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☆ Social media platforms are using what you create for artificial intelligence. Here’s how to opt out
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-23 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

For companies running AI models, social media platforms offer valuable data. He added that he would opt out of allowing LinkedIn use his data for AI training. Different social platforms vary in terms of the options they give users to opt-out of contributing to AI systems. Here’s where some of the major social media platforms may be using your data to train and run AI models, and how (and if) you can opt out. LinkedInLinkedIn this week began giving users the choice to opt-out of having their data used to train it generative AI models.

Persons: New York CNN — OpenAI, —, ” David Ogiste, “, Elon Musk’s, Grok, ”, X, Snapchat, ’ selfies, Reddit Reddit, Reddit, won’t, private.Meta Organizations: New, New York CNN, LinkedIn, Nobody’s, CNN, Microsoft, ”, Media, Services, Google, Meta, Facebook Locations: New York, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Europe

☆ Snapchat is rolling out new safety tools aimed at protecting teens from sextortion
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-25 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

The company on Tuesday announced a set of new safety features, including expanded warning pop-ups that appear when a teen receives a message from someone they don’t share mutual friends with or have in their contacts. And Snapchat will now prevent the delivery of friend requests for teens to or from an account that they don’t share mutual friends with that is also located in regions often associated with scammers. Meta in April also announced new features aimed at combating sextortion, including informing users when they’ve interacted with someone who engaged in financial sextortion. Now, when a user blocks another account, any new accounts created on the same device will also automatically be blocked. The updates build on Snapchat’s existing teen safety features, which include a “Family Center” where parents can supervise the behavior of 13- to 17-year-old users, and mechanisms for removing age-inappropriate content.

Persons: New York CNN —, aren’t, ” Snapchat, Jacqueline Beauchere, sextortion, they’ve Organizations: New, New York CNN, CNN, Meta, Prevention Locations: New York

☆ Snap Shares Plummet After Fourth-Quarter Results
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Yiwen Lu | More About Yiwen Lu | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Revenue for the three months ended Dec. 31 was $1.36 billion, up from $1.3 billion a year ago but below Wall Street projections of $1.38 billion for Snapchat’s parent company. Net losses for the fourth quarter narrowed to $248 million, from $288 million a year earlier. “2023 was a pivotal year for Snap, as we focused relentlessly on adding value to our community while evolving our business for long-term growth,” Evan Spiegel, the company’s chief executive, said in a letter to investors. On Monday, Snap laid off more than 500 workers, or about 10 percent of its global work force, part of a bigger wave of targeted cuts by tech companies this year. “While this decision was painful, and we will miss our friends and colleagues, we believe these changes are necessary to achieve our long-term goals” and manage expenses, Mr. Spiegel said in the letter.

Persons: ” Evan Spiegel, Spiegel Organizations: Revenue

☆ Snapchat to let parents decide whether their teens can use the app’s AI chatbot
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-11 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Snapchat will now give parents the option to block their teens from interacting with the app’s “My AI” chatbot following some questions about the tool’s safety for young people. Thursday’s announcement is part of a broader set of additions to Snapchat’s parental oversight tool Family Center. The changes are just the latest updates to Family Center, which lets parents supervise the behavior of 13- to 17-year-old users. Snapchat will now let parents decide whether their teen can chat with the app's My AI chatbot. The platform is also aiming to make Family Center easier to find.

Persons: New York CNN — Snapchat, Snapchat, ”, Evan Spiegel, Spiegel Organizations: New, New York CNN, Family, Center, YouTube, Google, Meta Locations: New York

☆ Snapchat users can now buy Amazon products without leaving the app
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( Sergio Padilla | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Amazon will now run shopping ads for select products on popular photo messaging app Snapchat, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed to CNN. Unlike prompts to get a user to open their phone’s web browser, Amazon’s shopping ads will allow them to shop and check out without having to exit the Snapchat app. “For the first time, customers will be able to shop Amazon’s Snapchat ads and check out with Amazon without leaving the social media app,” the Amazon spokesperson said in an email to CNN. “Customers in the U.S. will see real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, delivery estimates, and product details on select Amazon product ads in Snapchat as part of the new experience. The Amazon partnership could put Snapchat one step closer to competing with the robust in-app shopping experiences of rivals like Instagram.

