Arkansas has become the second state to pass a law requiring social media platforms to verify the ages of their users. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed the “Social Media Safety Act” into law, which requires companies verify the ages of users under 18 and to gain parental consent before minors create new accounts.

Utah recently passed similar measures, which also impose strict rules on how social media platforms handle the accounts of their youngest users, including an age verification requirement. The laws are part of a growing movement to enforce age verification measures and other age-based restrictions for social media companies. At least three other states are currently considering similar legislation.

The laws are also controversial. While lawmakers have for years called for more protections for teens on social media, privacy advocates and civil rights groups have opposed age verification mandates. Likewise, some child safety groups have argued that comprehensive privacy legislation would be a more effective way to protect children.

Under the Arkansas law, slated to take effect in September, companies are required to check the ages of their users via government-issued IDs like a driver’s license or “any commercially reasonable age verification method.” But, as CNNnotes, it’s not entirely clear which companies will be forced to comply with the law. The legislation includes a number of exemptions that would seem to excuse some prominent platforms.

For example, it states that platforms focused on “professional networking” and “career development” are exempt, which would seem to be a direct reference to LinkedIn. It also has exceptions for gaming-focused companies, as well as companies that allow “a user to generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment in which the primary purpose is not educational or informative,” which could be interpreted as excluding TikTok.

After a week-long tussle with Twitter and owner Elon Musk over labels that the company applied to its accounts, NPR said it will no longer use the platform at all. The organization criticized Twitter over a "state-affiliated media" label that was placed on its main account last week. Twitter later updated the text to read “government-funded media.”

However, NPR said the latest incarnation of the label is "inaccurate and misleading," as it's "a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence." The organization pointed out that federal funding accounts for less than one percent of its $300 million annual budget.

NPR CEO John Lansing said that, as a result of the label, the broadcaster is abandoning Twitter in order to protect its credibility. Until recently, Twitter typically reserved the "state-affiliated media" tag for government-run outlets like Russia's RT and Sputnik and China's Xinhua News Agency. 

"At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," Lansing said. "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again." The NPR chief also said that "degradation in the culture of Twitter" also played a role in the organization's decision to pause its use of the platform.

Going forward, NPR will no longer "post fresh content" on any of its 52 official feeds. NPR is giving workers who handle its Twitter accounts a two-week grace period to rework their social media strategies. For one thing, they've directed NPR's Twitter followers toward the broadcaster's newsletters and accounts on other social media platforms. The company is leaving it up to staff to decide whether to keep using their personal Twitter accounts.

Twitter has also applied the "government-funded media" label to the BBC's Twitter account, a move that organization has also objected to. In a BBC interview on Wednesday, Musk said the company will tweak the BBC label so that it reads "publicly funded." That would be a more accurate description of how the BBC is funded. Still, Lansing claimed even if Twitter were to backtrack and remove the label from NPR's account, the organization won't start tweeting again right away.

Meanwhile, Musk has revealed how he decides which organizations should have the contentious labels. He's consulting Wikipedia's publicly-funded broadcasters category page. As it happens, several organizations listed on that page — including Canada's CBC, Japan's NHK and the UK's Channel 4 — do not have such labels on their Twitter accounts.

LinkedIn is making it easier to prove you are who you say you are on your profile. The platform is adding new identity verification features that will allow users to confirm their name and employer, and it doesn’t involve paid subscriptions or blue checkmarks.

With the update, LinkedIn is rolling out three ways its members can confirm their identity. The company is partnering with CLEAR — yes, the same CLEAR that can get you to the front of security lines at airports and other venues — to check that the name on your ID is the same as the one on your profile. The process is free but does require sharing a U.S phone number and government-issued I.D.

LinkedIn is also offering a feature for verifying where you work that’s a slightly less involved process. To confirm your employer, you’ll need to enter a verification code sent to your company email address. In both cases, once the verification is complete, a “verification” field will appear on your LinkedIn profile that states what details have been verified.

