Facebook will publish two internal slide decks detailing its research into how Instagram affects teens’ mental health sometime “in the next few days.” Speaking at an online event hosted by The Atlantic, the company’s policy chief Nick Clegg said the company would release the data to Congress before making it available to the public.

“We're just making sure that all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted so that we can release it both to Congress and then to the public in the next few days," Clegg said of the slides, some of which have already been made public. His comments more than 10 days after The Wall Street Journalpublished an investigation into how Instagram affects the teens who use it. Citing internal research conducted by Facebook, The Journal wrote that “Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage” of teens, particularly teenage girls.

The investigation prompted immediate pushback from lawmakers, many of whom were already wary of Facebook’s handling of child safety, and its plans to build a version of its service for children under 13. On Monday, Instagram said it would “pause” that work in order to create more “parental supervision tools.” Members of Congress responded saying they want the company to end the project entirely. Facebook’s head of safety is scheduled to testify at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the subject Thursday.

Now, Facebook seems to be hoping that releasing more of its underlying research could help address concerns from lawmakers and others. In a separate statement published Sunday, the company’s top researcher suggested that The Wall Street Journal had mischaracterized its research. Clegg went a step further Monday, saying that the reporting based on documents “leaked by someone who clearly feels they have some points to make.”

“If you read the decks, and then compare it with some of the assertions that, you know, Instagram is toxic for all teens and so on, I don't think any reasonable person … would say that the research sustains that claim,” Clegg said. “When the dust settles people will see that we're just sincerely trying to kind of — like external researchers — are trying to work out what the complex relationship is between individuals, given their own individual circumstances, and their lives and their use of social media.”

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the company would release “two decks” that were central to The Journal report, but didn’t elaborate on the timing of the release.

But the decks alone are unlikely to quiet Facebook’s critics. For one, Facebook’s own rebuttal of The Wall Street Journal reporting appears to undermine the significance of its own research. “This research, some of which relied on input from only 40 teens, was designed to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram,” Facebook VP Pratiti Raychoudhury wrote. “It did not measure causal relationships between Instagram and real-world issues.”

It also raises questions about how Facebook will present the data it does make public. Last month, the company released a report on “widely viewed content” on its platform. The report was meant to rebuff criticism that News Feed favors polarizing content. But researchers outside the company quickly poked holes in the report, and said it was emblematic of Facebook’s larger transparency issues, particularly when it comes to working with outside researchers.

Which is why it’s notable that Clegg would invoke “external researchers” in his defense of the company. If Instagram isn’t actually harmful to most teens, as the company is claiming, then researchers not on Facebook’s payroll may be positioned to credibly make that point. Yet researchers say the company has made data increasingly difficult to access. And in some cases, the company has actively blocked outsiders from studying its platform, like when it recently disabled the personal Facebook accounts of researchers at New York University and then provided “misleading” explanations about its reasons for doing so, according to the FTC. (Incidentally, the researcher at the center of that controversy is testifying in a separate Congressional hearing this week.)

They may seem like unrelated issues. But if Facebook had better relationships with researchers outside the company, and made more of its own findings public it might be better able to head off internal critics who “have some points to make.”

Mere hours after Facebook said it was pausing work on Instagram Kids, a group of Democratic lawmakers has called on the company to instead completely abandon the project. Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal and Representatives Kathy Castor and Lori Trahan say Facebook’s decision to halt development is “insufficient.”

“Facebook has completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to protecting young people online and it must completely abandon this project,” the group said in a joint statement on Monday. They’re the same four lawmakers who told Facebook earlier in the year they had “serious concerns” about the project when they first learned about it.

Facebook said it was suspending work on Instagram Kids after The Wall Street Journalpublished a report that claimed the company had ignored its own research on the harm apps like Instagram can do to young people. The company quickly refuted that piece, saying its studies showed young people could have both positive and negative experiences interacting with social media. The company will have to answer questions on its research later this week when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee holds a hearing on the matter on Thursday.

Facebook has announced that it's "pausing" its Instagram Kids project in order to "work with parents, experts and policymakers to demonstrate the value and need for this product." The announcement follows criticism from 44 state attorneys general who asked Facebook to abandon the project, and a request from Democratic lawmakers for more detail about the project. 

The Instagram team said that it was building the app to get around the problem of kids accessing Instagram without parental permission. "We started this project to address an important problem seen across our industry: kids are getting phones younger and younger, misrepresenting their age, and downloading apps that are meant for those 13 or older," wrote Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri. 

