Kinktober. Whumptober. Kisstober. Flufftober. Goretober. October is a bacchanal of fan fiction, from romantic one-shots about unconventional character pairings to delicious smut that’ll make you reconsider your own sense of morality — all inspired by the month’s countless themed writing challenges. It’s an especially busy time for the fan fiction site Archive of Our Own…
Earlier this year, WordPress.com owner Automattic acquired a plug-in that allowed WordPress blogs to be followed in the fediverse — the decentralized social networks that include the Twitter rival Mastodon and others. As a result, it launched version 1.0.0 of the plug-in, allowing WordPress blogs to be followed on Mastodon and other fediverse apps. At…
Instagram’s new Twitter-like app Threads is not prepared to truly challenge Elon Musk’s X, if recent statements by Instagram head Adam Mosseri hold true. In response to a post about Threads’ position on hard news, Mosseri explained the company did not intend to “amplify” news on its platform. His position is not a surprise, though…
The European Union has expanded its warning about illegal content and disinformation targeting the Israel-Hamas war circulating on social media platforms to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Yesterday the bloc’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, published an urgent letter to Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter) — raising concerns the platform…
After a nasty battle between the developers of third-party apps and Reddit management, ultimately resulting in a site-wide protest, many app makers were put out of business due to Reddit’s price increases related to the usage of its API. Though the changes meant the loss of popular apps like Apollo, RIF (Reddit is Fun), ReddPlanent,…
The most popular apps suck us into the technological equivalent of couch lock, but it’s easy to imagine how things might have gone differently. Rather than idly scrolling and mindlessly issuing likes into the void, social media could — and, at its best, does — empower us to connect beyond its virtual confines. It’s not…
In a very swift test of the European Union’s newly updated content moderation rulebook, the bloc has fired a public warning at Elon Musk–owned X (formerly Twitter) for failing to tackle illegal content circulating on the platform in the wake of Saturday’s deadly attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists based in the Gaza Strip. The…
In the wake of increasing misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war now circulating on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, a number of journalists are building up their networks on rival platforms. The shift, though potentially small in terms of raw user numbers, could have an outsized impact on X, where power users create…
TikTok today is introducing a new feature that will allow its users to post directly to the video platform from a range of popular editing apps, including Adobe’s AI-powered video editing software Premiere Pro, its AI creativity app Adobe Express, as well as others, including Twitch, SocialPilot and ByteDance’s CapCut. The new offering, Direct Post,…
X competitor Bluesky is rolling out its latest release, version 1.52, with a number of changes, including those focused on improving the safety and security of its microblogging platform. The Jack Dorsey-backed startup says it will now allow users to change and verify their email addresses as part of a larger effort underway to improve…