Meta is adding some of its teen safety features to Instagram accounts featuring children, even if they're ran by adults. While children under 13 years of age aren't allowed to sign up on the social media app, Meta allows adults like parents and managers to run accounts for children and post videos and photos of them. The company says that these accounts are "overwhelmingly used in benign ways," but they're also targeted by predators who leave sexual comments and ask for sexual images in DMs.
In the coming months, the company is giving these adult-ran kid accounts its strictest message settings to prevent unsavory DMs. It will also automatically turn on Hidden Words for them so that account owners can filter out unwanted comments on their posts. In addition, Meta will avoid recommending them to accounts blocked by teen users to lessen the chances predators finding them. The company will also make it harder for suspicious users to find them through search and will hide comments from potentially suspicious adults on their posts. Meta says will continue "to take aggressive action" on accounts breaking its rules: It has already removed 135,000 Instagram accounts for leaving sexual comments on and requesting sexual images from adult-managed accounts featuring children earlier this year. It also deleted an additional, 500,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to those original ones.
Meta introduced teen accounts on Instagram last year to automatically opt users 13 to 18 years of age into stricter privacy features. The company then launched teen accounts on Facebook and Messenger in April and is even testing AI age-detection tech to determine whether a supposed adult user has lied about their birthday so they could be moved to a teen account if needed.
Since then, Meta has rolled out more and more safety features meant for younger teens. It released Location Notice in June to let younger teens know that they're chatting with someone from another country, since sextortion scammers typically lie about their location. (To note, authorities have observed a huge increase in "sextortion" cases involving kids being threatened online to send explicit images.) Meta also introduced a nudity protection feature, which blurs images in DM detected as containing nudity, since sextortion scammers may send nude pictures first in an effort to convince a victim to send reciprocate.
Today, Meta is also launching new ways for teens to view safety tips. When they chat with someone in DMs, they can now tap on the "Safety Tips" icon at the top of the conversation to bring up a screen where they can restrict, block or report the other user. Meta has also launched a combined block and report option in DMs, so that users can take both actions together in one tap.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-is-adding-new-safety-features-to-kid-focused-ig-accounts-run-by-adults-110000524.html?src=rss
Meta is no longer paying creators to post on Threads. The company quietly ended the Threads bonus program, which offered some creators thousands of dollars a month in bonuses, earlier this year, Engadget has confirmed.
The company hasn't officially commented on why it stopped the payments, but an Instagram support page that once listed details about the creator incentives no longer references Threads at all. In posts on Threads, creators who were once part of the program have said they stopped receiving payments around the end of April. That's roughly one year after Meta first started paying creators for popular posts. Though Meta never publicly shared a lot of details about how the program worked, creators who previously spoke with Engadget reported that they were able to earn monthly bonuses ranging from $500 to $5,000 in exchange for hitting specific metrics around post counts and views.
It's not clear what Meta's strategy for creators on Threads is going forward. The company is still trying to lure more brands and notable faces to the platform, and has tested features to help people find popular creators they previously followed on X. Meta has also added creator-friendly tools, like the ability to add more links to profiles and more detailed analytics for the app.
But Meta has yet to clearly explain what it can offer creators in return. The platform is hardly driving any traffic to outside websites. It's also much harder to build a following on Threads, since the platform defaults to an algorithmic timeline consisting mainly of recommended content. This means that it's easier for a post from an unknown account to go viral, but viral posts rarely lead to an influx of new followers.
Meta may simply be calculating that Threads already has enough momentum without paying people for viral content. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said he believes the app can be Meta's next billion-user platform. It's difficult to see how that happens without the buy-in of creators.
Have a tip for Karissa? You can reach her by email, on X, Bluesky, Threads, or send a message to @karissabe.51 to chat confidentially on Signal.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-has-ended-its-bonus-program-on-threads-201627935.html?src=rss
INDIA - 2024/02/12: In this photo illustration, the Threads logo is seen displayed on a mobile phone screen and in the background. (Photo Illustration by Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
It’s likely that you predominantly associate Spotify with music and podcasts, but if you’re a Premium member, you also get 15 hours of audiobook access per month. For some members, though, that clearly isn’t enough, as Spotify has introduced a new add-on subscription that doubles that listening time.
