It looks like Meta may be pumping the brakes on one of its more aggressive, and unpopular, growth-hacking tactics for Threads. The company appears to be working on a new privacy setting so Threads users can opt-out of having their posts cross-posted to Facebook and Instagram feeds.

The unreleased feature was spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, who often uncovers early versions of social media features before they officially launch. Paluzzi shared screenshots of a new “suggesting posts on other apps” toggle in Threads’ privacy settings.

The feature comes barely a week after the company acknowledged that it was promoting users’ Threads posts in Facebook feeds in an effort to boost Threads. While Meta has used similar tactics to promote its other apps in the past, the move has been widely unpopular among Threads users, many of whom are not active on Facebook and see the promotions as an intrusive overreach. Meta said last week it was “listening to feedback” in response to user complaints about not being able to opt out.

Notably, it appears as if Meta still intends to automatically enable cross-posting as a default setting. “If your profile is public, your posts may be suggested on other apps so people can discover and follow you,” the opt-out screen states.

The back and forth over the feature comes as Meta has steadily ramped up its efforts to boost Threads growth. The Twitter clone has been growing again in recent weeks, and currently has about 100 million monthly users. Mark Zuckerberg recently said he sees a path for the app to become Meta’s next billion-user service. But in order to reach that many people, the company will need to lean hard on its other apps to attract new sign-ups.

Meta just released an experimental new A/B testing feature for Reels on Facebook, allowing creators to experiment with different captions and thumbnail images to create the perfect clips. The tools are part of the pre-existing Professional Dashboard, which already provides plenty of useful metrics, like view count insights and more.

Here’s how it works. When creating a Facebook Reel on your mobile device, you can insert up to four different caption and thumbnail combinations. This starts a testing phase for the content. Whichever one gets the most views will automatically be displayed on your page as the “winning variant.” It seems fairly simple.

The company’s also working on incorporating generative AI to help create unique caption and thumbnail options, though that feature is still being worked out. The ultimate goal here is to ensure user-generated content gets as many eyeballs as possible. This increases Facebook’s traffic and potentially gives creators some money in the process, thanks to Meta’s bonus program.

To that end, there’s a new system in place that awards achievement badges for leaping past certain metrics. A digital badge isn’t as good as money, but it’s something (I guess.) Meta does say that these badges could help creators achieve increased visibility of their content, via an awarded Rising Creator label.

That’s not the only tool that rolled out today. There’s also a new feature that lets you quickly whip up Reels from pre-existing video posts and livestreams. The Professional Dashboard has new content management tools to help users keep track of all of this stuff. Previously, creators could only access content performance on a post-by-post basis, but now the dashboard gives you a more holistic view of things.

It’s interesting that this feature dropped on Facebook and not Instagram, as Reels are more integral to the latter than the former. We’ll update you if and when the company debuts these tools for Instagram users.

The Beatles are back, sort of. The fab four just released a new song, the group’s first since 1995. “Now and Then” is being advertised as the final Beatles track, which makes sense given that two of the members have passed and the other two are well over 80 years old.

The song was built using a demo track from John Lennon dating back to the 1970s and a guitar track from George Harrison from 1995. The surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, finished off the tune with the help of modern machine learning technology.

The software, which was first used by director Peter Jackson when making the Get Back documentary for Apple, was able to split Lennon’s vocal from the piano without any bleed, giving the remaining Beatles free rein to add whatever they wanted. You can watch a documentary on the making of the song right here.

As for the song itself, it’s a relatively slow Lennon ballad, with his vocals being a highlight. McCartney lays down one of his effortless bass lines and Starr hits the drums. The guitar solo is in the style of Harrison, but not actually played by him, though he handles some of the rhythm guitar in the background. There’s also a full orchestral arrangement because, well, it’s the Beatles. This likely won’t go down as one of the group’s most beloved tracks, but that Lennon vocal is both haunting and beautiful.

“Now and Then” was supposed to come out back in 1995 as part of The Beatles Anthology, along with “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, two other tracks culled from 1970s Lennon demos. Back in the 1990s, however, the technology just wasn’t there to separate Lennon’s vocal from the piano without some serious degradation to the original take.

