Google has announced changes to YouTube, Search and its other apps designed to make them safer for kids. The latest updates will make YouTube videos created by kids private by default, allow minors or their parents to request the removal of their images from Google Image results, turn SafeSearch on by default and more. The move is part of a recent push by Google to protect kids and give parents more control over what they see.

Many of the updates are dedicated to YouTube and YouTube Kids. The key change is aimed at young creators aged 13 to 17, changing the default upload setting to the most private option available. That means by default, the video can only be seen by select users unless the creator changes it to public. "We want to help younger users... make an intentional choice if they’d like to make their content public," Google wrote. 

Google is also expanding its so-called digital well-being tools for YouTube. It'll turn on break and bedtime reminders by default for all kids aged 13 to 17 while turning off autoplay by default. At the same time, it's adding an autoplay option on YouTube Kids while, at the same time, turning it off by default in the app. Parents will also be able to choose a "locked" default autoplay setting.  

Knowing the accurate age of our users across multiple products and surfaces, while at the same time respecting their privacy and ensuring that our services remain accessible, is a complex challenge.

Finally, Google said it will be removing "overly commercial content" from YouTube Kids, like a video that "only focuses on product packaging or directly encourages children to spend money." It also updated the disclosures that appear on “made for kids” content when a creator identifies a video as containing paid promotions.

On Search, Google promised to give minors "more control over their digital footprint." To that end, it's introducing a new policy allowing anyone under 18, or their parents or guardians, to request the removal of their images from Google Image search results. That change is designed to "help give young people more control of their image online," Google wrote. It will also turn SafeSearch on for all existing users under 18 and make it the default for teens setting up new accounts. Currently, it's just turned on for teen accounts managed by Family Link.

In other apps, Google will disable location history for all users under 18 without the ability to turn it on. It's launching a safety section in Play that will show parents which apps follow Google's Families policies and disclose how they use the data they collect in greater detail. On the advertising side, it will "block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18," the company wrote. 

Google stressed that it wants to work with "kids and teens, parents, governments, industry leaders, and experts in the fields of privacy, child safety, wellbeing and education to design better, safer products for kids and teens." Taken as a whole, the new changes should help prevent young people from seeing harmful content while blocking exploitive ads. In practice, however, it may take some time to shake out any bugs and ensure that advertisers are following the rules — so as always, it's best to keep a close eye on your kids' digital habits. 

Facebook has today announced that it has added two new destinations for when you want to move your data from the social network. In a blog post, the company said that users will be able to move their images to Photobucket and event listings to Google Calendar. Product Manager Hadi Michel said that the tool has been “completely rebuilt” to be “simpler and more intuitive,” giving people more clarity on what they can share to which platforms. In addition, users can now launch multiple transfers, with better fine-grain control on what they’re choosing to export in any one transfer.

This is yet another feature piled on to the Data Transfer Project, an open-source project developed by Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Facebook users can already send their photos to Google’s own image-storage service, as well as Dropbox, Blogger, Google Documents and Wordpress. This is, in part, a way to address the long-in-progress ACCESS Act, which would enable users to transfer their data to any competing platform. Facebook says that it calls on government to “make clearer rules about who is responsible for protecting that data as it is transferred to different services.”

Last month, Facebook’s Oversight Board chastised the company for losing an important policy for three years. At the center of the ruling was an Instagram post about Abdullah Öcalan, which encouraged people to talk about his political imprisonment. Öcalan is one of the founding members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The PKK is a Kurdish militia Facebook classifies as a “dangerous organization.”

The company had initially removed the post because of a rule that prohibits Facebook users from expressing support for groups and individuals that fall under that category. At the same time, Facebook also had “internal guidance” in place — which came out in part around discussions the company had about Öcalan’s imprisonment — that carved out an exception to that policy to allow people to discuss “conditions of confinement for individuals designated as dangerous.” However, Facebook did not apply that rule to Öcalan’s case due to an oversight that occurred when it moved to a new review system in 2018.

In examining what happened, the Oversight Board issued 12 recommendations to Facebook, which the company responded to today. To start, it will “immediately” re-implement the misplaced policy at the center of the case. Facebook says it has begun training its content reviewers on implementing the rule and expects the guidance to be fully in place within the next two weeks. 

By the end of the year, it also plans to clarify the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. Out of the 12 recommendations put forward by the Oversight Board, Facebook plans to fully or partially implement most of them. However, one it’s not sure on would involve the company sharing more comprehensive information on its enforcement of those policies. The company says it’s still examining the feasibility of creating a system that provides a country-by-country breakdown of enforcement and error data. It says it will share an update on that work in one of its upcoming quarterly updates.

Twitter’s experiment with ephemeral content may have ended earlier in the week, but its take on Clubhouse is going stronger than ever. Starting this week, Spaces hosts can invite other individuals to help them with moderation duties.

