Mere hours after Facebook said it was pausing work on Instagram Kids, a group of Democratic lawmakers has called on the company to instead completely abandon the project. Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal and Representatives Kathy Castor and Lori Trahan say Facebook’s decision to halt development is “insufficient.”

“Facebook has completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to protecting young people online and it must completely abandon this project,” the group said in a joint statement on Monday. They’re the same four lawmakers who told Facebook earlier in the year they had “serious concerns” about the project when they first learned about it.

Facebook said it was suspending work on Instagram Kids after The Wall Street Journalpublished a report that claimed the company had ignored its own research on the harm apps like Instagram can do to young people. The company quickly refuted that piece, saying its studies showed young people could have both positive and negative experiences interacting with social media. The company will have to answer questions on its research later this week when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee holds a hearing on the matter on Thursday.

Facebook will soon let folks who still have an Oculus Go do so much more with the virtual reality headset. The company will release an unlocked build of the operating system, which users can sideload to get full root access and do just about anything they want with the device.

Oculus consulting CTO John Carmack made the announcement in a tweet spotted by The Verge. Carmack clarified this only applies to Oculus Go, and not Oculus Quest. He noted that he'd been pushing for the move for years and that "getting all the necessary permissions for this involved so much more effort [than] you would expect."

Although Facebook discontinued Oculus Go last year to focus on Quest headsets, it's nice to hear it hasn't forgotten about the older model entirely. The unlocked OS could ensure that Go headsets won't be totally obsolete.

Carmack pointed out that the build will let anyone who finds an unopened Go in the future update the headset to the final version of the OS — even after the servers are closed. He also expressed hope that this will set a "precedent for when headsets go unsupported in the future."

When the build is ready, Carmack said it will likely be available through the Oculus website. However, he suggested Facebook has yet to finalize the distribution plan.

YouTube Music is rolling out to some Wear OS 2 smartwatches starting today. Gen 6 smartwatches from Fossil and Michael Kors will be able to stream music from the service, as will Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, Pro 3 Cellular/LTE and E3 models. The app was previously released for Wear OS 3 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.

It's the first YouTube Music smartwatch app that supports offline listening. If you're a YouTube Music Premium subscriber, you can download songs you can listen to offline and without ads. You'll be able to leave your phone at home and still listen to music while you work out or go for a walk.

The app includes the Smart Downloads feature, which updates the songs on your device when it connects to WiFi. Google says Premium subscribers can listen to more than 80 million songs and thousands of playlists from their wearable. The app, which is available through the Google Play Store, will hit more Wear OS 2 devices later this year.

Spotify rolled out an updated version of its Wear OS app last month. It also lets users download music to their smartwatch and stream tracks without the need to have a phone nearby.

Facebook has announced that it's "pausing" its Instagram Kids project in order to "work with parents, experts and policymakers to demonstrate the value and need for this product." The announcement follows criticism from 44 state attorneys general who asked Facebook to abandon the project, and a request from Democratic lawmakers for more detail about the project. 

The Instagram team said that it was building the app to get around the problem of kids accessing Instagram without parental permission. "We started this project to address an important problem seen across our industry: kids are getting phones younger and younger, misrepresenting their age, and downloading apps that are meant for those 13 or older," wrote Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri. 

At the same time, the company rejected the idea it was capitulating due to criticism. "Critics of 'Instagram Kids' will see this as an acknowledgement that the project is a bad idea. That’s not the case," Mosseri wrote. "The reality is that kids are already online, and we believe that developing age-appropriate experiences designed specifically for them is far better for parents than where we are today."

An important part of what we’ve been developing for 'Instagram Kids' is a way for parents to supervise their child’s use of Instagram. While we’re pausing our development of 'Instagram Kids,' we’ll continue our work to allow parents to oversee their children’s accounts by expanding these tools to teen accounts (aged 13 and over) on Instagram.

Some of the issues raised about the project revolve around Facebook's problems with privacy and particularly child safety. "Not only is social media an influential tool that can be detrimental to children who are not of appropriate age, but this plan could place children directly in the paths of predators," New York state attorney general Letitia James said when the project first came to light. 

Most recently, the WSJ published an article claiming that Facebook has knowingly ignored its own research showing that Instagram is toxic to the mental health of younger people. Yesterday, the social network refuted that article as well, saying its research said that young people had "both positive and negative experiences with social media." 

Facebook pointed out that both YouTube and TikTok have versions of their apps for kids under 13. It also said that Instagram Kids would not be the same as Instagram today, and was never meant for younger children, but tweens between 10 and 12 years old. "It will require parental permission to join, it won’t have ads, and it will have age-appropriate content and features," according to Mosseri. He also pointed out that Facebook has implemented several new measures on issues like body image, encouraging people to look at other topics or take a break if they're dwelling on negative content. 

However, lawmakers don't like even the idea of an app, regardless of intent. "The alternative approach that Facebook appears poised to take—specifically, pushing kids to sign up for a new platform that may itself pose threats to young users’ privacy and wellbeing—involves serious challenges and may do more harm than good," said a group of Democratic lawmakers. 

No, Netflix isn't done extracting every last drop of value from The Witcher. The streaming giant used its TUDUM event to tease a further expansion of its adapted fantasy series. There will be a third season of The Witcher, to no one's surprise, but Netflix also revealed plans for a second anime movie and, believe it or not, a "kids and family" series — a bit odd for fantasy world loaded with sex, violence and colorful language.

