Daredevil fans who were disappointed when Netflix axed the popular show after three seasons now have something to look forward to. Disney+ is moving forward with its own series about the blind lawyer-turned-superhero Matt Murdock, reportedVariety. The streaming service has signed co-writers Matt Corman and Chris Ord to write and executive produce the series. Corman and Ord served as co-showrunners for the NBC military drama The Brave, and the duo also created the spy drama Covert Affairs.

Daredevil is only the latest of a large number of MCU titles that have been revived on Disney+ as shows, starting with last year’s WandaVision. The streamer has since released six other Marvel shows, including Hawkeye, Moonknight and Loki, with many more to follow this year. Meanwhile, the raft of Netflix shows based on Marvel characters all left the streaming platform's library for good earlier this year.

The Daredevil Disney+ show is still in the very early stages — Variety notes that Marvel has yet to announce anything formally. Charlie Cox, who played the lead character in the Netflix series, returned to his old role in this year’s Spider-Man:No Way Home and Vincent D'Onofrio reprised his Daredevil role of Kingpin in Disney’s Hawkeye. Both actors seemed optimistic about a Disney+ revival of the series, but there's no telling if they'll return to the new series.

In an interview with Marvel News Desk, D'Onofrio shed some light on the Netflix show’s sudden cancellation, which shocked its many fans. The actor said the show’s departure in 2018 likely had to do with Marvel paving the way for Disney’s nascent streaming service. “You know, at the same time the group #SaveDaredevil started to rise, we started to learn the reasons why that happened and so we understood what Marvel was doing because Disney+ coming out.”

Facebook is still struggling to contain the video of last weekend’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Now, not only are clips of the shooting accessible on the platform, reposted clips of the attack are sometimes appearing alongside Facebook ads, The New York Timesreports.

The Times notes that it’s not clear how often ads are appearing alongside clips of the shooting, but the paper said that “searches for terms associated with footage of the shooting have been accompanied by ads for a horror film, clothing companies and video streaming services,” in their own tests and tests conducted by the Tech Transparency Project.

While this isn’t a new problem for Facebook — the platform has made similar missteps in the wake of a 2019 shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand — the company is apparently in some cases actually recommending search terms associated with videos of the shooting, according to The New York Times, which said Facebook suggested some searches as being “popular now.”

As with previous mass shootings and violent events, footage originally streamed to Twitch by the gunman in Buffalo has proved difficult for social media platforms to contain. Facebook previously told Engadget that it had designated the event a terrorist attack, and that it was working to automatically detect new copies that are shared to its service.

But videos are still falling through the cracks. And the fact that Facebook is surfacing ads near those videos is likely to raise further questions about whether the company prioritizes profits over safety as a whistleblower has alleged.

In a statement, a company spokesperson told The Times it was trying to “to protect people using our services from seeing this horrific content even as bad actors are dead-set on calling attention to it.”

The music world just lost one of its more influential figures. Deadlinereports Vangelis, the composer behind the scores for Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died in France at the age of 79. He broke ground in music by blending synthesizers with jazz, orchestral work and other styles normally seen at odds with each other. He helped the movie business break away from its dependence on classical or pop soundtracks, and joined artists like Brian Eno and Jean-Michel Jarre in defining both electronic music as a whole as well as sub-genres such as ambient and new-age.

Vangelis is synonymous with sci-fi thanks to his iconic Blade Runner soundtrack, but he was also a proponent of space exploration who produced multiple albums in tribute to major missions. He helped score Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos TV series, wrote Mythodea to celebrate NASA's Mars Odyssey mission in 2001 and produced a tribute to the Rosetta comet probe in 2016. His last full album, 2021's Juno to Jupiter, honored its namesake spacecraft right as it was shedding more light on the gas giant. He received NASA's Public Service Medal in 2003.

The musician was born in Greece in 1943 as Evangelos Odessey Papathanassiou. He started his music career in pop and soundtracks in the mid-1960s, but it was his 1970s forays into electronic music that helped develop his signature style. Cosmos, Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner cemented his reputation, while high-profile projects like 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander drew further attention.

Vangelis leaves a strong legacy. On top of his role in Hollywood, you can hear his influence in electronic artists like Robert Rich and Steve Roach. Even modern performers outside of his core genre, such as Armin van Buuren and Run the Jewels' El-P, cite him as a hero. He'll be missed, but you may hear echoes of his sound for decades to come.

