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Notion was having technical issues, so I have no idea what my schedule is today

Online organization app Notion was experiencing technical difficulties this morning and students, project managers, and other users — like me — who rely on it to organize our calendars are having minor freak-outs.

The company said in a tweet around 8:30AM ET that it was “experiencing a DNS issue, causing the site to not resolve for many users.” The company didn’t provide much additional detail, but some speculated that it may have to do with Notion’s web address: notion.so. The “so” suffix is the domain for the country of Somalia, and a deleted tweet from Notion asked if anyone knew people in Somalia.

We’re experiencing a DNS issue, causing the site to not resolve for many users. We are actively looking into this issue.

— Notion Status (@NotionStatus) February 12, 2021

The app is mainly used as a workplace collaboration tool, but it has become popular among casual users — including teens on TikTok, who use it to organize their class schedules. Users complaining about not being able to access Notion on Friday morning suggested now might be the time for the company, which was valued at $2 billion in April 2020, to make offline access a priority in future versions.

Around 11AM ET, the company said the DNS issue was resolved and users should begin to see service restored. The company confirmed it was putting protections in place to prevent future issues in an emailed statement to The Verge:

The reason for the downtime this morning was a very unusual DNS issue that occurred at the registry operator level. Our engineers jumped on it immediately and resolved the issue – we’re back up now. We’re in touch with the registry operator and registrar putting protocols in place so that we can avoid this type of incident from repeating in the future. This was a very rare chain of events to occur.

So far my Notion page is still down, so if I’m late to a Zoom meeting today, sorry boss, I tried. I mean, what are we supposed to do, write down our to-do lists on paper like olden times? (I do that, too, tbh. I have organization issues).

Clapper permanently bans QAnon-related content

Clapper has moved to ban accounts spreading QAnon conspiracy theories and vaccine misinformation in the wake of a Verge report last month.

Clapper CEO Edison Chen told The Verge on Thursday that the company will permanently ban QAnon-related content going forward. As of publication, Chen said Clapper has removed over 400 videos and 20 accounts for spreading QAnon or anti-vax misinformation and has increased its number of content auditors from around a dozen to 20. It will take Clapper up to 10 days to complete a full audit of its over 1 million videos, Chen said.

“We take this matter very seriously,” Chen said in an email to The Verge on Thursday. “After investigating, we decided to take action to remove and ban accounts regarding QAnon and mis-info about vaccines… which are against our mission.”

Chen continued, “From today, if additional users were to post QAnon-related content, it will be removed. We have zero tolerance about QAnon.”

Clapper launched last July as a “Free Speech Short video” app, mimicking platforms like TikTok but with less content moderation. After January’s deadly attack at the Capitol, QAnon content was largely banished from social media. The “free speech” platform Parler, which had a largely conservative-leaning user base, was forced offline by its web hosts after failing to respond to reports of violent threats on its platform.

Like Parler, Clapper became a popular app for conservatives who disagreed with the content moderation decisions of large tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. The Verge report found that some QAnon Clapper users were able to build large followings using hashtags like #thestorm and #thegreatawakening. One Q-related account identified by The Verge, belonging to Clapper user Josh Sardam, appears to have been removed as of publication.

Clapper’s QAnon ban puts the smaller platform’s policies in line with those at larger tech platforms like Facebook and TikTok. Last October, Facebook moved to completely ban QAnon, calling it a “militarized social movement.” Other platforms, like Twitter and TikTok, have also decided to ban the content outright in recent months.

Microsoft’s foldable Surface Duo price drops to $999, arrives in Europe next week

Microsoft is dropping the price of its foldable Surface Duo device to $999, and launching it in Europe and Canada next week. The Surface Duo will be available in the UK, France, Germany, and Canada on February 18th. It’s the first time the dual-screen Surface Duo has been available outside the US, for both businesses and consumers. Priced from £1,349 in the UK, the Surface Duo will be available at the Microsoft Store in the UK and retailer Currys PC World.

