As part of its latest push to court families, Netflix is launching two new features that highlight its children's programming. Starting today, subscribers will see a new top 10 list on kids and family profiles that ranks the streamer's most popular children's shows and movies. Netflix says the leaderboard will be updated daily to reflect what its 208 million customers are watching in 93 countries across the globe. Viewers can access the top 10 in the kids homepage or in the ‘New & Popular’ section in the menu bar across devices, barring Apple TV.

To help parents keep track of what their children are watching, Netflix is also sending out a biweekly email newsletter crammed with recommendations based on kids' viewing habits, including the their thematic preferences (like science or friendship shows), and tips on the streamer's parental controls. That will land in the inbox of parents who have a kids profile set up starting July 16th.

The features arrive as Netflix ramp up its kids' content in the face of stiff competition from streaming rivals. On Tuesday, the company extended its US licensing deal for Universal's animated film slate, giving it access to Illumination and Dreamworks movies such as Minions: The Rise of Gru. In addition, Bloomberg revealed that the streamer had struck a partnership with Moonbug Entertainment for new shows based on its popular YouTube properties CoComelon, Blippi and Little Baby Bum. 

Netflix's recent high-profile kids releases include a cooking show starring Michelle Obama titled Waffles + Mochi and the Lord and Miller produced animated movie The Mitchells vs the Machines. In the past, the streaming service has used interactive shows, IP acquisitions and series aimed at preschoolers to keep families coming back.

The competition has also seized upon kids content as a means of attracting subscribers. Earlier this year, HBO Max ordered a raft of new Cartoon Network shows, bumping up its slate to 300 hours of children's originals and 3,000 hours of library programming. Disney, meanwhile, has unloaded its vault of cherished family classics onto Disney+, along with Pixar exclusives and spinoffs such as Luca and Monsters at Work. Paramount+ also just announced a Fairly OddParents live-action reboot to add to its Nickelodeon line-up.

A few days ago, Universal signed a deal with Amazon to give Prime Video exclusive streaming rights for its live-action releases. This time, Universal has struck a deal with Netflix, specifically for its animated films. The companies have signed a multi-year licensing agreement that gives the streaming service exclusive access to animated movies from Universal-owned Illumination, such as Minions: The Rise of Gru, which comes out in 2022. They've also expanded their partnership to include films from DreamWorks Animation, including the upcoming The Bad Guys and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.

Similar to Universal's pact with Amazon, though, the Netflix deal is a bit complex. Yes, Netflix will have exclusive rights to animated films from Illumination and Dreamworks in the US, but only for a chunk of the 18-month period after the movies' theatrical run. Within the first four months, all Universal films will only be available for streaming on Peacock, the streaming service also owned by its parent company Comcast. Netflix will then have exclusive streaming rights for 10 months after that before the movies go back to Peacock for another four months. 

Once that 18-month period is done, Universal's animated films will also be available on Amazon Prime Video. Meanwhile, under their new deal, Netflix will license Universal's full animated and live-action slate four years after their release and will also secure streaming rights to select titles from the studio's library. While the deal can be a bit confusing, it all boils down to the fact that Netflix will continue having exclusive access to some of what could become the most-watched films on the platform. As Variety noted, Illumination's The Secret Life of Pets 2 is the most-watch Netflix movie in 2021 so far, according to a Forbes analysis. Last year, that distinction belonged to another film by Illumination: Despicable Me.

The God of Mischief will chase his glorious purpose in another season. If that sounds like complete gibberish, you probably haven't been watching Loki. Today, Disney revealed that the Marvel Studios series will return for a second season on Disney+. The media giant used the show's finale to announce the news. Mid-way through the sixth episode's end credits, Loki's case file can be seen with a stamp that reads "Loki will return in season 2.” 

The decision was likely a no-brainer: Loki had the streaming service's most-watched premiere back in June when Disney+ shifted its release days for originals from Friday to Wednesday. Now, it has become the first Disney+ Marvel show to get a second season renewal. Meanwhile, the fate of WandaVision and The Falcon and Winter Soldier remains a lot less certain, despite the originals garnering 23 and five Emmy nominations, respectively.

Loki helped to establish some of the major narrative elements that will percolate through phase four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the multiple universes set to be explored in the upcoming movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

It's a good time to be a Marvel fan in general. Last week saw the release of Black Widow on Disney+ Premier Access and theaters, ending a two-year drought for Marvel movies. The action film raked in $60 million on the streaming service and over $215 million globally. Just days ago, Disney also revealed that Marvel's animated show What If...? would debut on Disney+ on August 11th.

As it promised last month, Amazon has launched its serialized fiction Kindle Vella store that lets you unlock episodic, self-published stories via in-app purchases. The new platform is a way for readers to discover new fiction and a new way for authors to generate revenue from the Kindle Direct Publishing service. 

While the name might suggest otherwise, Kindle Vella isn't available on Amazon's Kindle e-readers. Rather, you'll only find it on Amazon.com or the Kindle iOS app (no Android for now). To start with, the service will be limited to US-based authors who publish stories in English. 

