Starting in 2022, Universal's movies will be available on Peacock first instead of on HBO. That means the next Jurassic World and the new Halloween movie will make their TV debut on the streaming service also owned by its parent company Comcast. According to Variety and The Wall Street Journal, Universal's films will appear exclusively on Peacock for streaming within four months after their theatrical release, as well as within the final four months of an 18-month window. 

Those 10 months in between, the films will be licensed to around two to three additional partners, though none of them will have exclusive rights to the movies. Universal has yet to release the list of additional partners, and it's unclear if HBO is one of them. Variety says that by adopting the segmented TV release schedule, Universal is hoping to avoid over-saturation or making its films seem stale. In addition, streaming platforms are apparently willing to pay top dollar for popular movies these days in an effort to stand out from their ever-increasing number of rivals out there. 

Whether the move leads to a boost in subscriber numbers for Peacock remains to be seen. Comcast made the streaming service available to more potential viewers just a month ago by releasing apps for the Amazon Fire TV and tablets and Samsung's smart TVs. Peacock also grew its live sports portfolio recently and announced that it's streaming 44 Premier Lacrosse League games for the season that started on June 4th. 

Twitter has shared concepts for four features that could give users more control over who can see, read and find their accounts, and it wants feedback from the public on what it showed off. The first of those features would make it easier for those with protected accounts to make their tweets publicly viewable in instances where they want to reply to non-followers. “If you have a protected account and reply to someone who isn’t following you, you may not know they can’t see your reply,” Lena Emara, Twitter people experience designer, wrote in a thread. So one idea is to include a prompt that reminds people of that fact, as well as give them the option to easily switch their tweets to public.

Twitter

Another potential feature would help those with multiple accounts. A mockup Emara shared shows an interface element that would allow you to switch to a different account directly from Twitter’s main composition window. What’s more, the new interface would allow you to see, at a glance, the name, handle and privacy status of your accounts all in one place.

The two other concepts Emara shared focus more on privacy. One of those details a feature that would periodically touch base with users to see if they’re happy with their current discoverability and conversation settings and make it easy to tweak them as needed without visiting the app’s settings menu. Lastly, the second one would create a system for notifying you when people search for your username and give you more control over whether your account is discoverable that way. That’s something that could be significant for limiting online harassment.

Twitter

As with the last time Twitter showed off several concept features, everything you see above “are just ideas and not being built (yet?).” They may never mature into features the company ships. That said, the feedback Twitter collects could inform other tools the company builds in the future.

Roblox is rushing to strike official music deals in the wake of a $200 million lawsuit over alleged copyright violations. TechCrunchreports that Roblox has unveiled a team-up with Sony Music that will bring more of the label's artists to the game platform. The two will collaborate on "innovative music experiences" beyond what you've seen so far, including a Lil Nas X concert in November and a Zara Larsson launch party in May.

The companies didn't say what kind of events you might expect, or when you might see them.

This isn't Roblox's first such deal. The gaming giant reached a similar agreement with BMG in June. It does represent Roblox's largest music pact to date, however, and leaves Universal and Warner as the only two heavyweight labels that haven't signed agreements.

Roblox might not have much choice but to keep making these arrangements. The music industry sued Roblox for allegedly doing little to stop gamers from making virtual boomboxes that stream copyrighted music. That's not including Robloxcore and other music designed for game worlds. The developer maintains that it screens uploaded music and cracks down on violators, but that clearly hasn't been enough for labels convinced Roblox is enabling piracy. Deals could help Roblox persuade Sony, BMG and others to call off their lawsuit, or at least soften the blow.

You won't have to wait too much longer to see how anime heavyweights tackle the Star Wars universe. Lucasfilm and Disney have announced that the Star Wars: Visions anthology will be available on Disney+ on September 22nd, and have offered a close look at the short films themselves. You'll get nine shorts from seven studios, each with a very distinct take on the space fantasy — including more than a few nods to Japanese culture.

Kamikaze Douga's The Duel, for instance, is a mostly black-and-white short involving samurai-like Jedi and Sith warriors. Studio Colorido's Tatooine Rhapsody is a Chibi-like rock opera (yes, you read that correctly), while Science Saru's T0-B1 draws more than a little from Astro Boy as it tells the tale of a droid that hopes to become a Jedi.