The Surface Duo is also launching in Canada, France, and Germany on February 18th. The device will be priced at 1,549 euros in Germany. Microsoft first launched the Surface Duo in the US in September 2020, and it has taken the company around five months to complete an international release.

Microsoft’s Surface Duo device.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The $400 price drop to $999 certainly makes it a more affordable device, but when we reviewed the Surface Duo last year we praised the hardware and found the buggy modified version of Android made it difficult to use at times. The device also lacked many non-Microsoft apps that took advantage of the dual screens. TikTok was one of the bigger third-party apps that got updated specifically for the Surface Duo last year, but there are still not enough apps taking advantage of this unique hardware.

While Microsoft has promised monthly updates for the Surface Duo, the company failed to deliver an update in December. The updates haven’t done enough to improve the software experience of using the Surface Duo, despite its obvious potential.

Update, February 11th 10:00AM ET: Article updated with Surface Duo launch details in other markets and updated US pricing.

Facebook is reportedly working on a Clubhouse copy

Facebook, a company known for ripping its ideas from competitors, has reportedly set its sights on social audio. The New York Times reports today that the company is working on a copycat of Clubhouse, the buzzy invite-only social audio startup. The Times reports the product is in the “early stages of development,” so it’s unclear if and when it might launch.

The news comes only five days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Clubhouse and participated in a room to talk about the future of augmented and virtual reality. His presence on the app was shocking, given it’s a new social network, so the fact that Facebook might now be cloning Clubhouse is no surprise. The company has already done so with multiple other apps, including, most infamously, Stories, which it took from Snapchat, and Reels, its TikTok competitor that launched last year.

Twitter is also working on a Clubhouse competitor called Spaces, which is in beta at the moment. Its team acquired social podcasting company Breaker, seemingly for its expertise in social audio, to help beef up its efforts. Meanwhile, Mark Cuban is also at work on a live audio app called Fireside, which The Verge reported on earlier this week. Clearly, lots of people in tech think audio will be an important format for communicating in the future, and they’re rapidly trying to get in on it before the trend dies out.

HBO Max is bringing back Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Clone High animated series

HBO Max is bringing back Clone High, the animated series from Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Bill Lawrence that originally ran for one season starting in 2002. It was essentially a parody of typical high school dramas, but one set at a school for the clones of historical figures like Cleopatra and Gandhi. HBO calls the new version “a modern refresh of the hit series” and says that all three creators are on board. The show is being produced by MTV Entertainment Studios and Erica Rivinoja, a writer on the first season who also worked on the sequel to Borat, will serve as showrunner.

Lord and Miller have been on a roll in recent years, working on films like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and serving as executive producers on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Clone High, meanwhile, has seen a surprising resurgence of popularity on TikTok.

The news comes alongside two other animated series orders from HBO Max. The streaming service will also be getting an adult Scooby Doo spinoff called Velma, starring Mindy Kaling in the titular role (she’s also an executive producer on the show) as well as Fired On Mars, “an existential workplace comedy set on the Martian campus of a modern tech company” starring Pete Davidson. There’s no word yet on when the new shows will debut.

Instagram says its algorithm won’t promote Reels that have a TikTok watermark

Instagram’s newest guidance for creators makes one thing clear: the platform wants people to stop posting recycled TikToks to Reels. Today, Instagram says it’s making changes to its algorithm and how it recommends Reels to users. Along with that, it’s issuing new best practices on its @creators account to give Instagram users tips on how to make content that’s likely to be seen and promoted.

The team now recommends that Reels users post vertical videos that use music found in Instagram’s library or sounds that they find on Reels. They also suggest “starting a trend” that others can participate in, like dance crazes, as well as “entertaining” and “fun” content. Reels that are mostly covered by text, are blurry, have a watermark or logo, or have a border around it won’t be recommended as frequently.

“We’re building on what we’ve learned from Explore to recommend fun and entertaining videos in places like the Reels tab, and personalize the experience,” says spokesperson Devi Narasimhan in an email to The Verge. “We are getting better at using ranking signals that help us predict whether people will find a reel entertaining and whether we should recommend it.”