Alternatively, some users will be able to verify both their identity and employer at once via a partnership with Microsoft Entra, which creates workplace IDs for companies that enroll its program. LinkedIn says the Entra partnership will be rolling out at the end of the month to employees of the “dozens” of companies currently in the program.

LinkedIn previously added phone number and email verification features last year, but those checks were only visible if you tapped into a slightly hidden “about this profile” field. The latest changes add a prominent “verifications” section that will appear directly under a user’s profile details.

Notably, the company is orienting its verification around confirming its members identities, rather than checkmarks or other specialized features. And, unlike Meta and Twitter, LinkedIn is opting to keep verification separate from its paid subscriptions. That also means that having a verified profile doesn’t come with any additional advantages, at least for now. But it could offer an extra layer of protection for those wary of fake accounts, impersonators or other scammers.

Substack has officially launched Notes for all users. The new product takes a lot of cues from Twitter and joins the long list of services looking to lure away users from Elon Musk’s beleaguered social network. At first (and second) glance, Substack Notes looks a whole lot like Twitter. Instead of tweets, you have notes. Instead of retweets, you get restacks. You can post external links, images, videos and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Substack

Your feed is broken up into two groups. The "Home" tab is the extended network comprised of creators you subscribe to, other users these creators recommend and anyone you follow. The "Subscribed" tab is reserved for content creators, prioritizing notes and activity from creators you actually subscribe to. 

"Historically, having worthy posts get shared widely is one of the major ways that writers find growth on Substack,” the company writes. “Notes will help posts find a valuable audience of writers and readers who are already invested in the Substack ecosystem and are just one click away from a subscription.”

Substack Notes already caused a fair bit of controversy straight from its first announcement last week. Upon that announcement, Twitter began blocking engagement with Substack-related tweets, though the social media giant has paused its whole bully routine. This is definitely a year of growth for Substack, with the platform attracting high-profile creators and adding a chat feature to further cement the service as a pseudo-social network.

While Notes comes pre-seeded with influencers who have large Substack followings, the company clarified to Engadget that "anyone can use Notes just like writers can." It's not clear in practice whether regular folks will want to turn Notes into a second Twitter or just a place to maintain a connection with their favorite newsletter creators. 

Substack says this is still an early version of the product, so users should expect “bumps, bugs and imperfections,” though it encourages them to take to Notes to issue feedback. The company also says this is just a small piece of a larger puzzle intended to bring more revenue and exposure to content creators.

Don't count on your Twitter Circle tweets being limited to a close-knit group, at least for the time being. Users have discovered a bug that exposes at least some private Circle posts to outsiders. They frequently show up in followers' For You recommendations, but some say the content is reaching total strangers. As you might imagine, that could be problematic if you're discussing a sensitive topic or want to minimize potential harassment.

Twitter is unavailable for comment as it has disbanded its public relations team. Creator Theo Brown tellsTechCrunch Twitter may be failing to filter Circle tweets out of its recommendation system before they're shared with other users.

Circles have been glitchy for months, but the flaws aren't known to have shared tweets with people outside a Circle. They sometimes haven't included the label indicating their Circle-only status, even if it was clear they couldn't be shared elsewhere. This is considerably worse — you now can't trust that a private post will stay that way.

Twitter has dealt with a growing number of technical issues since Elon Musk bought the company and laid off many employees. There have been multiple outages, troublesome API changes and confusion over feature rollouts and removals. While these hiccups aren't necessarily prompting a user exodus, they don't help at a time when the social media giant is reportedly struggling to keep advertisers and turn a profit.

Google announced a feature drop today for YouTube Premium users. Perhaps the most anticipated addition is iOS SharePlay support, which follows the release of Google’s equivalent feature in Meet video calls.

The company says iOS SharePlay support will arrive “in the coming weeks” for YouTube Premium subscribers. Apple launched SharePlay in 2021 in the wake of pandemic lockdowns, allowing people to watch media together through Apple’s video-calling service. However, YouTube is late to the party as a long list of video streaming services — including Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu and many others — have been compatible with SharePlay for months, if not years. (Netflix is a remaining holdout.) Assuming YouTube SharePlay works like Google Meet Live Sharing, only the person setting up the call would need a Google account subscribed to YouTube Premium; other participants wouldn’t.

