Twitter suffers worldwide outage

Twitter’s recent troubles include more than its battle with Elon Musk. The social media giant has suffered a global outage that started shortly after 8AM Eastern. Users reported a variety of glitches, including generic “error” messages and even broken website alerts. The issue affected both Twitter’s web version as well as apps, including third-party clients. The service appeared to be recovering as of 9AM ET, but the collapse still put a damper on many morning tweets.

We’ve asked Twitter for comment. The company’s status page made no mention of platform problems during the outage.

This isn’t the first significant downtime for Twitter this year. There were two partial outages in February that limited posting and loading tweets for some people. This new failure is considerably more substantial, however, and it brings further attention to Twitter’s uncertain future now that Musk is trying to cancel his $44 billion acquisition.

YouTube restores Lofi Girl account after false copyright claims

A much-loved YouTube account featuring calm hip-hop beats is back online today, after two popular radio live streams (the oldest of which has been playing non-stop for two years) got yanked from the platform due to bogus copyright claims. In a tweet, the owner of the Lofi Girl channel — which has been streaming relaxing ambient music since 2017 — announced that the streams have relaunched after a nearly 48-hour hiatus. 

The origin of the DMCA claims came from FMC Music, a Malaysian record label. After receiving a counterclaim from the creators of Lofi Girl, YouTube manually reviewed FMC’s complaint and came to the conclusion that the record label had no ownership over the music.

“Confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account 😔 we’ve resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out,” wrote YouTube on Twitter, in response to Lofi Girl’s request on Monday that the streams be reinstated.

But FMC Music is alleging that it is also a victim in this affair. A spokesperson from the label told local news site Malaysiakini that hackers broke into its YouTube account to file the copyright infringement claim. The record label said that it reported the incident to Google. Its YouTube account has since returned back online.

The relatively unknown record label was hit hard with online abuse over the weekend, as fans of Lofi Girl flocked to its social media channels and demanded to know why it filed the fake claim. Most of Lofi Girl’s largely Gen-Z and younger Millennial fanbase rely on the music to study, relax or meditate.

In an ironic twist, Lofi Girl also has a considerable Malaysian fanbase, who were also quite unhappy about the channel’s removal. In a Reddit thread on r/Malaysia entitled, “Who the hell is FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia and why did they copywrite strike lofi girl?”, a despondent fan urged others to “make some noise” on the record label’s socials.

“For context, I was studying while listening to lofi girl before both of their streams got taken down by a certain FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia. Now their livestreams can’t be accessed in Malaysia. What gives them the right to take down the best channel on youtube,” wrote the user.

Malicious copyright strikes are hardly a new incident on YouTube. Game creater Bungie decided to take one creator to court after they allegedly filed nearly 100 fake copyright claims. Lofi Girl noted that an accidental takedown in 2020 also took the account offline, and called for a stronger vetting process for DMCA claims at YouTube. “This event has shone a light on an underlying problem on the platform: It’s 2022, and there are countless smaller creators out there, many of which engaged in this discussion, that continue to be hit daily by these false claims on both videos and livestreams,” Lofi Girl wrote in a tweet.

Hitting the Books: Modern social media has made misinformation so, so much worse

It’s not just that one uncle who’s not allowed at Thanksgiving anymore who’s been spreading misinformation online. The practice began long before the rise of social media — governments around the world have been doing it for centuries. But it wasn’t un…

Meta Quest headsets will soon no longer need a Facebook login

Meta is changing course on its controversial requirement for users of its virtual reality headsets to log in with a Facebook account. Instead, they’ll need a new Meta account, which won’t need to be linked to Facebook. The company will start rolling out the new account next month for existing and new Meta Quest users. Those with a legacy Oculus account will need to have a Meta account to keep using their headset after January 1st, 2023.

The company stressed that a Meta account is not a social media profile, saying that it “lets you log into your VR devices and view and manage your purchased apps in one place.” It noted that future devices will require Meta accounts too.

There is a social aspect to the new account type though, at least for VR headsets. When you create a Meta account, you’ll need to create a Meta Horizon profile with the username, avatar, profile photo and so on that you’ll use in the company’s vision of the metaverse.

Oculus friends will become your followers and you’ll automatically follow them back. You can, of course, unfollow people and stop others from following you. You’ll still have the option of linking your Meta account to Facebook and Instagram, so you’ll be able to chat with friends in the VR version of Messenger or find some buds to play games with. 

While Facebook has a one-account-per-person rule, the company is fine with you having multiple Meta accounts. Perhaps you’ll have one for virtual meetings and another for hanging out with friends.

