Social Media | The Verge

Meta is running get-rich-quick ads for its AI tools

2026-04-30T12:48:13-04:00

Manus, an AI company Meta acquired for $2 billion last year is running ads promising quick, easy money with AI: Find local businesses without websites or with bad websites, have AI build them one, then call them up and sell it to them.

As part of the campaign, Manus was paying content creators to build out Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts that promote its AI product as an easy, lucrative gig. (The creators' TikTok accounts were taken down after The Verge inquired about them.) Some of these videos would also appear as official ads for Manus, but the posts on the paid creator accounts themselves often obscured their ties to the company …

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Instagram says it doesn’t want your tweet round ups

2026-04-29T22:14:51-04:00

The internet is full of copycat, stolen, reposted, and low-effort content - and Meta, at least publicly, has said it is working to cut off some of the reach.

Beginning in 2024, the company has made incremental announcements saying it would begin limiting "unoriginal" content from being recommended on Instagram. It meant that if you were downloading and reposting someone's Reels, or spamming the same clip over and over, your content wouldn't show up in recommendation feeds or places like the Explore tab. Similar rules were later announced for Facebook, where "unoriginal" accounts risk losing their ability to monetize content. The idea is tha …

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Conspiracy theories are swirling about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting

2026-04-27T13:11:44-04:00

Melania and Donald Trump attend the White House Correspondents' dinner on April 25, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images) | AFP via Getty Images

On Saturday evening, a room full of journalists, media personalities, and senior members of Donald Trump's administration descended into chaos as gunshots rang out at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Nobody was hurt, and the suspect was taken into custody - but it didn't take long for a narrative of doubt to take hold online.

There is no evidence that the attack at the WHCD was staged - but the conspiracies echo an increasingly common belief held even by some former Trump loyalists that the president is faking assassination attempts. Many people online appear to earnestly believe this attack is just the latest iteration.

On X, Threa …

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Instagram has launched another Snapchat clone

2026-04-24T07:44:54-04:00

Instagram is testing a new dedicated app that's focused around Snapchat-like photo sharing features. The app, called "Instants," was launched in Italy and Spain yesterday, Business Insider reports, and allows users to send each other disappearing photos that are available for 24 hours and can be viewed only once during that window.

The app is currently available on both iOS and Android. Meta hasn't announced if a desktop version will follow, or whether Instants will be launched in other regions, including the US. It resembles the "Shots" instant photo sharing feature that is already baked into Instagram messages (and was later rebranded to …

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X is going to let Grok curate your timeline

2026-04-22T16:51:58-04:00

X is putting its AI chatbot, Grok, in charge of your timeline. In an announcement on Wednesday, X product head Nikita Bier says Premium subscribers on iOS can get early access to a feature that allows users to pin specific topics to their home tab, which Grok will then use to curate the posts you see across each feed.

"It's powered by Grok's understanding of every post with the algorithm's personalization - meaning every timeline is made just for you," Bier writes. "And it works even better when it's a topic you already engage with."

Bier says early access to the Grok-powered timeline is coming to Android users "very soon." Along with this …

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The unraveling of Dan Crenshaw

2026-04-30T13:53:28-04:00

In 2019, a 35-year-old Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), newly elected to Congress, was photographed for the inaugural Time 100 Next list, wearing a dashing eye patch and looking upward with hope. A Harvard-educated Navy SEAL who'd lost an eye while fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Crenshaw was in rarefied company, listed among the magazine's candidates for tomorrow's leaders: musicians like Billie Eilish and Bad Bunny; athletes like Coco Gauff and Alysa Liu; business leaders like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong; fellow political stars like Pete Buttigieg.

Crenshaw was, Time declared, "what the Republican Party might look like after Donald Trump. …

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X makes it 1,900 percent more expensive to post links

2026-04-21T14:57:09-04:00

Posting links to X through custom social media software just got a lot more expensive. On Monday, X significantly increased how much it costs to post a URL via the X API, which is what third-party tools use to hook into the platform. It now costs $0.20 when a link is posted, up from $0.01.

Any change to make posting links more expensive will likely make X even less attractive to publishers than it already is, especially given the widely held suspicion that linking news articles can lower a post's reach. The issue came up in a recent spat between Nate Silver and X's head of product, Nikita Bier, who claimed that links are "not deboosted." Bu …

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WhatsApp tests ‘Plus’ subscription that adds stickers and more for a few bucks a month

2026-04-20T16:12:23-04:00

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WhatsApp Plus subscribers will get access to premium sticker packs. | Image: WABetaInfo

WhatsApp users are getting some new customization features - for a price. According to WABetaInfo, Meta is rolling out a WhatsApp Plus subscription to "a limited number of users," offering several cosmetic and quality of life perks, including exclusive stickers, different app themes, custom app icons, premium ringtones, the ability to pin up to 20 chats, and the ability to apply custom settings in bulk to lists of chats.

A screenshot from WABetaInfo shows the subscription's monthly price as €2.49, or just under $3, similar to Snapchat Plus, which costs $3.99 per month and includes similar perks. WhatsApp Plus is currently only supported in …

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YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts

2026-04-16T05:26:50-04:00

YouTube's time management settings now have an option to put a zero-minute time limit on Shorts, effectively removing them from your app in Android and iOS. The option is an update to the Shorts timer YouTube originally announced in October; the lowest previous option was 15 minutes.

The feature was expanded in January to give parents some control over how long their kids spend scrolling through Shorts, with an option for zero minutes "coming soon." According to YouTube spokesperson Makenzie Spiller, the option to set the timer to zero is now "live for all parents, and is currently being rolled out to everyone," including users with regula …

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Mastodon is about to launch its take on Bluesky’s starter packs

2026-04-09T12:10:42-04:00

Mastodon is preparing to roll out "Collections" in the next few weeks, a feature that allows you to find and create lists of accounts worth following, according to an announcement on Thursday. Collections, which take inspiration from Bluesky Starter Packs, will come with the ability to add up to 25 accounts to a single list.

If you're on a participating server, you'll be able to create a Collection with a short description and topic. You can also mark them as "sensitive," which "hides the description and accounts behind a content warning." As mentioned by Mastodon last year, Collections - then called "Packs" - will come with the ability to …

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