Persons: ’ Organizations: New, New York CNN, Amazon, CNN, “, Instagram, Meta’s Facebook Locations: New York, U.S, Snapchat

☆ Treasury yields are sky high. Here's why you should care
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-20 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

It’s no longer “higher for longer,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, it’s just “high for long.”What’s happening: 10-year Treasury yields are flirting with 5% for the first time since 2007, before the global financial crisis. It also means more expensive mortgage rates. Mortgage rates tend to track the yield on 10-year US Treasuries. When Treasury yields go up, so do mortgage rates; when they go down, mortgage rates tend to follow. Fed officials, including Powell, have indicated that rates could be high enough to help lower inflation towards their target goal of 2%.

Persons: ”, Steve Sosnick, Rob Almeida, Powell, they’re, Jerome Powell, Paul McCartney, Darrell Cronk, Anna Bahney, —, ” Lawrence Yun, Snapchat isn’t, Snapchat, Clare Duffy, Evan Spiegel Organizations: CNN Business, Bell, New York CNN, Federal Reserve, Interactive, MFS Investment Management, US Treasury, Treasury, Economic, of New, Financial, “, National Association of Realtors, NAR, Twitter Locations: New York, Ukraine, of New York, Wells Fargo, Northeast, Midwest, South, homeownership

☆ Snapchat isn’t just for teens anymore. Now it needs to make some real money
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-19 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

New York CNN —When Snapchat announced last month that it had reached 5 million paying subscribers for its Snapchat+ service, it seemed like a stunning achievement. At 5 million subscribers paying $3.99 per month, Snapchat+ is set to earn around $239 million in annual revenue. That subscriber number is just a fraction of its overall user base of Snapchat, which has quietly become one of the world’s fastest-growing social platforms. The sales declines come as Snapchat, like other platforms, works to update its advertising business to cope with changes to Apple’s app tracking policies. Snapchat has grown its user base by more than 10% year-over-year for the past 16 consecutive quarters.

Persons: Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, it’s, ” Jack Brody, ”, Angelo Zino, Jess Maddox, TikTok Snapchat, ” Brody, you’ve, TikTok, CFRA’s Zino, Scott Kessler, ” Snapchat, Kessler, Brody, Spiegel, “ It’s Organizations: New, New York CNN, Twitter, Facebook, CNN, “, CFRA Research, University of Alabama, YouTube, Intelligence, Meta, Apple Locations: New York, North America, United States, India, Europe, TikTok, Instagram

☆ A New Report Documents How Easily Children Can Access Graphic Images of the War
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Tiffany Hsu | More About Tiffany Hsu | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Meta, which owns Instagram, addressed its efforts to balance safety and speech in a blog post about the war on Friday. It noted that it established a special operations center with expert monitors working in Hebrew and Arabic, who removed or flagged more than 795,000 pieces of harmful content in the first three days of the conflict. The company also said that Instagram allows users to control how much sensitive content they are recommended. The platform said it is automatically detecting and removing graphic and violent content, placing opt-in screens over disturbing images and adding restrictions to its livestreaming function amid the hostage situation. (Hamas accounts have been blocked by platforms like Instagram and TikTok but remains active on Telegram.)

Persons: ” Isabelle Frances, Wright, TikTok Organizations: USA

But as it turns out, I was just not using my imagination, because this year’s Burning Man was an absolute nightmare. casey newtonA bit more of a Drowning Man than a Burning Man, I have to say. kevin rooseYeah, so as someone who’s been to Burning Man, I was fascinated by just the logistics of it all, because it is already a mess to get in and out of Burning Man. kevin rooseSo you are, in addition to a Burning Man escapee this year, you’ve been actually going to Burning Man for a long time. When I say I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what happened to prompt the things that were being directed at us.

