One of Google Search's oldest and best-known features, cache links, are being retired, Google's search liaison said in an X post seen by The Verge. Best known by the "Cached" button, those are a snapshot of a web page the last time Google indexed it. However, according to Google, they're no longer required. 

"It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Google's Danny Sullivan wrote in the post. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.

Nowadays, however, the feature is used for more than just a web page backup. Many people rely on it to check to validity of a site, and SEO managers can employ the feature to check their pages for errors. Many users, particularly news professionals, use the cache to see if a website has recently been updated, with information added or removed. And sometimes, a cache can let you check a site that's geoblocked in your region. 

Previously, clicking on the three-dot menu next to a result would open an "about this result" dialog with the Cached button at bottom right. Now, however, it opens a much larger menu showing a website's "about" page, a Wikipedia descrtipoin, privacy settings and more. The cached button is now nowhere to be seen.

None of the comments in Sullivan's replies were positive, with one SEO user saying "come on, why delete the function? It's really helpful for all SEO." Sullivan did say that Google may one day add links to the Internet Archive where the cache link button used to be, within About This Result. 

However, that sounds like it's far from a done deal, and would shift a massive amount of traffic over to the Internet Archive. "No promises. We have to talk to them, see how it all might go — involves people well beyond me. But I think it would be nice all around," he wrote. 

YouTube has hit a new milestone with its Music and Premium offerings. The paid services have more than 100 million users between them as of January, including those who were on a free trial. That's an increase of 20 million members in just over a year, and the figure has doubled since September 2021. YouTube has successfully grown the figures despite a $2 per month increase for Premium that came into force last summer.

It's unclear how many people are actually using YouTube Music (Premium includes access to that service). However you slice it, the music streaming service has significantly fewer paid users than Spotify, which had 220 million Premium members as of September 30. Spotify will reveal its latest membership numbers in an earnings report next week. Apple no longer breaks out its number of Apple Music subscribers. The last firm number the company gave for the service was 60 million subscribers back in 2019.

Regardless, the comparison between YouTube's paid service and Apple Music and Spotify Premium is hardly like-for-like. YouTube Premium is its own thing with its own benefits. It can be tough to go back to the lousier ad-strewn free version of the service after having Premium. The option to download videos for offline viewing without having to resort to workarounds and background playback feature are both very useful. YouTube Music is just an extra perk on top of that for many members.

The Pew Research Center has published an updated survey of US adult social media usage. Although YouTube (especially) and Facebook retain their dominant status from the last poll in 2021, TikTok is the fastest-growing platform, with more than a third of adults now saying they use the app.

The survey polled 5,733 US adults between May 19 and September 5, 2023. YouTube was far and away the most used platform, with 83 percent of respondents reporting using it at some point. Meanwhile, 68 percent of users reported using Facebook.

Those two are the only platforms with a majority of people using them through each age demographic. However, gaps based on age groups still exist — especially among YouTube’s users. For example, 93 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds report using Google’s video platform, while 60 percent of those 65 and older say the same. (Facebook only has a nine percent difference between the same two demographics.)

Instagram came in third place overall, as 47 percent of respondents said they use it. Pinterest (35 percent), TikTok (33 percent), LinkedIn (30 percent), WhatsApp (29 percent) and Snapchat (27 percent) all fall into the next tier down. TikTok’s growth stands out the most: The ByteDance-owned platform shot up 12 points from 21 percent from two years before. That’s by far the biggest leap of any platform on the list.

Richard Bord via Getty Images

The next tier down includes Reddit and X, each sitting at 22 percent. Complicating matters, Elon Musk’s company changed its name from Twitter to X (and brought in a new CEO) while the surveys were in the field. The company’s reported users dropped slightly in two years, from 23 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, Reddit rose four points from 18 percent two years before — despite the platform’s API controversy happening while the surveys were out.

