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Facebook will train its content-removal AI with police camera footage
Facebook will use footage from police body cameras to train its automatic detection systems to spot and remove footage of mass shootings. The company announced Tuesday that it will partner with law enforcement in the US and UK to obtain footage from their firearms training programs. Data from those videos should help Facebook's systems detect real-world, first-person footage of violent events.
Reddit experiments with livesteaming
Over the weekend, rumors and speculation began circulating on Reddit. Users were wondering what cryptic messages on r/pan, a new Reddit community, could mean. Today, Reddit pulled back the curtain. It announced Reddit Public Access Network (r/pan), a weeklong experiment, in which users can post livestream videos. The lessons Reddit learns from this experiment will likely help it develop a permanent livestreaming option in the near future.
LGBTQ+ creators file lawsuit charging YouTube with discrimination
In a federal lawsuit filed yesterday, a group of LGBTQ+ video creators claims YouTube discriminates against their content. The group alleges that YouTube suppresses their videos, restricts their ability to monetize their channels and enforces its policies unevenly, giving more leeway to producers with large audiences. According to The Washington Post, the suit argues that YouTube deploys "unlawful content regulation, distribution, and monetization practices that stigmatize, restrict, block, demonetize, and financially harm the LGBT Plaintiffs and the greater LGBT Community."
Facebook releases tools to flag harmful content on GitHub
Facebook wants to rid the internet of garbage. But it can't do that alone. So today, it's making two of its photo- and video-flagging technologies open-source and available on GitHub. It hopes the algorithms will help others find and remove harmful content -- like child exploitation, terrorist propaganda and graphic violence.
YouTube Premium can automatically download your favorite videos
YouTube is reportedly offering automatic downloads to its Premium subscribers. The opt-in feature should make it easier to watch content offline. As Android Police notes, some Premium subscribers now see a pop-up banner offering to automatically download favorite topics. In the "Downloads" section, users can pick channels and subjects to save for offline viewing, and each card indicates how long the videos are, so you have an idea of what you're saving.
Google researchers trained AI with your Mannequin Challenge videos
Way back in 2016, thousands of people participated in the Mannequin Challenge. As you might remember, it was an internet phenomenon in which people held random poses while someone with a camera walked around them. Those videos were shared on YouTube and many earned millions of views. Now, a team from Google AI is using the videos to train neural networks. The goal is to help AI better predict depth in videos where the camera is moving.
YouTube lets you hide channels from your recommendations
No matter how advanced algorithms get, none will understand your YouTube viewing preferences better than you. With that in mind, YouTube is adding a few new features that will give users more control over which videos appear in their homepage and Up Next suggestions. The changes will roll out beginning today on Android and iOS, and they'll arrive on desktop soon.
Google will work with LGBTQ+ groups on harassment policies
In the wake of YouTube's controversial decision not to pull videos containing homophobic and racist attacks, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote an internal email acknowledging that "the LGBTQ+ community has felt a lot of pain and frustration over recent events." While a few Google execs have already apologized for YouTube's decision, Pichai's email carries more weight given his position. The email, obtained by The Verge, also suggests that Google plans to conduct more internal discussions aimed at addressing its harassment policies.
iOS 13 makes it easier to browse, view and edit photos and videos
Aside from the introduction of that system-wide dark mode in iOS 13, Apple is also making it easier to browse, view and edit your photos and videos. At WWDC 2019, the company showed off a new version of its Photos app that's designed to "remove duplicates and clutter and focus on your best shots." Powered by machine learning, this feature will put your best shots front and center, and you can narrow them down by selecting the new Days, Months and Years tabs. With Days, for instance, the pictures or videos that system thinks you'll like the most will get more real estate on your screen. And you can pinch-to-zoom to view all of your pictures in one go, as well.
A New Zealand shooting video hit YouTube every second this weekend
In the 24 hours after the mass shooting in New Zealand on Friday, YouTube raced to remove videos that were uploaded as fast as one per second, reports The Washington Post. While the company will not say how many videos it removed, it joined Facebook, Twitter and Reddit in a desperate attempt to remove graphic footage from the shooter's head-mounted camera.
Twitter's revamped camera is its answer to Stories
There were rumors flying around recently of Twitter working on a "News Camera," which would bring a Stories-style feature to the social network. And, well, it turns out that's partially true. At SXSW 2019, Twitter is launching a revamped camera for its app that will make it easier to tweet pictures and videos. This new camera, which starts rolling out to users today, has the potential to be one of the biggest changes to Twitter in the past few years -- right up there with the company's shift to 280 characters. While that may be the case, the new feature still feels very much like Twitter though, not a clone of Snapchat or Instagram Stories.
