done, the scanned document will end up in the Mac app with a minimum of hassle. I found it useful to scan a bunch of legdocuments directly into a new folder in Finder, for example.

According to a support page for the feature, the Mac will need to be running macOS Mojave or above, and the iPhone or iPad needs to be running iOS 12 and above. Both devices need to have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on, and signed into iCloud with the same Apple ID with two-factor authentication enabled.

As well as scanning documents, the feature can also be used to take photos. Simply select “Take Photo” rather than “Scan Documents” from the menu and tap the shutter button on your mobile device to capture an image.

Camera Continuity isn’t a new feature, but its compatibility with the iPhone’s document scanner was news to me.

This TikTok Tom Cruise impersonator is using deepfake tech to impressive ends

What’s better than an ultra-high-tech, Mission: Impossible-style mask? The deepfake technology this TikToker is using to impersonate Tom Cruise, apparently (via The Daily Beast). The deeptomcruise account appears to feature someone who’s pretending to be the famous actor, and the impression isn’t just jaw-dropping because of how well the person replicates Cruise’s famous laugh.

How can you tell it’s not actually Tom Cruise using some sort of strange Twitter name? First, his voice is close, but it’s not quite there, especially since the lip-syncing is a tiny bit off at some points. You can hear what the real Cruise sounds like in this video (unless, of course, James Corden also deepfaked him in).

Second, while the tracking and lighting on the face are darn near immaculate — especially when the actor passes something in front of his face — there are still a couple of telling glitches, notably in the golf one where the sunglasses disappear and his mouth morphs for a frame or two.

It’s not perfect, but it’s close.

Gif: The Verge

Even with these minor blips, the effect is still spooky. I’m not going to yell from the rooftops that deepfakes will be ruinous to society, but the fact that someone is posing, almost believably, as a famous actor on TikTok (and gaining 236,000 followers in the process) shows that it’s still hard to track deepfakes. While the account pretty clearly indicates that it’s a fake by using “deep” in its name, the next one to pop up might not. TikTok didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Verge asking whether this type of account is allowed under its terms of service, but its TOS explicitly call out impersonations as forbidden:

You may not: […]

impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent you or your affiliation with any person or entity, including giving the impression that any content you upload, post, transmit, distribute or otherwise make available emanates from the Services

That said, this account does seem to be a bit of relatively harmless fun. If you’re reading this, person who runs deeptomcruise (or the real Tom Cruise), please show us if this tech can keep up with your best Tom Cruise run, or if it can handle you dancing and lip-syncing to Bob Seger. Just whatever you do, leave Oprah, deepfaked or not, out of it.

Shadow and Bone’s first trailer teases Netflix’s next big hit

Netflix is constantly looking for its next big franchise hit — a new Stranger Things or The Witcher. And the trailer for Shadow and Bone teases that the upcoming fantasy series could be next.

The first trailer for Netflix’s adaptation of the series showcases the series’ main protagonist, Alina, a map maker who discovers that she harbors a special power that can prevent the world from being swallowed up in darkness threatened by a terrifying sea-of-sorts called the Fold.

Shadow and Bone is Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy series that has swept readers by storm. The book, which introduces readers to the Grisha universe — a world inhabited by special people who practice a form of spell work known as small sciences — has become immensely popular on sites like Tumblr and TikTok.

Fantasy, especially series that focus on teenage and young adult characters, is a genre that every network and streamer is trying to dominate. Whether it’s a Percy Jackson series on Disney Plus or His Dark Materials on HBO, figuring out what the next big fantasy obsession is in a post-Game of Thrones world has become a race. It makes sense; shows like The Witcher and Stranger Things are immensely popular, and fantasy worlds allow studios and networks to create full-fledged franchises.

For example, the Grisha universe was originally made up of a trilogy — Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising — but was followed up by the Crooked Kingdom series, which included the popular Six of Crows. If Shadow and Bone takes off for Netflix, there are several more books for the streamer to mine for potential spinoffs of its own.

For now, fans will at least be able to tune into Shadow and Bone to watch the adventures of Alina, Mal, and the Darkling. Shadow and Bone will premiere on April 23rd.