Other platforms with significant age-group discrepancies include Instagram (78 percent of 29-and-under survey participants use it, compared to 15 percent of 65 and older) and Snapchat (65 percent use it for those under 30, four percent for 65 and up). The 40- to 49-year-old demographic, which includes younger Gen-Xers and all but the youngest Millennials, has especially high rates for LinkedIn (40 percent), WhatsApp (38 percent) and Facebook (75 percent).

In other demographic-based notables, Pew reports TikTok is especially popular among Hispanic users, with 49 percent reporting use (and women reported using it at a 15 percent higher rate than men). X is more popular with adults with annual household incomes of at least $100,000 — a nine-point swing compared to the $70,000 to $99,999 tier. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, given its career-oriented focus, LinkedIn has a higher rate of respondents with at least a bachelor’s degree (25 points higher than those with “some college education” and 43 percent higher than those with a high school diploma or less).

Instagram is testing yet another feature meant to give users an alternative to finstas. It’s called “flipside” and it allows people to create a secondary photo grid that only designated friends can see.

If that sounds somewhat familiar it’s probably because Instagram already makes it pretty easy for users to create posts intended for a more limited audience. The app added the ability for users to share grid posts with “close friends” back in November (Stories for close friends has been a thing since 2018). More recently, it tested audience lists for Stories, so users could create multiple lists for small-group sharing. The app, of course, also makes it fairly easy to create an actual finsta.

Flipside, somewhat confusingly, offers yet another way of doing essentially the same thing. Users create a separate list of friends, distinct from “close friends,” to add to their “flipside.” They can then choose to post to their main grid or to their “flipside,” which is also accessible from their profile but only visible to the aforementioned list of friends. People will know if they have access to someone’s flipside if they see a key icon in someone’s grid, according to screenshots shared on Threads. (You can see a video of it in action over on Threads.)

Apparently, even Instagram head Adam Mosseri realizes this is all a bit redundant. “On one hand it feels good to create a clear space that feels more private,” he wrote in a post on Threads. “On the other, it's yet another way to reach a smaller audience on top of secondary accounts and Close Friends.”

He added that “we're not even sure we'll launch it,” which might explain why the company has been relatively quiet about the test. Flipside was first spotted back in December but was an internal prototype at the time, according to TechCrunch. However, it's now started to appear for actual users, with a number of reports of it appearing on Threads over the last day.

Early reactions seem to be mixed, with some enthusiasm for the update and some wondering why on earth they need yet another social media profile to maintain. Others seem to be, understandably, confused.

While finstas have (sometimes hilariously) been maligned, Meta’s recent obsession with creating “more private” spaces on Instagram is likely about more than simply adding convenience. Mosseri has noted many times over the last couple years that Instagram users simply aren’t posting as much as they used to, especially in their feeds. For an app that relies on advertising — much of it in users’ feeds — that’s less than ideal. So it’s not all that surprising Instagram would be looking for new ways to get people to spend more time posting to and scrolling their feeds.

AI-generated content can be found everywhere online, including your Google News feed. A report from 404 Media revealed that Google is boosting websites filled with AI-generated articles ripped from other outlets. While this isn’t a total surprise, the revelation is disappointing. Google News used to be a place you’d find the latest and most accurate information on most topics. But just because something makes it to Google News doesn’t necessarily mean the information is reliable.

404 Media cited several examples of AI-written articles getting past Google. One example involved a “news site” called Worldtimetodays, that recently published an article about Star Wars. An analysis of the article showed it was highly similar to one published earlier by Distractify. The Worldtimetodays article included the same author photo along with some odd phrasings, as you’d expect with AI. The ripped article read “Let’s be honest, war of stars fans,” instead of Star Wars fans. The site also had articles that were barely rewritten from Heavy, without bothering to replace Heavy’s watermarked images.

As AI advances and becomes even more accessible, we will likely continue to see mass output of plagiarized articles and unreliable information on Google News. Because as of right now, it’s clear Google may not be ready to fully audit the articles populating its news feed. The company told 404 Media that while it tries to filter spam on Google News, it isn’t overly concerned whether an article is written by humans or AI. A Google representative said it’s more about the quality of the content.

“Our focus when ranking content is on the quality of the content, rather than how it was produced. Automatically-generated content produced primarily for ranking purposes is considered spam, and we take action as appropriate under our policies,” the statement read.

Google went on to reiterate that websites are considered for Google News automatically, and new websites may not be immediately detected by the system. The company added that its goal is to reward “original content that demonstrates things such as expertise and trustworthiness,” but it looks like it’s missing the mark by letting these AI-generated articles through in the first place.

For many, "new year, new me" includes finding a new job. Scouring sites like LinkedIn and Indeed for opportunities can feel like a full-time role in and of itself. This process could potentially improve moving forward, with LinkedIn announcing its latest feature: Job Collections. 

Basically, instead of searching for a specific industry or role, LinkedIn is using generative AI and large language models to analyze each job posting and categorize it into groups such as IT, pro sports, remote and top startups. Along with saving time, LinkedIn indicates that this feature can benefit people who aren't sure what their next step looks like. The company compares it to Airbnb Experiences — you might not know what you're searching for, but you could find something great. Its success relies significantly on how well it understands you versus wasting your time further sorting through jobs that are completely off base. 

According to LinkedIn, applications have risen 50 percent in the US and 36 percent globally, with 85 percent of working people contemplating changing jobs this year. The number of people searching for a job isn't surprising, given the number of recent layoffs. In the tech industry alone, 2024 has already seen layoffs at Twitch, Google, Meta, Discord and more.  

To use LinkedIn's new feature, simply go to the Jobs tab and click on "Explore with Job Collections." You can now also go to Preferences and choose from things like employment and location type. Then LinkedIn will highlight them in green anytime they appear on a job listing. Plus, if a job isn't exactly what you want but the company is, you can now send them an "I'm Interested" notification right from the listing instead of visiting their profile to do so. 

Facebook was flooded with fake advertisements featuring a deepfaked Rishi Sunak ahead of the UK's general election that's expected to take place this year, according to research conducted by communications company Fenimore Harper. The firm found 143 different ads impersonating the UK's Prime Minister on the social network last month, and it believes the ad may have reached more than 400,000 people. It also said that funding for the ads originated from 23 countries, including Turkey, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States, and that the collective amount of money spent to promote them from December 8, 2023 to January 8, 2024 was $16,500. 

As The Guardian notes, one of the fake ads showed a BBC newscast wherein Sunak said that the UK government has decided to invest in a stock market app launched by Elon Musk. That clip then reportedly linked to a fake BBC news page promoting an investment scam. The video, embedded in Fenimore Harper's website, seems pretty realistic if the viewer doesn't look too closely at people's mouths when they speak. Someone who has no idea what deepfakes are could easily be fooled into thinking that the video is legit.

The company says this is the "first widespread paid promotion of a deepfaked video of a UK political figure." That said, Meta has long been contending with election misinformation on its websites and apps. A spokesperson told The Guardian that the "vast majority" of the adverts were disabled before Fenimore Harper's report was published and that "less than 0.5 percent of UK users saw any individual ad that did go live."

Meta announced late last year that it was going to require advertisers to disclose whether the ads they submit have been digitally altered in the event that they're political or social in nature. It's going to start enforcing the rule this year, likely in hopes that it can help mitigate the expected spread of fake news connected to the upcoming presidential elections in the US. 

Meta is rolling out a suite of new tools on Instagram that give users more control over how much spam content and bots they will see on their feeds. People will also be told if something they posted is in accordance with community guidelines. The new tools will be introduced gradually in the coming weeks.

Instagram has developed and improved its automated detection system that checks for spam across comments, tags, story views and followers. The moderation systems will flag fake followers and spam-filled content and give users the option to delete those items in bulk to save users time. Any suspected spam or bot account will get filtered into a separate inbox for you to review, and if an account isn’t spam, you can approve a request and they’ll be added to your following list. Otherwise, all accounts will be automatically removed after 30 days. Posts by profiles that get tagged as spam won't appear on the content creators’ accounts unless they get approved. An account holder can view, bulk delete or approve any tag requests flagged by the system.

