If you haven’t been seeing much political content on Instagram lately, there’s a reason for that.
Since March, Instagram and Threads have instituted a new default setting that limits political content you see from people you’re not following.
Hundreds of creators, convened by GLAAD and Accountable Tech, have signed an open letter demanding that Instagram make the political content limit an opt-in feature, rather than on by default.
Instagram’s definition of political content leaves a lot of room for interpretation, which stokes further concern among these creators.
“Removing political recommendations as a default setting, and consequently stopping people from seeing suggested political content poses a serious threat to political engagement, education, and activism,” the letter says.
Apple News is testing a new game for iOS 17.5 called Quartiles, which requires players to organize a grid of 20 syllables into 5 four-syllable words.
Spotted by Gadget Hacks, the interface for Quartiles looks a lot like the New York Times’ newest hit, Connections.
Did Apple News sherlock the New York Times?
While it may appear odd for a news aggregator to continue investing in games, that’s exactly what has been working for the New York Times.
But given that the New York Times is low-key running a gaming studio now, it’s not a bad idea for Apple to churn out some new, preferably square-shaped games.
Astranis has taken the wraps off a new generation of communications satellites that will serve broadband to customers on Earth from geostationary orbit, but faster and smaller than any comsat up there.
Astranis builds and operates relatively small broadband satellites in high orbits, and sells that capacity on to telecom and internet service providers.
The startup takes prize in the comparatively diminutive size of its GEO satellites, which are normally huge and, as a result, are easy to track and potentially attack.
Like the company’s current satellites, Omega will have the ability to maneuver in GEO using on-board all-electric propulsion.
The company aims to complete the first Omega satellite in 2025 and launch to orbit in 2026.
By default, children will be able to read, but not write, comments under both of these content settings modes.
(This option is generally the first step into the main YouTube experience, after using the dedicated YouTube Kids app as a younger child.)
Parents can view and change their child’s settings from the parent settings on YouTube or via Google’s Family Link parental controls app, YouTube notes.
More recently, however, the Kids Online Safety Act has gained steam, demanding more robust parental controls from platform makers.
After launching parental controls in 2021, YouTube rolled out a handful of product updates to make YouTube safer for teens in November 2023.
AT&T has begun notifying U.S. state authorities and regulators of a security incident after confirming that millions of customer records posted online last month were authentic.
According to AT&T the records contained valid data on more than 7.9 million current AT&T customers.
AT&T took action some three years after a subset of the leaked data first appeared online, which prevented any meaningful analysis of the data.
The full cache of 73 million leaked customer records was dumped online last month, allowing customers to verify that their data was genuine.
AT&T eventually acknowledged that the leaked data belongs to its customers, including about 65 million former customers.
On Wednesday, the tech giant announced that a handful of enhanced editing features previously limited to Pixel devices and paid subscribers — including its AI-powered Magic Editor — will now make their way to all Google Photos users for free.
But with the growing number of AI-powered editing tools flooding the market, Google has decided to make its set of AI photo editing features available to more people for free.
Previously, these kinds of edits would require Magic Eraser and other professional editing tools, like Photoshop, to get the same effect.
With the expansion, Magic Editor will come to all Pixel devices, while iOS and Android users (whose phones meet the requirements) will get 10 Magic Editor saves per month.
The other tools will be available to all Google Photos users, no Google One subscription is required.
Ah, spring has sprung here in the Northeast United States, and it’s not only flowers that are blooming.
Today on Equity’s startup-focused Wednesday show, we dug into the Multiverse-Searchlight deal, which reminded us of the Wonderschool-Early Day transaction that we covered on the show a few weeks ago.
Startup Land is feeling quite busy and high-dollar again, and that’s a lot of fun!
We wrapped up the show with a cool discussion of this new venture capital fund that’s targeting growth-rounds in Africa.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Anticipation is building for TechCrunch Early Stage 2024, where industry leaders and budding entrepreneurs alike are eagerly awaiting a bevy of startup-focused sessions.
Attendees can expect to be inspired by Oliver Palnau’s entrepreneurial journey, which began at the age of 23 with his venture into the real estate market.
During the session, Palnau and Romano will detail how to ignite interest from customers and investors, build a minimum viable product (MVP), raise initial capital, and assemble a winning team.
Attendees will leave the session empowered and equipped with practical advice to embark on their own entrepreneurial journeys with confidence and determination.
We can’t wait for this session and all the other early stage–focused content at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024.
Venture capitalists’ appetite for fusion startups has been up and down in the last few years.
The road to true fusion power remains long, but the kicker is that it’s no longer theoretical.
He added the timeline was to be able to get to fusion energy by the mid-2030s.
If we manage to get to that then the middle of the 2030s is possible.”The startup’s investors are equally convinced.
And there are at least 43 other companies developing nuclear fusion technologies.
Meta announced on Tuesday it’s rolling out the ability for Messenger users to create shared albums in chats, send photos in high-definition, and share larger files up to 100MB in size.
With these new features, Messenger is targeting people who tend to create shared albums or share HD images via services like Google Drive.
Now, users can create albums of photos and videos in group chats, whether it’s to organize photos of a recent spring break or grandma’s 80th birthday celebration.
The launch of the new feature follows Meta’s rollout of support for HD photos on WhatsApp back in September 2023.
The new features are rolling out on mobile to all Messenger users.