Audiobooks+ was first trialled in Ireland and Canada, and is launching initially for Premium Individual and Plan members in a number of countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Once you’ve added it to your existing subscription, you’ll get an additional 15 hours of listening to audiobooks included in Spotify’s catalog, on top of what’s already included in the base plan. For individuals, Spotify Premium on its own costs $12 per month.
For those on Premium Family ($20 per month) or Duo ($17 per month) plans, the plan manager has to purchase the add-on, and they’re also able to buy a one-time top-up of 10 hours if they run out before their entitlement resets each month.
Spotify does already offer an Audiobooks Access plan to customers in the US only, which is separate from the Premium offering and also includes access to music and podcasts with ads.
Pricing for Audiobooks+ varies by market, but will cost £9 per month in the UK (around $12), where an individual Premium plan costs £12 (about $16). We’ll find out what it costs here when it arrives in the US, which Spotify told Engadget will happen in the "coming weeks".
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/spotifys-audiobooks-add-on-is-now-available-to-some-premium-subscribers-165030551.html?src=rss
TikTok has proven to be a powerful platform to help tunes go viral and now the company is making it easier for songwriters to benefit from that reach. The social media site has rolled out a pair of new features in beta: a Songwriter label that identifies users as such under their profile, and a Songwriter Music Tab that lets them spotlight tracks they've written or co-written.
So far, only a limited number of publishers and songwriters can apply to get the new label and tab. TikTok noted that several established songwriters including Lauren Christy (Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears), Toby Gad (Fergie, John Legend) and Justin Tranter (Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande) are among the first to gain access. Others who want to join can put their names on a waitlist.
TikTok and its parent ByteDance developed the Songwriter Features after surveying 871 songwriters and doing 18 in-depth interviews. Those findings informed the design of the feature with the aim of improving discovery and monetization opportunities while raising songwriters' profiles on TikTok. The platform noted that 53 percent of full-time songwriters who post content on social media do so on TikTok.
When it comes to royalties and copyright, TikTok has taken a similar tack to YouTube and other social media sites. All the music available on TikTok can be used in videos and the platform has deals in place with distributors and labels to license music. Artists then receive royalties whenever creators use their music on TikTok, the amount of which depends on the individual distributor.
TikTok is following belatedly in the heels of Spotify, which has offered a similar songwriter spotlight feature since 2020. Last month, ByteDance introduced the TikTok for Artists music insight platform designed to help musicians gain access to "data and insights about their music, posts and followers."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktoks-latest-feature-will-help-songwriters-show-off-their-work-131512204.html?src=rss
Threads is testing letting you sign up with a Facebook account rather than an Instagram account. The new option, spotted by Social Media Today, doesn't appear to be widely available yet, but is already mentioned in a Meta support article.
Besides making it easier for people who don't have an Instagram account to quickly create an account on Meta's X and Bluesky competitor, this new Facebook sign up option should influence the kind of posts and ads that get recommended to you.
"Signing up to Threads with your Facebook account helps unlock features that work across Threads and Facebook, like using the same login info to access both apps," Meta writes in a support article. "If you create a Threads profile with your Facebook account, we’ll combine your info across Threads and Facebook."
Encouraging users to build their Threads profile using the information and followers they had on Instagram was one of the ways Meta quickly grew its Threads user base. It hasn't always led to the best experience on Threads, though. As it turns out, growth-obsessed Instagram users produce fairly shallow text posts. And because most people's Instagram accounts are associated with their Threads profile, they get served a lot of that subpar engagement bait by default. If you came to Threads looking for the relative wit of X, you'd come away pretty disappointed.
Letting you sign up with Facebook will likely have its own shortcomings (namely, modern Facebook is pretty spammy, too), but it at least acknowledges that what people want from Instagram is different from what they want from Threads.
Meta has made a concerted effort as of late to establish Threads as more of an independent entity. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram at Meta, shared that the company planned to remove "the Instagram graph import from the onboarding flow" back in November 2024. Threads also started testing using its own separate direct messaging inbox in June, after relying on Instagram DMs since launch.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-is-testing-facebook-account-sign-ups-191214734.html?src=rss
If you were having trouble viewing Reddit today, you weren't alone. Downdetector showed a spike in outages and problems at the site. Reddit acknowledged the problem on Wednesday. At 12:38PM ET, it said the situation had been resolved.
