The internet has been transformed by social media, and the many platforms are now critical to how we communicate online. The Verge keeps a close eye on everything that’s happening in the social media landscape, covering key players like Meta, X, and TikTok, reporting on new features, following cultural moments, and breaking down the policies that shape how the platforms work.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the open-source, cross-platform European Age Verification Solution it has been testing will be available publicly soon, reports Bloomberg. She said it is “completely anonymous,” using a passport or ID card to verify age for access to online services, with accuracy that complies with EU child-protection regulations.
Digital privacy non-profit the Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced it’s leaving X, citing a sharp decline in views for its posts. With EFF off the platform, some commenters agree with the organization’s thinking.
Krankor:
eff x, I agree
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Now that a jury has ruled against Meta and YouTube in a landmark trial, the sharks are circling, and what better place to find potential clients than on those social media platforms? The only problem is that Axios reports Meta pulled “more than a dozen” such ads from firms like Morgan & Morgan and Sokolove Law on Thursday.
Outage reports have gone up and down on Downdetector today, and my feed occasionally hasn’t loaded. Bluesky says the issue, which it blamed on an upstream service provider, “appears” to have been fixed, but users have taken the problems as a chance to poke fun at unpopular comments from the Bluesky team about vibe coding.
Updates: Added Bluesky’s status updates.
Why nuclear options like age limits and repealing Section 230 won’t make social media safer.
One way to reduce screen time? The Scrōll Stoppr by Yahoo. Who knows if it actually ships, but these are listed in the TikTok Shop at a price of $4.99 with free shipping for anyone who’s tried every other way to put their phone down.
The musician’s account disappeared after posting pictures from his no-phones-allowed concert to r/PaulMcCartney, spurring media reports that mods had banned him. However, as 404Media points out, the subreddit’s mods say it wasn’t them, and a site admin commented with an attempt at an explanation:
Hey all! Just for clarity, that account was never banned from the site (or the subreddit) there was a technical error that made it appear to be banned from the site. This has now been resolved. Sorry for any confusion this caused or issue for the mod team here!
Baseball is back this week and we’ve already got the afterglow of a great World Baseball Classic, an upcoming Heated Rivalry-themed game night, and Netflix completely missing the first-ever robot ump challenge because they cut away to a mid-game interview. It’s a long season — can MLB keep the momentum going?
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
A New Social’s Bridgy Fed tech has been linking microblog posts and accounts across services like Mastodon and Bluesky for a while, but now that ability applies to more macro content as well:
….users on platforms like Mastodon will see the announcement with the article attached, but platforms that support long-form like WordPress and Ghost will get the whole article, and both will be treated as the same post across the Fediverse.
A beta feature in development for WhatsApp would display users’ status updates at the top of the Chats tab, similar to how stories are displayed in Messenger and Instagram, WABetaInfo reports. Status updates, which disappear after 24 hours like stories, are currently displayed in a separate tab in the app.
As drone strikes hit the city, social media videos shared by influencers follow a script: nonchalance at the danger, followed by flattering videos and photos of UAE leaders. “I know who protects us,” the videos go.
TikTok trend or a coordinated influence campaign?
Our trust in online images and videos is being eroded by AI, misinformation, and video game clips.
Instead of relying on hashtags to disclose a promotion, creators can now use a toggle to have “Paid partnership” text appear at the bottom of their post, as shown by X head of product Nikita Bier.
It’s a posthumous one because, as Buzzfeed reported in 2019, someone on 4chan of all places confirmed Epstein’s death more than half an hour before the first media reports. Now, Business Insider reports that within the files recently released, there are documents showing how the Justice Department and FBI investigated by subpoenaing 4chan, T-Mobile, and AT&T, trying to find the source.
They were unsuccessful.
As part of a test on Threads, when you type “DM me” or “message me” in a post or reply, those words will turn into a link that people can tap to start a DM conversation.
It’s harder to clean up a mess you’re still actively making.
Regulators noticed Polymarket and Kalshi rake in cash on sports bets. So now prediction markets are cosplaying as the future of news.
The Pew Research Center surfaced data showing 3 in 10 Americans do at least sometimes, based on responses to its survey last fall, although about 62 percent said they don’t end up reading most of the newsletters they receive.
If you’d like to drive those numbers up — and perhaps without relying on prediction markets — we have a few suggestions.
Plaintiff attorney Rachel Lanier told Judge Carolyn Kuhl this morning that after she’d admonished against using smart glasses in the courthouse, they learned that one person was still wearing them in the hallway where jurors were present. After alerting Meta’s counsel, Lanier said they were told the glasses weren’t recording.
Prediction: This is going to be a mess for the Trump right.
