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.
Following Australia’s social media ban for children under 16 taking effect last month, Meta says it has now removed almost 550,000 Instagram, Facebook, and Threads accounts that it believes were run by kids under that age threshold. Despite its compliance, Meta is still voicing opposition to the law.
Seems a lot of people got password reset requests from Instagram over the last few days, including several Verge staffers and members of their family. The email might look legit. It might even have that little blue checkmark in Gmail. But, it probably came from a scammer. Honestly, it’s best practice to never click links in emails anyway.
“Prediction markets” continue to appear everywhere, including CNN and CNBC, and Polymarket is shitposting about citizen journalism.
Meanwhile, The Athletic is the latest (following Awful Announcing and Front Office Sports) reporting on sports misinformation X accounts like “Emma Vance” and “Scott Hughes” have spread while sporting those site’s affiliate badges.
In June, the New York state legislature passed a bill requiring social media companies to display warnings about the potential mental health harms of using their products. Now the governor has officially signed the bill into law. The announcement of the signing says that:
To combat the mental health risks of using harmful features of social media platforms that prolong use, this legislation will require social media companies to display warning labels on their platforms when a young user initially uses the predatory feature and periodically thereafter, based on continued use.
[Governor Kathy Hochul]
Meta wants Threads to be the app you open first thing in the morning, and it sounds like some of you feel about the same way I do about that idea.
Vogon5:
Absolutely not lmao
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The platform had blocked access to users in Mississippi due to an age verification law, but in a post on Monday, Bluesky said it has upgraded its Age Assurance system to “restore access to people over 18 in Mississippi” and to comply with “upcoming laws in Australia and other regions.”
In addition to complying with the under-16 social media ban that begins December 10th in Australia, Reddit is making changes globally for under-18s:
Teen account holders under 18 everywhere will get a version of Reddit with more protective safety features built in, including stricter chat settings, no ads personalization or sensitive ads, and no access to NSFW or mature content.
Your Discord Checkpoint shows how many messages you sent, your favorite servers, which friends you spent the most time with, and a whole bunch more. You can find your end-of-year stats by opening the Discord app, tapping You on the bottom-right, and selecting the Checkpoint banner.
Threads will test a feature where you can include “dear algo” in a post to add more or less content on whatever you’re writing to the algorithm about to your feed, according to Threads boss Connor Hayes.
Though Club Chalamet started off as just another stan account, The Wall Street Journal reports that Simone Cromer — the woman behind the Timothée-obsessed page — has found new success on Substack where she has generated enough revenue to “cover the cost of her summer vacation to Italy” with just a few hundred subscribers.
[The Wall Street Journal]
Members can now post under a nickname, along with a custom avatar, though admins have to approve them first. It’s a small step towards Discordification for Facebook, which has otherwise always insisted on posting under real names.
“We’re not changing what’s enforced,” Bluesky says, but starting in the coming weeks, when the platform takes an “enforcement action” on a post, a user will be informed of what policy they violated, the severity of the violation, and the end date of any suspension.
The company told Wired it removed Blued and Finka, two of the country’s most popular gay dating platforms, to comply with an order from the government’s cyberspace watchdog. Most international LGBTQ+ dating apps are already blocked on Apple’s Chinese storefront, including Grindr.
Bluesky was the best place on the internet during the World Series last weekend. I wrote yesterday about how the matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays was a feast for fans old and new, and now we have some numbers to illustrate that: Bluesky says at least three percent of all posts on Saturday (Game 7) were about baseball, and the site had a 30 percent surge in traffic.
