Google has been working with researchers to make its products and services more inclusive for people with darker skin tones. Now, the company is open sourcing a major part of that work. The company is making its skin tone research widely available as part of its effort at creating more ”responsible AI.” The research has so far resulted in the Monk Skin Tone Scale (MST), a scale “designed to be easy-to-use for development and evaluation of technology while representing a broader range of skin tones.”

The scale is meant to more accurately reflect the diversity of different skin tones, Google says, and was developed with Harvard professor Dr. Ellis Monk. The work will help AI more accurately “see,” a wider range of skin tones, especially darker ones.

This research will be most apparent to users in search results and in its Photos app to start. For search, Google is using the MST scale to surface results that are more inclusive of darker skin tones. For example, makeup-related searches will come with a filter for adjusting for different skin tones so users can find results that are most relevant for them.

In Photos, Google is also using the MST scale to power a new set of “Real Tone filters.” According to Google, these filters are “designed to work well across skin tones” and “a wider assortment of looks.”

Eventually, Google says it will incorporate the MST scale into more of its products and services. It’s also working to make it easier for brands, creators and publishers to label content to adapt to the scale so Search will be better able to surface results for different hair textures and colors too.

Developing...

Elon Musk has finally confirmed what many have long suspected: that he would allow Donald Trump back on Twitter.

In an interview with The Financial Times, Musk said that he would reinstate Trump when his deal to acquire Twitter closes. “I guess the answer is that I would reverse the perma ban,” Musk said in response to a question about whether he would allow the former president back on the platform. “Obviously, I don't own Twitter yet. So this is not a thing that will definitely happen because what if I don't own Twitter.”

Though Musk has long made it clear he disagrees with Twitter’s decision to ban Trump, it’s the first time he has explicitly said he would “reverse” it. “I think bans just fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter as a town square where everyone can voice their opinion,” Musk said. He added that permanent bans should be reserved for “accounts that are bots or spam scam accounts.”

Whether Musk would bring back Trump has been a major question and the company’s own executives have told employees they don’t know what direction Musk will take the company. Employees have been concerned that Musk could reverse many of the company’s policies around trust and safety and reverse progress they have made in combatting online abuse and misinformation.

Musk said that accounts that break the company’s rules could still be punished with temporary suspensions or having individual tweets deleted. But he said that he and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey believe that permanent bans “should be extremely rare.”

Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Cameo, the startup behind the video app that allows users to pay celebrities for short personalized greetings, has laid off a significant chunk of its workforce. The company parted ways with 87 employees, according to Cameo CEO Steven Galanis. That number, which according to Protocol, includes top executives like the CTO and CPO, accounts for about 25 percent of the company’s employees.

“I made the painful decision to let go of 87 beloved members of the Cameo Fameo,” Galanis said on Twitter. He reportedly told employees the company had hired too quickly and fallen short of revenue expectations. The startup has raised $165 million and was valued at $1 billion last spring.

Galanis, a Web3 enthusiast who once compared the burgeoning movement with colonization of the Americas, called it a “brutal day at the office." In recent months, Galanis has expanded Cameo’s purview from celebrity and creator videos to NFTs. News of the layoffs also comes one day after the company announced a new partnership with Snap to power a new advertising product for Snapchat.

Neighborhood social network Nextdoor is trying out a new way to keep conversations respectful. The company is introducing a new feature that will remind users to keep conversations “constructive” when the app detects that a particular thread may be likely to turn negative or overly contentious.

With the change, which will be rolling out over the next few weeks, users will see a big pop-up reminding them “you can set the tone,” before they are able to add to a discussion. “Show your neighbors what it looks like to have empathetic conversations,” it reads.

It’s an approach the company has tried before. Nextdoor introduced “kindness reminders” in 2019, which surface pop-ups when the app detects someone may be about to post a heated comment. Last year, it debuted a similar reminder to promote anti-racist language among its users.

What sets these latest notifications apart is that they appear proactively, before a user has typed out a comment. The feature uses machine learning to detect when a conversation between neighbors may be close to becoming problematic, looking at factors like the rate of comments coming in as well as whether the people active in a thread have been reported in the past.