Researchers blame YouTube for the rise in Flat Earthers
Despite steps taken to counteract problematic material YouTube is still a hotbed of hoaxes and fake news -- a problem that's become so prevalent the site recently announced it is changing its AI in a bid to improve matters. But now the scope of the problem has really come to light, as new research suggests that the increasing number of Flat Earthers can be attributed to conspiracy videos hosted on the site.
YouTube creators can hype prerecorded videos with 'Premieres'
While YouTube users have been able to schedule prerecorded videos for years, until now there hasn't been a seamless way to build anticipation for those videos. But there's a feature being launched at VidCon 2018 called YouTube Premieres that's going to change that. This tool will let creators hype future on-demand videos with a dedicated public landing page that they can link to before a video is live on their channel. Right now, YouTube creators tend to go on other social sites like Instagram or Twitter to let their followers know about incoming videos, but there wasn't a way for them to direct people to a specific page on YouTube -- not for prerecorded videos, anyway.
Instagram’s IGTV could soon challenge YouTube’s dominance
Instagram was born as a simple photo-sharing app in 2010, but it began moving into video in 2013, when it started letting users upload short clips. Now, five years after making that initial push into the space, the company plans to take its efforts even further with the launch of IGVT. It's a stand-alone app that'll feature vertical videos up to an hour long, which is a major shift from the one-minute time limit on Instagram. IGTV will also have a dedicated space in the main Instagram app, in case you want to watch these videos in the same place you look at pictures and Stories. With creators including Fortnite champ Ninja and singer Lele Pons on board, it's clear Instagram wants to lure internet personalities like them to IGTV -- even if it can't pay them just yet.
Instagram takes on Snapchat and YouTube with IGTV
Where there's smoke, there's fire. For Instagram, that smoke recently came in the form of rumors about it launching a feature to host curated, long-form videos in its app. And well, there's fire, alright. Today, at an event in San Francisco, Instagram made IGTV official, a new standalone app geared toward creators like those on YouTube and Snapchat Discover. As expected, this is all about giving users the ability to upload videos that are longer than a minute (up to an hour). And yes, the footage is vertical, as this is intended to be a mobile-first experience. IGTV will be available on Android and iOS "in the coming days," but you can watch the longer videos starting today inside the main Instagram app.
Facebook promises to delete unpublished videos
Now that Facebook has been outed as keeping videos you've recorded but never published, the social media has promised to actually delete them. Last week, the sister of a New York Magazine writer found old videos that should have been cleaned off the site buried in her downloaded Facebook data archive. Facebook today apologized for this issue and told Select/All that it would delete the video content it should have in the first place.
YouTube makes art out of ads at SXSW
Unless it's during the Super Bowl, chances are not many people actively look forward to watching ads. But the main reason people do enjoy those is that brands design them to have a cultural effect, rather than just feel like a simple product-pitch video. At SXSW, YouTube is showing a form of that with "The Greatest Stories Retold," an installation inside its Story HQ space that had 13 creative agencies turn classic fairy tales like Snow White into interactive, short-form stories. What YouTube hopes to accomplish with this is to show the power of its six- and 15-second ads, as well as longer-form ones.
Vimeo turned popular internet films into an art exhibition
It was hard to leave Westworld at SXSW, but it had to be done. Thankfully, the show here in Austin is full of other tech-themed places to check out. One of them is Vimeo's "The Decade," an art exhibition that turns popular internet films into immersive experiences. The company says the space, which is located inside a hostel in downtown ATX, was created to celebrate 10 years of its favorite Staff Picks. There are eight different installations total, with each being inspired by some of Vimeo's best videos from the past decade. The documentary Jim Carrey: I needed Color, for instance, was brought to life with a showcase of Carrey's real artwork and his painting boots -- all while the film was playing in the same room, naturally.
YouTube invests $5 million in 'positive' video following backlash
YouTube has faced some serious backlash against awful content, lately, from exploitative childrens' videos to Logan Paul's ill-advised video of a corpse. YouTube needs to up its positivity, and it may be doing so with a $5 million additional investment in its socially-aware Creators for Change program, which premiered at the Tribeca TV festival last year.
Logan Paul forced YouTube to admit humans are better than algorithms
YouTube is no stranger to controversy. Many of its top stars have been in hot water recently: From PewDiePie making racists remarks, to a "family" channel with abusive kid pranks, the company's been under fire for not keeping a closer eye on the type of content that makes it onto the site. Most recently, Logan Paul, a popular YouTuber with more than 15 million subscribers, faced backlash after posting a video that showed a corpse he came across in Japan's so-called "Suicide Forest." That clip, which was eventually taken down by Paul himself, forced YouTube to cut almost all ties with him and to figure out ways to prevent another situation like this.
