Meta tests ‘Series’ for episodic Reels on Instagram and Facebook

Elon Musk’s X lets you write long-form content on the platform through its Articles feature, but only if you’re a paid subscriber or business. The decentralized social networking startup Bluesky has a different idea. On Thursday, Bluesky rolled out a new version of its app that integrates with Standard.site, a community project for building long-form content on the same underlying protocol that powers Bluesky. This means Bluesky users can now explore content beyond microblogs, or the short posts that Bluesky is known for. Instead, they can read articles, blog posts, and newsletters published across the wider network of AT Protocol-powered apps, known as the “Atmosphere.” That includes sites like Leaflet, pckt, and Offprint, which cater to independent writers and publishers who want to own their content and expand their distribution across the open web. These articles will initially appear as dynamic link cards — essentially, an enhanced preview. Bluesky says this is just a first step, and the functionality will be improved over time. Image Credits:Bluesky This marks the second expansion of Bluesky’s capabilities based on other projects built by community members. In February, a startup called Germ became the first private messaging service that could launch directly from Bluesky’s app, thanks to a similar integration. By building the technology infrastructure alongside its social networking client application, Bluesky is able to leverage the other apps and services also running on the AT Protocol. That’s not a bad deal for the third parties, either, as they can tap into the distribution provided by Bluesky’s network of some 44.5 million registered users. The expansion to long-form content follows shortly after WordPress’s announcement earlier this month of its own plugin that allows any WordPress site to publish to the Atmosphere. (The plugin joins another WordPress already offered for publishing to the open social services that are powered by a different protocol, ActivityPub, such as Mastodon.) Like Bluesky, WordPress’s integration relied on Standard.site’s lexion records, which basically means that your blog becomes data on the AT Protocol itself, instead of just a link you’re sharing on an app like Bluesky. Because of this, any app compatible with the AT Protocol could allow its users to read WordPress blog posts. With this integration now coming to Bluesky, you can see more of the startup’s vision for the open social web — one where data itself is open and freely distributable, accessible from any client, and where users can move between personal data servers (PDS) at will. (Though Bluesky was the first PDS, there are now others to choose from, including those offered by Eurosky, Blacksky, Northsky, and others.) That’s certainly different from X’s approach to content, long-form or otherwise, which remains siloed in its app and is only able to be embedded elsewhere on the web. However, the advantage that X offers in terms of distribution is its 550 million monthly active users — something that Bluesky’s open social rival may never be able to beat. The updated version of Bluesky (v1.122) also includes a handful of other features, the company noted, including a refreshed GIF picker and photo viewer, and expanded moderation labeling at the account level, and a fix for a bug that was silently dropping some iOS video uploads. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio

Meta is doubling down on its subscription offerings. On Wednesday, the social networking giant announced it’s now rolling out its consumer subscription plans globally for its flagship apps, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and beginning tests of new subscriptions for businesses, creators, and Meta AI users. For a few dollars per month, consumers subscribing to Instagram Plus ($3.99/mo), Facebook Plus ($3.99/mo), or WhatsApp Plus ($2.99/mo) will gain access to extra features, like profile customization, super reactions, and story insights, among other things. In an announcement, Meta’s head of product Naomi Gleit noted that “more fun features” will be added in the future. Meanwhile, Meta will begin testing other offerings, including professional plans for creators and businesses, and AI-focused plans for all users. These new tests will be branded as “Meta One,” which will serve as the company’s home for its subscription offerings going forward. ILLUSTRATION – 16 May 2024, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schwerin: ILLUSTRATION – The Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp apps can be seen on the display of a smartphone. The internet programs belong to Meta, the umbrella brand of the Facebook Group. The European Commission opens proceedings against the Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta on suspicion of violations of the protection of minors. Photo: Jens Büttner/dpa (Photo by Jens Büttner/picture alliance via Getty Images)Image Credits:picture alliance / Contributor (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Meta confirmed it was planning a subscription offering earlier this year, with its initial tests rolling out in the spring. The idea behind the plans aimed at consumers is to provide additional features for power users who want more from their social apps. It also allows Meta to diversify its revenue streams beyond advertising by extracting more value from its existing audience of billions, given the limited growth opportunities for these apps, which have already achieved global saturation. The new “Plus” plans are tailored to each individual app, with Facebook Plus and Instagram Plus focused more on social expression, while WhatsApp Plus focuses on personalization and messaging. However, the company tells us the new plans don’t replace its existing offering, Meta Verified, which is focused on verification, impersonation protection, and extra support. (This could change in time, but for now, Meta is not winding down the older plans.) For starters, the new Instagram Plus plan gives subscribers access to extra features, like the ability to see how many people have rewatched your Story in aggregate, as well as the ability to create unlimited audience lists for Stories, beyond the “Close Friends” option. Users will also be able to spotlight a story once a week for additional views, extend a story beyond 24 hours, preview a story without showing up as a viewer, search their story viewer list to see who is watching, and more. Users will also be able to post straight to their profile and highlight without showing up on their followers’ feeds. There are also other features like Super Heart animated reactions for Stories, custom app icons, customizable fonts for profile bios, and access to additional pins for your profile. These features are designed to better serve creators and those looking to grow their following and understand their audience, but could also appeal to heavy users. Facebook Plus offers a similar set of features to Instagram Plus. WhatsApp Plus, however, offers other features, like app themes, custom ringtones, additional pinned chats, list customization, premium stickers, and more. Image Credits:picture alliance / Contributor (opens in a new window) / Getty Images AI plans and more, including those for creators and businesses Alongside the launch, Meta says it will begin testing even more subscription plans, which is where things start to get confusing. For Meta AI users, it will test two plans — Meta On

As AI video models become more powerful, YouTube is no longer solely relying on creators to label their AI videos — it will now automatically label videos on their behalf. The company announced on Wednesday that its internal systems will apply labels when it detects that “significant photorealistic AI” has been used. YouTube will also be making its AI labels more prominent, so they’re easier to spot across both long-form videos and YouTube Shorts. AI labels on the video platform have been in use for over two years, after YouTube updated its AI policies and rolled out a tool in Creator Studio that required creators to disclose their videos included AI content that could be mistaken for a real person, place, or event. Videos that obviously depicted some sort of animated or imaginative scenario — like a unicorn prancing through a fantastical world — did not have to be labeled. The company says its policy around AI labeling hasn’t changed, but it will take a more active role in policing the content on its platform. The move follows Google’s release of Gemini Omni, a new family of multimodal AI models at its Google I/O developer conference last week that can output high-quality videos that reflect an understanding of physics, culture, history, and science. Starting in May, YouTube will now use new internal signals to help identify AI-generated content and label it accordingly, the company says. This doesn’t mean that creators shouldn’t continue to disclose their use of AI, but if they neglect to do so, YouTube will label the video for them. While creators whose content was misidentified will be able to update the disclosure status in a YouTube video, they won’t be able to remove those labels if the content was created with YouTube’s own AI tools, like Veo or Dream Screen, the company says. Labels will also be permanently attached to videos when the content contains C2PA metadata indicating it was fully AI-generated. (Recently, OpenAI committed to the C2PA standard, joining Nvidia, Kakao, and Eleven Labs.) The addition of automatic AI detection functionality comes shortly after the expansion of YouTube’s AI deepfake detection, which now allows any adult to scan YouTube specifically for face matches, after initial tests with celebs, public figures, politicians, and other creators. YouTube says it will also make its AI labels more consistent and prominent. Before, labels would appear in the expanded description, unless the video touched on more sensitive topics like health or news; if so, a prominent label would appear directly on the video itself. Now, the labels will appear directly below the video player above the description for long-form videos and overload directly on YouTube Shorts. Image Credits:YouTube The company said moving the labels will make them more obvious to people who come across photorealistic, AI-altered, or AI-generated content on the site. Meanwhile, for AI video that is only slightly altered, animated, or unrealistic — like the above-mentioned prancing unicorn — the label will appear in the expanded description only. Notably, YouTube says that AI labels won’t have an impact on how a video is recommended or its ability to monetize. In addition to its policing of AI content, the company has been investing in AI for things like its interactive search feature, Ask YouTube, a playlist generator for YouTube Music, AI video summaries, and other generative AI creation tools. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signa

google Advancing content provenance for a safer, more transparent AI ecosystem OpenAI Deepfake Alert: Here's how to detect AI images & videos with OpenAI tool Deccan Herald What are Google's SynthID watermarks and how do they help users tell real content from AI-generated content The Times of India