TikTok reaches $92 million settlement over nationwide privacy lawsuit

TikTok has agreed to pay $92 million to settle a class action lawsuit over alleged privacy violations, which included claims that the app collected “highly sensitive personal data” to track users and target ads to them. TikTok rejected the allegations but said it didn’t want to spend time litigating the issue.

“While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community,” a TikTok spokesperson wrote in a statement sent to The Verge.

The settlement combines 21 proposed class action lawsuits against TikTok over an assortment of alleged privacy violations. The lawsuit makes some substantial claims, from allegations that TikTok analyzed users’ faces to determine their ethnicity, gender, and age to supposed violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act over its transmission of private data. Nearly all US users would be included in the settlement.

As part of the settlement, TikTok has agreed to avoid several behaviors that could compromise user privacy unless it specifically discloses those behaviors in its privacy policy. Those behaviors include storing biometric information, collecting GPS or clipboard data, and sending or storing US users’ data outside the country.

TikTok did not respond to a request for comment on whether it currently engages in any of these behaviors or would be changing its privacy policy as a result of this agreement.

The settlement is just one of many that TikTok has made to set aside privacy concerns. The company settled a lawsuit over alleged children’s privacy allegations in 2019, and the same year, it paid $5.7 million to the Federal Trade Commission over accusations that its predecessor, Musical.ly, failed to gain parental approval for young users.

You can now listen to WandaVision’s latest spoiler-filled bop on Spotify and Apple Music

WandaVision’s seventh episode started to answer some of the biggest questions of the series, and — in line with its sitcom trappings — the show dropped one of its biggest reveals yet in a very spoiler-y retro-style theme song.

Since the episode was released, the track has exploded in popularity to the point that Disney seems to have noticed by dropping the official soundtrack on services like Spotify and Apple Music a few days ahead of the planned release on Friday, February 26th.

Spoilers for WandaVision episode 7 ahead.

That’s right, you can now stream the official version of “Agatha All Along” to your heart’s content. The song, like WandaVision’s other sitcom themes, was written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (best known for their work on the Frozen soundtracks) featured at the end of the most recent episode.

“Agatha All Along” reveals that nosy neighbor “Agnes” is in fact the witch Agatha Harkness — who, as the song makes clear in an incredibly catchy manner, was behind at least some of the oddities of Westview all along as the villain of the series.

Since the episode was released, the song has already become a TikTok trend, received a trap remix, and been re-created as a soaring orchestral number. It’s the kind of popularity that brings to mind another musical streaming hit: the massively viral “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher” from Netflix’s The Witcher.

That song had similarly exploded in popularity across the internet when The Witcher was released, but it took Netflix over a month to get its act together and release an official version of the soundtrack on streaming services, almost entirely missing the moment. It’s a mistake that the streamer hasn’t made since, and the viral soundtracks to more recent shows — like Bridgerton’s pop culture covers — have been available alongside the series’s debut.

With the early release of the soundtrack, it seems that Disney has made a similar choice to ride the wave and not let “Agatha All Along” pass it by, even if it means bumping up a few release dates — until the next WandaVision theme song takes over TikTok, that is.

Social networks are finally competitive again

Lately, the consumer internet — that set of products devoted to building and monetizing large networks of people — has started to feel rather buzzy. A space that had been largely emptied out over the past five years is once again humming with life. The products are compelling enough, and growing fast enough, that Facebook and others have begun trying to reverse-engineer and copy them.

It still doesn’t seem quite real to me, and yet everywhere I look the signs are there: social networks are competitive again.

Today, let’s tour this weird new landscape and talk about what it means — and doesn’t mean — for the tech giants and the governments trying to rein them in.

I. How competition ended

If I had to put a date on when competition ended among social networks in the United States, I’d choose August 2nd, 2016. That’s when Instagram introduced its copy of Snapchat stories, blunting the momentum of an upstart challenger and sending a chill through the startup ecosystem.

I don’t think copying features is necessarily anti-competitive — in fact, as I’ll argue below, it’s a sign that the ecosystem is working as intended — but the effect of Facebook’s copying here was dramatic. Snap fell into a long funk, and would-be entrepreneurs and investors got the message: Facebook will seek to acquire or copy any upstart social product, dramatically limiting its odds of breakout success. Investment shrunk accordingly.

