Career-networking site LinkedIn has told Australian lawmakers it is too dull for kids to warrant its inclusion in a proposed ban on social media for under 16 year olds. "LinkedIn simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors," the Microsoft-owned company said in a submission to an Australian senate committee.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2dz2z72y8o
Instead, the company has announced that in mid-December, it will sunset the City Guide. However, although the Foursquare app is going away, the company is opening its Places database to the world. Django co-creator Simon Willison has already investigated the database and has some info on how it's hosted and how to access it.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/27/foursquare_to_close/
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The new feature will be available to users of all ages, including Teen accounts. “We want to make sure everyone on Instagram – especially teens – has safe, positive, age-appropriate experiences and feels the time they’re spending on Instagram is valuable,” Meta said. “We want to give teens new ways to shape their Instagram experience, so it can continue to reflect their passions and interests as they evolve.”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/19/24300458/instagram-reset-content-recommendations-from-scratch
Bluesky is growing rapidly and is currently picking up around one million new sign-ups a day.
It had 16.7m users at the time of writing, but that figure will likely be outdated by the time you read this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dm0ljg4y6o
Meta execs have acknowledged that ads are coming to its newest social network. "We definitely plan to bring ads to Threads," Instagram Head Adam Mosseri, who also oversees Threads, said in April. "At the end of the day, we're a business, and Threads needs to make enough money to pay for the people and servers that it takes to run the service and provide it to people for free."
https://www.pcmag.com/news/brace-yourself-for-ads-on-threads-in-january
School districts across 19 states claim that the companies do not adequately implement features like age verification, parental controls, and session timeouts. Design choices that allow for endless scrolling, coupled with targeted algorithms, mean kids have trouble putting down their phones, creating a doom loop that can interrupt sleep at best and create serious mental health issues at worst. The schools say they've had to dedicate resources to handle this, from confiscating phones to dealing with online behavior that spills into classrooms, including dangerous social media "challenges."
https://www.pcmag.com/news/school-districts-notch-a-win-in-tech-addiction-case-against-top-platforms
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The Communities feature, which YouTube launched today at the Made on YouTube event in New York City, is sort of a mix of old-school forum, subreddit, and Facebook group. Once a creator turns on their community, anyone who joins can post, and people can reply to each other.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/18/24247529/youtube-communities-social-comments