Narasimhan says Instagram user surveys demonstrated that people have a “less satisfying” Reels experience when content is recycled from other apps or is blurry, so it’ll start deemphasizing that content in its recommendation software. This makes it less likely to be discovered by people who aren’t following the person who posted it.

It’s no surprise these recommendations are coming six months after Reels launched in the US. The platform might have been okay with people initially bringing their TikToks over to Instagram, but as it looks to become a popular destination on its own, Instagram needs to make sure Reels isn’t just an advertisement for TikTok, or worse, a place where people just dump whatever content they’ve already made. This might mean more work for creators, however, who will possibly have to shift some of their effort to Reels, rather than focusing on one platform and then distributing the content everywhere else.

Snap says its TikTok competitor already has 100 million monthly users

Snap says its TikTok competitor, Spotlight, had 100 million users in January 2021, just two months after it launched. The figure would suggest a surprisingly successful debut for the service, which has taken over the far-right tab inside of Snapchat.

TikTok likely still has a significant lead on the new service, though. TikTok said it had 100 million monthly users in the United States alone as of June 2020, and signs suggest the app has only continued to grow since then. (On the other hand, Instagram’s leader has said he’s “not yet happy with” Reels, its shortform video competitor.)

Snap has put a lot of money behind Spotlight in order to help the section catch on. The company promised to give away $1 million per day to creators for more than a month in order to get people posting videos, filling the service with fun stuff to watch. The initiative seemingly worked, with some creators seeing the service as a quick way to make a lot of cash. Creators are now uploading an average of 175,000 videos per day, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in prepared remarks for investors.

“While it is still very early in the development of this new content platform, we are highly encouraged by the initial results and excited about the potential for Spotlight to further expand our monetization opportunity in the future,” Snap CFO Derek Andersen said in prepared remarks.

The feature is still far more limited than TikTok. Exploration options are limited, and you can’t remix sounds or go down a rabbit hole of dance videos to a popular song, bot features that have helped TikTok continue to grow.

It’s also worth noting that Snap gave the figure in terms of monthly users when the company has long placed a focus on daily users overall. That suggests the daily usage of the feature is a good amount lower, given that someone only needed to open the tab once in January to be considered a monthly user. Snap now boasts 265 million daily users overall, up from 249 million the prior quarter, the company said in its Q4 2020 earnings release.

Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter team up to crack down on hackers who steal rare usernames

Instagram has disabled hundreds of accounts that were stolen as part of online hacking operations designed to gain access to and sell rare and coveted usernames, the company tells The Verge. Both TikTok and Twitter also took action on some of the accounts belonging to the same hackers, reports journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs.

The Facebook-owned platform set its sights mainly on the community surrounding OGUsers, a website well-known for trafficking in stolen usernames and helping facilitate the hacking of these accounts through methods like SIM swapping, which is when a user gains control of someone’s phone number and uses it to reset passwords and take control of social media handles. News of Instagram’s enforcement was first reported on Thursday by Reuters.

“Today, we’re removing hundreds of accounts connected to members of the OGUsers forum. They harass, extort and cause harm to the Instagram community, and we will continue to do all we can to make it difficult for them to profit from Instagram usernames,” a Facebook spokesperson tells The Verge. The disclosure is notable because it’s the first time the platform has publicly shared information regarding moderation against username hackers. Earlier this week, Instagram released a new feature that lets people recover deleted posts, in the event a hacker takes control of their account and wipes it clean.

Krebs reported on Thursday that the crackdown was something of a joint effort, with Twitter and TikTok also taking action against popular OGUsers community members at the same time on those companies’ respective platforms (although it’s unclear how much coordination there was between the three companies or how far-reaching TikTok and Twitter’s enforcement was).

“As part of our ongoing work to find and stop inauthentic behavior, we recently reclaimed a number of TikTok usernames that were being used for account squatting,” TikTok told Krebs in a statement. “We will continue to focus on staying ahead of the ever-evolving tactics of bad actors, including cooperating with third parties and others in the industry.”