The new accounts will offer privacy controls, including the option to make your profile private and manually approve follower requests. Users aged between 13 and 17 will have private profiles by default.

This is an important shift for Meta as it continues to place more focus on its vision of the metaverse. However, Meta is said to have scaled back its metaverse ambitions in the last few months, having reportedly killed off some Reality Labs projects and put a planned dual-camera smartwatch on hold. 

Still, there are at least some positives of Meta divorcing VR from its social media apps. Folks who are interested in Meta Quest but want nothing to do with Facebook will no longer need an account for the latter.

Meta allows select creators to post their NFTs on Facebook

Non-fungible tokens have arrived on Facebook. Meta has confirmed to TechCrunch that it has started giving select creators in the US the power to post digital collectibles on their profiles. While it’s unclear if and when the feature will make its way to more users — Meta called the release a “slow rollout” — company CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously said that Meta was going to test NFT support on the social network. Meta Product Manager Navdeep Singh has posted photos on Twitter of what NFT integration would look like on Facebook’s, and similar to Instagram’s implementation, creators will have a digital collectibles tab on their profile where they can show off their NFTs.

Creators will be able to post their collectibles as status updates that people can comment on and react to, and clicking on them shows information on the artwork. According to Decrypt, Facebook will allow users to link their compatible digital wallets with the website, similar to how they can do so on Instagram. At the moment, Facebook supports NFTs minted on Ethereum and Polygon, though it will soon support Solana and Flow NFTs, as well. 

Meta started testing NFT integration on Instagram in May, promising additional related features, such as allowing users to display their pieces as augmented reality stickers in Stories. NFTs are perhaps a more fitting addition to Instagram than Facebook, based on the platforms’ userbase, but Meta is determined to make them a part of its products. Zuckerberg wrote in the post announcing the arrival of digital collectibles on Instagram: “We’re starting building for NFTs, not just in our metaverse and Reality Labs work, but also across our family of apps.”

Instagram test turns all video posts into Reels

It looks like Meta truly is making a big push for Reels. Social media consultant Matt Navarra has posted a screenshot on Twitter showing a notice for an experimental Instagram feature that says all video posts would be shared as Reels on the app. If your account is public, that means anyone can discover your video and use your original audio to create their own Reel. Only friends would see your video if your profile is private, but other users can still create a remix with your Reel and download it as part of their remix. The only way to ensure nobody uses your Reel for remixes is to turn the option off in Settings or to disable it for each video you post.

As TechCrunch notes, this move doesn’t come as a surprise when the TikTok-style videos have quickly become a popular format on both Instagram and Facebook. When he revealed the company’s fourth quarterly earnings report for 2021, Mark Zuckerberg said that Reels is now Meta’s fastest growing content format. Meta chief product officer Chris Cox called Reels a “bright point” for the company, as well, in a recent memo shared with employees warning them about “serious times” ahead due to slowing growth. He also said that one of the projects Meta intends to focus on for the second half of 2022 is monetizing Reels as quickly as possible. 

Apparently, time spent viewing the short-form videos has more than doubled since last year, with 80 percent of that growth coming from Facebook. That’s why the company will go as far as to redesign Instagram’s and Facebook’s home pages to better incorporate the short videos. Turning all video posts into Reels would give the company more content to circulate, which in turn would translate to more time viewing videos on the platform and bigger potential ad earnings for when the format is finally monetized. That said, not all experimental Instagram features make it to wide release, and it remains to be seen whether this one will survive the testing phase.

Acast subscribers will soon get access to exclusive podcast groups on Facebook

Your favorite podcast might soon have an official, easy-to-find forum. Meta has teamed up with podcast giant Acast to offer exclusive Facebook Groups for podcasts using Acast+ paid subscriptions. Link your membership to your Facebook account and you’ll have a ready-made place to discuss the latest episode with fellow fans — you won’t have to hunt for a message board or use social network hashtags. You’ll also get exclusives like livestreams and Q&A sessions with show hosts.

The two companies didn’t say when subscriber groups would be available. Several podcasts are involved in a testing period, including the beauty show Fat Mascara. The price you’ll pay will likely vary, but podcasters can enable Acast+ for free. 

Meta has struggled to compete in the podcasting realm, and began shutting down services in early June. The deal keeps the company involved in the category, however. The social media company can benefit from the rise of paid podcasts (through increased use of its services) without having to pour resources into creating or distributing content. This is the first time a podcast company is using Facebook’s new platform for Interoperable Subscriber Groups, but it might not be the last if Acast’s partnership proves successful.