The previous year, after the success of Twitter’s Periscope app, Facebook had cloned its live video features, and enthusiasm for both products seemed to broadly peter out. When live group video experienced momentary success under Houseparty, Facebook cloned that too, and Houseparty later sold to Epic Games for an undisclosed sum.

It was in this stagnant environment that many people, myself included, came to believe that it had been a mistake to let Facebook acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. The former became the breakout social network of a younger generation, and the latter cemented Facebook’s global dominance in communication. A world in which both had remained independent would have been much more competitive, even if neither had grown to the scale that they did under Facebook.

This is the basic thesis of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the company, which it filed in December. The government argues that Facebook “is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct,” and if successful, it could force Facebook to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. It’s a tricky case; as Ben Thompson explains here, the government’s attempt to define the market in which Facebook competes so as to prove it has a monopoly is rather tortured.

You can think the FTC’s case against Facebook is weak and also believe that the period from 2016 to 2021 saw remarkably little innovation among American social networks, at least in terms of the basic user behaviors that they inspire. The market for social products became incredibly concentrated; Facebook and Google built a duopoly in digital advertising; and their vast size and unpredictable effects helped to trigger a global backlash against American tech giants.

If, like me, you think this is all a problem, you could argue for one of two basic approaches to fixing it. The first is government intervention, in the form of an antitrust lawsuit or new regulations from Congress, that would regulate the ability of tech giants to acquire smaller companies or put up new barriers to entering the market or competing on fair terms. The second is to do basically nothing, trusting that the entropic nature of the universe and the inexorable march of time would eventually restore competition.

If the second choice sounds ridiculous, it is not without precedent. In the late 1990s, Microsoft’s dominance over the PC market led the government to pursue an antitrust case over the company’s move to bundle its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system. The fear was that such bundling would grant Microsoft total power over the consumer PC market forever. In reality, of course, mobile phones were out there just waiting to be perfected, and then Apple came along and did just that, and now no one really worries too much about Microsoft’s power over the PC market.

I do wish the US government had intervened around 2016 to explore new regulations for tech giants’ mergers and acquisitions. In its absence, we could only bet on entropy — and whichever contrarian capitalists still felt like they could challenge Facebook in the market despite its many advantages.

The thing is, though, that a bunch of contrarian capitalists did. And lately they have been having a lot of success.

II. How competition began

Facebook’s biggest competitor in 2021 is, of course, TikTok, which has been siphoning usage from Facebook’s family of apps since it launched in the United States in 2018 (after merging with Musical.ly).

TikTok began by making it dramatically easier for people to make compelling videos, parceled out fame and fortune with a central feed that is incredibly compelling even if you don’t know or follow a single person, and eventually created an entire universe of audio memes, visual effects, and community in-jokes.

Eugene Wei, our best writer and thinker on TikTok, published the third part of his essay series about the app Sunday night. Among the many salient points Wei makes is that the sheer number of forces that have gone into TikTok’s success have made it difficult for Facebook (or YouTube) to clone. He writes:

People will litigate Instagram copying Snapchat’s Stories feature until the end of time, but the fact is that format wasn’t ever going to be some defensible moat. Ephemerality is a clever new dimension on which to vary social media, but it’s easily copiable.

This is why TikTok’s network effects of creativity matter. To clone TikTok, you can’t just copy any single feature. It’s all of that, and not just the features, but how users deploy them and how the resultant videos interact with each other on the FYP feed. It’s replicating all the feedback loops that are built into TikTok’s ecosystem, all of which are interconnected. Maybe you can copy some of the atoms, but the magic lives at the molecular level.

The success of TikTok is a source of real anxiety inside Facebook, where employees ask CEO Mark Zuckerberg a question about it during nearly every all-hands Q&A session. The company has deployed a competitor, called Reels, inside of Instagram, and perhaps it will find a way to succeed. But the larger point is that, whatever the odds, Facebook now has to compete against TiKTok or risk losing the next generation.

You’ve probably already considered that, though. (Unless you’re the FTC, which conspicuously avoided any mention of TikTok in its entire complaint about Facebook’s alleged monopoly position.) But when it comes to mobile short-form video, Facebook and YouTube face a real challenge.