In addition to disabling the accounts that were stolen, rendering them worthless, the social platforms have also disabled some accounts of well-known OGUsers middlemen who act as intermediaries during username transactions by holding funds in escrow in exchange for a cut of the fee, reports Reuters.

OGUsers made headlines last summer when a small cohort of hackers affiliated with the site allegedly participated in an unprecedented Twitter hack that involved resetting the passwords on the accounts of dozens of high-profile individuals and companies, including Elon Musk and Barack Obama, and using their access to run a bitcoin scam. Like the individual at the center of the Twitter hack, then-17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark, many of the hackers Instagram is cracking down on today and those who frequent OGUsers are minors, often drawn into the community by the allure of stealing and retaining a rare username of their own.

These usernames tend to be single words — in rare cases, individual letters or numbers — and they can fetch tens of thousands of dollars on underground markets for stolen digital goods. And because platforms like Instagram and Twitter have rules barring the buying and selling of accounts, the hackers interested in procuring one of these coveted handles often resort to illegal means to obtain them. SIM hacking is a popular method, but standard phishing as well as sustained online harassment, extortion, and even swatting are other known techniques, notes Reuters.

Instagram is working on a TikTok-style vertical feed for Stories

Instagram might try to emulate another element of TikTok’s design with a new vertical feed for Stories, TechCrunch reports. Navigating with vertical swipes up and down would make stories behave more like Reels, the shortform video feature the company added to better compete with TikTok.

The vertical stories feed is not currently being tested, Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch, but code for the change is already in development based on this screenshot developer Alessandro Paluzzi shared. It’s not much to go on, but it does show Instagram is at least considering the adjustment to its ever-expanding features.

Mimicking Reels (which, in turn, was heavily “inspired” by TikTok) would unify Instagram’s various feeds in some sense. If Stories became a vertical experience, it would not only match Reels, but also the app’s original feature: scrolling the feed. IGTV would still function a bit differently, though; those videos are buried in a vertical grid in profiles but feature horizontal navigation once you start watching.

In an interview with Instagram head Adam Mosseri for the Decoder podcast, he said 2020 was about “placing a bunch of bets,” while 2021 would be about “delivering on those commitments and simplifying the experience.” The company is already testing changes to what kind of content can be added to stories, and changing how those stories are displayed could be the next step in that simplification process.

TikTok now has an official Android TV app, sort of

TikTok has come to Google’s Android TV platform, marking the short video app’s latest expansion to big screens, according to 9to5Google. Though the app is currently on the Google Play Store, it seems to not be working in every region yet.

The Android TV take on TikTok looks remarkably similar to the TikTok app that arrived on Samsung TVs in the United Kingdom. Videos play vertically (just like in the phone app) in a scrollable main feed, with access to specific categories of videos, and your profile is also available to browse. I haven’t been able to download it on my Chromecast with Google TV to test, but it appears to be a more fully featured option than what TikTok launched on Amazon’s Fire TV, which got a curated selection of videos from TikTok that didn’t require an account to see.

The Profile section of the Android TV TikTok app.

Image: TikTok

Many users have been running into the issue of the app not working in their region, with one of the main exceptions being people downloading it in the UK, Android Police reports. Reddit users have also run into the problem even when trying to sideload the app onto other Android TV devices. The app loads, but when one user tried to log in, they were told that the TikTok app was not available in their region yet. The Verge has reached out to TikTok for comment on the app’s availability.

If you’d like to test it for yourself, you can download the new Android TV TikTok experience from the Play Store now.

Google salvaged Robinhood’s one-star rating by deleting nearly 100,000 negative reviews

Google is actively removing negative reviews of the Robinhood app from the Google Play Store, the company confirmed to The Verge. After some disgruntled Robinhood users organized campaigns to give the app a one-star review on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store — and succeeded in review-bombing it all the way down to a one-star rating — the company has now deleted enough reviews to bring it back up to nearly four stars.

