SAN FRANCISCO, April 27 — What changes will you be seeing after this week’s round of social media platform updates? YouTube and Twitter add features to fight the spread of misinformation, Bumble will protect users from unwanted nudes, and Snapchat announces plans to use Bitmoji characters in games.
Every week, the most popular apps and social media platforms get updated. Here’s a summary of the changes you’ll see in the near future:
YouTube
On Wednesday, Google announced in a blogpost that it’s working to make YouTube’s tools to fight fake news in Europe more robust. More specifically, the company noted that in the near future, it will launch transparency labels on government— or publicly-funded news publisher videos in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland.
Also on Wednesday, Twitter announced that it has made it easier to report “deliberate attempts to mislead voters” which includes the spread of disinformation about how to vote or register to vote, voting requirements and the date of an election. When you tap to report a tweet, a new option will appear in the “Report an issue” menu where you’ll be prompted to provide an explanation of the violation. This will first roll out in India to protect voters in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, followed by rollout in Europe during EU elections.
Public conversation on Twitter is never more important than during elections. Today, we’re launching a new reporting feature to tackle deliberate attempts to mislead about voting. We’ll start with #LokSabhaElections2019 & #EUelections2019 https://t.co/rDdEwX3FcR pic.twitter.com/jrLOc3k1hC
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 24, 2019
Bumble
Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd announced on Wednesday that the dating app’s AI-powered “Private Detector” can detect sexually explicit images with up to 98 per cent accuracy. When detected, the platform will refuse to upload these images to a personal profile, and will blur them if sent in a private chat until a user chooses to see them. The feature will roll out in June.
Our AI will soon be able to detect a dick pic with 98% accuracy. We’ll warn you if we think an image is lewd. 🚫🍆https://t.co/iLKPovvUNc
— Whitney Wolfe Herd (@WhitWolfeHerd) April 24, 2019
Snapchat
As reported by TechCrunch on Thursday, Snapchat is working on bringing your customized 3D Bitmoji avatar into video games via a Bitmoji for Games SDK. This software development kit will help game developers integrate Bitmoji characters into their games on “virtually any platform and in any genre.” — AFP-Relaxnews