Google is also adding YouTube video queuing to mobile devices. Premium subscribers can now add new videos to watch next — like they’ve been able to on the web since 2019. The mobile version of the feature initially appeared late last year in beta under the Android app’s “Try new features” section.

Also arriving “in the coming weeks” is enhanced 1080p streaming for YouTube Premium subscribers on iOS. Google acknowledged the feature was under testing in February after a small group of users reported seeing the option. It uses a higher bitrate (YouTube sends more data per second), which should lead to a better-looking picture. During the beta test, Google claimed the quality of standard 1080p streaming would be unaffected, meaning it wouldn’t nerf video quality for free users to drive subscriptions.

Premium subscribers on Android, iOS and the web will also soon see a new feature that lets them easily pick up YouTube videos where they left off on another device. Additionally, the new Smart Downloads feature on mobile will automatically add recommended videos to your library (when connected to WiFi) for offline viewing. Of course, if you don’t want to waste storage, you can turn off the feature in the app’s settings menu.

Substack users woke to a strange surprise today when trying to share links on Twitter, finding an error message when interacting with any tweet featuring a Substack link. Tweets with an outgoing link to Substack cannot be retweeted, replied to or even liked. The error message states that “some actions on this tweet have been disabled by Twitter.” The loss in functionality even extends to tools like TweetDeck.

You can still tweet out Substack links, but that is where engagement ends. This could be a garden variety error, but it could be a response by Musk and Twitter to Substack’s recently-announced Twitter-esque Notes feature. After all, Twitter is no stranger to silencing rivals, both real and imagined. The social network briefly placed restrictions on tweets with outgoing links to Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram and Truth Social, even outlawing outgoing links to other social media profiles in bios. Musk has also experimented with banning journalists who cover Twitter and made other questionable decisions for a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist.

The founders of Substack issued a response to the move and it certainly seems like they believe the restrictions were instituted on purpose and not part of a system error.

“We’re disappointed that Twitter has chosen to restrict writers’ ability to share their work. Writers deserve the freedom to share links to Substack or anywhere else. This abrupt change is a reminder of why writers deserve a model that puts them in charge,” the founders wrote.

There is another option beyond spite or a system error. It is possible Substack ran afoul of Twitter’s recently-announced API pricing scheme. The sheer number of links to Substack content from users would force the company to invest in the Enterprise-level API at $42,000 a month. If Substalk balked about these costs and Twitter caught wind of it, this could be another New York Times checkmark situation.

Substack says it is currently investigating the newly-imposed restrictions and that it will “share updates as additional information becomes available.” The company shared a blog post in which it expressed hope that these moves were made in error and stated that "cracks are starting to show in the internet’s legacy business models." We reached out to Substack and will update this post if the situation changes or if functionality is restored.

Twitter has finally shut off its free API and, predictably, it’s breaking a lot of apps and websites. The company had previously said it would cut off access in early February, but later delayed the move without providing an updated timeline.

But, after announcing its new paid API tiers last week, the company seems to have started cutting off the thousands of developers relying on its free developer tools. Over the last couple days, a number of app makers and other services have reported that the Twitter API is no longer functioning. Mashable reported the shutoff seems to have started Tuesday morning, though many developers are still trying to understand what’s happening as Twitter doesn’t seem to have communicated with most developers about the changes.

The ending of Twitter’s free API comes after the company abruptly changed its rules to ban third-party Twitter clients as part of a larger shakeup of its developer strategy. But, as we’ve previously reported, third-party clients were only a small fraction of the developers, researchers, bot makers and others who relied on Twitter’s APIs.

For example, apps and websites that used Twitter’s API to enable sharing of content to and from Twitter are now seeing that functionality break. WordPress reported Tuesday that it was no longer able to access the API, rendering its websites unable to automatically share posts to Twitter. (The issue has since been fixed, according to the company.)