Nextdoor

The goal, according to the company’s Chief Product Officer Kiran Prasad, is to catch people before they get involved in a discussion that could be veering off course. Once you’ve already started typing out a response, he says,"you’re kind of committed to a certain level because you’ve already written a bunch of stuff." If people can see the reminders before they start writing, the hope is they’ll be more likely to respond thoughtfully, or even not jump in at all.

For a service that has often been in the spotlight for enabling people’s more base instincts (there’s a reason why the app has had to actively remind users to not be racist) predicting when a conversation is likely to turn negative could have a sizable impact.

“It'll start to kind of set the tone that these are the types of conversations that are appropriate or not appropriate on the platform,” Prasad said.

Nextdoor isn’t the only platform to try out these kinds of reminders in an effort to make people be nicer to each other online. Twitter has prompted users to rethink mean tweets, and has said the prompts have led to a decrease in harmful replies. TikTok adopted a similar measure, prompting users to “reconsider” before posting offensive comments. Instagram also has anti-bullying “nudges.”

Prasad says that early tests of Nextdoor’s “constructive conversations” reminders have already been positive, though it has led to some decrease in overall engagement on the platform. “We think that it's still the right thing to do.”

Jack Dorsey is at it again. The twitter co-founder shared another rambling tweetstorm, in which he mused about Twitter’s shortcomings, user trust and whether or not the platform should be permanently banning users.

The comments come on the heels of a turbulent week for Twitter, which is facing uncertainty about what will happen to its platform with Elon Musk at the helm. But if people were hoping Dorsey could add some clarity to the discussion, they’ll likely be disappointed.

“Every decision we made was ultimately my responsibility,” he said. “In the cases we were wrong or went too far, we admitted it and worked to correct.”

The comments may have been an oblique reference to Elon Musk’s earlier tweets targeting a top Twitter policy official, but he didn’t directly address the situation. Instead, he shared some vague thoughts about what Twitter should do to fix itself.

“Some things can be fixed immediately, and others require rethinking and reimplementing the entire system,” he said. “A transparent system, both in policy and operations, is the right way to earn trust. Whether it’s owned by a company or an open protocol doesn’t matter _as much as_ deliberately deciding to be open about every decision and why it was made.”

Dorsey also seemed frustrated by what current CEO Parag Agrawal has referred to as “noise” about what’s happening to the company. “Doing this work means you’re in the arena,” Dorsey tweeted. “Nothing that is said now matters. What matters is how the service works and acts, and how quickly it learns and improves. My biggest failing was that quickness part. I’m confident that part at least is being addressed, and will be fixed.”

Dorsey added that it’s “crazy and wrong” that “individuals or companies bear this responsibility,” in an apparent reference to past unpopular decisions. “I don’t believe any permanent ban (with the exception of illegal activity) is right, or should be possible. This is why we need a protocol that’s resilient to the layers above.”

Musk’s buyout has rocked Twitter, a company whose own executives have told employees they are unsure what direction Musk will take the platform. Musk, who has said he has “no confidence” in the company’s current leadership, has suggested that he would drastically scale back the company’s existing content moderation policies and, potentially, its staff.

Whether Musk has Dorsey’s backing has been a major source of speculation. Dorsey said earlier in the week that “Elon is the singular solution I trust,” and said that his buyout is getting the company out of an “impossible” situation in which it is tied to an ad-based revenue model. Both Dorsey and former Facebook board member Peter Thiel reportedly encouraged Musk to take Twitter private, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Musk has reportedly floated the idea of charging organizations to embed tweets on other websites, and ramping up Twitter’s subscription product Twitter Blue. He also reportedly wants to replace Agrawal with an executive of his own choosing, Reutersreported Friday.

Dorsey’s comments are also notable for what he didn’t say. He didn’t mention Musk by name, and he didn’t defend Twitter’s employees, though he said “the company has always tried to do its best given the information it had.”

What a difference a year can make. Roughly one year after pandemic-fueled buying spree pushed Amazon profits to new highs, the retail giant’s growth has now stalled to its slowest rate in more than two decades.

The company reported $116.4 billion in sales for the first quarter of 2021, an increase of just 7 percent from last year. That stands in stark contrast to the 44 percent jump it saw this time last year. It’s also the slowest single-quarter growth the company has seen since 2001, according toCNBC. Amazon lost $3.8 billion this quarter, its first loss since 2015.