Reddit told Engadget that an update was the culprit. "An update we made caused some instability," a company spokesperson said. "We reverted and are seeing Reddit ramp back up." As to what that update was, we don't yet know, but it was probably a standard tweak to the site that just had some bugs on board.
If you tried to visit Reddit this morning, you likely saw a message reading, "Server error: We have encountered an error. Please try again later." The company's system status page showed a "partial outage" for the desktop web, mobile web and mobile apps.
Downdetector
Meanwhile, Downdetector's status page (above) showed a sharp upward trend in problems starting at around 11:20 AM ET. The graph dropped again after Reddit implemented its fix.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/reddit-is-back-online-after-a-brief-outage-161522867.html?src=rss
Meta is going after creators who rip off other users' content as part of a broader effort to fix Facebook's feed. In its latest update, the company laid out new steps it's taking to penalize accounts that lift work from others.
In a blog post for creators, Meta says that accounts that "repeatedly" and "improperly" reuse other accounts' text posts, photos or videos will have their pages demonetized "for a period of time." Meta willa also throttle all of their posts, not just the ones with the offending content. The company notes that the change is meant to target "repeated reposting of content from other creators without permission or meaningful enhancements" and not content like reaction videos.
Meta has previously taken similar steps to reward original content on Instagram, where the company has actively replaced reposted Reels with the original clip. The company now says it's looking into a similar move on Facebook by adding a link to the original video when it detects a duplicate.
Meta
The latest crackdown comes as Meta says it's trying to reduce the amount of spammy and other undesirable posts in Facebook's feed. Earlier this year, the company said it would demonetize creators who share posts with spammy captions and go after creators that manipulate engagement on the platform. In its newest update, Meta shared that since the start of the year it penalized more than 500,000 accounts that engaged in such tactics, "applying measures ranging from demoting their comments and reducing the distribution of their content to preventing these accounts from monetizing." The company has also removed more than 10 million profiles it says impersonated "large content producers."
Additionally, Meta is rolling out new in-app insights it says can help realtors understand issues affecting their reach or monetization status. The new dashboard will highlight potential problems, like unoriginal content or spammy captions, as well as issues affecting monetization.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-says-its-cracking-down-on-facebook-creators-who-steal-content-203713569.html?src=rss
Two years in, Threads is starting to look more and more like the most viable challenger to X. It passed 350 million monthly users earlier this year and Mark Zuckerberg has predicted it could be Meta's next billion-user app.
But Threads still isn't sending much traffic to other websites, which could make the platform less appealing for creators, publishers and others whose businesses depend on non-Meta owned websites. According to Similarweb, a marketing intelligence firm, outbound referral traffic from Threads climbed to 28.4 million visits in June. That's a notable jump from 15.1 million visits a year ago, but still relatively tiny considering Threads is currently averaging more than 115 million users a day on its app, according to Similarweb.
Regular Threads users have long suspected that Meta deprioritizes posts with links. For most of the last two years of Threads' existence the common wisdom was that users shouldn't share links, or should only share them as replies to a primary post. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, who also oversees Threads, hasn't exactly encouraged linking either. He said last year that Threads doesn't intentionally downrank links but that "we don’t place much value on" them because "people don’t like and comment on links much."
Meta's reluctance wasn't just about users' preferences, though. The company was also concerned about how spammers and other bad actors might abuse links on the text-based platform. More recently though, Meta has changed course, and has been taking steps to surface more "good" links in recommended posts.
"We’ve been working on making sure links are ranked properly," Mosseri said in June. "Links have been working much better for more than a month now." The company has also bolstered links on the platform by allowing users to add more links to their Threads profiles and providing link-specific analytics to its "insights" feature. "We want Threads to be a place that helps you grow your reach – even outside of Threads," Meta said in a May update.
But despite these changes, Threads is still sending very little traffic to websites. Data shared by Similarweb shows that during May and June of last year — when Threads had more than 150 million monthly users — it sent just 24.8 million referrals to outside websites. During May and June of this year, that number more than doubled, rising to 51.8 million.
Those numbers still suggest, though, that the majority of Threads' users are rarely, if ever, clicking on links they see on Threads. Lia Haberman, a social media marketing consultant and author of the ICYMI newsletter, said she's not surprised. "People just got trained not to look for them, not to include them, not to think about them," she tells Engadget. "You can't just flip a switch and all of a sudden expect people to embrace links."
