Things are about to get even more turbulent for the tech industry.
You can now skip ahead in Reels by holding down on either edge of the screen, which plays the video at double speed. Reels started out with a 15-second cap but can now run for up to three minutes, so playback controls make sense.
TikTok thought the same thing when it added a fast-forward feature, which you enable by... holding down on either edge of the screen. What a coincidence!
Last week, The Atlantic launched a tool designed to search the LibGen database that Meta allegedly trained its AI models on. Author Maris Kreizman writes for Literary Hub that she found her still-unpublished work in the mix:
But my upcoming essay collection won’t be published until July 1, and yet somehow Meta has already accessed it to train its AI. Advance copies of digital galleys are available legitimately for the most part only on NetGalley and Edelweiss, and both of those services have strict terms and conditions about what users can do with unpublished work (not much!).
The company is getting rid of a feature it introduced less than a year ago that gave users the ability to leave semiprivate and disappearing comments on grid posts and Reels. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the feature wasn’t widely adopted, and that the platform has become “too complicated” over the years.
That’s according to WABetaInfo, which spotted that a recent beta of the Android app supports sharing motion photos, Android’s GIF-like animations that accompany some photos, similar to the Live Photos feature found on iPhones (and which, the outlet notes, WhatsApp for iOS already supports).
[wabetainfo.com]
During his weekly AMA, Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged that “we really should build” a small-but-important feature that competitors like TikTok and YouTube offer: picture-in-picture (PIP). Maybe you’ll be able to multitask and watch reels soon.
Also, Instagram is working to improve its search feature this year — including the ability to search for content, not just other accounts.
It’s also the third best-selling book on Amazon. Meta, meet the Streisand effect!
[The New York Times]
Elon Musk has publicly railed against Delaware’s corporate law as its judges ruled against his wishes, moving the incorporation of Tesla and other companies out of state. Now, CNBC says a January WSJ report that Meta was considering moving its incorporation spurred immediate action from the governor on a new bill, SB 21, that might make its laws friendlier to folks like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
After skipping a typical review by the state’s bar association, it’s passed the state Senate and could be voted on by the state House as soon as Thursday.