Persons: casey newton, kevin roose, I’ve, KEVIN, casey newton It’s, you’ve, it’s, I’ll, casey newton What’s, kevin roose Bluetooth, Kevin Roose, ” casey newton, Casey Newton, Jonathan Greenblatt, Elon, Kevin, casey newton Oh, casey newton You, “ shay, denfreude, kevin roose Schadenfreude, shay, who’s, It’s — casey newton, casey newton That’s, Smart, casey newton Ugh, kevin roose —, casey newton Right, — casey newton, kevin roose What’s, casey newton Sure, ” casey newton Never, Adrian Aoun, He’s, ” adrian aoun, adrian aoun, Larry Page, Adrian, I’m, casey newton Amen, here’s, you’d, we’ve, you’re, Larry, roose, Max, Harry Potter, adrian aoun I’m, they’re, adrian aoun —, —, Rice Krispie, kevin roose Wow, let’s, adrian aoun Oh, adrian aoun She’s, She’s —, We’re, wrenches, hitchhike, I, Gerlach, kevin roose She’s, Y, It’s, They’re, — you’re, casey newton We’re, it’s Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, West, kevin roose It’s, Casey, casey newton Well, Linda Yaccarino, Jonathan, kevin roose Jonathan, ” jonathan greenblatt, jonathan greenblatt, CHUCKLES, I’d, Linda, kevin roose You, Nick Fuentes, haven’t, Kevin —, that’s, what’s, we’re, casey newton I’ve, jonathan greenblatt I’m, We’ve, — what’s, Here’s, That’s, John, “, ”, CASEY, kevin roose Totally, Hank Green, Hank, ” Hank, hank, It’s Hank, Ben Shapiro, kevin roose Hank, Diana Dionisio, Diana, Snapchat, Jay Hepler, Jay, ” Casey, don’t, casey newton Really, casey newton I’m, Holly Godfrey, Holly, Kevin Scott, Kevin Scott’s, Bing, Rachel Cohn, Jen Poyant, Caitlin Love, Chris Wood, Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano, Paula Szuchman, Tam, Nell Gallogly, Kate LoPresti, Jeffrey Miranda, CASEY CHUCKLES Organizations: The New York Times, Defamation League, porta, Electric, Google, Labs, Black Rock, casey newton Fair, Burning, Reno, Defamation, Elon, Labor, Twitter, Center, ADL, Nazi, Anti, Twitter’s Trust, Safety, OG, YouTube, Cato Institute, US, Microsoft, Kevins, Davis Locations: Nevada, La Habra , California, Spanish, East, Iraq, Coachella, Bay, Solano County, Toronto, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Hogwarts, playa, Haiti, Dunkirk, ”, Gerlach, LA, New York, Reno, it’s Reno, America, Florida, chemo, Tokyo, That’s, hardfork@nytimes.com

☆ Snapchat is working to make its app even safer for teen users
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-07 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Snapchat says it’s working to make its app even safer for teen users. The company also launched a series of YouTube videos for parents about the features and an updated website laying out its teen safety and parental control policies. And since then, Snapchat — like other platforms — has rolled out a variety of new teen safety and parental supervision tools. The app’s other existing teen safety measures include prohibiting young users from having public profiles and having teens’ Snap Map location-sharing tool turned off by default. Snapchat will also impose a new strike system for accounts promoting content inappropriate for teens in its Stories and Spotlight sections, where users can share content publicly on the app.

Persons: New York CNN — Snapchat, Snap, Snapchat Organizations: New, New York CNN, YouTube Locations: New York

☆ Snapchat users freak out over AI bot that had a mind of its own
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Snapchat users were alarmed on Tuesday night when the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot posted a live update to its profile and stopped responding to messages. The Snapchat My AI feature — which is powered by the viral AI chatbot tool ChatGPT — typically offers recommendations, answers questions and converses with users. But posting a live Story (a short video of what appeared to be a wall) for all Snapchat users to see was a new one: It’s a capability typically reserved for only its human users. “Why does My AI have a video of the wall and ceiling in their house as their story?” wrote one user. “This is very weird and honestly unsettling.” Another user wrote after the tool ignored his messages: “Even a robot ain’t got time for me.”Turns out, this wasn’t Snapchat working to make its My AI tool even more realistic.