So where else does Facebook suddenly find itself forced to compete?

For starters, there’s audio. While still available only by invitation, Clubhouse recently hit an estimated 10 million downloads. Celebrities including Tiffany Haddish, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Zuckerberg himself have made appearances on the app, granting it a cultural cachet rare in a social startup that is still less than a year old. Clubhouse raised money last month at a valuation of $1 billion — more than Facebook ultimately paid for Instagram.

Because it’s an audio app, Clubhouse doesn’t pose quite the existential threat that TikTok does: you can still theoretically browse Instagram or message businesses on WhatsApp while listening to a Clubhouse chat. But Facebook has been sufficiently intrigued by Clubhouse’s rapid rise that it is now working out how to clone the app, according to a report this month in The New York Times. Elsewhere, Twitter already has a Clubhouse clone, called Spaces, in beta. It’s not clear that Clubhouse poses a threat to either company, exactly. But both are still taking it as a challenge.

What else?

After years of making its most prominent investments in technically challenging media involving video, augmented reality, and virtual reality, Facebook is reportedly taking a second look at text. The rise of Substack over the past year has begun to mint a growing number of millionaire, text-based creators, while also pulling millions of people away from their social feeds into the relative calm of the email inbox. (I have a personal stake in this one, of course; I started a newsletter in large part because my social feeds had come to feel like a lousy place to get my news.)

What’s interesting here is that Facebook now seems open to this possibility, too. Last month, the Times also reported that Facebook is developing newsletter tools for reporters and writers. (I’ve confirmed this with my own sources.) As with Clubhouse, newsletters hardly pose an existential threat to Facebook. But they do bleed time and attention away from the company’s apps — and in a world where news may not be even available on Facebook in some countries, it may be wise for it to have a hedge. (And Twitter clearly thinks so, too: it acquired Substack competitor Revue last month.)

That leaves Facebook competing with legitimately fast-growing, well-funded competitors across several categories. And while it’s in a much earlier stage, I think the company may soon have an interesting competitor in photography as well.

Dispo is an invite-only social photo app with a twist: you can’t see any photos you take with the app until 24 hours after you take them. (The app sends you a push notification to open them every day at 9AM local time: among other things, a nice hack to boost daily usage.) Founded by David Dobrik, one of the world’s most popular YouTubers, Dispo has been around as a basic utility for a year. But last month a beta version launched on iOS with social features including shared photo “rolls,” and it quickly hit the 10,000-person cap on Apple’s TestFlight software. It raised $4 million in seed funding in October, and assuming the buzz continues into a public launch, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dispo took off in a major way.

Audio, video, photos, and text: to some extent, Facebook has never had to stop competing across these dimensions in the company’s history. But I can’t remember the last time it was fighting so many interesting battles at the same time.

III. What it means

Here’s what I’m not saying when I argue that social networks are competitive again:

That Facebook has not acted in various anti-competitive ways throughout its history.
That Facebook should no longer be subject to antitrust scrutiny, or that the US government (and, separately, a coalition of US attorneys general) should abandon their lawsuits.
That, given all this new competition, Facebook should be allowed to purchase rival social networks in the future.
That Facebook won’t remain the world’s largest social network for a long time to come, or that its business will suffer in the short term.

In fact, I think there’s a good case to be made that antitrust pressure from the US government in particular is what has allowed competition to return to social networks in the first place. Had Clubhouse or Substack emerged in 2013 or 2014, it’s not hard to imagine Facebook racing to acquire them and knock them off the chessboard. But in 2021, when Facebook faces a formal antitrust review in the United Kingdom over its acquisition of a failing GIF search engine, the company can only sit back and try to copy what others are doing better.

If that’s the case, it suggests that the half-assed response to Facebook’s growing dominance over the past half-decade nonetheless got us, however belatedly, to a better place. Antitrust pressure made it extremely difficult for the company to make acquisitions, opening a window just big enough for new entrants to climb through. It remains to be seen how big any new challengers to Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter can grow. But for the first time in a long time, I’m optimistic about their chances.