With today’s announcement, a single Space can include one host, two co-hosts and up to 10 speakers. As a co-host, you can invite additional people to talk, mute and remove rowdy participants and pin tweets. However, you won’t be able to remove the original host or your counterpart, nor can you end a broadcast. Adding a co-host is done through an invite system that allows you to search for specific users.

Of course, Twitter isn’t the only company making audio broadcasts an integral part of what it offers users. Facebook and Discord quickly added Clubhouse-like features to their platforms following the app’s early post-release success. And if you believe Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, most online services are likely to add live audio as a way for their users to communicate, much like they did when it came to video and Stories.

TikTok is no stranger to other companies copying the format of its signature short-form videos, but it may now do the same with Stories. Per a tweet shared by social media consultant and former TheNext Web writer Matt Navarra, the company has introduced posts that disappear after 24 hours. TikTok told Variety it's currently testing the feature with a small subset of users outside of the US and emphasized they may not become a permanent fixture within the app.

"We're always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience," a spokesperson for the company told Engadget. "Currently we're experimenting with ways to give creators additional formats to bring their creative ideas to life for the TikTok community."

Snapchat was the first app to feature Stories before the format was widely copied by everyone from Facebook to LinkedIn. Twitter also tried to make the feature work on its platform with Fleets, but that experiment ended earlier this week. Much like its rivals, TikTok may feel it needs to add Stories to stay relevant, particularly with companies like YouTube investing millions to replicate its success.

Before the US election last year, a team of researchers from New York University's engineering school launched a project to gather more data on political ads. In particular, the team wanted to know how political advertisers choose the demographic their ads target and don't target. Shortly after the project called the NYU Ad Observatory went live, however, Facebook notified the researchers that their efforts violate its terms of service related to bulk data collection. Now, the social network has announced that it has "disabled the accounts, apps, Pages and platform access associated with NYU's Ad Observatory Project and its operators..."

The researchers created a browser extension to collect data on the political ads the website shows the thousands of people who volunteered to be part of the initiative. Facebook says, however, that the plug-in was made to avoid its detection system and calls what it can do "unauthorized scraping." The extension "scrape[d] data such as usernames, ads, links to user profiles and 'Why am I seeing this ad?' information," Facebook wrote in its announcement. It also said that the extension collected data about Facebook users who didn't install it and didn't consent to take part in the project.

The company wrote that it made "repeated attempts to bring [the team's] research into compliance with [its] Terms." That apparently included inviting the researchers to access its US 2020 Elections ad targeting data through FORT’s Researcher Platform. Facebook said the data set on the platform could offer more comprehensive information than what the extension can collect, but the researchers declined its invitation. 

As The Wall Street Journal mentioned in its report last year, Facebook has an archive of advertisements on its platform, which includes data on who paid for an ad, when it ran and the location of the people who saw it. However, it doesn't contain targeting information, such as how it's determined who sees the ad. On its website, Ad Observer researchers wrote: "We think it's important to democracy to be able to check who is trying to influence the public and how." 

Facebook is adamant that it disabled the project's access to its platform because it knowingly violated the website's terms against scraping. It blocked the team's access to its platform, it said, in order to "stop unauthorized scraping and protect people's privacy in line with [its] privacy program." After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it agreed to an updated policy with the FTC, which pushed the social network to limit third-party access to its data. We asked the Ad Observer team for a statement and will update this post if we hear back. 

Facebook is reportedly looking into analyzing the content of encrypted data without having to decrypt it. The company is recruiting artificial intelligence researchers to study the matter, according to The Information. Their research could pave the way for Facebook to target ads based on encrypted WhatsApp messages. Facebook could also use the findings to encrypt user data without affecting its ad targeting approaches.

This area of research is called "homomorphic encryption," which relies heavily on mathematics. Microsoft, Amazon and Google are also working on the approach. The aim of homomorphic encryption is to allow companies to read and analyze data while keeping it encrypted to protect information from cybersecurity dangers and to maintain privacy.

Facebook told The Information it's "too early for us to consider homomorphic encryption for WhatsApp at this time." Facebook could benefit from the tech in a number of ways. Protecting data without impacting the effectiveness of ad targeting could allow Facebook to both meet its business goals and satisfy regulators who have expressed concern about how the company handles user information. Facebook could be years away from harnessing homomorphic encryption, however.

In 2019, Facebook revealed plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across all of its messaging services: Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Later that year, the US, UK and Australia sent a joint letter to Facebook, urging it not to push forward with the project "without ensuring there will be no reduction in the safety of Facebook users and others, and without providing law enforcement court-authorized access to the content of communications to protect the public, particularly child users." However you slice it, encryption is a thorny issue for Facebook, whether or not it's able to analyze the data.

In the last few years, many of the biggest social media companies have been throwing money at creators, trying to get them to embrace their platforms and bring loyal audiences to their apps. Earlier this year, YouTube announced a $100 million fund specifically to pay creators who use the platform's new Shorts format, which just came out of beta and rolled out to 100 countries last month. That fund is now live as of today, so the company is dropping more details on how you can get paid.