The serialized stories will run from 600 to 5,000 words per episode, with the first three offered for free. To see subsequent episodes, you'll need to pay for "tokens," with prices ranging from $2 for 200 tokens up to $15 for 1,700 tokens. The latter will give you about 34 episodes, though prices per episode depend on the word count — the more words, the more you'll have to spend. 

Authors, meanwhile, will receive 50 percent of the revenue along with bonuses based on engagement with the app's social media-style features. To that end, readers can follow stories to be notified of new episodes, leave a thumbs up for episodes they like, apply a "Fave" for their favorite story of the week (provided they purchase tokens), and share on Twitter, Facebook and other social media. To boost engagement, authors can speak directly to readers at the end of episodes to "share story insights and behind-the-scenes content," Amazon wrote. 

Since Amazon opened Vella to authors three months ago, "thousands of authors" have published "tens of thousands of Kindle Vella episodes across dozens of genres and microgenre," Amazon said. Authors appear to be interested as well. "I’ve published close to 30 novels, and I’m enjoying the adventure of writing The Marriage Auction in this new format,” said bestselling author Audrey Carlan in a statement. Whether or not the format takes off now depends on readers — to try it out, you can access Vella here. 

As protests continue in Cuba over the country’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the surrounding economic fallout, the Cuban government has moved to restrict access to social media and messaging platforms. According to NetBlocks, an organization that tracks internet access, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram have all been at least partially blocked on the Caribbean island since Monday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it appears the restrictions are still in place, with Reuters reporting that people in Havana don’t have access to mobile data at the moment. We’ve reached out to Facebook and Telegram for confirmation on the outages, and we’ll update this article when we hear back from the companies.

Mobile internet access is relatively new to Cuba. It was only in late 2018 that the country’s socialist government started rolling service out across the island. At the time, President Miguel Diaz-Canel, the politician protestors are demanding resign, said greater internet access would help Cubans “defend their revolution.” However, Cuba to dissent is not new. We’ve seen governments in countries like Mynamar and Iran use similar strategies when they faced protests in the past.

Facebook is working on a new way to highlight authoritative information within Groups. The platform is starting to roll out a new “expert” label for group members who have expertise in an area related to the group’s interests.

With the change, which Facebook says is available to “select” Groups, an admin can invite a group member to be a group “expert.” If the person accepts, then they’ll get a badge next to their name similar to the way group moderators and admins are identified.

Notably, being a group “expert” doesn’t grant you extra control of group features, or higher visibility within a group. Instead, Facebook is billing it as a way for group admins to highlight members who are likely to have helpful insights to share with the rest of the group. Experts can also host question and answer sessions or live audio rooms. 

Separately, Facebook is also testing a feature that would allow group admins to proactively find expert voices for their group. That test, which is starting with groups related to fitness and gaming, allows individuals to identify themselves as experts in a particular topic. In these cases, group admins will be able to search for experts who aren’t already members of their group and invite them to join. The experts will also have the ability to automatically invite “recently engaged Page followers” to join any group in which they join as an expert.

Experts is the latest of several changes to Facebook Groups in recent months. The company has also taken steps to get moderators to shoulder more responsibility in ensuring group members follow Facebook’s rules, and introduced new tools to limit toxic conversations. While dedicated “experts” won’t directly impact these efforts, the addition of more knowledgeable voices could free up time for group admins.

Apple TV+ and HBO Max have picked up their first nominations in the top two Primetime Emmy categories. HBO Max's Hacks and The Flight Attendant, and Apple's excellent Ted Lasso all received nods for Best Comedy Series. All but one of the nominees in that category are streaming shows, with the exception of ABC's Black-ish. Netflix picked up a trio of nods for Emily in Paris, Cobra Kai and The Kominsky Method, while Hulu earned one for Pen15.

Netflix led the way in the Best Drama Series category, with The Crown and Bridgerton among the nominees. Disney+ returned to the fold with a second successive nomination for The Mandalorian in that category. Amazon Prime Video's The Boys and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale (which won the award in its first season) made the cut, along with HBO's Lovecraft Country, FX's Pose and NBC's This Is Us.

The Crown and The Mandalorian are the shows with the joint-most nominations this year with 24 each. Another Disney+ show, WandaVision, is right behind with 23 nods, including Best Limited Series and best actor (Paul Bettany) and actress (Elizabeth Olsen) in a limited series or movie. Other big streaming winners include The Handmaid’s Tale (21 nominations), Ted Lasso (20) and The Queen’s Gambit (18).

Other notable streaming nominees include The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (Disney+, five nominations), the Star Wars/Simpsons crossover Maggie Simpson In: The Force Awakens From Its Nap (Disney+, one), The Umbrella Academy (Netflix, four), Love, Death + Robots (Netflix, two) and the fantastic documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry (Apple TV+, four).