Likewise, Echobox, a service that allows publishers to share content on Twitter, said on Wednesday it was also disconnected from the Twitter API “without warning.” The company said it found a workaround, but hadn’t heard from Twitter. News reading app Flipboard, which recently began shifting its focus to Mastodon, also warned that anyone who used Flipboard to view Twitter feeds would soon see the feature disabled.

Many of Twitter’s bot developers are also impacted. The maker of “Cheap Bots Done Quick,” which allows people to create bots for Twitter, reported receiving a notice that they were cut off from the API. Twitter has said that its new “basic” tier is meant to provide a pathway to allow bots to continue, but many developers have said the monthly limit of 1,500 tweets is too constrained.

Newsletter platform Substack is also having issues using embedded tweets, though it’s unclear if this is related to the API shutdown or the company recently announcing a potential Twitter competitor. (Embeds seem to be functioning normally on other websites, including this one.)

All of these issues are further complicated by the fact that Twitter seems to have communicated very little with any of its developers about these changes or what they mean. Most of the employees who worked in developer relations were cut during the company’s mass layoffs. And the company’s developer forums are filled with posts from confused developers looking for answers. The company no longer has a communications team, and its press email auto-responds with a poop emoji.

As Mashablepoints out, the shutoff has even affected developers who are willing to pay for Twitter’s API, even though pricing for higher-level enterprise tiers is still unclear. “When Twitter announced these new tiers last week, we immediately sought to sign up for the Enterprise tier,” Echobox wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “ We still have had no response from Twitter’s enterprise sales team and our access to the API was cut off without notice yesterday.”

News app Tweet Shelf said its API access had also been suspended despite applying for Enterprise API access. So did TweetDeleter, a service for automatically deleting tweets, and Tweet Archivist an analytics tool. 

But it’s still unclear how many developers will be able to continue using Twitter’s API in some form. The free and $100/month “basic” tier are extremely limited compared to what was previously offered for free. And, while Twitter hasn’t revealed exactly how much the “enterprise” level will cost, many are expecting it to be prohibitively expensive – rumors have suggested it could cost $40,000 a month or more.

Some developers aren’t even waiting to find out the pricing details. The developer of Social Bearing, an analytics service used by researchers, said there was no way the service could continue to run. “I wish those of you left at Twitter and fellow devs the best of luck,” they tweeted.

When Elon Musk first proposed taking over Twitter, one the first changes he claimed he'd make would be “open-sourcing” Twitter’s algorithm. Last week, Twitter finally followed through on that promise, publishing the underlying code for the site’s "For You" recommendations on GitHub.

Quickly, Twitter sleuths began sifting through the code to see what they could dig up. It didn’t take long for one eyebrow-raising finding: that Musk’s tweets have their own category (along with Democrats, Republicans and “power users”). Twitter engineers hastily explained that this was for “stat tracking purposes,” which has since been confirmed by other analyses. And though Twitter removed that section of code from GitHub within hours of its publishing, it’s still fueled speculation that Twitter’s engineers pay special attention to their boss’ engagement and have taken steps to artificially boost his tweets.

But there have been few other major revelations about the contents of the code or how Twitter’s algorithm works since. And anyone hoping this public code would produce new insights into the inner workings of Twitter will likely be disappointed. That’s because the code Twitter released omitted important details about how “the algorithm” actually works, according to engineers who have studied it.

The code Twitter shared was a “highly redacted” version of Twitter’s algorithm, according to Sol Messing, associate professor at NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics and former Twitter employee. For one, it didn't include every system that plays a role in Twitter’s recommendations.

Twitter said it was withholding code dealing with ads, as well as trust and safety systems in an effort to prevent bad actors from gaming it. The company also opted to withhold the underlying models used to train its algorithm, explaining in a blog post last week that this was to “to ensure that user safety and privacy would be protected.” That decision is even more consequential, according to Messing. “The model that drives the most important part of the algorithm has not been open-sourced,” he tells me. “So the most important part of the algorithm is still inscrutable.”