Twitter is taking more steps to slow the spread of misinformation during times of crisis. The company will attempt to amplify credible and authoritative information while trying to avoid elevating falsehoods that can lead to severe harm. Under its new crisis misinformation policy, Twitter interprets crises as circumstances that pose a "widespread threat to life, physical safety, health or basic subsistence" in line with the United Nations’ definition of a humanitarian crisis.

For now, the policy will only apply to tweets regarding international armed conflict. It may eventually cover the likes of natural disasters and public health emergencies. 

The company plans to fact-check information with the help of "multiple credible, publicly available sources." Those include humanitarian groups, open-source investigators, journalists and conflict monitoring organizations.

Twitter acknowledges that misinformation can spread quickly and it will take action "as soon as we have evidence that a claim may be misleading." Tweets that violate the rules of this policy won't appear in the Home timeline or the search or explore sections.

"Content moderation is more than just leaving up or taking down content, and we’ve expanded the range of actions we may take to ensure they’re proportionate to the severity of the potential harm," Twitter's head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth wrote in a blog post. "We’ve found that not amplifying or recommending certain content, adding context through labels, and in severe cases, disabling engagement with the Tweets, are effective ways to mitigate harm, while still preserving speech and records of critical global events.

The company will also make it a priority to put notices on highly visible rule-breaking tweets and those from high-profile accounts, such as ones operated by state-run media or governments. Users will need to click through the notice to read the tweet. Likes, retweets and shares will be disabled on these tweets as well.

"This tweet violated the Twitter Rules on sharing false or misleading info that might bring harm to crisis-affected populations," the notice will read. "However, to preserve this content for accountability purposes, Twitter has determined this tweet should remain available." In addition, the notice will include a link to more details about Twitter's approach to crisis misinformation. The company says it will start adding the notice to highly visible misleading tweets related to the war in Ukraine.

The notice may appear on tweets that include falsehoods about on-the-ground conditions during an evolving conflict; misleading or incorrect allegations of war crimes or mass atrocities; or misinformation about the use of weapons or force. Twitter may also apply the label to tweets with "false information regarding international community response, sanctions, defensive actions or humanitarian operations."

There are some exceptions to the rules. They won't apply to personal anecdotes, first-person accounts, efforts to debunk or fact-check a claim or "strong commentary."

However, a lot of the fine details about Elon Musk's pending takeover of Twitter remain up in the air, and this policy could change if and when the deal closes. Musk has said Twitter should only suppress illegal speech (which is also a complex issue, since rules vary by jurisdiction). It remains to be seen exactly how he will handle content moderation.

Picking out something new to watch from Netflix’s slew of kid’s titles can be overwhelming, for both parents and children. And sometimes kids are just indecisive. But the streaming service’s new “Mystery Box” feature on Netflix Kids — available today — can leave the decisions up to the algorithm. Similar to the “Play Something” option for the adult set, the Mystery Box feature will pick a new title that viewers haven’t watched before. Rest assured, the new show or film that Mystery Box selects won’t be a complete wildcard pick — the titles will be similar to shows that viewers have already deemed their favorites.

In order to try out the Mystery Box, select a kid’s profile on Netflix on any platform of your choice. Then go to the “Favorites Row” on top of the homepage. Finally, hover over the “Mystery Box” option to see a selection of new titles.

When it comes to children’s programming, Netflix has more competition than ever before. Its main rival in the space — Disney+ — is planning on a $32 billion content spend for the 2022 fiscal year. Hulu, HBOMax and Apple TV+ all offer children’s programming. Netflix last year acquired some high-profile IP, including the Roald Dahl Story Company. But given its current commitment to trim costs in light of a historic drop in subscribers earlier this year, we’re likely to see Netflix be more cautious moving forward. A number of kids titles that were in production recently got the chopping block, including an animated series by Meghan Markle and Ava DuVernay’s Wings of Fire.

Netflix will expand its accessibility features in 10 additional languages, part of an effort to accommodate users who are hearing and vision-impaired. Starting this month and through early 2023, Netflix will roll out Audio Descriptions (AD), Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH) and dubbing for its entire library of original content, in languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian. Eventually, the streamer plans to add even more languages from the Asia-Pacific region and local European languages. The expansion will be available to all Netflix users globally and only apply to Netflix Originals. 