Robinhood came under intense scrutiny on Thursday, after the stock trading app announced it would block purchases of GameStop, AMC, and other stocks made popular by the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, and some users have already replaced their deleted one-star reviews with new ones to make their anger heard.

Here’s a screenshot from the Play Store page captured by 9to5Google when the app had a one-star rating and nearly 275,000 reviews:

Robinhood’s page on the Play Store earlier on Thursday.

Image: 9to5Google

And here’s a screenshot we took shortly before publishing this article, showing a nearly four-star rating and around 180,000 reviews.

Robinhood’s Play Store rating later on Thursday.

It’s not outside Google’s purview to delete these posts. Google’s policies explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app’s rating, and the company says it has a system that “combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews.” Google says it specifically took action on reviews that it felt confident violated those policies, the company tells The Verge. Google says companies do not have the ability to delete reviews themselves.

On Apple’s App Store, Robinhood has a 4.7 rating, and we didn’t see any reviews newer than Wednesday. However, popular apps like TikTok, Uno, and Genshin Impact also didn’t have reviews from any later than Wednesday when we checked.

Unhappy Robinhood users aren’t just using reviews to show their ire — they’re also calling for a class action lawsuit. Later on Thursday, Robinhood said it would allow “limited buys” of certain stocks on Friday. The company said that halting purchases on Thursday was “a risk-management decision.”

Instagram made a richer story interface for desktops

Instagram is making its Stories feature more complete on the desktop. In a small interface refresh today, the company is updating its Stories feature so that it opens up to show a carousel of videos, which previews what’s cued up next and the content that just played. From this interface, viewers can click on whatever story they want to watch. It’s sort of like if the tiny circles at the top of users’ feeds went bigger and full-screen.

This is a minor change, but it rounds out the desktop feature and makes it more appealing to use, especially as people are on their computers more frequently while working from home. For the most part, Instagram has left Stories unchanged for years. The format is the same as always, with posts being ephemeral.

Most of Instagram’s changes to the format come in the form of creative tools, like stickers for small businesses and new fonts. For now, Instagram’s firmly focusing on Reels, its TikTok competitor, with Stories receiving small updates to keep it fresh.

YouTube has paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and others over the last three years

YouTube has paid out more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media organizations over the last three years, according to a new letter published by CEO Susan Wojcicki.

In Wojcicki’s first letter to creators of 2021, the CEO spent some time addressing YouTube’s growth. The number of new channels that joined the company’s Partner Program, which allows creators to earn advertising revenue, more than doubled in 2020. YouTube also “contributed approximately $16 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2019, supporting the equivalent of 345,000 full time jobs,” according to an Oxford Economics report that Wojcicki highlights.

The letter also focuses on the work YouTube’s team still has in front of them. Mainly, transparency, especially where content strikes and advertising dollars are concerned. Wojcicki noted that at the “scale we operate, it’s hard for creators to keep up with changing Community Guidelines.”

Wojcicki’s letter states that YouTube wants to be better about communicating changes to avoid channel strikes. After three strikes within a 90-day period, a channel is terminated.

“In December, I spoke with creator Charlie White from the channel penguinz0 after he tweeted about being given a strike for an older video due to a new policy,” Wojcicki wrote. “We know this situation is similar to frustrations shared by other creators.”

One example that came up after the 2020 presidential election was YouTube’s decision to ban any videos that propelled misinformation about voter fraud. The new policy went into effect in December, but YouTube gave a grace period for creators to ensure none of their videos violated the new policies.

YouTube executives have also faced mounting pressure to do a better job of moderating the site and preventing misinformation from spreading. YouTube is now shifting its focus to vaccination misinformation. “We’re always working to strike the right balance between openness and responsibility as we meet the guidelines set by governments around the world,” Wojcicki wrote.