The company attributed the slowdown to a number of factors, including effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine (something many tech companies have cited in recent earnings reports). The company’s stake in electric car-marker Rivian also accounted for some of the hit, as the company lost more than $7 billion on its investment in the company, whose stock has dipped amid production delays.

The report isn’t the first sign that Amazon has been struggling to turn its characteristically massive profits. The company recently raised the price of Prime for the first time since 2018, citing wage hikes for workers and increasing costs of transportation. The company also hiked prices for sellers by 5 percent.  

The company has also been dealing with a wave of organizing at its warehouses around the country, despite significant investments in anti-union consultants. Notably, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said one of the company’s priorities would be increasing “productivity” at fulfillment centers. “Today, as we’re no longer chasing physical or staffing capacity, our teams are squarely focused on improving productivity and cost efficiencies throughout our fulfillment network.”

Amazon also confirmed that its annual shopping bonanza Prime Day is set for July, though it didn’t provide an exact date.

In case there was any doubt that Snap is among the many platforms trying to challenge TikTok, the company just introduced a new suite of creator-friendly editing tools called “director mode.” The company showed off the new editing tools, which are rolling out “in the coming months” at the company’s Partner Summit event.

In a blog post, Snap said that director mode is meant to help people create more “polished” content than what is currently possible with Snapchat’s in-app camera. The new tools include a TikTok-like green screen feature that relies on Snapchat’s vast library of augmented reality lenses. There are also new camera controls, including the ability to record simultaneously from the front and rear-facing camera similar to the once popular app Frontback. There’s also a new “quick edit” tool to tweak multiple snaps at once, and new ways to sleep up or slow down videos.

As the name suggests, director mode is geared toward Snapchat’s growing ranks of video creators, and the new tools could help fuel fresh content for Spotlight, the app’s hub for TikTok-like short form videos. It could also help Snap Stars — the company’s term for public, verified accounts — make more interesting content for their Stories. Which could come in handy as Snap also recently introduced new revenue sharing features for Snap Stars with mid-roll ads.

Snap also teased a new partnership with LiveNation, which will allow concertgoers and festival attendees to access exclusive augmented reality features crafted specifically for the live events. These include the ability to virtually “try on” merch with AR, a “find friends” feature and other AR effects. The upcoming Electric daisy Carnival festival will be the first to take advantage of the features, though Snap says it will be available at other events this year.

The app is also further building out its augmented reality shopping features. It’s adding a new section of its app called “Dress Up” that will be exclusively dedicated to AR “try-on” experiences from brands and creators. It’s also making its AR shopping features available to other apps via its Camera Kit developer platform. The move will allow retailers and brands to add Snapchat-powered augmented reality try-on features to their existing apps.

Elon Musk may have already broken a key provision of the deal he made with Twitter. One day after Twitter disclosed the terms of its deal with Musk, the Tesla CEO is already raising questions about his willingness to adhere to a non-disparagement clause.

According to an SEC filing shared by twitter on Tuesday, Musk is “permitted to issue Tweets about the Merger or the transactions contemplated hereby so long as such Tweets do not disparage the Company or any of its Representatives.” In other words, Musk can tweet about the deal all he wants, but he can’t denigrate Twitter or its employees.

But once again Musk seems unwilling to moderate himself, and has done so at the expense of a top Twitter executive.

On Tuesday night, Musk replied to a tweet about an earlier Politico story that reported Twitter’s top policy exec, Vijaya Gadde, had cried during a meeting with staff discussing Musk’s buyout. The original tweet also noted Gadde’s role in Twitter’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. (The company quickly reversed course after initially trying to limit the story, citing its policy on hacked materials.)

“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk responded. On Wednesday, Musk targeted Gadde again, tweeting a meme based on her appearance on a 2019 episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast.

The tweets, which have prompted a wave of harassment directed at Gadde, have prompted two former Twitter CEOs to come to her defense. Twitter co-founder and former CEO EV Williams wrote that Gadde is “one of the most thoughtful, principled people I know.”

Former CEO Dick Costolo was more pointed. “You're making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats,” hesaid. “Bullying is not leadership,” he wrote in a separate tweet. “I’m just saying Twitter needs to be politically neutral,” Musk responded.