The streamer said its aim was to allow even more viewers to watch content that is not in their native language. “For decades, the entertainment you had access to was determined by where you lived and what language you spoke, meaning people who needed AD or SDH could not enjoy stories made outside of where they were from,” wrote Netflix’s director of accessibility Heather Dowdy in a blog post.

For those who are deaf or vision-impaired, watching a new show or film on a streaming platform means turning on assistive technologies like subtitles or audio descriptions. But such accessibility features aren’t widely available across all platforms. Advocacy groups for the deaf and blind such as the National Federation of the Blind and the National Association for the Deaf have pushed streaming services to include more accessibility features over the years. Thanks to a 2012 settlement with the NAD, Netflix makes closed captioning available for all of its content. Netflix began rolling out audio descriptions for the blind and visually impaired in 2015, with the release of the show Daredevil. But the entertainment industry has been slow to embrace the newer technology, at the expense of its vision-impaired audience.

Currently, there are over 11,000 hours of audio description available globally on Netflix, and the streaming service plans to keep adding more. Netflix is also adding new badges for subtitles and audio descriptions on iOS and the web version.

“Our ambition is to entertain the world, and by increasing our SDH and AD language availability to now cover over 40 languages we hope to give all of our members the ability to see their lives reflected on screen,” wrote Dowdy.

YouTube Music on Wear OS now works the way you'd expect. As The Vergenotes, Google's music service now streams directly from its Wear OS app, whether you're on LTE or WiFi. You'll need to pair with an Android phone for full functionality (cellular streaming isn't an option for iPhone users), and a Premium subscription is necessary regardless of platform. If you meet those criteria, though, you can leave your phone at home knowing you'll still have access to all your tunes.

The upgrade also lets you add a YouTube Music tile for quick access to the browse section or your most recently played playlist. If you do need offline listening, Smart Downloads will automatically refresh your on-watch library whenever you're connected to WiFi. The streaming upgrade should finish rolling out this week.

First-party music streaming on Wear OS has been problematic, to put it mildly. Google Play Music was available on the platform, but the app didn't carry over when the company shut down the service in 2020 and transitioned to the YouTube offering. YouTube Music came to Wear OS (with offline-only playback) in summer 2021, but it was initially restricted to the Galaxy Watch 4 and didn't come to Wear OS 2 devices until September that year. You've had to turn to Spotify and other third-party services for streaming, and in some cases it wasn't an option at all.

There's plenty of pressure to add streaming, though. Google is releasing the Pixel Watch this fall with optional LTE, and it wouldn't look good if you couldn't stream the company's music service on its official smartwatch. The improved YouTube Music app should ensure a consistent experience when the Pixel wristwear arrives, at least if you're determined to use an all-Google setup.

YouTube is making it easier to find the best moments in a video. The service is updating its desktop and mobile video players with a previously experimental graph that shows the most popular (that is, replayed) segments. You might not have to use guesswork or chapter markers to jump past the fluff and get to the content you're really there to watch.

The company has also teased plans to test an "easier" method of seeking the exact point in a video that you want to play. Rather than simply displaying a thumbnail for a given point, the player will show a visual timeline (below) that can indicate a scene change. The test will come "soon" to Premium subscribers through YouTube's "new" section.

Google

The additions join an existing wave of improvements, including an enhanced full-screen mode, auto-generated chapters and single-video looping. These latest upgrades are more targeted, however— YouTube is clearly aware that you might not want to sit through a whole video just to find the snippet you're really looking for.

Meta’s accounting of the most popular content on Facebook continues to be a confusing mess to untangle. The company released the latest version of its “widely viewed content report,” which details some of the most-viewed Facebook posts in the United States.

And, once again, the latest report raises questions about the company’s ability to limit the spread of what Meta euphemistically refers to as “lower-quality posts.” Between January and March of this year, six of the top 20 most popular links on Facebook were from a spammy website that has since been banned by the company for inauthentic behavior.

“In this report, there were pieces of content that have since been removed from Facebook for violating our policies of Inauthentic Behavior,” the company wrote in a blog post. “The removed links were all from the same domain, and links to that domain are no longer allowed on Facebook.”