ArXiv, a widely used open repository for preprint research, is doing more to crack down on the careless use of large language models in scientific papers. Although papers are posted to the site before they are peer-reviewed, arXiv (pronounced “archive”) has become one of the main ways that research circulates in fields like computer science and math, and the site itself has become a source of data on trends in scientific research. ArXiv has already taken steps to combat a growing number of low-quality, AI-generated papers, for example by requiring first-time posters to get an endorsement from an established author. And after being hosted by Cornell for more than 20 years, the organization is becoming an independent nonprofit, which should allow it to raise more money to address issues like AI slop. In its latest move, Thomas Dietterich — the chair of arXiv’s computer science section — posted Thursday that “if a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can’t trust anything in the paper.” That incontrovertible evidence could include things like “hallucinated references” and comments to or from the LLM, Dietterich said. If such evidence is found, a paper’s authors will face “a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted by a reputable peer-reviewed venue.” Note that this isn’t an outright prohibition on using LLMs, but rather an insistence that, as Dietterich put it, authors take “full responsibility” for the content, “irrespective of how the contents are generated.” So if researchers copy-paste “inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content” directly from an LLM, then they’re still responsible for it. Dietterich told 404 Media that this will be a “one-strike” rule, but moderators must flag the issue and section chairs must confirm the evidence before imposing the penalty. Authors will also be able to appeal the decision. Recent peer-reviewed research has found that fabricated citations are on the rise in biomedical research, likely due to LLMs — though to be fair, scientists aren’t the only ones getting caught using citations that were made up by AI. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Anthony Ha is TechCrunch's weekend editor. Previously, he worked as a tech reporter at Adweek, a senior editor at VentureBeat, a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, and vice president of content at a VC firm. He lives in New York City. You can contact or verify outreach from Anthony by emailing anthony.ha@techcrunch.com. View Bio

Instagram announced on Wednesday that it’s globally launching “Instants,” a new feature for sharing authentic, disappearing photos after testing it with select users. The feature lets users share disappearing photos with their Close Friends or mutual followers that can be viewed only once and remain available for 24 hours. The app borrows ideas from social platforms like Snapchat, Locket, and BeReal, as it focuses on authentic and ephemeral content. Unlike Instagram, which is about curated and polished content, Instants is designed for quick, real-life snapshots. With Instants, you capture a photo with Instagram’s in-app camera and aren’t allowed to edit the image. The format doesn’t allow uploads from your camera, and, although you can add text to your “instants,” you can’t modify them any further. Meta said in a blog post that the idea behind this format is to share authentic moments as they’re happening. It’s worth noting that Meta is also testing the Instants format as a standalone app in select regions, including Spain and Italy. You can capture an Instant by tapping the mini photo stack in the bottom right corner of your Instagram inbox. After you share your Instant, recipients can react with emojis, reply, and send an Instant back. Meta notes that recipients can’t screenshot or record Instants that you’ve shared. Image Credits:Instagram Instagram stores your shared Instants in a private archive that you can see for up to one year. You can also compile Instants from your archive into a recap and post it to Instagram Stories. If you’ve accidentally shared an Instant, you can tap the “undo” button and delete an Instant from your archive to unsend it to friends who haven’t opened it yet. And if you don’t want to receive Instants, you can hold down the pile of Instants in your inbox and swipe right to temporarily stop receiving them. You can also choose to block or mute specific people. Although Instagram began as a way for friends to share moments with each other, the platform has gradually become overrun with influencer content and ads. With Instants, the company looks to be leaning back into more casual, private interactions centered around photo sharing among circles of friends. However, Instagram may be a bit late to capitalize on the trend of low-pressure, authentic photo sharing, as BeReal is not as popular as it once was, and many users already use Instagram Stories for fast, informal updates and might not see the need for a separate app and feature to do so. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. You can contact or verify outreach from Aisha by emailing aisha@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at aisha_malik.01 on Signal. View Bio

