Slack just became the latest company to embrace real-time audio. The messaging app is launching a new, Discord-like chat feature called Huddles. The feature, along with new collaboration tools for sharing pre-recorded audio and video are, according to the company, meant to provide an alternative to the “endless stream of meetings” that have dominated many office workers’ calendars during the pandemic.

Huddles allows Slack users to create impromptu meetups either in direct messages or an existing channel. When a participant starts a Huddle, other members can quickly join and chat in real time, much like you would in Discord. Though it’s meant to be “camera-free,” Huddles does support screen-sharing for an extra layer of collaboration.

Slack says the feature is a good alternative to voice or video calls because it’s a more low-pressure way for workers to quickly chat without the need to schedule a meeting. Tamar Yehoshua, the company’s chief product officer, compared Huddles to the kinds of impromptu conversations that happen in offices but don’t often occur with remote work. “It’s as if you see people congregating in a conference room and you just stick your head in and then leave when you’re ready,” she said during a briefing with reporters.

Slack

While Slack is the latest in a long list of companies embracing the audio trend kickstarted by Clubhouse, the company says it’s responding to the way that work has changed during the pandemic. After more than a year working from home, Zoom fatigue is real. At the same time, many workers may never go back to the office — at least, not full-time. So it’s not surprising Slack would respond to these shifts.

Similarly, the company is also addressing the need to collaborate when everyone isn’t online at the same time. The “schedule send” feature it recently previewed will now be rolling out. And the app is introducing new tools to share videos, voice and screen recordings within Slack.

While the app already allows users to swap video files within chats, the new tools go a step further. Users can record and share natively within a channel, and other team members can respond with a video or voice recording of their own. They also include live captioning, and both the recording and the accompanying transcription are searchable after the fact.

Finally, Slack also showed off a new directory tool for its business users called Slack Atlas. The feature adds more information to Slack’s existing profiles, such as org charts and employee start dates. It can also integrate with existing tools like Workday to automatically pull in relevant details to workers’ Slack profiles.

Facebook has revealed its long-rumored standalone newsletter platform: Bulletin. Mark Zuckerberg announced the new project during a live audio room, saying that the project was a “response to what’s happening in the media ecosystem.”

Interestingly, unlike previous journalism initiatives from Facebook, Bulletin primarily lives outside of the main Facebook app. The newsletter platform has its own website, though it will take advantage of Facebook’s distribution tools. The newsletters will be integrated into author’s Facebook pages and readers can find the content in the news section of Facebook’s app.

Developing...

A federal judge has dismissed the FTC’s initial antitrust complaint against Facebook, saying it was “legally insufficient.” While it’s an early win for Facebook, the FTC’s antitrust case against the company isn’t necessarily over. The judge noted that the FTC can file an amended complaint in the next 30 days.

But Judge James Boasberg said that the FTC would need to provide more evidence to back up its claims that Facebook is a monopoly. “The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims — namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services,” Boasberg wrote. “The Complaint contains nothing on that score save the naked allegation that the company has had and still has a ‘dominant share of th[at] market (in excess of 60%).’”

Separately, Judge Boasberg also dismissed the antitrust lawsuit against Facebook filed by attorneys general from 48 states and territories. The suits, which were announced alongside the FTC’s, said Facebook had illegally stifled competition. But the judge wrote that too much time had passed for the case to move forward.

The FTC and the states had filed antitrust charges against the company in December, saying the company had engaged in anti-competitive behavior in acquiring competitors like WhatsApp and Instagram in an effort to neutralize companies it saw as a threat. The cases also cited Facebook’s dealings with competitors like Snapchat and Vine.

The dismissals are a notable victory for Facebook, which had argued that neither the states or the FTC had a credible antitrust case. The social network had accused the FTC of seeking a “do-over” for acquisitions it had previously approved. In response to the FTC suit, the judge noted the agency “is on firmer ground in scrutinizing the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.”

It’s not yet clear how the FTC will respond, but it’s hardly the end of Facebook’s antitrust woes. Congress recently introduced v, including one that would target major acquisitions like Facebook’s deals for WhatsApp and Instagram. The company is also facing antitrust investigations by regulators in the UK and European Union.

Update 6/28 4:55pm ET: In a statement, Facebook said it was "pleased" with the judge's decisions. "We are pleased that today's decisions recognize the defects in the government complaints filed against Facebook. We compete fairly every day to earn people's time and attention and will continue to deliver great products for the people and businesses that use our services." 

YouTube has pulled 30,000 videos for sharing misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines, Axiosreports. Details on the takedowns come six months after the company first updated its policies to address misinformation about the coronavirus vaccines.

Prior to October, YouTube had more general coronavirus misinformation policies, but those didn’t specifically address vaccines. The company has taken down more than 800,000 videos for spreading coronavirus misinformation since last February, according to Axios.

But as vaccine availability has increased, the issue of vaccine misinformation has become more urgent for platforms. Facebook and Twitter have also expanded their policies to combat misinformation about the vaccines in recent months. But unlike Facebook, which announced plans to curb misinformation about all vaccines, YouTube’s policies only address a specific subset of claims about the COVID-19 vaccines that contradict official guidance from the World Health Organization and other authorities. 

It looks like Parler’s App Store exile will continue. Bloombergreports that Apple recently rejected the app’s bid to get back onto iPhones, citing “highly objectionable content.”

Apple had originally kicked Parler out of the App Store in January, shortly after the riots at the U.S Capitol. Apple said at the time that the app needed to improve its content moderation and make a bigger effort to keep dangerous and hateful content off its platform. The company said the suspension would be in place “until we receive an update that is compliant with the App Store Review Guidelines and you have demonstrated your ability to effectively moderate and filter the dangerous and harmful content on your service.”

According to Bloomberg, Apple rejected Parler's latest bid to rejoin the App Store late last month. Apple reportedly told Parler that the latest iteration of its policies were not “sufficient to comply with App Store Review guidelines.”

At issue is not just Parler’s policies, but the fact that the app is still filled with the kind of “highly objectionable content” Apple wanted it to address. ““n fact, simple searches reveal highly objectionable content, including easily identified offensive uses of derogatory terms regarding race, religion and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols,” Apple told Parler.

Parler didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The “free speech” app is still trying to find a path forward after being kicked out of Apple and Google’s app stores and being cut off from Amazon Web Services. Parler’s website is now back up and running, but its future remains uncertain. CEO John Matze was fired in February, and Bloomberg now reports seven other staffers, including all its iOS developers, were also let go.

Facebook says the antitrust lawsuits targeting the company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp should be dismissed. The company issued its first official response to antitrust charges from the Federal Trade Commission and 46 state attorneys general, saying that the government was seeking a “do-over.” Facebook filed motions to dismiss both cases.

In a statement, the company said neither lawsuit had made a credible case for antitrust. “Antitrust laws are intended to promote competition and protect consumers,” Facebook wrote. “These complaints do not credibly claim that our conduct harmed either.” The response comes three months after the company was hit with antitrust charges from the FTC and the state attorneys general.

Both cases allege that Facebook has engaged in anti-competitive behavior and that its deals to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp were meant to neutralize companies it saw as a threat. Facebook said this amounted to a do-over as both acquisitions were scrutinized, and approved, by the FTC years ago.

In a new court filing, Facebook’s lawyers say that the FTC “has not alleged facts amounting to a plausible antitrust case,” and that the charges come amid a “fraught environment of relentless criticism of Facebook for matters entirely unrelated to antitrust concerns.” Regarding the case from state AGs, Facebook says that the states “lack standing to bring the case” and that they “waited far too long to act.” In its motion to dismiss the state charges, Facebook referred to the states’ case as “afterthought claims.”

In addition to its acquisitions, both cases also pointed to Facebook’s platform policies, and how it treated third-party developers. The state case and the FTC lawsuit both called out Facebook’s treatment of Twitter-owned Vine, which saw its access to Facebook’s API cut off in 2013 in a decision that was approved by Mark Zuckerberg. In its motion to dismiss the FTC case, Facebook lawyers said the company “had no duty to make its platform available to any other app.”

The FTC and the state AGs have until April to respond to Facebook’s motions to dismiss. As The Wall Street Journal points out, actually getting the charges dismissed before a trial requires Facebook to “meet a high legal standard” that may be difficult to clear. Even if it did, a dismissal would hardly be the end of Facebook’s antitrust woes. The company is also facing an antitrust investigation from Congress and regulators in the European Union.

TikTok is introducing new features meant to reduce bullying and harassment on its platform: new comment controls and in-app prompts to discourage nasty comments.

The app is expanding its comment filtering tools to give users the ability to approve all new comments before they can appear underneath their clips. With the change, new comments will be hidden until the account owner approves them. The company notes that it already lets users filter comments based on keywords, but that the new setting provides an additional layer of control.

TikTok

TikTok is also adding a feature meant to proactively stop bullying before it happens. When it detects that a particular comment may break its rules, the app will prompt users to “reconsider” before posting. The feature is similar to one created by Instagram, which warns users when it detects a potentially rule-breaking remark. Like Instagram, TikTok won’t prevent users from posting the comment in question, but will give them the opportunity to change their words.

TikTok has tightened its rules around bullying in recent months. The company updated its community guidelines in December to add more specifics around its anti-bullying and harassment policies. It’s also working with a group of outside experts who advise the company on content policies and moderation rules.