Instagram is adding easier access to support for eating disorders

Instagram is announcing that it’s adding resources for people affected by eating disorders to its social platform. If users search for hashtags or content that’s potentially related to disordered eating, the company will guide that user to resources or help lines provided by the National Eating Disorders Association (or NEDA) in the US, as well as others in the UK, Australia, and Canada.

Instagram says that currently, it tries to blur out potentially triggering content in search results, and it does direct people to generalized crisis support, but it should now direct users to resources specifically designed around eating disorders. In its blog, Instagram also says that it plans to show the resources if someone is trying to share eating disorder-related content, or “if a friend is concerned about something they see posted and wants to offer support.”

This update is similar to what TikTok announced earlier today. However, unlike TikTok, it doesn’t appear as if Instagram pointed to eating disorder-specific resources before, though they were shown in the general list of help lines. Currently, searching for content related to eating disorders will bring you to that general help line list, which not only includes NEDA but the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Veterans Crisis Line, and Trevor Project as well.

Currently, the list doesn’t surface eating disorder help lines, even if that’s the type of content from which the user was directed to it.

However, Instagram’s screenshots imply that the support button will specifically point out the NEDA contacts to people, rather than just showing them the whole list of available help lines.

As part of its National Eating Disorders Awareness Week programing, the company also says it’s planning to work with community leaders to publish Reels that “encourage positive body image, push back against weight stigma and harmful stereotypes, and show that all bodies are worthy and deserve to be celebrated.” According to the post, this is the third time that Instagram has worked on content for NEDA week.

Instagram has had issues in the past trying to regulate eating disorder content, and the social network is often brought up in conversations about negative body image and perception, especially among young people. While the higher resource prioritization likely won’t do much to help with self-esteem issues after using the site, it should help people who are struggling and vulnerable get easier access to help from experts.

TikTok’s latest hit is an accidental upload from a government office in rural Indiana

A series of accidentally posted office videos has become an unexpected viral hit on TikTok. The most popular shows a series of municipal employees bidding farewell to their colleague, Connie, against the backdrop of a prairie-hued office space straight out of Parks & Rec.

“Congratulations from the Orange County clerk’s office,” says the male deputy clerk, before stepping off to the right.

County Clerk Elizabeth Jones steps into the frame: “We wish you the best in your future endeavors.”

“We appreciate the good job that you have done for the state of Indiana,” says another, before making room for a fourth. “Goodbye, Connie!”

As of press time, more than 40,000 users have liked the video, and it has been viewed more than 300,000 times. The @deputyclerk account, which was only launched yesterday, has already amassed nearly 3,000 followers, despite having only eight videos, all of which are variations on the same goodbye message.

The videos have inspired a wave of spinoff content, as users look to put their own spin on the burgeoning meme. In most cases, users take on the role of Connie, imagining themselves to be as loved and appreciated as her.

In other cases, users have lip-synced over the audio. “New Trend alert: which voice fits u best,” asks one such video. “Charli u have 24 hours.”

The sudden internet fame has been a whirlwind for the clerk’s office, which was not even aware the videos were being posted online. Based in Paoli, Indiana (population 3,677), the clerk’s team is still unsure why the videos have attracted so much attention.

“We didn’t know that it was on TikTok,” says Elizabeth Jones, who leads the clerk’s office for Orange County Clerk. “Somehow it got in the for you page, and it got send to a lot of people.”

“People were like, why did I get this,” Jones continued. “It was really meant just to be her goodbye video.”

The videos begin on Thursday morning, when the office heard news that beloved Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson was retiring. A number of state employees were recording farewell videos for Lawson, and the Orange County office decided to record its version using TikTok to take advantage of the app’s native filter capabilities. But while several clerks were TikTok users, none had ever made a video using the app.

“We all had issues with one or the other so we just did it seven or eight times,” says Deputy Clerk Olivia Griffith, the last woman to speak in the video. “It said ‘save to my device,’ so I thought it was just going to the photo gallery on my phone.”

Many had assumed that the rejected videos would disappear entirely. “The one where I’m singing…that definitely wasn’t supposed to be seen by anybody else,” says Jones.

With 3,000 followers, the office now has a surprising level of TikTok clout, although they’re still undecided on whether they will try to expand on their newfound fame with more videos.

“I don’t know,” says Griffith. “We haven’t thought about it. We may.”