Notably, neither Jack Dorsey — who recently enthusiastically endorsed Musk’s takeover —or current CEO Parag Agrawal has commented directly. Agrawl tweeted Wednesday that he was “proud of our people who continue to do the work with focus and urgency despite the noise.”

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Regardless, this kind of “noise” from Musk is not likely to sit well with Twitter employees, many of whom are already apprehensive about the direction Musk will take the platform.

Musk has claimed that he wants Twitter to be "politically neutral," which in his estimation "effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally." Early reports looking at changes in follower counts for high-profile accounts suggest that far-right politicians are seeing a sharp uptick in followers. 

We may not yet know exactly what Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter means for the platform, but one Twitter alternative is already booming as a result of the news. Mastodon, the open-source social media service which bills itself as the “largest decentralized social network on the internet,” has been "exploding" since Musk's acquisition, according to its founder.

News of Twitter's buyout has rattled Twitter employees and users, as Musk has indicated he plans to take a much more hands-off approach to content moderation. As is often the case when Twitter makes a controversial change, some users have threatened to leave the platform, while critics have pushed #RIPTWITTER to trend.

In this case, at least some disgruntled users are apparently turning to Mastodon as a potential alternative. Hours after the Twitter acquisition was announced, Mastodon said it saw “an influx of approx. 41,287 users.” Of those, about 30,000 were new users, Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko wrote in a blog post.

“Funnily enough one of the reasons I started looking into the decentralized social media space in 2016, which ultimately led me to go on to create Mastodon, were rumours that Twitter, the platform I’d been a daily user of for years at that point, might get sold to another controversial billionaire,” he wrote. “Among, of course, other reasons such as all the terrible product decisions Twitter had been making at that time. And now, it has finally come to pass, and for the same reasons masses of people are coming to Mastodon.”

Mastodon’s official iOS and Android apps are also seeing an uptick in users, according to data provided by analytics firm Sensor Tower. The apps have been downloaded roughly 5,000 times “or nearly 10% of its lifetime total” downloads since Monday, according to the firm. The app is currently ranked No. 32 on the App Store charts for social media apps.

It’s not the first time Mastodon has benefited from issues at Twitter. The company was briefly popular in 2017, following outrage over Twitter’s decision to remove user handles from the character limit for @-replies (back when Twitter changed its product so infrequently even mundane changes were fodder for mass outrage). Mastodon saw another uptick in 2019, when users in India were angry over moderation policies. 

While Mastodon has been in the spotlight as a potentially viable Twitter alternative in the past, it has yet to reach the mainstream. But its current popularity comes at a moment when Twitter is also exploring how it could become an open-sourced protocol — much like Mastodon.

Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is not a single, centralized service. Though the interface looks similar to Twitter — it has a 500-character limit but otherwise will be mostly recognizable to Twitter users — it runs on an open-source protocol. Groups of users are free to create and maintain their own “instances” with their own rules around membership, moderation and other key policies. Users are also able to take their followers with them between instances.

Mastodon operates its own instances, mastodon.social and mastodon.online, but those are apparently overloaded, according to Rochko, who suggests that new users sign up via the official apps and join other communities on the service. And, because it’s open source, Mastodon makes its code available on GitHub, an idea Musk has also endorsed with regards to Twitter’s algorithms.

But all that also comes with extra complexity for new users who may not easily understand Mastodon’s unique structure or how it works. But those who stick around long enough may see some significant new features. Rochko said that end-to-end encrypted messaging is in the works, as well as “an exciting groups functionality.”

Twitter co-founder and Block Head Jack Dorsey has made it clear that Elon Musk has his support as the new owner of Twitter. In his first public comments since Twitter and Musk announced the $44 billion deal, Dorsey said that “Elon is the singular solution I trust.”

Dorsey wrote that Musk and current CEO Parag Agrawal were “getting the company out of an impossible situation,” and that the company was on “the right path.” Dorsey also alluded to his own regrets regarding how Twitter is structured.

“The idea and service is all that matters to me, and I will do whatever it takes to protect both,” he wrote. “Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step.

“In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”

Though not the first time Dorsey has endorsed Musk’s involvement with the company, his latest comments come at a moment of uncertainty for the company when many employees are anxious about the direction of Twitter.