At the same time, the company rejected the idea it was capitulating due to criticism. "Critics of 'Instagram Kids' will see this as an acknowledgement that the project is a bad idea. That’s not the case," Mosseri wrote. "The reality is that kids are already online, and we believe that developing age-appropriate experiences designed specifically for them is far better for parents than where we are today."

An important part of what we’ve been developing for 'Instagram Kids' is a way for parents to supervise their child’s use of Instagram. While we’re pausing our development of 'Instagram Kids,' we’ll continue our work to allow parents to oversee their children’s accounts by expanding these tools to teen accounts (aged 13 and over) on Instagram.

Some of the issues raised about the project revolve around Facebook's problems with privacy and particularly child safety. "Not only is social media an influential tool that can be detrimental to children who are not of appropriate age, but this plan could place children directly in the paths of predators," New York state attorney general Letitia James said when the project first came to light. 

Most recently, the WSJ published an article claiming that Facebook has knowingly ignored its own research showing that Instagram is toxic to the mental health of younger people. Yesterday, the social network refuted that article as well, saying its research said that young people had "both positive and negative experiences with social media." 

Facebook pointed out that both YouTube and TikTok have versions of their apps for kids under 13. It also said that Instagram Kids would not be the same as Instagram today, and was never meant for younger children, but tweens between 10 and 12 years old. "It will require parental permission to join, it won’t have ads, and it will have age-appropriate content and features," according to Mosseri. He also pointed out that Facebook has implemented several new measures on issues like body image, encouraging people to look at other topics or take a break if they're dwelling on negative content. 

However, lawmakers don't like even the idea of an app, regardless of intent. "The alternative approach that Facebook appears poised to take—specifically, pushing kids to sign up for a new platform that may itself pose threats to young users’ privacy and wellbeing—involves serious challenges and may do more harm than good," said a group of Democratic lawmakers. 

NBC Universal has warned YouTube TV subscribers that 14 of its channels may be removed if the two parties can't resolve a dispute, 9to5Google has reported. YouTube has acknowledged the situation on its official blog, saying that it will drop its monthly price by $10 if the situation isn't resolved and the content goes offline. If you're a YouTube TV subscriber, you stand to lose NBC, USA Network, Golf Channel, Bravo, CNBC, Telemundo and eight other channels. 

According to YouTube, the dispute revolves around how much money its paying NBC Universal (NBCU) for its content. "For the duration of our agreement, YouTube TV seeks the same rates that services of a similar size get from NBCU so we can continue offering YouTube TV to members at a competitive and fair price," the Google-owned service said. NBC said in a statement that it's seeking "fair rates" from Google, adding that YouTube TV is "just days away from letting their contract expire."

NBC Universal is trying to put some pressure on YouTube TV, asking users to tweet at or chat with YouTube TV, or even switch providers. However, YouTube is saying that it will only renew "if NBCU offers us equitable terms" and said it would drop monthly prices by $10 from $64.99 to $54.99 while the channels are off the platform. It even encouraged users to sign up for NBC's Peacock streaming service for $4.99 per month in order to retain NBCU content. 

Twitter says your new video uploads will appear less pixelated and have better quality. The official Twitter support account has revealed that the website made updates to fix its platform's poor video quality, which has been a problem for its users since the beginning. Twitter told The Verge that it removed a pre-processing step when you upload videos that's responsible for the issue. That step apparently splits the clip you're trying to upload into smaller chunks for easier processing, and that could reduce video quality.

The company told the publication that the changes aren't live on Twitter Media Studio, a tool that gives you access to all the media you've ever uploaded, yet. Also, while the improved video quality is expected to be available to everyone, it will only apply to new video uploads and won't be retroactively applied to old ones. Here's a sample of a new upload that's supposed to have better quality:

While some people said they barely notice any difference from before, others noticed less compression in full screen and quicker adjustment when you switch screen sizes. The quality still isn't comparable to HD videos posted on YouTube, but it does look decent enough. Back in 2019, Twitter also made changes to the way it uploads JPEGs to prevent lowering their quality upon being posted.

Twitter has been trying to limit the toxic replies you can get on its website by giving you tools that allow you to be more proactive in preventing them from going through. In the future, those tools could include a feature that lets you filter potentially offensive replies and another that lets you limit potentially unwelcome accounts from replying. Twitter Senior Product Designer Paula Barcante has released a sneak peek of the features, which are merely concepts at the moment, to seek input from users.

Barcante says Twitter will ask you if you'd like to switch on those controls if it detects potentially harmful replies to your tweets. If your reply filter is on, Twitter won't show you or anyone else — except the user who wrote the response — the harmful tweets it detects. If you decide to limit unwelcome accounts, users who've recently shown patterns of breaking rules won't be able to reply to your tweets at all. 