Musk’s original motivation to make the algorithm open source seemed to stem from his belief that Twitter had used the algorithm to suppress free speech. “One of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people's tweets — if they're emphasized or de-emphasized —that action should be made apparent,” Musk said last April in an appearance at TED shortly after he confirmed his takeover bid. “So anyone can see that action has been taken, so there's no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.”

But none of the code Twitter released tells us much about potential bias or the kind of “behind-the-scenes manipulation” Musk said he wanted to reveal. “It has the flavor of transparency,” Messing says. “But it doesn’t really give insight into what the algorithm is doing. It doesn't really give insight into why someone's tweets may be down-ranked and why others might be up-ranked.”

Messing also points out that Twitter’s recent API changes have essentially cut off the vast majority of researchers from accessing a meaningful amount of Twitter data. Without proper API access, researchers are unable to conduct their own audits, which would be able to provide new details about how the algorithm works. “So at the same time Twitter is releasing this code, it’s made it incredibly difficult for research to audit this code,” he wrote in his own analysis.

Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) also raised the importance of audits when we talked last year, shortly after Musk first discussed plans to “open source” Twitter’s algorithm. Like Messing, she was skeptical that simply releasing code on GitHub would meaningfully increase transparency into how Twitter works.

"If you're actually interested in public oversight on something like a Twitter algorithm, then you would actually need multiple methods for oversight to happen” Hanna said.

There is one aspect of Twitter’s algorithm that the GitHub code does shed some new light on, though. Messing points to a file unearthed by data scientist Jeff Allen, which reveals a kind of “formula” for how different types of engagement are given priority by the algorithm. “If we take that at face value, a fav (twitter like) is worth half a retweet,” Messing writes. “A reply is worth 27 retweets, and a reply with a response from a tweet’s author is worth a whopping 75 retweets.”

While that’s somewhat revealing, it’s, once again, an incomplete picture of what’s actually happening. “It doesn't mean that much without the actual data,” Messing says. “And Musk just made data so insanely expensive for academics to get. If they want to actually study this now, you basically have to get a giant, massive grants — half a million dollars a year — to get a meaningful amount of data to study what's happening.”

Twitter has added a label to the main account of NPR to designate the public broadcaster as "US state-affiliated media." Until now, such labels have typically been reserved for state-run organizations such as RT and Sputnik in Russia and China's Xinhua News Agency. The labels appear on every tweet from accounts they're applied to.

“We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as ‘state-affiliated media,’ a description that, per Twitter’s own guidelines, does not apply to NPR," the broadcaster's CEO John Lansing said in a statement. "NPR and our member stations are supported by millions of listeners who depend on us for the independent, fact-based journalism we provide. NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable. It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way. A vigorous, vibrant free press is essential to the health of our democracy.”

As Mediaite points out, Twitter has edited its guidelines regarding the "state-affiliated media" label since applying it to NPR's account. "State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media," the guidelines page read on Tuesday, according to a Wayback Machine snapshot. By Wednesday morning, Twitter had removed the text "or NPR in the US." Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment. 

Elon Musk, who took over Twitter in October, noted the change to NPR's account. In response to a user who gave him acknowledgment for the move, Musk tweeted a portion of the state-affiliated media policy that reads "State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution." Musk wrote that the definition "seems accurate" with regards to NPR.

On Tuesday, Musk responded to a tweet that criticized NPR over a report suggesting that “European right-wing politicians [are] lobbing a conspiracy theory that elites want people to eat bugs.” He replied with an exclamation point. The user who posted the thread went on to claim that "NPR is worse than the propaganda of Maoist schoolchildren during the cultural revolution.”

NPR, which is an independent non-profit, says that on average, less than one percent of its annual operating budget comes from government grants. Over the last five fiscal years, around 70 percent of its revenues have come from corporate sponsors and core and programming fees paid by member organizations. Meanwhile, Voice of America, a broadcaster that is owned by the US government, does not have a state-affiliated media label on its Twitter account.