As YouTube announced earlier this year, the company plans to invite "thousands of eligible creators" to claim a payment from the program from now through 2022; YouTube is offering from $100 to $10,000, depending on how many people watch the Short as well as some other engagement metrics. Anyone posting shorts is theoretically eligible to get picked for a payment, not just creators who participate in the YouTube Partner Program (that's the program YouTube launched 14 years ago so that users could get paid for their content).

Naturally, there are a number of standards that these Shorts need to meet to be eligible. Most of them are pretty straightforward, like abiding by YouTube's community guidelines and copyright policies. YouTube also doesn't want people just re-uploading content they created for Snapchat or TikTok, so any Shorts with watermarks or logos from other social networks won't qualify. YouTube says it'll be awarding payments on a monthly basis so interested creators will be incentivized to keep making new Shorts.

While YouTube Shorts is a relatively new platform, TikTok has had a similar fund for its creators since 2020. It was announced as a $200 million fund, double what YouTube currently has budgeted for its Shorts fund, and those interested would have to submit their best work. But while TikTok's fund may be larger than this Shorts program, YouTube notes that it has nine other ways for its creators to monetize their content.

While YouTube Shorts is a relatively new platform, TikTok has had a similar fund for its creators since 2020. It was announced as a $200 million fund, double what YouTube currently has budgeted for its Shorts fund, and those interested would have to submit their best work. But while TikTok's fund may be larger than this Shorts program, YouTube notes that it has nine other ways for its creators to monetize their content.

Not to be outdone, Facebook recently launched its own $1 billion program to lure creators to Instagram as well as its main service. Perhaps more significantly than the sheer dollar value is the fact that Facebook isn't going to collect a cut of creators' revenue through 2022, making a focus on the platform even more potentially lucrative. The size of this move is an admission from Facebook that it's a little behind the curve here; Instagram didn't offer any kind of revenue share until last year, in fact. 

Between TikTok's massive influence and Facebook's massive war chest aimed at creators, YouTube is going to need to keep offering its users more ways to make cash — and the company knows it. Indeed, it said in today's news that the $100 million fund is the "first step" in its plans to monetize Shorts.

Streaming services are embracing cheaper subscription plans in a bid to turn free users into paying customers. Following news of a YouTube Premium Lite offering yesterday, Spotify is the latest streamer to confirm a cheaper tier. The world's biggest music streaming service is testing a $0.99 monthly plan that retains the ads but gives you infinite skips per hour and lets you select specific songs on an album or playlist for playback. Spotify, which confirmed the test to The Verge, is hoping it can convince you to put up with ads in return for more control over the listening experience. In other words, it wants to have its cake and eat it, too.

Currently, free users can only skip six tracks per hour and have to listen to shuffled songs on albums and playlists. That's a bummer if you're sick of hearing Justin Bieber or just want to put that one new Billie Eillish track on repeat. Despite those incentives, getting people to pay for an ad-supported service, even if it is just $0.99 per month, is still a big ask. Especially when they're accustomed to getting it for free. Then again, video streamers like Hulu and HBO Max have either successfully done it or are trying to do it.

The risk is that it could eat into Spotify's existing premium user base, which make up 165 million of its 365 million subscribers. Turning those remaining 200 million users into paying members is clearly the goal here. It could be that the low $0.99 price helps to ease that transition. We'll know if the gamble has paid off if Spotify expands the plan to more users. In the past, the company has done just that with new plans, including its $12.99/month Duo tier aimed at discouraging password sharing and its upcoming Lossless "HiFi" offering.

In a bid to boost YouTube Premium sign-ups, Google has offered everything from free hardware to access to unique features. Now, it's going back to basics. The company is testing a lower-priced subscription plan in parts of Europe that gives you ad-free viewing without offline downloads, YouTube Music and background playback. A Resetera user first spotted the new YouTube Premium Lite tier in Netherlands, Finland and Sweden while trying to cancel the paid-for service. 

The plan costs €6.99 ($8.32) per month, the same as the student tier, whereas the normal price is €11.99 ($14.26). YouTube confirmed to The Verge that it's also testing the offering in Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg and Norway with local equivalent pricing. Comparatively, Netflix Basic costs €7.99 ($9.50) in several of those regions.

The YouTube Premium Lite page states that you get ad-free YouTube and YouTube Kids across multiple devices including mobile, desktop and TVs. In the past, YouTube has announced incentives for paying users including free products such as Google Stadia and neat features like automatic downloads.

But, since its launch, and subsequent rebranding, the service has always been more like a bundle with the inclusion of YouTube Music, which may not entice those already paying for Spotify or Apple Music. Trimming the fat to offer the core ad-free experience for less will certainly appeal to more viewers, and could help to drive subscriptions as a result.