The Beatles may say this is their last song ever, but we’ll report back in 2053 and see if that ends up being true. See you then. In the meantime, check out the track.

YouTube’s no longer just experimenting with ad-dodging viewers. The platform has gone all out in its fight against add-ons, extensions and programs that prevent it from serving ads to viewers worldwide, it confirmed to Engadget.

“The use of ad blockers violates YouTube’s Terms of Service,” a spokesperson said. YouTube started cracking down on the use of ad blockers earlier this year. By June, it took on a more aggressive approach and warned viewers they wouldn’t be able to play more than three videos unless they disable their ad blockers.

It may be an overly aggressive push: Some people apparently can’t play videos on Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers even if they don’t have ad blockers, according to Android Police, but we could not replicate that behavior.

— Mat Smith

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This AI-powered security camera can describe what it sees in detail

Beyond just ‘dog spotted.’

Psync Labs

Psync Labs’ focus is to improve machine vision and pair this with generative AI to help it, and you, understand what it can see. Its debut security camera, the Genie S, will process what it sees and send you a written description of what (it thinks) is going on. The camera, which doesn’t have the best picture and sound quality, has 32GB built-in storage for $35, and some exciting stuff happening inside.

ViewSay is Psync’s transcription tool that uses GPT, a form of generative AI, to get the camera to describe in text what it’s seeing. ViewSay, which currently costs 99 cents a month (but will jump to $7 per month in the future) can apparently identify objects, sort events that triggered the recording and even let you search through the clips with text, all through your smartphone. It’s early days, but the system shows glimpses of insightful visual analysis .

Continue reading.

Apple Music’s Siri-only $5 voice plan gets silenced

It’s no longer listed on the streaming service’s website.

Apple appears to have killed off its lowest-cost Apple Music subscription. The Apple Music Voice Plan allowed folks to access the streaming service for $5 per month, as long as they were willing to use it only through voice commands to Siri. However, as of Wednesday, the plan is no longer listed on the Apple Music webpage. As it stands, the cheapest standalone Apple Music option is now the student plan, which costs $6 per month and includes Apple TV+ at no extra cost — if you’re a student.

Continue reading.

LinkedIn’s latest premium perk is an AI job coach

The platform is ramping up its AI-powered features as it hits 1 billion users.

LinkedIn is adding a new AI-powered job coach for its premium subscribers. The feature will tap into LinkedIn data to help job seekers find, research and apply for roles, and it arrives as the company announced its user base has grown to one billion members. For now, the most prominent feature for job seekers will be AI-generated insights alongside each job posting. The tool can summarize lengthy job descriptions and weigh in on whether the role is a good fit for a user, based on their LinkedIn profile. For example, it can highlight specific work experiences users’ may want to emphasize in their application.

Continue reading.

Disney will buy out Comcast and take full control of Hulu

It will pay $8.61 billion for the deal.

Disney is buying the rest of Hulu from Comcast. It will acquire the 33 percent of Hulu Comcast still controls and expects to pay NBCUniversal around $8.61 billion for the deal, though the final amount will be determined sometime next year. Disney CEO Bob Iger said when he announced the combined streaming app that it’s “a logical progression” of the company’s direct-to-consumer offerings. And hey: Comcast still has Peacock.

Continue reading.

Oscar-nominated actor Scarlett Johansson has taken legal action against an AI app developer for using her voice and image in an ad without permission, Variety has reported. The 22-second ad promoted an AI image editor called Lisa AI: 90s Yearbook & Avatar, and reportedly used an AI-generated version of Johansson's voice and image.

The ad showed a real clip of Johansson in a Black Widow behind-the-scenes clip, saying "What's up guys? It's Scarlett and I want you to come with me...". It then transitions to AI-generated photos and a cloned version of her voice promoting the AI app. Under the ad is fine print that states: "Images produced by Lisa AI. It has nothing to do with this person." Multiple Lisa AI apps created by Convert Software remain on the App Store and Google Play, according to Variety, but the ad no longer appears on X. 