One other interesting part of Wojcicki’s letter was a focus on regulation. A recent hot topic in tech policy circles is reform of Section 230, which effectively allows social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to operate without being liable for content people post. Wojcicki referred to Section 230 as an act that “enables us to both keep YouTube open and allow a large amount of content on the internet as well as take the actions necessary to protect our platform.” Although Wojcicki didn’t issue a stronger sentiment, she did bring up that the debate over Section 230 happening in Congress has caught the attention of creators like Hila and Ethan Klein.

Wojcicki’s full letter, which includes more details about creator revenue and an update on YouTube Shorts, the company’s answer to TikTok, can be read on Google’s blog.

Lego Vidiyo is a new augmented reality-powered version of TikTok — for your Minifigures

Lego is launching a new, augmented reality social video service called Vidiyo that will let users create their own music videos and dance clips and share them with friends, all while applying their own effects and styles to the videos.

It sounds a lot like TikTok but aimed at younger children with strict moderation built in, and a Lego twist that makes most of the UI built in real-world Lego bricks instead of toggles in an app.

To create a Vidiyo, users will have to download the app and select a song (the toy company is partnering with Universal Music Group, so there will be a wide variety of licensed songs from actual bands to choose from, like 5 Seconds of Summer or Imagine Dragons).

A Lego Vidiyo character with BeatBits

Photo: Lego

But instead of just selecting a filter and dancing away, kids will instead scan a Lego Minifigure to star in the video, along with any Lego “BeatBit” tiles — 2 x 2 bricks that unlock the various digital AR effects in the app. Then, kids will be able to dance away to the music — alongside a full-sized version of their Lego character in AR — before editing and sharing the clip.

One of the key aspects that Lego hopes will set Vidiyo apart, though, is its content moderation. All content uploaded to the app has to pass a moderation test first, and any content that features “personally identifying information” — like real people in a video — won’t be allowed to be uploaded. (Although kids will still be able to watch their videos starring themselves locally.)

BeatBit tiles for Lego Vidiyo

Photo: Lego

There’s still a lot of information that Lego hasn’t revealed yet about Vidiyo, including how much sets will cost, but the company does promise that more information will be on the way before the first Lego Vidiyo products launch on March 1st.

Italian watchdog tells TikTok to block users whose ages can’t be verified

Italy’s data privacy authority has ordered video sharing app TikTok to temporarily block the accounts of any users whose ages can’t be confirmed, Reuters reported. The order comes after the death of a 10-year-old girl in Palermo, whose parents told authorities their daughter was participating in a “blackout challenge” she saw on the app. The child died of asphyxiation, and authorities are investigating whether anyone invited her to try the challenge.

The Italian Data Protection Authority ordered TikTok to block unverified users in Italy until at least February 15th. The company told The Guardian it had not found content on its platform which would have encouraged the child to participate in the challenge, but said it was cooperating with the investigation.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge on Saturday but a spokesperson told Reuters: “Privacy and safety are absolute priorities for TikTok and we are constantly working to strengthen our policies, our processes and our technologies to protect our community and younger users in particular.”

Under its terms of service, users must be at least 13 years old to sign up for an account on TikTok, but Italian authorities said it’s easy to get around that rule. TikTok has a version of its app in the US for children under 13— TikTok for Younger Users— which is meant to limit the content and interaction available to those users.

As it skyrocketed in popularity, TikTok spent much of the past year adding more privacy controls for younger users’ accounts. It introduced remote parental controls and allowed parents to change kids’ privacy settings on the app. Earlier this month, TikTok updated the default privacy settings for users between 13 and 15 years old, putting limits on who can see and comment on their videos.

But children’s privacy advocates have argued that TikTok does not do enough to protect children on its platform. Its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance paid a $5.7 million fine to the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 for an earlier version of TikTok called Musical.ly, over allegations it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA) in allowing users under 13 to sign up for the app without their parents’ consent.

The temporary suspension of unverified accounts in Italy bans TikTok from “further processing user data for which there is no absolute certainty of age and, consequently, of compliance with the provisions related to the age requirement.”