An important step toward a more interoperable “fediverse” — the broader network of decentralized social media apps like Mastodon, Bluesky and others — has been achieved.
Though both Mastodon and Bluesky are decentralized social media efforts, they rely on different underlying protocols.
That could shift in the future, however, to becoming opt-out for Bluesky users only.
So if my Bluesky account is @sarahp@bsky.social, then my bridged account is @sarahp.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy.
Anything from your Bluesky account that interacts with fediverse users will be bridged, including replies, @-mentions, likes, reports, and, if you have fediverse followers, your own Bluesky posts.
Set to arrive in Wix’s app builder tool this week, the capability guides users through a chatbot-like interface to understand the goals, intent and aesthetic of their app.
But reviews of Wix’s AI site builder aren’t exactly glowing, with early adopters reporting bugs and generic-looking finished products.
So — given that the under-the-hood tech is similar, outside a few upgraded generative AI models — why should people expect Wix’s AI app builder to be any better?
Image Credits: WixAbrahami admitted that the AI app builder — like all generative AI tools — might make mistakes.
On Fiverr, a cursory search yields a long list of highly-rated app developers, some of whom charge around the same price as a subscription to Wix’s AI app builder.
eBay’s newest AI feature allows sellers to replace image backgrounds with AI-generated backdrops.
eBay’s background enhancement tool could benefit sellers who lack the equipment or skills to take professional-looking or high-quality photos.
It may also improve on eBay’s previous offering, which used computer vision technology to give listing photos a simple, white background.
The new AI feature is powered by the open-source model Stable Diffusion.
The latest announcement comes a year after eBay introduced an AI feature that generates titles and descriptions for a product listing.
Post News, a microblogging site that emerged in the days after Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, is shutting down just a year and a half after launching in beta.
Founder Noam Bardin, previously CEO of Waze, broke the news in a post on Friday.
“At the end of the day, our service is not growing fast enough to become a real business or a significant platform,” Bardin said.
Instead of subscribing to various different publications, Post users could purchase individual articles from certain partner outlets.
But perhaps it was too soon to try to capture this nascent movement in a social platform.
The tools would be part of a wider set of proposals Ofcom is putting together focused on online child safety.
Consultations for the comprehensive proposals will start in the coming weeks with the AI consultation coming later this year, Ofcom said.
AI researchers are finding ever-more sophisticated ways of using AI to detect, for example, deep fakes, as well as to verify users online.
It found that 32% of the kids reported that they’d seen worrying content online, but only 20% of their parents said they reported anything.
Among children aged 16-17, Ofcom said, 25% said they were not confident about distinguishing fake from real online.
That’s privacy by design.”The funding is notable in part because Cape appeal to users is not yet proven.
The latest round is being co-led by A* and Andreessen Horowitz, with XYZ Ventures, ex/ante, Costanoa Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Forward Deployed VC, and Karman Ventures also participating.
Those jobs may exposed him to users (government departments) who treated the security of personal information and privacy around data usage as essential.
(Cape today also announced a partnership with USCellular — which itself provides a MNVO covering 12 cellular networks, and Doyle said that it’s talking with other telcos, too).
Although payments for this might be anonymous, a user’s data is still routed through the network infrastructure of the underlying carrier, making a users movements and usage observable.
The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has published new guidance which has major implications for adtech giants like Meta and other large platforms.
The guidance, which was confirmed incoming Wednesday as we reported earlier, will steer how privacy regulators interpret the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in a critical area.
The full opinion of the EDPB on so-called “consent or pay” runs to 42-pages.
However a market leader imposing that kind of binary choice looks unviable, per the EDPB, an expert body made up of representatives of data protection authorities from around the EU.
“Online platforms should give users a real choice when employing ‘consent or pay’ models,” Talu wrote.
After its IPO, the platform is planning a slew of product features for the year ahead, and — spoiler alert — most of them are powered by AI.
“I think the IPO was an important milestone, but we’re just focused on building for our users,” Reddit Chief Product Officer Pali Baht told TechCrunch.
Reddit’s product roadmap includes faster loading times, more tools for moderators and developers, and an AI-powered language translation feature to bring Reddit to a more global audience.
According to Reddit’s IPO filing, in December 2023, 50% of Reddit’s daily active unique users were from non-U.S. countries.
The company will build on those updates with other new tools, like an LLM that’s trained on moderators’ past decisions and actions.
Privacy-focused search engine Brave announced Wednesday that it is revamping its answer engine to return AI-powered synthesized answers.
Brave said that informational queries, such as the one listed about the new answer engine, will automatically rely on AI to present information in a summarized format.
“The user only needs to enter a query as they are used to doing with a regular search engine.
Multiple reports have pointed out that AI-powered search could have grave effects on the future of the web.
“This challenge is not unique to Brave Search but present across most AI-powered answer engines and chatbots, premium or open.
Yet a binary choice (aka “consent or pay”) is exactly what Meta is currently forcing on users in the region.
The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has been meeting this week to discuss adopting an opinion on so-called “consent or pay”, following a request made back in February by a trio of concerned data protection authorities.
A spokeswoman for the EDPB confirmed to TechCrunch that it adopted an opinion on “consent or pay” on Wednesday morning, saying it will be published later today.
However the choice Meta gives EU users is a binary one: Either consent to its use of personal data for targeted advertisng or pay a monthly fee to access ad-free versions of its social networks.
But on the core issue of whether Meta’s mechanism complies with the EU’s long-standing data protection framework the Board’s opinion is key.