Johansson is "handling the situation in a legal capacity," said her lawyer Kevin Yorn. "We do not take these things lightly. Per our usual course of action in these circumstances, we will deal with it with all legal remedies that we will have," he added. 

Johansson has one of the best known faces (and voices) in Hollywood and is the spokesperson for high-end companies including Dolce & Gabbana and Louis Vuitton. Given that, it's hard to believe that someone would even attempt to rip off her likeness, if the claim is accurate (and it's not exactly a ringing endorsement for the quality of advertisers on X). 

The idea of using AI to rip off celebrity likenesses is a relatively new phenomenon, so the legal ramifications are still being worked out. In one notable incident, actor Tom Hanks warned his fans on social media that videos using AI versions of his likeness were being used to fraudulently hawk products. 

Though it's still a legal grey area, some states have related laws around privacy rights, with California for one allowing civil lawsuits for the unauthorized use in advertising or promotion of someone’s "name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness." 

YouTube is no longer preventing just a small subset of its userbase from accessing its videos if they have an ad blocker. The platform has gone all out in its fight against the use of add-ons, extensions and programs that prevent it from serving ads to viewers around the world, it confirmed to Engadget. "The use of ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service," a spokesperson told us. "We've launched a global effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience. Ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube."

YouTube started cracking down on the use of ad blockers earlier this year. It initially showed pop-ups to users telling them that it's against the website's TOS, and then it put a timer on those notifications to make sure people read it. By June, it took on a more aggressive approach and warned viewers that they wouldn't be able to play more than three videos unless they disable their ad blockers. That was a "small experiment" meant to urge users to enable ads or to try YouTube Premium, which the website has now expanded to its entire userbase. Some people can't even play videos on Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers even if they don't have ad blockers, according to Android Police, but we weren't able to replicate that behavior.

People are unsurprisingly unhappy about the development and have taken to social networks like Reddit to air their grievances. If they don't want to enable ads, after all, the only way they can watch videos with no interruptions is to pay for a YouTube Premium subscription. Indeed, the notification viewers get heavily promotes the subscription service. "Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide," it says. But with YouTube Premium, viewers can go ad-free, and "creators can still get paid from [their] subscription."

The website raised Premium's rates to $14 a month in July from $12 before that. YouTube Premium also gives users access to offline viewing, background playback and higher-quality 1080p streaming, but it could be too expensive for those who just want an ad-free experience. The platform used to offer a more affordable option called Premium Lite in certain European regions, and it only cost €7 ($7.42) a month to remove advertisements from videos. However, it never made Lite available worldwide and ultimately killed that option by the end of October.

LinkedIn is adding a new, AI-powered perk for its premium subscribers: a built-in job coach that uses AI and LinkedIn data to help job seekers find, research and apply for roles. The new feature arrives as the company announced its user base has grown to 1 billion members as it looks to ramp up its investment in AI-driven features.

The Microsoft-owned company has increasingly been experimenting with AI features for its paying members. Earlier this year, it introduced the ability to use generative AI to write better profile descriptions and messages to hiring managers. But the latest AI perks aim to provide an even more personalized experience.

For now, the most prominent feature for job seekers will be AI-generated insights alongside each job posting. The tool can help summarize lengthy job descriptions and weigh in on whether the role is a good fit for a user based on the contents of their LinkedIn profile. For example, it can highlight specific work experiences users’ may want to emphasize in their application and provide tips on how to improve their LinkedIn profile to look more attractive to hiring managers.

LinkedIn

Because LinkedIn is able to draw on its vast trove of career data, the tips it’s able to provide are much more personalized than what you’d likely get if you were to ask other generative AI services for tips, says LinkedIn product manager Rohan Rajiv. “This is made possible by generative AI, but also the datasets that bring all of this together,” Rajiv tells Engadget. “It's your profile, your connections, and all of this that essentially can help you move your job search forward.”