The links all came from a Vietnam-based “news” site called Naye News. Unfortunately, Facebook didn’t share details about the actual URLs that went viral and were later removed, so there’s not much we can glean about the actual content. What we do know is that Naye News, which as Bloomberg reporter Davey Alba points out has never before appeared in a widely viewed content report, was able to reach a vast number of Facebook users before the company banned it. Links to Naye News appeared six times on the list of the top 20 URLs, including the two top spots. Together, these links got more than 112 million views, according to the report.

This website wasn’t the only source of questionable content that made it into the top most-viewed list. The fourth-most popular link on the list was a YouTube clip from a town hall meeting with Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, featuring a nurse making provablytly false claims about COVID-19 treatments.

During a call with reporters, head of Facebook Integrity Anna Stepanov, said that links to the YouTube video were demoted in News Feed after it was debunked by fact checkers. The company also added warning labels to discourage it from being reshared. “Without these features, this link would likely have received even more reach,” Stepanov said.

But even with those measures, the link was still viewed more than 22.1 million times on Facebook. That’s more than the number of views on the original YouTube video, which currently has about 6.5 million views.

Meanwhile, another URL on the report, which got 12.3 million views, is a link to a website called “heaveemotions.com,” that now redirects to a website that appears to be meant to trick visitors into installing malware. On Facebook though, the link originally rendered a preview with meme-style text that reads: “They told me the virus is everywhere. I told them so is God. Can I get an Amen? I Bet you won’t repost.”

Screenshot/ Facebook

It’s not the first time overtly spammy content has appeared in one of these reports. In the last version of this report, the top Facebook Page was one later removed by the company for breaking its rules. Reporter Ryan Broderick later identified the page’s origins as a Sri Lankan content farm.

The reports, which Meta began releasing in part to rebut data suggesting far-right personalities consistently dominate the platform, are one of the only windows the company offers into what’s popular on Facebook. That’s been a key question for researchers trying to study the platform and how information, and misinformation, spreads across it. But researchers have also raised questions about how Meta was compiling these reports, which in the past have surfaced bizarre results.

Notably, Meta now says it’s changing the way it evaluates what content is the most “widely viewed” on its platform. Previous reports identifying the top links on Facebook were based on any public post that contained a URL, even if the was just appended to the body of a text post. This meant that popular Pages could effectively spam their followers with random links — like to a website representing former Green Bay Packers football players — embedded in a text or photo post.

Researchers had widely criticized this approach as a widely distributed text post with a link at the end is a lot different than a link post in which the linked content is fully rendered as a preview. Now, Meta is reversing course. “Moving forward, links will need to render a preview in order to be counted as a view, as that more accurately represents what people are seeing.”

Even so, these reports are still only a limited look at what’s most popular on Facebook. The company says the list of the top 20 most-viewed links — the list that included Naye News and COVID-19 misinformation — “collectively accounted for 0.03% of all Feed content views in the US during Q1 2022.” But as always with Facebook, its sheer size means that even a fraction of a percent can equate to millions of views. At the very least, these reports show that it’s still relatively easy to game Facebook’s algorithms and spread “low quality” content.

Last year, YouTube debuted a feature that let viewers shop products directly from a livestream. It'll take that feature a step further later this year by allowing creators to co-host live shopping streams across two channels, it announced at its annual Brandcast event. It also unveiled a new "redirects" feature that will let YouTubers work more closely with brands.

YouTube said the features will be a way to help creators and advertisers make more "meaningful connections" with their audiences. The first allows two channels to go live and cohost together, "uniting their communities in a single live shopping stream," YouTube said. The other is called live redirects, letting creators start a shopping livestream on their own channel, then redirect to a brand's channel for fans to keep watching. 

With the new features, YouTube is taking live shopping to a new level in order to take on terrestrial shopping channels. It's not a coincidence that it hosted Brandcast at the so-called "Upfronts" sessions used by TV channels broadcasters to promote new content to advertisers, rather than the digital equivalent, NewFronts. 

While most broadcasters flaunt original programming at Upfronts (the first live version in three years), YouTube focused on live shopping, short-form video and high-profile creators like Mr.Beast, Patrick Starr and Marques Brownlee. It also noted that the Media Rating Council accredited YouTube again for content-level brand safety, making it the only platform with the rating. As mentioned, the co-hosting feature will arrive sometime in 2022, but there's no word yet on when we'll see the brand redirects feature.