The company didn't provide release dates for any of the new projects. The second season of The Witcher premieres December 17th.

This isn't a completely unexpected move. Netflix clearly enjoyed success with the first season of The Witcher, and it's apparently confident enough in the second to prompt a renewal months in advance. The expansion would capitalize on that fandom and make it accessible to a much wider audience. It's just a question of whether or not viewers are willing to follow along, especially when iconic characters like Geralt and Yennefer might not be involved.

Twitter says your new video uploads will appear less pixelated and have better quality. The official Twitter support account has revealed that the website made updates to fix its platform's poor video quality, which has been a problem for its users since the beginning. Twitter told The Verge that it removed a pre-processing step when you upload videos that's responsible for the issue. That step apparently splits the clip you're trying to upload into smaller chunks for easier processing, and that could reduce video quality.

The company told the publication that the changes aren't live on Twitter Media Studio, a tool that gives you access to all the media you've ever uploaded, yet. Also, while the improved video quality is expected to be available to everyone, it will only apply to new video uploads and won't be retroactively applied to old ones. Here's a sample of a new upload that's supposed to have better quality:

While some people said they barely notice any difference from before, others noticed less compression in full screen and quicker adjustment when you switch screen sizes. The quality still isn't comparable to HD videos posted on YouTube, but it does look decent enough. Back in 2019, Twitter also made changes to the way it uploads JPEGs to prevent lowering their quality upon being posted.

You no longer have to wonder just what Netflix's adaptation of Sandman will look like. Netflix has shared a teaser for The Sandman that reveals the pivotal moment when an occult ritual captures Morpheus (aka Dream, played by Tom Sturridge) and sets the story in motion. As author Neil Gaiman put it, scenes like this will be more than a little reminiscent of the comic book series — good news if you were hoping for a faithful adaptation.

The series has a slew of well-known actors, including Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, Stephen Fry as Gilbert, and Patton Oswalt as Matthew the Raven. You'll also likely recognize actors like Narcos' Boyd Holbrook (playing The Corinthian) and The Good Place's Kirby Howell-Baptiste (as Death).

Netflix still won't commit to a release date for The Sandman beyond "coming soon." Still, it's evident the company is giving the show a lavish treatment. It's expecting a hit on par with Gaiman's other adaptations (such as Amazon's American Gods and Good Omens), and it's delivering the production values to match.

You might not have to stay at home to watch James Bond movies if and when Amazon closes its purchase of MGM. As Deadlinereports, producer Barbara Broccoli revealed to Sky News that Amazon had committed to releasing Bond movies in theaters "in the future." Broccoli wasn't more specific than that, but it's safe to say you won't need a Prime Video subscription to watch 007's post-Daniel Craig exploits.

MGM has gone out of its way to make sure the latest Bond flick, No Time to Die, premieres in theaters. The movie was slated to debut in April 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic prompted delays to November 2020, April 2021 and finally September 30th, 2021 for the UK. It reaches the US on October 8th. In all cases, MGM has steadfastly refused to make it available on streaming services like rival studios' blockbuster releases — Amazon might face stiff resistance if it tries digital premieres.

The news follows a familiar pattern: Hollywood studios are determined to stick to theater-first launches for as long as possible. While there was clearly some success for WarnerMedia and other studios that released movies simultaneously or exclusively on streaming services at the height of the pandemic, they clearly want to return to the pre-COVID status quo.

Twitter has been trying to limit the toxic replies you can get on its website by giving you tools that allow you to be more proactive in preventing them from going through. In the future, those tools could include a feature that lets you filter potentially offensive replies and another that lets you limit potentially unwelcome accounts from replying. Twitter Senior Product Designer Paula Barcante has released a sneak peek of the features, which are merely concepts at the moment, to seek input from users.

Barcante says Twitter will ask you if you'd like to switch on those controls if it detects potentially harmful replies to your tweets. If your reply filter is on, Twitter won't show you or anyone else — except the user who wrote the response — the harmful tweets it detects. If you decide to limit unwelcome accounts, users who've recently shown patterns of breaking rules won't be able to reply to your tweets at all. 

Since the process would be automated, Barcante admits that it may not be accurate all the time and may end up filtering out even respective, non-problematic responses. That's why the company is also exploring the possibility of giving you the option to review filtered tweets and limited accounts. Of course, the final iterations of the tools might look vastly different from these previews if they do get released. 

When asked if toggling on the reply filter would filter out all tweets from an account or just the tweet the website has deemed potentially offensive, Barcante didn't have an answer yet. She said what she showed was just an "early concept that requires testing and iteration" and that Twitter will provide more details if it decides to launch the tools.

Twitter is adding yet another feature to make Spaces more discoverable. On Friday, the company announced the addition of Topics. As the name suggests, they’re essentially pre-defined tags you can use to help like-minded individuals find your audio rooms. You can add up to three Topics to a Space. Some of the ones you can use currently include "entertainment," "world news" and "gaming."

At launch, the feature is somewhat limited. It’s only available to select Android users, there are only 10 total Topics to choose from and Topics only work in English. However, Twitter said iOS support is coming soon, and that it will expand the number of available Topics “as we build together.”

Like the API v2 update the company announced back in August, it’s safe to say Twitter’s hope here is to encourage greater use of Spaces by making it easier to find audio rooms, particularly the ones that align with your interests.