For now, it’s still early days for the feature which is launching in beta to a limited set of LinkedIn Premium subscribers. But the company has signaled it intends to make AI a central part of its service going forward. “Today marks the beginning of a new journey, one where the power of AI is your ally in every career question and decision,” LinkedIn’s Chief Product Officer, Tomer Cohen, wrote in a blog post.

Threads was missing a lot of features users would expect from a service similar to Twitter's (now X's) when it launched. Over the past few months, however, it has been been rolling out more and more new features to give users a more robust experience, including polls, an easy way to post GIFs and the ability to quote posts on the web. Still, since it doesn't have an API, third-party developers can't conjure features specific to their services that would make the social network a more integral part of people's everyday lives. An example of that is local transportation agencies being able to automatically post service alerts when a train is delayed. According to Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, though, Threads is working on an API for developers — he just has concerns about how it's going to be used. 

As first reported by TechCrunch, Mosseri responded to a conversation on the platform about having a TweetDeck-like experience for Threads. In a response to a user saying that Threads has no API yet, the executive said: "We're working on it." He added that he's concerned that the API's launch could mean "a lot more publisher content and not much more creator content," but he's aware that it "seems like something [the company needs] to get done."

Mosseri previously said that Threads won't amplify news, which may have been disappointing to hear for publishers and readers looking to leave X. Instead, he said, Threads wants to "empower creators in general." More recently, in an AMA he posted on the platform, Mosseri said that that his team's long-term aspiration is for Threads to become "the de facto platform for public conversations online," which means being both culturally relevant and big in terms of user size. He said he believes Threads has a chance of surpassing X, but he knows that his service has a long way to go. For now, he keeps his team focused on making people's experience better week by week. 

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Threads has "just under" 100 million monthly active users. Like Mosseri, he is optimistic about its future and said that there's a "good chance" it could reach 1 billion users over the next couple of years.

Barbarian is one of the more memorable horror movies of the last few years. It tells a tale of a young woman who finds that someone is already staying at her rental home. She has little choice but to stay there since nearby hotels are all booked up. That alone is a nightmare scenario but the film goes into some truly wild directions from there. On the surface, it seems like an odd choice to turn into a video game, but that's exactly what's happening.

New Regency Pictures and Friday the 13th: The Game and Evil Dead: The Game developer Diversion3 Entertainment have teamed up to bring Barbarian to PC and consoles. Despite the multiplayer format of the studio's previous projects, this will be a single-player, narrative-focused title which will "expand on the settings, characters and creatures of Barbarian." There's no release timeframe as yet.

“We’re very excited to work with the team at New Regency to expand on the settings, characters and creatures of Barbarian,” Tim Hesse, an executive producer at Diversion3 Entertainment, told Variety in a statement. “The film did a magnificent job of not only scaring audiences with its unexpected and horrifying twists and turns, but also in establishing strong characters thrown into terrifying situations. We look forward to exploring these themes further in the game.”

A straight adaptation of the film's story probably wouldn't work as a game. But there's certainly potential for it to work as a tension-filled survival horror title given (mild spoilers) how much of the Barbarian takes place in terrifying underground tunnels.

For the uninitiated, here's the trailer for Barbarian. Happy Halloween.

It seems like just about every streaming service has raised their price this year – most recently, Apple TV+, Netflix and Disney+. In this episode, we chat with Janko Roettgers, author of the newsletter Lowpass, about the state of streaming media. Why are these companies pushing their prices up now, and what does that mean for you, the viewer? Does this mean the dream of cord cutting is over? (Spoiler: No, not really.)

Also, we chat about Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips, adult film star Riley Reid’s new AI chatbot, and why Super Mario Wonder is the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

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Topics

• Reporter Janko Roettgers explains what’s going on with streaming price increases – 1:0

• Other News: 41 states use Meta over Instagram’s influence on kids – 23:15

• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 brings more AI power to phones – 28:59

• Snapdragon X Elite takes aim at Apple’s M series chips – 33:26

• Working on – 42:30

• Pop culture picks – 46:12

Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Ben Ellman
Guest: Janko Roettgers
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien