The UK's NCA and IWF are urging parents to tighten social media privacy settings as AI tools make it easier to turn ordinary images into abuse material.
| Pranob Mehrotra | July 4 |
Google Maps is reportedly developing a Gemini-powered feature that could let users discover restaurants and place food orders without leaving the app.
| Moinak Pal | July 3 |
A new Pew Research Center survey has found that 56 percent of Americans support banning social media for anyone under 16, with support crossing party lines and age groups.
| Pranob Mehrotra | July 3 |
Instagram approved and displayed advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material in India before removing them following an investigation.
| Moinak Pal | July 3 |
WhatsApp’s username feature has run into trouble in India, where officials are concerned about impersonation fraud and fake accounts.
| S. Kumar Manglam | July 2 |
X has launched Live Studio, a dedicated streaming command center inside Creator Studio, and is putting $1 million on the table to incentivize creators to go live on the platform.
| Pranob Mehrotra | July 2 |
Reddit is locking down old.reddit.com with a login wall, and the admin's post hinting it may not last forever has longtime users worried.
| M. Priyadarshini | July 1 |
A new study tested 86 child safety features across TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, and found that more than half were broken, buried, or missing entirely.
| M. Priyadarshini | June 30 |
A new study found TikTok videos about ACL rehab exercises were poor overall, raising fresh concerns about teens using viral clips for injury recovery advice.
| Vikhyaat Vivek | June 30 |
Instagram is testing new shortcuts for Your Algorithm, making it easier for users to adjust recommendations while browsing Feed and Reels.
| S. Kumar Manglam | June 28 |
Snapchat Planets turns your friendship ranking into a tiny social solar system, where being Mercury is elite and Neptune might sting a little.
| Vikhyaat Vivek | October 14 |
Meta is testing interest-based channels, phone-to-TV casting, and a horizontal video hub as Instagram for TV expands beyond Samsung's launch.
| M. Priyadarshini | June 22 |
A new study suggests AI-generated junk content has become one of TikTok's defining features. Worse still, children and educational content appear to be among the platform's hardest-hit corners.
| Shimul Sood | June 21 |
Instagram now lets you add a unique caption to each of up to 20 carousel slides, rolling out to all users starting today.
| Shikhar Mehrotra | June 18 |
A new Kapwing report found that 59% of videos shown to new TikTok accounts are AI slop, roughly three times the rate found on YouTube.
| M. Priyadarshini | June 17 |
Threads is rolling out upgrades to its Communities feature and a new feed personalization tool called Your Algo.
| Pranob Mehrotra | June 17 |
Meta is rolling out AI Mode on Facebook, a new feature that uses Meta AI to answer questions by pulling from public content across Meta apps, rather than returning standard search results.
| Pranob Mehrotra | June 15 |
A Molly Rose Foundation study found 34% of UK teens encountered suicide, self-harm, or eating disorder content on social media in a single week, barely unchanged from before the Online Safety Act took effect.
| Pranob Mehrotra | June 14 |
A brief Meta outage logged users out of Facebook and Messenger, sent Downdetector complaints surging, and also affected Instagram while Threads remained less clear in available reports.
| Paulo Vargas | June 12 |
A new Australian study links two or more hours of daily social media use in early adolescence with poorer mental health outcomes one year later.
| Vikhyaat Vivek | June 12 |
Instagram is expanding its AI-powered effects for voice notes to more users, growing the feature from eight effects at its India launch in March to 15, including a new Goal! filter tied to the FIFA World Cup.
| Pranob Mehrotra | June 11 |
Reddit’s new video comments could make replies more useful in DIY, cooking, makeup, fitness, and tutorial communities, where showing a step can be easier than explaining it in text.
| S. Kumar Manglam | June 11 |
TikTok is testing voice calling in DMs, according to screenshots shared by a user on X. The feature will reportedly require both participants to be friends and offer a "Mute calls" option in DM settings.
| Pranob Mehrotra | June 10 |
New research from Northeastern University found that TikTok's "Not Interested" button loses effectiveness quickly, with flagged content resurfacing on user feeds within minutes after they stop pressing it.
| Pranob Mehrotra | June 10 |
Instagram is giving users real control over their feeds with Your Algorithm, a feature that lets you add and remove topics across the whole app.
| M. Priyadarshini | June 10 |
The British Film Institute is preserving 430 viral videos and memes, including Charlie bit my finger, Badgers, and the Liz Truss lettuce livestream.
| Vikhyaat Vivek | June 8 |
You can now rearrange your Instagram profile grid any way you like, with no limits on how many times you reorder your posts.
| M. Priyadarshini | June 8 |
Mr. Lin emphasized that “Narnia” was an exception and insisted that the company’s perspective on movie theaters had not changed. “There is a group of filmmakers who still want theatrical. Those are filmmakers that we’ve accepted we just won’t work with,” he said, deploying what’s become his trademark bluntness.
| Shimul Sood | June 6 |
Internal documents from lawsuits filed by 1,400+ school districts reveal how Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube deliberately targeted students, even during school hours.
| Rachit Agarwal | June 5 |
Google is giving creators a fresh spotlight in Search, and it could change how you keep tabs on your favorite online personalities. The update brings a new way to discover content without endlessly jumping between apps.
| Shimul Sood | June 5 |
Meta has launched Creator Assistant, a conversational AI tool built into the Facebook creator dashboard that analyzes your content performance, explains why it worked, and suggests new ideas based on trending content.
| M. Priyadarshini | June 4 |
Meta is testing a new Instagram feature to prevent teens from being repeatedly served the same content, as it expands 13+ content settings globally.
| M. Priyadarshini | June 2 |
X has launched React with Video, a new feature that lets iOS users respond to posts with a recorded video reaction using green screen, split screen, or picture-in-picture modes.
| Rachit Agarwal | June 2 |
Meta is bringing paid features to Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Instagram Plus may appeal to creators and heavy users, while WhatsApp Plus looks harder to justify.
| S. Kumar Manglam | May 28 |
X is cracking down on repost accounts and content thieves by reducing payouts and shifting engagement credit back toward original creators.
| Varun Mirchandani | May 24 |
UK police are done waiting for tech companies to act and are now pushing the government to block under-16s from unsafe platforms entirely.
| M. Priyadarshini | May 23 |
The World Happiness Report found that the more time you spend on social media, the greater the loss to your well-being, and young people in the West are feeling it the most.
| Rachit Agarwal | May 23 |
Meta’s new Forum app turns Facebook Groups into a standalone hub for questions, recommendations, and AI-powered search, giving the company a Reddit-like test built from communities it already owns.
| Paulo Vargas | May 22 |