Instagram’s status update feature, Notes, will soon be more prominent in the app. Up until now, Notes have only been visible from Instagram’s inbox, but the brief updates will soon also be visible directly on users’ profiles.

The change should increase the visibility of the feature and give people a new place to interact with their friends’ updates. (Instagram added reply functionality to Notes back in December.) The app is also experimenting with “prompts” for Notes, which will allow users to share questions for their friends to answer in their updates, much like the collaborative “add yours” templates for Stories.

Notes are similar to Stories in that the updates only stick around for 24 hours, though they are only visible to mutual followers, so they aren’t meant to be as widely shared as a typical grid or Stories post. The latest updates are another sign of how Meta has used the feature, first introduced in 2022, to encourage users to post more often for smaller, more curated groups of friends.

Separately, the app is also adding a new “cutouts” feature, which allows users to make stickers out of objects in their photos, much like the iOS sticker feature. On Instagram, these stickers can be shared in Stories or in a Reel. Cutouts can also be made from other users’ public posts, effectively giving people a new way to remix content from others (Instagram’s help page notes that users can disable this feature if they prefer for their content to not be reused.)

Meta AI is consistently unable to generate accurate images for seemingly simple prompts like “Asian man and Caucasian friend,” or “Asian man and white wife,” The Verge reports. Instead, the company’s image generator seems to be biased toward creating images of people of the same race, even when explicitly prompted otherwise.

Engadget confirmed these results in our own testing of Meta’s web-based image generator. Prompts for “an Asian man with a white woman friend” or “an Asian man with a white wife” generated images of Asian couples. When asked for “a diverse group of people,” Meta AI generated a grid of nine white faces and one person of color. There were a couple occasions when it created a single result that reflected the prompt, but in most cases it failed to accurately depict the prompt.

As The Verge points out, there are other more “subtle” signs of bias in Meta AI, like a tendency to make Asian men appear older while Asian women appeared younger. The image generator also sometimes added “culturally specific attire” even when that wasn’t part of the prompt.

It’s not clear why Meta AI is struggling with these types of prompts, though it’s not the first generative AI platform to come under scrutiny for its depiction of race. Google’s Gemini image generator paused its ability to create images of people after it overcorrected for diversity with bizarre results in response prompts about historical figures. Google later explained that its internal safeguards failed to account for situations when diverse results were inappropriate.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously described Meta AI as being in “beta” and thus prone to making mistakes. Meta AI has also struggled to accurately answer simple questions about current events and public figures.

X has named a new head of safety nearly a year after the last executive in the position resigned. The company said Tuesday that it had promoted Kylie McRoberts to Head of Safety and hired Yale Cohen as Head of Brand Safety and Advertiser Solutions.

The two will have the unenviable task of leading X’s safety efforts, including its attempts to reassure advertisers that the platform doesn’t monetize hate speech or terrorist content. The company said earlier this year it planned to hire 100 new safety employees after previously cutting much of its safety staff.

Head of safety has been a particularly fraught position since Elon Musk took over the company previously known as Twitter. Musk has previously clashed with his safety leads and McRoberts is the third person to hold the title in less than two years. Previously, Yoel Roth resigned shortly after the disastrous rollout of Twitter Blue in 2022. Roth was replaced by Ella Irwin, who resigned last year after Musk publicly criticized employees for enforcing policies around misgendering.

Not much is known about McRoberts, but she is apparently an existing member of X’s safety team (her X account is currently private and a LinkedIn profile appears to have been recently deleted). “During her time at X, she has led initiatives to increase transparency in our moderation practices through labels, improve security with passkeys, as well as building out our new Safety Center of Excellence in Austin,” X said in a statement.

LinkedIn is testing a new feed of TikTok-like vertical videos. The feature hasn’t been publicly announced but it’s been spotted by users in recent days and the company confirmed the tests to TechCrunch.

According to a screenshot shared by Instagram employee Jenny Eishingdrelo and a video posted to LinkedIn by influencer marketing exec Austin Null, the new feed will appear in a separate “video” tab in the LinkedIn app. Users will be able to scroll vertically to move between clips, much like TikTok or Instagram Reels.

It’s not the first time the company has hopped on a trendy format. LinkedIn previously experimented with a Stories feature for disappearing posts. That feature lasted less than a year, though the professional network hinted at the time that it wasn’t done with its video experiments, saying it was working “to evolve the Stories format into a reimagined video experience across LinkedIn.”

Presumably, LinkedIn is hoping the feed will showcase content from its ranks of professional creators and thought leaders, many of whom are already posting video to their feeds. However, it’s not clear how many of the site’s users are interested in a dedicated video feed for workplace-related content.

