Social Media

The long-running microblogging platform is adding a bunch of heavily requested features, including the ability to save posts for later and sort them into collections, like musings on physical media or quotes about creativity. Subscribers can also now use animated GIFs as their avatars.

The EU Kids Act will be formally unveiled tomorrow where it will eventually be put to a vote by the 27 nation bloc. Parent-chaperoned “mini accounts” are proposed for children 13 to 15.

Under AB1709, social platforms can’t provide algorithmic recommendations, infinite scroll, or autoplay features to users under 16 unless they receive parental consent.

The New York Times delves into Trump’s mental health through the lens of his increasingly unhinged postings on his also-ran Truth Social platform. Here’s how the White House responded to criticisms:

Throng turns your Bluesky feed into a 3D walking getting yelled at simulator. The timeline becomes a crowd of people running up to recite each post in your face, then wandering off. Yes, it has ragdoll physics. There is also a giant cow. Happy Friday, everyone.

The social media app for neighborhoods is doubling-down on local business discovery with a new “Local Faves” hub that promotes verified neighbor recommendations to combat fake online reviews. “Local businesses have always grown through word of mouth. Online, though, reviews can be bought, manipulated, or faked,” says Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia. “Nextdoor’s approach mirrors the value of real word of mouth: a real neighbor, in a real neighborhood, sharing a business they’ve actually used.”

With the option enabled, only your followers will see your posts in Bluesky’s Discover feed. Other apps running the decentralized AT Protocol may still include your content in their feeds, however.

X sued the startup after it attempted to cancel its ownership of the “Twitter” and “Tweet” trademarks, claiming they had been “abandoned.” But a preliminary ruling from April suggests “X seemed to have given up intellectual property claims,” leading Operation Bluebird’s co-founders to launch the Twitter.now platform, as reported by Ars Technica.

From an announcement post:

It’s planning to run full-page ads in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times on Thursday, according to NYT reporter Mike Isaac, on the heels of Meta’s $17 billion settlement with state AGs. Meta is using the settlement to urge its top competitors to take on similar restrictions.

In contrast to Threads, Bluesky’s active user growth has trailed off lately, and as it looks to expand its big tent, it’s making one part of the experience better: video.

Rewatching We’re All Going to the World’s Fair had me thinking about internet lore, creepypastas, and urban legends. Personally, I’m a sucker for a good haunted videogame like Ben Drowned or Petscop. But I want to know what weird and creepy internet rabbitholes you think are worth diving down.

It would have been the next bellwether in the group of cases tried in a Los Angeles state court. In the first, Meta and YouTube were ordered to pay $6 million total. After settling with TikTok, the teen’s lawyer told The New York Times, she wanted to “resume her life.”

The company laid out its defense in the trial against a coalition of state AGs, previewing that it will call on their own public health officials to combat claims of social media addiction, and claiming that the states have pulled public statements out of context to claim it misled parents.

In an opening statement, California deputy AG Megan O’Neill accused Meta of doing “too little, too late” to curb teens’ problematic usage of Facebook and Instagram, while misleading the public. She also laid out the states allegations that Meta knew — but didn’t remove – many kids under 13 on its platforms.

While recent stats from Similarweb showed a decline in Bluesky’s active users, the app is continuing to build that big tent Toni Schneider talked about and is now testing support for videos that are up to 10 minutes long. It’s also announced Bluesky Protocol Services, which is supposed to make it easier to build apps that connect to its AT Protocol infrastructure.

From a new “Under the Hood” page in settings that X is piloting, you will be able to download aggregate stats for the past month on “labels that can affect post visibility in the X algorithm” that are applied to your posts and account, according to a screenshot published by TechCrunch.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept Media claim Truth Social’s up to $100,000 /month subscription is “profoundly corrupt” and “unconstitutional,” alleging Trump is illegally “profiting by selling government information.” The Intercept and FPT are asking the court to block the Truth Social subscription.

Bluesky has added the option to hide reposts from specific accounts, which sounds useful for following a certain sort of person.

Users have been unable to log in to their accounts for a few hours, simply receiving a message that reads “An error occurred. Please try again later.” But now the whole site is refusing to load for many. The company posted on Instagram that it’s working to resolve the issue.

The New York Times reports that Owen Cenazandotti and Safine Hamadi were convicted of aggravated violence, incitement to hatred, and violence online related to Raphaël Graven’s death during a Kick livestream last year. Cenazandotti and Hamadi both face suspended prison terms, fines, and a six-month ban from posting on Kick.

250 employees have been laid off, The New York Times reports, including members of the social network’s content moderation team. The closure was made “to streamline our operations and better align our teams for long-term growth,” a press officer for TikTok’s US joint venture told The Times.

Mostly because I find it hilarious to watch people say out-of-pocket shit to under their own government names to people they are going to see at the farmer’s market and everywhere else. (The problem of people being mean online is not, it turns out, anonymity.) Here’s one woman’s story of the local consequences of a post.

The Senate Commerce Committee passed a version of the Kids Online Safety Act that includes the hallmark duty of care, which the House stripped from the version its committee passed. It’s a significant — but limited — step, since the bill got stuck in the House last time it passed the Senate.

OpenAI’s glossy influencer trip prompted more backlash than the company might have expected, but we’re as shocked as anyone to see so many social media stars on board.

Only 3,300 more lawsuits to go, all filed by minors claiming that TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat were designed to be addictive, resulting in harm to their mental health. The plaintiffs’ claims against Meta, Google, and Snap are still on track for a bellwether trial in October. The first case to reach trial resulted in a $4.2 million verdict against Meta and $1.8 million against Google.