News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday.
Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news.
It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project.
Regardless of whether or not you were an Artifact user — I was for a time — that Yahoo is still feeling acquisitive under its current ownership structure matters.
Artifact is hardly the only startup project in the market today that might be looking for a new home, after all.
It’s election season in the U.S., and Instagram has changed the way that it recommends political content.
But the platforms won’t proactively recommend content about politics, which could limit users’ ability to learn about political issues from people outside of their existing circles.
Plus, Instagram’s definition of political content is a bit broad — it describes political content as anything “potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics.”If these changes bother you, you can adjust your settings to override Instagram’s political content filters.
Changing Instagram’s political content settingsIf you don’t want Instagram to filter out political content from your feed, here are steps to opt out of these changes.
Limiting political content is going to have a ripple effect.
Instagram is introducing new nighttime nudges for teen accounts to limit their time on the app, the company announced on Thursday.
The new nighttime nudges will appear when teens have spent more than 10 minutes on Instagram in places like Reels or DMs late at night.
The notice will remind teens that it’s late and encourage them to close the app and go to sleep.
The nighttime nudges will be shown automatically and can’t be turned off, which means teens can’t opt in or out of seeing them.
The new nighttime nudges join Instagram’s other features aimed at reducing teens’ time on its app.
Instagram has a feature where you can add music directly to your posts — a popular option among users who want to add life to their content and show off their musical taste.
Then, you click on the music note icon at the top of the editing screen, which brings you to Instagram’s music library of over 12,000 songs.
Previously only available on Stories and Reels, Instagram expanded its music feature in 2022 to bring the capability to image posts.
However, Instagram has yet to support music on carousels with videos.
The app is also reportedly experimenting with music on profiles — a nod to the MySpace era.
Instagram is launching the ability for users to post video Notes, the company announced on Wednesday.
Up until now, you could only post text or emojis to your status update.
Now, you can post a two-second looping video Note that will be visible to your mutual followers or Close Friends for 24 hours.
Another differentiator between video Notes and video Stories is that you can only post content from your front-facing camera when sharing video Notes.
Plus, you have to capture the content in the app when posting a video Note, which means that you can’t upload a video from your phone’s camera gallery.
Many people use Notes to communicate non-verbal ideas and feelings. They are a great way to quickly write down what’s on your mind, or to share something funny or cute.…