Instagram will also send in-app notifications if it detects posts that violate its content policies. This follows Instagram’s most recent update that shows when posts are blocked from appearing on the Explore page, which should stop account holders from repeating those mistakes. For Stories though, Instagram said it is still experimenting with hiding views from accounts that the platform deems as spam.

The company already introduced the "Hidden Words" tool in 2021, which hides messages with questionable keywords. In the coming update, Instagram said it will start to edit out suspected spam through the advanced comment filtering tool. The issue of harassment and spam has long been a focal point for Instagram. It has had to deal with bots storming the platform and proliferating sexually explicit content. However, the company needs to strike a balance between policing inappropriate content and allowing for the free exchange of ideas on its platform. Recently, Instagram has faced scrutiny for allegedly censoring pro-Palestinian content amid the ongoing war in the Gaza.

Hannah Shaw, better known as the “Kitten Lady,” teaches people how to care for neonatal cats, and has raised more than $1 million for animal shelters and rescues. Her Facebook page has gained over a million followers since she began making cat content, but she almost lost it all to a social engineering hack that took over access to her Meta business account.

“I built that community for more than a decade. Thinking that I might lose it was pretty devastating,” Shaw said.

Influencers rely on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for their income. These sites have evolved from side project enablers to the sole source of income for some content creators. However, bad actors have found ways to also take a piece of the piece from those earning an honest living there. Yes, high-level hackers tend to seek entities with deep pockets, targeting them with highly complicated attacks. But much of the cyber criminality today is social engineering jobs, ripping off mid-level creators with much fewer resources than a multinational corporation, but also significantly less technical know-how.

A creator who goes by Hobby Bobbins — who gained a cult following within her niche of vintage clothing restoration — walked me through how all of this happened to her. The attack occurred in almost the exact same steps that led to Shaw’s account takeover. It started with an interview request from an individual going by Rex Hall, who claimed to be a manager for the show “Podcast and Chill with MacG.” This appears to be a real podcast, although no one named Rex Hall seems to be publicly associated with it. (We reached out to the podcasters to determine if they're aware their brand is being used to perpetrate a social engineering scheme and have not heard back.) "Podcast and Chill" is based in South Africa, and according to its Twitter bio, its purpose is in part for "documenting black excellence.” It doesn’t specifically focus on the topics Shaw or Bobbins cover, like animal wellness or vintage clothing. But influencers receive these requests constantly, the podcast hosts had a digital footprint and "Rex" was able to answer any questions that Bobbins had.

The malicious actor asked their targets to hop on a Zoom call for pre-interview prep, including setting up Facebook Live to bring in revenue. “Everything seemed normal at first, the only odd thing was his camera was not on. But even that is not too odd, a lot of people don’t want to be on camera,” Shaw said. After a labyrinth of back and forth over backend settings, the scammer leads their targets to a backend setting called “datasets.” It’s an obscure page, often used to give people admin access to a business account. But victims thought it was a normal part of setting up for Facebook Live because it does include event management options.

Both Shaw and Bobbins pushed back on the request to access datasets and turned off their screen sharing to avoid giving too much away. But the hackers still got in by insisting they help with setup, saying that they needed to view one seemingly innocuous link. In datasets, creators generated a unique URL that the scammers could use to get into the account. “When he captured that direct URL, it basically generated that email invite for him without ever having to access my email without him even needing to know a password or anything,” Bobbins said. “All he had to do was put in the link and accept the invite and then it automatically added his own personal Facebook to my page.”

After gaining access, "Rex" was able to make themself an admin of the page. With that power, they could remove Bobbins’ ability to log in. Support tickets with Meta sent her in circles trying to get her account back. Bobbins’ lost her way to communicate with her 400,000 followers, and hackers deleted years of content she had dedicated her career to making.

The scammers cleaned the page to make room for bogus links that led to ad-filled sites to generate easy revenue. They put in a list of about 100 blocked words so that followers couldn’t flag to each other that the account had been hacked. “Anybody who commented on my page that said ‘stolen’ or ‘hacked’ or ‘scam’ or whatever would be automatically blocked out. So, none of my other followers could see the people who knew that my account was hacked,” said Bobbins. She lost an unknown number of views and “hundreds of dollars” worth of sales each day that her account had been taken over.