Persons: CNN —, chatbot, ”, ain’t, Snapchat’s, Snapchat, OpenAI Organizations: CNN

☆ Apple may soon show off its biggest and riskiest new hardware product in years
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —Next week, Apple may unveil its most ambitious new hardware product in years, but it’s in a product category that is anything but a proven winner. The highly-anticipated release of an AR/VR headset would be Apple’s biggest hardware product launch since the debut of the Apple Watch in 2015. “So it is great timing for that market.”An uncertain marketFor now, the overall headset market remains small. There were 8.8 million AR/VR headsets shipped globally last year, according to data from market research firm IDC. Unlike almost any other company, however, Apple can create demand for an experimental new product or category.

Persons: ”, Ramon, –, Tim Cook, Cook, “, Siri, Eric Abbruzzese, Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, Abbruzzese, don’t, ” Abbruzzese Organizations: CNN, Apple, Apple Watch, VR, IDC, Washington Post, GQ, Ikea, Bloomberg, ABI Research, Facebook, Street, Meta, Google

☆ Google is bringing an AI chatbot to search results. Here's what it's like
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

With the update, the look and feel of Google Search results will be noticeably different. Users can now sign up for a waitlist for the new Google Search, which will first launch in the United States, via the Google app or Chrome’s desktop browser. The new Google Search also offers a Perspectives feature to showcase what other people are buying or thinking about, and factoring that into results. Like ChatGPT, the new Google Search and Bard are built on a large language model. Google previously told CNN that Bard would serve as a separate, complementary experience to Google Search, and planned to “thoughtfully” add large language models to search “in a deeper way” at a later time.

☆ Snap’s Sales Fall for First Time as a Public Company
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Erin Griffith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The NewsSnap, the parent company of Snapchat, reported on Thursday that its revenue had fallen for the first time since it went public as the app maker struggled to adjust to a difficult economic environment. The company said demand for its ads was “disrupted” by upgrades it made to the platform it sells ads on. Snap also recorded a net loss of $329 million, which was narrower than the $360 million it lost a year ago. Despite the company’s business struggles, the number of Snapchat daily users grew to 383 million, a 15 percent increase over last year. In a statement, Evan Spiegel, Snap’s chief executive, highlighted Snapchat’s increase in users.

☆ Snapchat’s new AI chatbot is already raising alarms among teens and parents
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The feature is powered by the viral AI chatbot tool ChatGPT – and like ChatGPT, it can offer recommendations, answer questions and converse with users. The net effect is that conversing with Snapchat’s chatbot may feel less transactional than visiting ChatGPT’s website. Snapchat's new AI chatbot. “I snapped a picture … and it said ‘nice shoes’ and asked who the people [were] in the photo,” a Snapchat user wrote on Facebook. One user wrote on Facebook that she’s been asking My AI for homework help.

☆ Google Glass is being discontinued, again
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Jennifer Korn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

First unveiled in 2013, Google Glass was initially marketed for a general audience, with the promise of giving people access to a computer on their face rather than having to pull out a phone. The first Enterprise edition of Glass, announced in 2017, was pushed for use in industries such as manufacturing and logistics. The Enterprise Edition 2, released in 2019, was Google’s last attempt at saving the Glass product. Still, the dream of Google Glass lives on. And even after the setback of Glass, Google said last year it was continuing to test other AR glasses.

☆ Snap stock surges as Congress renews efforts to ban TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner is expected to unveil bipartisan legislation Tuesday afternoon that expands President Joe Biden’s authority to ban TikTok and other suspected information technology risks from the United States, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst CFRA Research, wrote in a note Monday that the “biggest beneficiaries of a TikTok ban” would be Snapchat, Facebook-parent Meta, and YouTube. “TikTok’s emphasis on short-form videos has increased engagement/time spent by consumers and has upended the entire industry, creating a headwind for META/SNAP,” Zino wrote. Shares of YouTube’s parent company Alphabet were essentially flat on Tuesday. A TikTok ban, or the possibility of it, may just be one more positive for Meta’s stock this year.

☆ Snap Launches My AI Chatbot Using OpenAI Technology
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Meghan Bobrowsky | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Snapchat’s chatbot is designed to help answer user questions and generate ideas in the chat tab on the app. Snapchat parent Snap Inc. has become the latest company to unveil a new artificial-intelligence feature on its platform, offering an experimental chatbot powered by OpenAI’s buzzy technology to paying users. The chatbot, called My AI, is available to users who subscribe to Snapchat+, the company’s $3.99 a month subscription service, Snap said Monday. The chatbot is designed to help answer user questions and generate ideas in the chat tab on the app.