Visions likely wont' define the Disney+ calendar the way The Mandalorian or numerous Marvel shows have so far. With that said, it does show how Disney is experimenting with streaming — it's willing to try formats that likely wouldn't work in theaters or conventional TV.

It seems more and more law enforcement agents are trying to use online platforms' copyright-takedown measures to prevent videos that show them in a bad light from being shared online. A California police officer has tried to use the tactic on a BLM protestor at the Alameda Country courthouse by playing Taylor Swift's Blank Space, as reported by The Washington Post and Variety. His attempt failed, though, and it even backfired spectacularly: The video has almost 800,000 views on Twitter as of this writing, as well as 300,000 views on YouTube. 

The protestor was at the courthouse for the pretrial hearing of Jason Fletcher, the police officer charged with voluntary manslaughter for killing Steven Taylor, a Black man, inside a Walmart. In the video posted by the Anti Police-Terror Project, you'll hear the officer admit that he played the popular Swift song so that it gets a copyright strike on Google's video platform. "You can record all you want, I just know it can't be posted on YouTube," he said. 

When asked if there's an administrative regulation telling cops to play copyrighted music to prevent videos from being shared, the officer replied: "Not that I know of." Alameda County sheriff's office spokesperson Sgt. Ray Kelly told The Post that there's no policy barring what the officer did in the video, but that the office does not "condone" his behavior.

Back in February, several police officers in Beverly Hills had also been caught on video seemingly trying to get a prominent LA activist banned from Instagram by triggering is copyright filters. They kept playing songs while being filmed, including Sublime's Santeria and The Beatles' Yesterday. 

Chessie Thacher, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Northern California, told The Post that the tactic "does seem to be a trend right now." Thacher added: "People have the right to film the police, and efforts by the police to infringe on this right are unconstitutional. So if they're using copyright laws to prevent people from exercising their right — and amplifying what they’re seeing — then that's a real problem."

Riot Games is no stranger to making music. With K/DA, the studio has one of the world’s most popular virtual bands, but it’s latest musical project is different. On Friday, Riot released Sessions: Vi, a 37-track album of instrumental beats with contributions from artists like Chromonicci and Junior State. What makes the release special is that streamers and content creators can use all the songs from Sessions: Vi for free.

Riot hopes the album and future ones like it will help ease some of the copyright headaches Twitch streamers have had to deal with for much of the past year. At the start of last June, Twitch got a “sudden influx” of DMCA takedown notices. The majority of those targeted archived broadcasts that had been up on the platform for years. The company has tried in a variety of ways to prevent more takedown notifications from coming in, but those efforts don’t seem to have addressed the problem. That's because in May Twitch said it received another batch of approximately 1,000 individual DMCA notifications. For some streamers, those notices represent a potential ban from the service.

You can stream Sessions: Vi on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube. 

Amazon has opened a new front in its streaming battle with Netflix. The company is bringing the anime hit Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon A Time to Prime Video globally, barring Japan, on August 13th, according to Deadline. Together with a revised version released last month, the fourth and final chapter in the movie saga has raked in more than $86 million at Japanese theaters, making it the biggest earner of the year. For those who missed the previous entries, the good news is they're also coming to Prime Video, including Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone, Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance and Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo.

Blending mech action with intimate teenage drama, the Evangelion franchise became a pop culture behemoth in Japan and a revered cult classic overseas. Netflix ran the original series back in 2019 along with two films — Evangelion: Death True² and The End of Evangelion — as part of its push into Japanese animation. Though it probably helped to expand the show's reach, some legacy fans were upset that Netflix chose to go with a new voice cast for its English dub instead of the original players. More recently, the streamer announced that it's launching around 40 anime shows and movies in a bid to capture subscribers in Asia.

Amazon, on the other hand, has dabbled in anime in the past, most notably through its Blade of the Immortal adaptation in 2019. Evangelion is a big get for the company and success could prompt it to wade further into the genre.