X is working on features that will allow admins of “Communities,” the platform’s tool for subreddit-like groups, to designate the spaces as containing “adult content.” The change was confirmed by an engineer at X amid reports that the Elon Musk-owned company was working on enabling NSFW groups.

In a post on X, engineer Dong Wook Chung noted that “soon” NSFW content would be automatically filtered in the app’s Communities feature. “Admins can now set 'Adult content' in Settings to avoid auto-filtering of the content,” Chung said.

As Bloomberg reported, researchers had previously spotted clues that X planned to enable settings for “adult-sensitive” content. X permits users to share nudity and other “graphic” content, but doesn’t allow it to appear in certain parts of the app, like profile photos and cover images for Communities.

X’s Communities feature predates Musk’s takeover of the company. Twitter began experimenting with the idea in 2021, saying it would provide “a more intimate space for conversations” on the platform. Though Twitter never publicly discussed enabling NSFW features for Communities, the app allowed adult content, unlike most of its social media peers. The company reportedly looked into creating an OnlyFans competitor with its creator subscription product in 2022. The plan was eventually scrapped, according to the Platformer newsletter, due to concerns it would “worsen” the company’s problems with illegal child exploitation content.

It’s not clear if X’s current leadership has addressed those concerns. In a separate post, Chung, the X engineer, stated that the new filtering settings “is about making Communities safer for everyone by automatically filtering out” adult content. “Only users who have specified their age will be able to search Communities with NSFW content.” 

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

Snapchat has a new AI-powered perk for subscribers: Bitmoji versions of your pet. The feature, which is unfortunately not called “petmoji,” allows users to snap a photo of their four-legged friend to create a cartoon-like avatar to accompany their Bitmoji in the Snap Map.

Based on screenshots shared by the company, it seems users will be able to choose from a few different variations of the AI-generated images after sharing a photo of their pet. That’s considerably less customization than what you can do with your own human-inspired Bitmoji,though it should allow users to create something that looks similar to their IRL pet. (No word on if Snap could one day introduce branded pet accessories for animal avatars like they do for human Bitmoji.)

The addition is also the latest example of how Snap has embraced AI features in its subscription offering. Since debuting Snapchat+ in 2022, the company has used the premium service to experiment with generative AI features, including its MyAI assistant as well as camera-powered features like Dreams and AI-generated snaps. Snapchat+ has more than 7 million subscribers, the company announced in December.

Elsewhere, Snap added some updates for non-subscribers, too. The app is adding a new template feature to make it easier to edit clips, and new swipe-based gestures to send and edit snaps more quickly. Snapchat will also support longer video uploads for Stories and Spotlight. In-app captures can now be three minutes long, while the app will support uploads of up to five minutes.

YouTube’s TikTok competitor, Shorts, is becoming a more significant part of the company’s monetization program. The company announced that more than a quarter of channels in its Partner Program are now earning money from the short-form videos.

The milestone comes a little more than a year after YouTube began sharing ad revenue with creators making Shorts. YouTube says it currently has more than 3 million creators around the world in the Partner Program, which would imply the number of Shorts creators making money from the platform is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.

Because ads on Shorts appear between clips in a feed, revenue sharing for Shorts is structured differently than for longer-form content on YouTube. Ad revenue is pooled and divided among eligible creators based on factors like views and music licensing. The company has said this arrangement is far more lucrative for individuals than traditional creator funds.

So far though, it’s unclear just how much creators are making from Shorts compared with the platform’s other monetization programs. YouTube declined to share details but said the company has paid out $70 billion to creators over the last three years.

Shorts’ momentum could grow even more in the coming months. TikTok, which itself has been trying to compete more directly with YouTube by encouraging longer videos, is facing a nonzero chance that its app could be banned in the United States. Though that outcome is far from certain, YouTube would almost certainly attract former TikTok users and creators.

Meta is failing to enforce its own rules against anti-trans hate speech on its platform, a new report from GLAAD warns. The LGBTQ advocacy group found that “extreme anti-trans hate content remains widespread across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.”

The report documents dozens of examples of hate speech from Meta’s apps, which GLAAD says were reported to the company between June 2023 and March 2024. But though the posts appeared to be clear violations of the company’s policies, “Meta either replied that posts were not violative or simply did not take action on them,” GLAAD says.