Friends: The Reunion (HBO Max) scored four nominations, the filmed Hamilton performance (Disney+) scooped up 12 and Bo Burnham's terrific Inside (Netflix) received six. All of those were nominated for Best Variety Special (Filmed) alongside Dave Chappelle's 8:46 (Netflix, but it streamed on YouTube), David Byrne's American Utopia (HBO) and HBO Max's West Wing reunion.

Between them, HBO and HBO Max have the most nominations overall with 130. Netflix is right behind them with 129. In only its second year of Emmy eligibility, Disney+ is in third place with 71 nominations.

Apple got 35 nominations in total, including one for Apple TV's Carpool Karaoke: The Series. Apple Watch Series 6 and Beats by Dre ads are among the nominees. Hulu received 25 nods this year and Prime Video scooped up 18.

Quibi (yes, you read that correctly) landed Emmy nominations for the second straight year with eight overall. The defunct streaming platform's shows are now branded as Roku Originals after Roku picked up the library of short-form series.

Paramount+ has six nominations, YouTube received five and Facebook landed three: two for Oculus and one for Facebook Watch. Peacock scooped up two nods, while AMC+, Pluto and Discovery+ each received a single nomination.

Mozilla is back with a new privacy-oriented browser update that plays nice with the world's biggest social network. With the release of Firefox 90, you can now use your Facebook details to login to websites in Private Browsing or Strict Mode. 

The change is made possible due to Smartblock 2.0, the new version of the improved third-party tracking blocker that was introduced with Firefox 87. For the uninitiated, the feature fixes up web pages that are broken by Firefox's content protections by replacing tracking scripts with "stand-ins" that allow sites to render normally.

Until now, SmartBlock would restrict scripts on Facebook as a "known tracker" that was collecting your data (or your device's data) across the web. Of course, that meant you couldn't use the pervasive "Connect with Facebook" option on other sites, which makes signing up to an online service a cinch. 

Realizing that millions of users don't want to be cut off from the quick login function, Firefox has made it so that Smartblock quickly unblocks Facebook scripts to allow you to sign in with your details as usual. On websites where you don't use the function, Firefox continues to block Facebook's trackers. 

Apple has signed a deal with producer Alexander Rodnyansky's company AR Content to make Russian-language and multilingual shows for Apple TV+. Rodnyansky told Variety that the agreement makes Apple "the very first of all the global streaming platforms to sign a strategic partnership with a company with Russian roots."

Rodnyansky's credits include Cloud Atlas, Sin City: A Dame to Kill for and Machete Kills, but he says it's his experience and production expertise in Russia that primarily led Apple to work with him. He produced Russian films Leviathan and Beanpole, which both won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and were Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominees.

The deal with Apple is for several shows, some of which will be set inside Russia. The shows will be overseen by Russian writers and directors as well as international creatives.

Rodnyansky notes streaming has helped shows made in a variety of languages and countries to become international hits. “This is an amazing time when you have Fauda in Hebrew and Arabic doing really well across multiple territories, when you have French-speaking shows like La Mante or Marianne, or German shows like Dark or Babylon Berlin crossing borders,” Rodnyansky said. “This is a time for Russian-speaking shows to do the same, or multilingual shows."

Apple has similar first-look deals in place with Ridley Scott and Ron Howard's production companies, but the AR Content pact hints at its international ambitions. Netflix, which has expanded to all but a few countries and territories, has found success in acquiring and making international content. Spanish crime drama Money Heist has been a massive hit, while French thriller Lupin is Netflix's most successful original series so far this year. Anime and Korean dramas are also growing in popularity among subscribers. Earlier this year, Netflix picked up a modern-day adaptation of Anna Karenina as its first original drama series in Russian.

It's not too surprising that Apple is looking at a similar approach to content. Apple TV+ only has a few non-English-language projects available to stream, including Tehran and Losing Alice, so there's a lot of scope for Apple to expand its library with Russian and multilingual shows.

Disney+ has been shy about divulging sales for Premier Access movies like Mulan, but it's now eager to brag. As AV Clubreports, Disney has revealed that Marvel blockbuster Black Widow raked in more than $60 million in estimated revenue solely from customers paying $30 each for Premier Access. That's more than a quarter of the roughly $215 million Disney expected to make from all sources, including US and international box office sales.

The company also bragged that Black Widow was the largest US box office opening during the COVID-19 pandemic, just besting F9. That wasn't difficult, though, given that movie theaters have routinely struggled to attract viewers when they weren't dealing with widespread closures.

We wouldn't count on Disney providing Premier Access figures on a regular basis, especially as the pandemic continues to (hopefully) subside and more people are comfortable venturing to theaters. To some extent, the media giant needed the $60 million number to make Black Widow's debut sound more impressive. We'd add that it's difficult to compare this against data for rivals like Amazon and Netflix. They don't have equivalents to Premier Access, so they measure success for original movies largely in terms of viewership and new subscriptions.

Nonetheless, this represents an important milestone for Disney as it shifts toward streaming. It's now comfortable mentioning Premier Access numbers after months of staying quiet. Even if Premier Access fades into the background, it's now a significant part of Disney's movie release strategy.