Since the process would be automated, Barcante admits that it may not be accurate all the time and may end up filtering out even respective, non-problematic responses. That's why the company is also exploring the possibility of giving you the option to review filtered tweets and limited accounts. Of course, the final iterations of the tools might look vastly different from these previews if they do get released. 

When asked if toggling on the reply filter would filter out all tweets from an account or just the tweet the website has deemed potentially offensive, Barcante didn't have an answer yet. She said what she showed was just an "early concept that requires testing and iteration" and that Twitter will provide more details if it decides to launch the tools.

Twitter plans to address a longstanding complaint people have had with its mobile app. If you use the software frequently, you may have noticed tweets will sometimes disappear from view just as you’re partway through reading one. You see this happen when your timeline refreshes and it happens most often when there are a lot of people replying to a single tweet.

“We know it’s a frustrating experience, so we’re working on changing it,” the company said, adding that it plans to roll out a variety of updates over the next two months to address the issue. Twitter didn’t detail what those changes will look like but promised they will keep your timeline fresh while preventing tweets from disappearing as you’re reading them.

Twitter has been iterating on new features at an increased clip in recent months. For instance, the company recently said it would begin testing a tool for removing followers sometime this month. Twitter also recently began rolling its Communities feature to users.

Discord has started testing a feature called Watch Together that allows users to create playlists of YouTube videos they can then watch directly on the chat platform. First spotted by The Verge, the feature is only available to friends and family servers at the moment. However, the company reportedly plans to roll it out to the broader Discord community by the end of October. Users can add a video to the server queue either by searching directly through the included interface or pasting a link from YouTube.

Discord didn't have much to say about the test when we reached out to the company. "As a company founded in innovation, we're always experimenting and building things we believe our users will enjoy," a Discord spokesperson told Engadget. "We don't have anything more to share right now, but stay tuned."

However, the integration comes just weeks after YouTube sent cease and desist letters to Groovy Bot and Rythm, two of the most popular tools for playing music from YouTube, Spotify and other streaming services directly over Discord. The move forced both apps to shut down. As The Verge points out, the company tested a feature similar to Watch Together toward the start of the year, but ended up shelving it temporarily before bringing it back this week. The company appears to have reprioritized development on the feature following the shutdown of Groovy Bot and Rythm.

There's no shortage of ways to capture YouTube videos on the web. Take your pick of dangerous websites, or just go old-school and record a video of your desktop. Now, YouTube is finally offering a simpler solution for computer users: A download button. As Android Police reports, it's currently available as an experimental feature for Premium subscribers. That's not a huge surprise, as YouTube already offers mobile video downloads for subscribers too. 

Once you've flipped it on, you'll see a download button right next to the share option below videos, or alongside the three dot menu when browsing. After downloading a video, it gets placed in your offline YouTube library. You can choose to grab videos in resolutions from 144p to 1080p — sorry, 4K fanatics. At this point, there doesn't appear to be any size limit, aside from your available storage.

From my quick tests, the feature works as advertised on Safari and Chrome. Personally, it's not something I'd use as often as mobile downloads, but it's a nice option to have for future trips.

Netflix is acquiring the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC) and rights to the author's entire catalog, including classics like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach, the company announced. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed (and are subject to regulatory approval), but three years ago Netflix paid "nine figures" for the rights to 16 of Dahl's works, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In any event, it likely represents one of Netflix's largest acquisitions to date. 

News of the acquisition started bubbling up yesterday following a Bloomberg report. Netflix has big plans for Dahl's works, including "the creation of a unique universe across animated and live actions films and TV, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theater, consumer products and more," wrote Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos and RDSC managing director (and Dahl's grandson) Luke Kelly. 

The companies revealed that director Taika Waititi and screenwriter Phil Johnston are working on a series based on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory world. Netflix is also working with Sony and Working Title on an adaptation of Matilda The Musical. 

The acquisition appears to go well beyond Netflix's past content deals, in which it simply licensed content from others. It famously did so with Marvel, then ended up canceling Daredevil and other Marvel shows when it couldn't come to terms with Disney, which was planning at the time to launch rival service Disney+. 

With Roald Dahl's catalog, it promises to "bring these timeless tales to more audiences in new formats... [while] maintaining their unique spirit and their universal themes of surprise and kindness," Sarandos and Dahl wrote. "These stories and their messages of the power and possibility of young people have never felt more pertinent." Last year, the company issued an apology on its website for Dahl's history of antisemitic statements, as Bloomberg noted.