Publishers, a group that likely posts more links on Threads than anyone else, don't seem to be seeing significant traffic from Threads either. Data provided by Chartbeat, a company that provides analytics data to publishers, shows that publisher page views from Threads have nearly doubled since the start of the year, rising from 8.8 million in January to 15.1 million in June.
Interestingly, according to both Similarweb and Chartbeat's data for 2025, referrals from Threads peaked in March. That month, Threads sent 28.8 million outbound referrals to websites, according to Similarweb, while Chartbeat publishers saw 25 million page views from the platform.
But while the latest stats show that traffic from Threads has grown significantly over the last year, it still represents a tiny proportion of the publishers' traffic overall. According to Chartbeat, over the last year and a half Threads has consistently accounted for less than one tenth of a percent of sites' referral traffic. By comparison, Facebook referrals have hovered around 2 - 3 percent over the same period, while Google Discover has accounted for about 13 - 14 percent of referrals. Even among other "small" sources of referrals, like chatGPT, Reddit and Perplexity, Threads is only ahead of Perplexity in terms of the number of referrals it sends.
Threads referrals even pale in comparison to Twitter's, which was never known as a major traffic driver even before Elon Musk's takeover of the company. In January of 2018, Twitter accounted for 3 percent of publishers' page views, according to Chartbeat data reported by the Press Gazette. By April of 2023, after Musk's takeover but before he rebranded the site to X, that number had fallen to 1.2 percent.
Chartbeat's data isn't a complete picture — stats provided to Engadget were based on an analysis of 3,000 sites that have opted in to anonymized data sharing — but the slight increase in referral traffic roughly lines up with another major change Meta made this year. In January, following Mark Zuckerberg's move to end fact checking and walk back content moderation rules, Threads also ended its moratorium on recommending political content to all users.
Following this change, some publishers of political news, including Newsweek, Politico and Forbes saw a spike in referrals from Threads, Digidayreported. But those gains don't seem to be universal, and it's not clear why some publishers may be benefitting more than others. "Threads is trailing significantly in traffic, subscription conversions, and overall conversion rate," compared with Bluesky and X, the Boston Globe's VP of Platforms Mark Karolian recently shared on Threads.
While Threads' growth so far hasn't been hampered by its inability to drive users off-platform, it could become an increasingly important issue for Meta if it really wants to bring more creators onto the platform. The company is also getting ready to flip the switch on ads on the platform. A user base that ignores links could complicate Meta's pitch to advertisers, who are already taking a cautious approach to Threads. Meta declined to comment.
Haberman says that Threads' ambivalence toward links might be symptomatic of a larger identity crisis the platform is still facing. It has a large user base, but it's not always clear who Threads is really for. It isn't known as a destination to follow breaking news, like Twitter once was, or as a place with highly-engaged subcultures, she notes. "Threads needs to have a purpose," she says. "And right now, it seems very much like a suggestion box at work where people are just filing complaints and trauma dumping."
Whether smaller platforms like Threads can reliably drive traffic to websites is an increasingly urgent question. At a time when online search feels like it's getting worse, AI is rapidly replacing many searches and cannibalizing websites' search traffic. Publishers, as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, are being hit especially hard by these shifts.
Threads is extremely unlikely to fill those gaps on its own, even if referral traffic vastly improves. And publishers in particular have plenty of reasons not to become too reliant on a Meta-owned platform. At the same time, there's clearly an opportunity for Threads to play a bigger role in a post-search world. That would not only benefit the creators, publishers and small business owners Meta has long courted, it could help Threads establish an identity of its own.
Have a tip for Karissa? You can reach her by email, on X, Bluesky, Threads, or send a message to @karissabe.51 to chat confidentially on Signal.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-users-still-barely-click-links-170139103.html?src=rss
CANADA - 2025/01/27: In this photo illustration, the Threads logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Discord has begun rolling out its in-app Orbs currency to everyone. In conjunction with the platform's Quest system, users can earn Orbs by watching ads on Discord. You can then use the currency to purchase exclusive drip for your profile, including badges, effects and avatars. It's also possible to exchange Orbs for three-day Nitro credits and anything else you can buy on the Discord Shop.