The reported content included posts with anti-trans slurs, violent and dehumanizing language and promotions for conversion therapy, all of which are barred under Meta’s rules. GLAAD also notes that some of the posts it reported came from influential accounts with large audiences on Facebook and Instagram. GLAAD also shared two examples of posts from Threads, Meta’s newest app where the company has tried to tamp down “political” content and other “potentially sensitive” topics.

“The company’s ongoing failure to enforce their own policies against anti-LGBTQ, and especially anti-trans hate, is simply unacceptable,” GLAAD’s CEO and President Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But GLAAD’s report isn’t the first time the company has faced criticism for its handling of content targeting the LGBTQ community. Last year the Oversight Board urged Meta to “improve the accuracy of its enforcement on hate speech towards the LGBTQIA+ community.”

TikTok, already fighting a proposed law that could lead to a ban of the app in the United States, may soon also find itself in the crosshairs of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is close to wrapping up a multiyear investigation into the company, which could result in a lawsuit or major fine, Politico reports.

The investigation is reportedly centered around the app’s privacy and security practices, including its handling of children’s user data. According to Politico, the FTC is looking into potential violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), as well as “allegations that the company misled its users by stating falsely that individuals in China do not have access to U.S. user data.” TikTok could also be penalized for violating the terms of its 2019 settlement with regulators over data privacy.

While it’s not clear if the FTC’s investigation will result in a lawsuit or other action, the investigation is yet another source of pressure for the company as it tries to secure its future in its largest market.. After a quick passage in the House, the Senate is considering a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or face an outright ban in the US. The Biden Administration, which has also tried to pressure ByteDance to divest TikTok, is backing the measure and US intelligence officials have briefed lawmakers on the alleged national security risks posed by the app.

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

The Oversight Board is urging Meta to change the way it moderates the word “shaheed,” an Arabic term that has led to more takedowns than any other word or phrase on the company’s platforms. Meta asked the group for help crafting new rules last year after attempts to revamp it internally stalled.

The Arabic word “shaheed” is often translated as “martyr,” though the board notes that this isn’t an exact definition and the word can have “multiple meanings.” But Meta’s current rules are based only on the “martyr” definition, which the company says implies praise. This has led to a “blanket ban” on the word when used in conjunction with people designated as “dangerous individuals” by the company.

However, this policy ignores the “linguistic complexity” of the word, which is “often used, even with reference to dangerous individuals, in reporting and neutral commentary, academic discussion, human rights debates and even more passive ways,” the Oversight Board says in its opinion. “There is strong reason to believe the multiple meanings of ‘shaheed’ result in the removal of a substantial amount of material not intended as praise of terrorists or their violent actions.”

In their recommendations to Meta, the Oversight Board says that the company should end its “blanket ban” on the word being used to reference “dangerous individuals,” and that posts should only be removed if there are other clear “signals of violence” or if the content breaks other policies. The board also wants Meta to better explain how it uses automated systems to enforce these rules.

If Meta adopts the Oversight Board’s recommendations, it could have a significant impact on the platform’s Arabic-speaking users. The board notes that the word, because it is so common, likely “accounts for more content removals under the Community Standards than any other single word or phrase,” across the company’s apps.

“Meta has been operating under the assumption that censorship can and will improve safety, but the evidence suggests that censorship can marginalize whole populations while not improving safety at all,” the board’s co-chair (and former Danish prime minister) Helle Thorning-Schmidt said in a statement. “The Board is especially concerned that Meta’s approach impacts journalism and civic discourse because media organizations and commentators might shy away from reporting on designated entities to avoid content removals.”

This is hardly the first time Meta has been criticized for moderation policies that disproportionately impact Arabic-speaking users. A 2022 report commissioned by the company found that Meta’s moderators were less accurate when assessing Palestinian Arabic, resulting in “false strikes” on users’ accounts. The company apologized last year after Instagram’s automated translations began inserting the word “terrorist” into the profiles of some Palestinian users.

The opinion is also yet another example of how long it can take for Meta’s Oversight Board to influence the social network’s policies. The company first asked the board to weigh in on the rules more than a year ago (the Oversight Board said it “paused” the publication of the policy after October 7 attacks in Israel to ensure its rules “held up” to the “extreme stress” of the conflict in Gaza). Meta will now have two months to respond to the recommendations, though actual changes to the company’s policies and practices could take several more weeks or months to implement.

“We want people to be able to use our platforms to share their views, and have a set of policies to help them do so safely,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “We aim to apply these policies fairly but doing so at scale brings global challenges, which is why in February 2023 we sought the Oversight Board's guidance on how we treat the word ‘shaheed’ when referring to designated individuals or organizations. We will review the Board’s feedback and respond within 60 days.”