<p>The reboot of early-internet social news site Digg is underway. Original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have launched an early-access community for some of the first people who signed up after last month&#8217;s announcement that the pair had bought Digg and planned to relaunch it as something new. The early-access program is [&hellip;]</p>

<p>WhatsApp has announced a slew of new updates across chats, calls, and channels designed to enhance the messaging and calling experience for users as it continues to compete with popular services like Telegram and Discord. Among the most notable additions is an &#8220;Online&#8221; indicator that appears at the top of a group chat to show [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the recently released tell-all book &#8220;Careless People,&#8221; told U.S. senators during her testimony on Wednesday that Meta actively targeted teens with advertisements based on their emotional state. This claim was first documented by Wynn-Williams in her book, which documents [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook&#8217;s former head of Global Public Policy, testified before the U.S. Senate today about the company&#8217;s relationship with China. According to Wynn-Williams, the company now known as Meta worked directly with the Chinese Community Party (CCP) to &#8220;undermine U.S. national security and betray American values,&#8221; she said. She alleges that Facebook created custom-built [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta is starting to test a new feature in Threads that lets users follow the same creators they follow on X, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. “We’re currently testing a way for you to find and follow creators from other platforms on Threads, making it easier to connect with the people and conversations that matter [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Instagram appears to be quietly testing locked reels that viewers would have to unlock with a code and a provided hint. The feature is a simple way to increase engagement with the creator&#8217;s content, but it could also offer creators and celebrities a way to share exclusive reels with their most dedicated fans, who are [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Reddit Answers, the platform&#8217;s conversational AI search tool, gets an upgrade through an integration with Google Gemini. This comes over a year after Reddit expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to access its Vertex AI platform to build AI agents. Google and Reddit announced the update on Wednesday, explaining that by incorporating Gemini on Vertex AI, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the company is looking to improve the app&#8217;s search functionality, admitting this is an area where Instagram could do more to compete. The remarks, made on a recent episode of the &#8220;Build Your Tribe&#8221; podcast, come at a time when younger Gen Z users often turn to social apps like [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Your 401k is suffering. The billionaires are fighting. The gamers are imperiled. Not even the penguins on McDonald Island, where no humans reside, have been spared. But at long last, 26-year-old YouTuber and chocolatier MrBeast has weighed in on President Donald Trump&#8217;s controversial plan to impose sweeping tariffs on imports. Jokes aside, the prolific YouTuber [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Tapestry, a new app designed to organize the open social web, is adding a valuable feature to help people who are keeping up with multiple social networks: It will now remove duplicate posts from your feed. That means if you follow the same person across social networking services like Bluesky and Mastodon, you won&#8217;t have [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Snapchat is introducing Sponsored AI Lenses, a new ad format that lets brands engage with consumers in an immersive way. While Snapchat has offered brands the opportunity to pay for sponsored lenses on the platform for years, now they can leverage AI-generated experiences powered by Snap&#8217;s proprietary generative AI technology. With these interactive lenses, brands [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta is introducing Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger. The feature, which automatically enrolls young users into an app experience with built-in protections, will be available on these platforms in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada before expanding to additional regions in the future. Teen Accounts first rolled out to Instagram last September after Instagram [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Amid a morning of pandemonium on Wall Street, a popular news aggregator on X, known as Walter Bloomberg, posted a false report declaring that President Trump was considering a 90-day pause on his controversial tariff proposal. This news was not true, and yet, index funds like the Dow Jones whipsawed — rapidly rising, before reversing [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Welcome back to Week in Review! Tons of stuff for you today, including Nintendo&#8217;s Switch 2; capacity issues at OpenAI; a story that deserves the Hollywood treatment; and much, much more. Let&#8217;s go! It&#8217;s finally (almost) here: After almost 10 years, Nintendo finally released its Switch successor, the Switch 2. According to TechCrunch&#8217;s Amanda Silberling, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta will no longer have any fact-checkers in the U.S. come Monday, according to chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan. Meta announced this significant policy change in January when it also loosened its content moderation rules. The timing of this change coincided with President Trump&#8217;s inauguration, which Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended after [&hellip;]</p>

<p>President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for the TikTok ban by 75 days. Trump shared a post on Truth Social on Friday stating that he is signing an executive order to allow more time to finalize a deal. The announcement comes just one day before the ban was set to go into effect. &#8220;My [&hellip;]</p>

<p>X&#8217;s plan to boost revenue by selling off dormant usernames on its service is starting to shape up. According to recent changes found in X&#8217;s web application, the company is setting up a &#8220;handle inquiry&#8221; process that will allow Verified Organizations &#8212; companies and other organizations that already have a $1,000 per month X subscription [&hellip;]</p>

<p>When OpenAI debuted its image-generation feature in ChatGPT last week, social media exploded when users realized that they could make AI-generated images that looked like something out of an animated film from Studio Ghibli. Fans hoped that Studio Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki would take a stand, but the 84-year-old animator has remained silent. In the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>As YouTube Shorts continues to compete with TikTok, the platform is announcing new upcoming features to help creators publish engaging short-form videos. Creators will get access to an improved video editor, the ability to generate AI stickers, a feature that syncs content to the beat of a song, enhanced templates, and more. The launch of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Starting Wednesday, Meta says it will begin combining the Instagram accounts of the Second Lady of the United States, Usha Vance, and the former Second Gentleman of the United States, Doug Emhoff. As a result, the 1.2 million people who were previously following the Instagram account of Kamala Harris&#8217;s husband, @secondgentleman46archive (recently archived by the [&hellip;]</p>