Shaw and Bobbins both went to Meta for help, but it was fruitless. “There is zero support for a problem like this with Facebook,” Bobbins said. Resetting her password went nowhere, because it couldn’t change the admin settings that the hackers had changed. When Bobbins finally figured out how to contact the help desk at Facebook with a support ticket, it was closed out “almost instantly” with no help received, she said. In response to our questions about this attack vector or what they’re doing to help creators keep accounts secure, Meta recommended users implement multifactor authentication and report any issues to its support center. But Shaw and Bottoms both have two-factor authentication turned on, and their accounts still got taken over. Meta did, however, introduce better customer service as a feature in its paid verification package earlier this year, another way social media platforms are charging for security features.

Shaw got her account back in about 72 hours from the initial attack by using her following to find a person who could help, but Bobbins wasn’t as lucky. She’s still struggling with access today, over a month since the hack occurred. She briefly got back in and was able to begin manually reuploading her past content. Beyond that, those who accessed the accounts changed location permissions, turned off messaging capabilities, removed her shop from her page, blocked certain followers and took away her $5 per month subscribers. The web of damage became so widespread, Bobbins created a list of the footprints left by the attacker to help others undo the changes. Since the account takeover, Bobbins has struggled to keep access to her account, with unusual flags on seemingly unwarranted copyright violations and other issues kicking her out.

“There’s no extra step that can be taken right now to protect somebody from the thing that I just went through,” Bobbins said. The only prevention for a crime like this is spreading the word, so that others don't fall for the same social engineering trick. That’s why Shaw is helping bring together more than a dozen of other victims of the same scam to minimize damage and call for greater creator security.

Still, there’s no real solution without the platforms creating major change. Platforms should do a better job of quickly investigating complaints from followers because right now the onus is on the page owners to figure it out, said Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. While there are a lot of prescribed processes for traditional identity theft, like freezing your credit, there aren’t well-defined practices for social media account takeovers because creators are at the mercy of these platforms.

If you stumble upon what appears to be an account takeover as a follower, Velasquez recommends getting in touch with the creator outside of that specific platform to let them know a hack is occurring. Victims of an account takeover can also alert the Internet Crimes Complaint Center about the incident, but there’s not much else they can do. Or, creators can avoid using the platform altogether. “At this moment in time, I don't recommend that anybody accepts Facebook Live interviews,” Shaw said.

Earlier this year, Google announced it would shut down its standalone podcast app in 2024. Since then, the company has started moving podcasts into YouTube and its companion app YouTube Music. As a way to ease the transition, Google will be rolling out a migration tool for its current podcast app users. With the tool, users in the US will be able to move their favorite pod subscriptions from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music, or export them for use in other podcast apps.

In the coming weeks, the migration tool will be available through a banner in Google Podcasts. There are step-by-step instructions on how to use the migration tool in Google's Help Center. The entire process is just four steps and you’ll need to have both Google Podcasts and YouTube Music installed on your device to complete the transfer. After the transfer, Google notes it may take a few minutes for everything to show up in your YouTube Music library.

Google's move to ditch its standalone podcast app doesn't come as a total surprise. Google Podcasts has been around since 2018 but it never quite took off like similar apps, including Overcast and Spotify. And YouTube is already a popular destination for podcast fans, with a recent study claiming over 23 percent of podcasts listeners use YouTube as their primary player. Many of today's trending podcasts are already available on YouTube. For podcasts that are not available on the platform, users can add shows directly to their YouTube Music library via RSS feed. This isn't Google's first rodeo. Back in 2020, the company nixed its standalone music app, Google Play Music, in favor of YouTube Music, and it also offered a comprehensive tool to transfer libraries to the new app.

Google Podcasts will remain live for listening through March 2024, after which users will be able to migrate or export their subscriptions through July 2024.