Before it hosts its Play Live event on the 22nd, EA will stream a series of “Spotlight” panels throughout the month of July. In all, fans can look forward to four such panels. The series will start on July 8th with an event devoted to Battlefield 2042, Apex Legends and first-person shooters more broadly. The panel will feature contributions from both Dice and Respawn Entertainment.

The next one falls on July 13th. It will consist of a conversation on indie games that EA promises will be “spirited.” Given that Josef Fares of It Takes Two and A Way Out developer Hazelight Studios is taking part, we believe it. Then, it’s an EA Sports double-header, with back-to-back panels scheduled for July 19th and 20th.

The first will offer a detailed look at Madden NFL 22 and how fan input has shaped the game's updated franchise mode. EA is also promising a look at a new scouting feature that it hopes to release in September. When it comes to the July 20th panel, meanwhile, EA is being tight-lipped. “Look, we’re not allowed to tell you much about this one yet, sorry,” the company said. “But we can say this Spotlight will highlight an extremely cool new addition to an extremely popular and long-running EA Sports franchise.”

Part of the reason EA plans to host these panels is so that it can make games the “unwavering” focus of its July 22nd event. From start to finish, the publisher says its main showcase should clock in at about 40 minutes. Outside of more details on upcoming titles like Battlefield 2042, EA will reportedly show off a Dead Space remake at the event. 

Facebook is testing new prompts to reach users who may be “becoming an extremist.” The in-app messages, which Facebook has confirmed is a test, direct users to resources aimed at combating extremism.

CNN first reported the new prompts, which have been spotted by Twitter users in recent days. One version is aimed at people who may know someone falling into extremism. “Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist,” it reads. 

Another prompt appears to warn users who may have encountered extremist content on the platform. “Violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment,” it says. “You can take action now to protect yourself and others.”

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the messages are “part of our ongoing Redirect Initiative work.” The initiative is part of a broader effort by Facebook to fight extremism on its platform by working with groups like Life After Hate, which helps people leave extremist groups. The prompts will send users to Life After Hate or other resources, according to CNN.

It’s not clear how Facebook is determining which users may be most likely to be affected by extremism, but the issue has become a hot-button topic for Facebook. The company was widely criticized for not doing enough to prevent QAnon and other fringe groups from using its platform to grow their followings. Facebook has also been accused of downplaying its role in enabling the events of January 6th. And when the Oversight Board recommended the company conduct its own inquiry into the issue, the company said investigations should remain in the hands of law enforcement and elected officials.

Twitter is thinking about new ways to share tweets with specific groups of people. The company showed off two concepts for new features that would allow users to target tweets toward specific audiences without having to switch accounts or change privacy settings.

The first would enable people to designate “trusted friends” so some tweets would only be visible to that group. The idea is similar to Instagram’s “close friends” feature for Stories. According to an image shared by Twitter designer Andrew Courter, Twitter’s version would allow users to toggle the audience much like the way you can choose who is able to reply to you.

He added that “perhaps you could also see trusted friends' Tweets first” in your timeline, which would offer another alternative to the chronological or algorithmic “home” timelines Twitter currently offers.

Twitter

Another feature would allow people to take on different personas or “facets” from the same account. For example, a user could have a professional identity, where they tweet about work-related topics, and a personal one that’s meant more for friends and family. According to the images, users could have the option of making any one persona public or private, and new followers would be able to choose which “facet” they want to see tweets from.

Finally, Courter showed off a new concept for filtering replies that would allow users to choose specific words or phrases “they prefer not to see.” Then, if a user who is replying or mentioning the user tries to use one of those words or phrases, Twitter will let them know the words go against that person’s preference.

Twitter

According to the images shared by Courter, the feature wouldn’t prevent anyone from sending a tweet using the offending words, but it would make it less visible to the person on the receiving end. The idea is similar to other kinds of anti-bullying nudges Twitter has employed in the past, but would go a step further as each user could set their own conversational “boundaries.”

All these features are still just ideas — Courter noted that “we’re not building these yet” — so they may never actually launch. But the company is looking for feedback on the designs, so they could inform future tools Twitter does decide to build. At the very least, it sheds some light on how Twitter is thinking about issues like identity.