☆ Facebook Parent, Snap Embrace AI Technology That Powers ChatGPT Chatbot
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Meghan Bobrowsky | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Snapchat’s chatbot is designed to help answer user questions and generate ideas in the chat tab on the app. Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and Snap Inc. are embracing the much talked-about artificial-intelligence technology popularized by OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT chatbot. Meta is establishing a group aimed at accelerating adoption of the so-called generative AI technology across the company, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Monday. Meta, which also owns Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp, is centralizing staff who are working on the AI technology from across the company to achieve faster breakthroughs it can apply to different products, Mr. Zuckerberg said.

☆ Offices are more than 50% filled for the first time since the pandemic started
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Jordan Valinsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Nearly three years after the pandemic began, American offices are finally more than halfway filled again as workers have gradually returned to the office. Office occupancy across 10 major US cities crossed 50.4% of pre-pandemic levels for the first time since early 2020, according to security swipe tracker Kastle Systems. That marks the first time occupancy has crossed the 50% mark since March 2020, when many offices sent workers home because of Covid. Disney is ordering corporate employees to return to offices four days a week beginning March 1. The protest involves more than 40 contractors for YouTube Music, according to the Alphabet Workers Union, which is backing the strike.

☆ Snap stock plunges 15% as revenue growth stalls
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Snap’s quarterly revenue was just shy of $1.3 billion, essentially flat from the year prior. Snap said it has already seen a roughly 7% revenue decline so far in the first quarter compared to the year prior. It estimates revenue for the first three months of the year will be down between 2% and 10% compared to the previous year. (Those figures were included in an investor letter, despite Snap saying it would not provide specific guidance for the quarter.) Snap (SNAP) shares fell as much as 15% in after-hours trading following the report.

☆ Starbucks orders corporate employees to return to office 3 days a week
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Juliana Liu | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Corporate workers at Starbucks must return to the office at least three days a week by the end of January, interim CEO Howard Schultz announced in a Wednesday memo, as another corporate giant clamps down on remote work. Employees of regional offices must report to the office three days a week, though the memo didn’t name the days or specify what counts as commuting distance. When Starbucks (SBUX) embarked on hybrid work last year, Schultz said, corporate workers “made a promise” to be in the office between one to two days a week. The announcement comes a few days after Disney (DIS) CEO Bob Iger ordered workers to return to the office four days a week starting March 1. Apple (AAPL), for example, has called for its corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week.

☆ Disney CEO Bob Iger orders workers to return to the office 4 days a week
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Jordan Valinsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Disney CEO Bob Iger is clamping down on remote workers. Iger, who recently returned to Disney’s helm after a brief hiatus, ordered employees to return to corporate offices four days a week beginning March 1. In an email sent to employees obtained by CNN, he said that employees work better together in-person. Iger returned to Disney in November 2022, replacing predecessor Bob Chapek after a tumultuous, brief tenure. Snapchat’s parent company recently asked workers to return to the office 80% of the time, or the equivalent of four days a week, beginning in February.

☆ Google Might Need to Be Un-Google-Like
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Dan Gallagher | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Google doesn’t like to do layoffs. The internet giant has been avoiding the tech layoff trend so far. Salesforce announced cuts affecting about 8,000 employees last week, following a raft of reduction plans from a swath of tech players. Layoffs are falling especially hard on Google’s main competitors in the online advertising business. Combined cuts at Facebook -parent Meta Platforms , Amazon.com , Snapchat’s parent Snap and Twitter total about 34,000 workers, according to disclosures from the companies and reporting by The Wall Street Journal.

☆ A guide to parental controls on social media
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-13 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

CNN Business —A little over a year ago, social media companies were put on notice for how they protect, or fail to protect, their youngest users. The four social networks have since introduced more tools and parental control options aimed at better protecting younger users. But some lawmakers, social media experts and psychologists say the new solutions are still limited, and more needs to be done. For now, guardians must learn how to use the parental controls while also being mindful that teens can often circumvent those tools. In addition to parental controls, the app restricts access to some features to younger users, such as Live and direct messaging.

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