Sometimes developers will also offer the currency in exchange for simply trying out their game, or completing a specific gameplay task. Other rewards include exclusive profile decorations you can only earn by completing an associated Quest. The fastest way to start earning Orbs is by tapping the "Discover" icon in Discord's sidebar and then selecting "Quests." There you will see any promotions Discord is currently running, along with recently completed ones. If you're keen on earning Orbs, be sure to check back often as Discord frequently rotates new Quests in and out.
Discord
The online response to Orbs has been about what you would expect. When Discord first announced the currency, most people on the Discord subreddit were either lukewarm on the idea or outright hostile to it. However, the company says users are broadly in favor of it. Discord points to a survey it conducted before it began rolling out Orbs to beta testers this past May. In September 2024, the company found 82 percent of users it surveyed said they would like to earn a virtual currency on the platform, with nearly half of survey respondents saying a virtual currency would improve their overall experience.
In June, Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy told Engadget the company sees Orbs as a way to give players something in return for their time and attention while aiding game studios with discoverability. In my testing, I've found the system is easy enough to ignore if you don't care about customizing your profile, and they're not necessary to access any of Discord's core functionality.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/discords-virtual-orbs-currency-is-now-available-for-everyone-to-earn-130043599.html?src=rss
Facebook has been showing some users a pop-up message asking them if they want to allow the social network to create collages, recaps and AI restylings using photos they've yet to upload from their camera roll. According to TechCrunch, Facebook has been showing users the message when they upload a new Story on the app. It doesn't pop up for everyone, however, since we weren't able to replicate the event. In that notification, Meta wrote that in order to create ideas for users, it'll select media from their camera roll and upload it to the company's cloud "on an ongoing basis, based on info like time, location and themes."
The message also said that the media won't be used for ads targeting, but its wording raised concerns about the possibility of Meta using people's camera roll files to train its artificial intelligence technology. Meta assued The Verge that it's not "currently training [its] AI models with these photos." The company's comms manager, Maria Cubeta, told the publication that Meta "testing suggestions of ready-to-share and curated content from a person’s camera roll" as part of its efforts to explore ways to make content sharing easier. "These suggestions are opt-in only and only shown to you — unless you decide to share them — and can be turned off at any time. Camera roll media may be used to improve these suggestions, but are not used to improve AI models in this test," she said.
The test feature has a limited reach, but it has been ongoing for some time, seeing as some users have reported seeing it earlier this year. In fact, Facebook already has a Help page for it, giving users instructions on how to allow and disallow "creative ideas with camera roll cloud processing" on Facebook. For those who've previously clicked Allow when the message popped up for them, they can go to Settings and switch it off in the "Camera roll sharing suggestions" section under Preferences.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/facebook-test-uses-meta-ai-to-process-photos-youve-yet-to-upload-140021100.html?src=rss
A logo of Meta AI sits on a wall with other pictures at the company's House during the 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 24, 2025. REUTERS/Yves Herman
YouTube is getting an injection of Google’s AI-assisted search functionality in the shape of a new carousel feature. In a blog post, YouTube said the AI-generated carousel is currently exclusive to its Premium members in the US. It might appear (it seemingly won’t happen every time) when you search for "queries related to shopping, place, or things to do in a specific location" in the YouTube app on your phone.
This carousel pulls in a series of relevant videos that play in order from left to right (you can also tap a video’s thumbnail to jump straight to that clip), with each one getting its own headline and a paragraph of text that explains its inclusion. The implementation, unsurprisingly, looks a lot like going through your friend’s stories on Instagram. YouTube says each video in the carousel provides “useful insights” related to your query.
YouTube has also announced that it will start rolling out its previously Premium and Android-exclusive conversational AI tool to standard users in the US. The AI assistant can be activated by clicking the "Ask" button that appears between the existing share and download options in the toolbar below a video, and allows you to ask it questions related to the content of the video. You can also have it summarize a video before you hand over five minutes of your time to watching it, or get recommendations for similar content. When it first introduced this functionality, YouTube said its AI tool draws on information within YouTube itself and the wider web. It’s not clear how many users will be able to use the new feature or how often you can expect it to show up. It's also unclear if or when iPhone users will get it.
