Social Media

Meta wants Threads to be the app you open first thing in the morning, and it sounds like some of you feel about the same way I do about that idea.

The platform had blocked access to users in Mississippi due to an age verification law, but in a post on Monday, Bluesky said it has upgraded its Age Assurance system to “restore access to people over 18 in Mississippi” and to comply with “upcoming laws in Australia and other regions.”

In addition to complying with the under-16 social media ban that begins December 10th in Australia, Reddit is making changes globally for under-18s:

Your Discord Checkpoint shows how many messages you sent, your favorite servers, which friends you spent the most time with, and a whole bunch more. You can find your end-of-year stats by opening the Discord app, tapping You on the bottom-right, and selecting the Checkpoint banner.

Threads will test a feature where you can include “dear algo” in a post to add more or less content on whatever you’re writing to the algorithm about to your feed, according to Threads boss Connor Hayes.

Though Club Chalamet started off as just another stan account, The Wall Street Journal reports that Simone Cromer — the woman behind the Timothée-obsessed page — has found new success on Substack where she has generated enough revenue to “cover the cost of her summer vacation to Italy” with just a few hundred subscribers.

Members can now post under a nickname, along with a custom avatar, though admins have to approve them first. It’s a small step towards Discordification for Facebook, which has otherwise always insisted on posting under real names.

“We’re not changing what’s enforced,” Bluesky says, but starting in the coming weeks, when the platform takes an “enforcement action” on a post, a user will be informed of what policy they violated, the severity of the violation, and the end date of any suspension.

The company told Wired it removed Blued and Finka, two of the country’s most popular gay dating platforms, to comply with an order from the government’s cyberspace watchdog. Most international LGBTQ+ dating apps are already blocked on Apple’s Chinese storefront, including Grindr.

Bluesky was the best place on the internet during the World Series last weekend. I wrote yesterday about how the matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays was a feast for fans old and new, and now we have some numbers to illustrate that: Bluesky says at least three percent of all posts on Saturday (Game 7) were about baseball, and the site had a 30 percent surge in traffic.

It’s been added to the list of social media sites that will be required to block under-16s in the country, alongside Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, and Instagram. Local Twitch rival Kick has also made the cut. The ban kicks in December 10th, the next stage in age-gating the internet.

Few would accuse Fox News of being a bastion of quality journalism. But even for them, this is pretty shocking. The site ran a story under the headline “SNAP beneficiaries threaten to ransack stores over government shutdown,” with outrageous quotes like, “It is the taxpayer’s responsibility to take care of my kids.” Of course, the videos weren’t real. Fox updated the article, with an alarmingly blasé correction note:

While no cause of death has been announced yet, Naroditsky’s passing is being investigated as a possible suicide. Many have pointed their fingers at disgraced former world champion Vladimir Kramnik, who has waged an online bullying campaign against Naroditsky. Defector has a detailed report of Kramnik’s behavior and its effect on Naroditsky:

The survey offers a fascinating look at the modern landscape of news creators and influencers. It offers a taxonomy of news creators, breaking them down into four types of content: commentary, news/investigation, explanation, and specialism. Unsurprisingly, it also found that younger generations have shifted away from traditional media, towards creators and personalities, and that partisan content often outflanks more balanced approaches.

It’s testing a few new features, like changing how the reply button works to open into a thread instead of directly into the composer, that are “all aimed at improving the quality of conversation and giving people more control over their experience.”

61-year-old Larry Bushart is out of jail after a month for posting a meme on Facebook. In the wake of Kirk’s killing, ordinary people were doxed, harassed, and even jailed for comments made online about the right wing influencer. According to the Washington Post, Bushart is now celebrating his freedom and building his legal case — and is back to posting.

My beloved Blue Jays are currently up 3-2 in the World Series, in part due to an outstanding performance from 22-year-old Trey Yesavage, who apparently uses doomscrolling as a way to prepare mentally. Professional athletes: they’re just like us!

As Meta published its quarterly earnings yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg promised that AI would soon bring to social media the one thing we’ve all been waiting for: a “huge corpus of content.”

The platform is testing a way for users to indicate what topics they want to see in content, beginning with Reels. Instagram said previously that this was in the works. The topics appear to be extremely specific — things like Bad Bunny, “Japanese artisan menswear,” “vintage Patek,” and so on. In other words: help Instagram improve its algorithm.

After adding AI last month, Zillow now has DMs too. But we won’t rest until its social media-ification democratizes the process of throwing shade at soulless millennial house flips.