New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing so-called “addictive feeds” to children under 18, unless they obtain parental consent.
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act defines an addictive feed as one where the content is recommended or prioritized based on information about the user or the user’s device — basically, these are the algorithmic news feeds used by most social apps.
“Non-addictive feeds,” a category that includes “feeds listed in chronological order,” would still be allowed.
“New York is leading the nation to protect our kids from addictive social media feeds and shield their personal data from predatory companies,” Governor Hochul said.
It would also prohibit platforms from sending notifications related to these feeds between the ages of midnight and 6am without parental consent.
LinkedIn is testing a new TikTok-like short-form video feed, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday.
With this new test, LinkedIn joins numerous other popular apps that have launched their own short-form video feeds following TikTok’s rise in popularity, including Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Netflix.
Null posted a short demo on LinkedIn showcasing the new feed, which lives in the app’s navigation bar in a new “Video” tab.
LinkedIn’s new feed would give creators a new place to share their video content and potentially reach more viewers.
It’s possible that LinkedIn may also monetize the feed at some point in the future to entice creators to post their video content on the app.
Would-be Twitter/X rival Bluesky is looking to more directly invest in its developer community in order to foster growth.
The company last week announced “AT Protocol Grants,” a new program that will dole out small grants to developers building on its new social networking protocol.
Initially, Bluesky said it would release $10,000 in grants of $500 to $2,000 per project apiece, based on factors like cost, usage, and more.
The concept of decentralized social networking has been around longer than Bluesky, however, with many projects, including Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, and others, backed by the ActivityPub protocol.
Bluesky says the projects receiving the grants can be useful to either developers or end users and will be paid out via public GitHub Sponsorships.
In the last 12 months, reader apps have adopted AI to change how users consume news.
However, developer Nate Parrott’s app Feeeed (it’s four Es), which is available for iPhones and iPads, focus more on creating an algorithmic timeline to combine different sources.
The appJust like any reader app, Feeeed lets you add RSS feeds to your timeline.
“The whole idea of a news feed for yourself, on your own terms is still key to understanding the app, I think.
“The big challenge for Feeeed is giving people a feed that feels deeply personal without asking them to do too much work.
TikTok has slowly been introducing new topic feeds to its homepage in addition to the popular “Following” and “For You” feeds. Some users are noticing new video feeds dedicated to…