Google’s AI Overview tool has been a controversial topic because it’s not always accurate with the information it provides, among other reasons. Whether similar issues arise for YouTube creators remains to be seen.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/youtube/youtubes-newest-premium-perk-more-ai-clutter-155942603.html?src=rss
Google Earth is celebrating its 20th birthday, and to mark the occasion, Google is bringing historical Street View imagery to the service. In a blog post, Google said the anniversary update allows users to "explore the wonders of the planet from even more viewpoints, whether it’s a bird’s eye view or at street level."
From today, when you load up Google Earth you’ll see a new option for historical imagery in the toolbar, which allows you to move back and forth between now and years gone by. Seemingly predicting that you might be overwhelmed by the prospect of having the entire planet at your fingertips, Google offers some suggestions. You might want to look at a timelapse of Berlin between 1943 and the modern day, in which time the Berlin Wall was built and fell, before the city underwent huge urban transformation. You could also observe the rapid expansion of Las Vegas since the 1980s, or how Houston’s NRG Stadium was built on top of what was just farmland back in 1944. Some Maps users have even used the historical view to look up, say, pictures of their homes from years gone by, occasionally finding imagery of lost loved ones in the process.
Google also announced further updates to Google Earth, including new AI-driven insights for professional users in the US. Urban planners will soon be able to access information about things like tree canopy coverage and surface land temperatures of different areas of a city using built-in Gemini insights.
Google Earth first launched in 2005, and according to Google was downloaded 100 million times in its first week. It’s had a number of major updates over the years, adding features such as searchable wallpapers and 3D timelapse videos.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-brings-historical-street-view-to-google-earth-153040270.html?src=rss
As Meta's platforms fill up with more AI-generated content, the company still has a lot of work to do when it comes to enforcing its policies around manipulated media. The Oversight Board is once again criticizing the social media company over its handling of such posts, writing in its latest decision that its inability to enforce its rules consistently is "incoherent and unjustifiable."
If that sounds familiar, it's because this is the second time since last year the Oversight Board has used the word "incoherent" to describe Meta's approach to manipulated media. The board had previously urged Meta to update its rules after a misleadingly edited video of Joe Biden went viral on Facebook. In response, Meta said it would expand its use of labels to identify AI-generated content and that it would apply more prominent labels in "high risk" situations. These labels, like the one below, note when a post was created or edited using AI.
An example of a label when Meta determines a piece of Ai-manipulated content is "high risk."
Screenshot (Meta)
This approach is still falling short though, the board said. "The Board is concerned that, despite the increasing prevalence of manipulated content across formats, Meta’s enforcement of its manipulated media policy is inconsistent," it said in its latest decision. "Meta’s failure to automatically apply a label to all instances of the same manipulated media is incoherent and unjustifiable."
The statement came in a decision related to a post that claimed to feature audio of two politicians in Iraqi Kurdistan. The supposed "recorded conversation" included a discussion about rigging an upcoming election and other "sinister plans" for the region. The post was reported to Meta for misinformation, but the company closed the case "without human review," the board said. Meta later labeled some instances of the audio clip but not the one originally reported.
The case, according to the board, is not an outlier. Meta apparently told the board that it can't automatically identify and apply labels to audio and video posts, only to "static images." This means multiple instances of the same audio or video clip may not get the same treatment, which the board notes could cause further confusion. The Oversight Board also criticized Meta for often relying on third-parties to identify AI-manipulated video and audio, as it did in this case.
"Given that Meta is one of the leading technology and AI companies in the world, with its resources and the wide usage of Meta’s platforms, the Board reiterates that Meta should prioritize investing in technology to identify and label manipulated video and audio at scale," the board wrote. "It is not clear to the Board why a company of this technical expertise and resources outsources identifying likely manipulated media in high-risk situations to media outlets or Trusted Partners."
In its recommendations to Meta, the board said the company should adopt a "clear process" for consistently labeling "identical or similar content" in situations when it adds a "high risk" label to a post. The board also recommended that these labels should appear in a language that matches the rest of their settings on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Meta didn't respond to a request for comment. The company has 60 days to respond to the board's recommendations.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/the-oversight-board-calls-metas-uneven-ai-moderation-incoherent-and-unjustifiable-100056893.html?src=rss
CANADA - 2025/01/19: In this photo illustration, the Meta Platforms, Inc. logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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