Meta will start using AI to scan photos and videos for visual clues to see if a user is under 13 and should be removed from Facebook and Instagram, the company announced on Tuesday. These visual clues include a person’s height or bone structure, it said. “We want to be clear: this is not facial recognition,” Meta explained in its blog post. “Our AI looks at general themes and visual cues, for example height or bone structure, to estimate someone’s general age; it does not identify the specific person in the image. By combining these visual insights with our analysis of text and interactions, we can significantly increase the number of underage accounts we identify and remove. The visual analysis system is now operating in select countries, but Meta says it’s working toward a broader rollout. Meta says this system is part of its efforts to keep kids under 13 off its platforms. These efforts include using AI to analyze entire profiles for contextual clues, such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades. The company looks for these signals across different formats, such as posts, comments, bios, captions, and more. Meta plans to expand this technology to more parts of its apps, including Instagram Live and Facebook Groups, in the future. If Meta determines that a person may be underage, it will deactivate their account, and the user will need to prove their age using the company’s age verification process in order to prevent their account from being deleted. The announcement comes weeks after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and putting children at risk. The company was also ordered to implement fundamental changes to its platforms. Meta has since threatened to shut down its social media services in the state. It’s worth noting that this case is one of many lawsuits that Meta and other Big Tech companies are facing over child safety. Techcrunch event San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 Meta also announced on Tuesday that it’s expanding its technology that automatically places teens into stricter “Teen Accounts” on Instagram to 27 countries in the EU and Brazil. These teen accounts place users into a stricter account experience with additional safeguards, such as receiving DMs only from people they follow or are already connected to, hiding harmful comments, and setting accounts to private by default. Additionally, Meta said it’s expanding the technology to Facebook in the U.S. for the first time, followed by the U.K. and EU in June. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. You can contact or verify outreach from Aisha by emailing aisha@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at aisha_malik.01 on Signal. View Bio

Instagram announced on Thursday that accounts that regularly repost content they didn’t create, or primarily share other people’s work as photos and carousels, will no longer be eligible for recommendations across the app. The Meta-owned platform says the idea behind the change is to ensure creators of original content get the credit and distribution they deserve. It’s worth noting that these protections were already in place for reels, and are now being applied to photos and carousels, which are the posts that feature a collection of images and videos in a swipeable format. The update targets content aggregators that don’t post original content and instead simply re-upload others’ posts. By limiting the reach of these accounts, Instagram is looking to boost originality on its app while also working to prevent the same posts from being circulated over and over again. Instagram classifies original content as content someone wholly created or reflects their unique perspective, such as photos or videos they took, or content they designed. Additionally, Instagram sees content that someone materially edited as original content. For instance, using existing third-party content, such as meme templates or popular clips, is fine as long as users edit it by adding a element that enhances the content, the company says. Image Credits:Instagram / “For example, an original meme transforms another creator’s photo or video,” Instagram explained in a blog post. “When meme creators add humor, social commentary, cultural references, or a relatable take by incorporating elements such as unique text, creative edits, and voiceover on a photo or video, they’re producing something original. The best meme creators take third-party content and make it unmistakably theirs by layering in a perspective, joke, or context that wasn’t there before. This is the kind of creativity we want to continue rewarding.” Instagram says low-effort edits, such as adding watermarks or changing the speed of a video, don’t count. Additionally, uploading a screenshot of another person’s post with their username visible for credit doesn’t qualify. It’s worth noting that this change won’t affect how Instagram shows people content from aggregator accounts they follow. It will instead no longer show this content in recommendations across the app, including users’ feeds and the “Discover” tab. Techcrunch event San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. You can contact or verify outreach from Aisha by emailing aisha@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at aisha_malik.01 on Signal. View Bio