Media

Apple is introducing a change to how subscriptions work. No, it’s not lowering its cut, despite the government’s antitrust investigation and its lawsuit with Epic. It announced that developers will be able to offer subscriptions via a new feature, called offer codes. These one-time use

Facebook is sharing some new growth numbers around its video destination — namely, that Facebook Watch is now receiving more than 1.25 billion visitors every month. The company isn’t saying specifically how those numbers have changed during the pandemic (when video services like Netflix hav

We’re now 61 days away from the U.S. presidential election, and Facebook is once more ramping up its efforts to level the playing field and attempt to keep its platform from being manipulated to influence how people vote. CEO Mark Zuckerberg today announced a series of new measures, including

Facebook’s photo and video portability tool has added support for two more third party services for users to send data via encrypted transfer — namely: cloud storage providers Dropbox and (EU-based) Koofr. The tech giant debuted the photo porting tool in December last year, initially of

Facebook has banned a politician from India's ruling party, Bharatiya Janata Party, for violating its policies against hate speech on its platform, the company said today, weeks after inaction on the politician's posts landed the social giant in hot water in its biggest market by users. The

India continues to crack down on Chinese apps, Microsoft launches a deepfake detector and Google offers a personalized news podcast. This is your Daily Crunch for September 2, 2020. The big story: India bans PUBG and other Chinese apps The Indian government continues its purge of apps created by or

Facebook’s video destination, Facebook Watch, is introducing a new feature called “Your Topics” that will allow you to tailor its feed to include more of the content you want to see. Currently, Facebook leverages its existing understanding of each viewer’s interests to perso

Yesterday's overflow Galaxy Unpacked event was about one thing and one thing alone: the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Honestly, it was a bit anticlimactic after its predecessor found Samsung unveiling five new devices. But the singular focus wasn't for lack of new stuff to show off. In fact, the company

The continual uncertainty around TikTok’s future may have provided a big boost to Snapchat in August. Or maybe it was just the Disney eyes filter that went viral. In any event, preliminary estimates from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower indicate that Snapchat’s mobile app across

Stan Chudnovsky last spoke at Disrupt in 2016, so we’ve got a lot to catch up on. Chudnovsky remains in charge of Facebook Messenger — his current title is VP of Messenger — so he can tell us more about how the product has evolved at this year’s Disrupt 2020 on September 14-18.

“The Mandalorian” is returning to Disney+ with new episodes starting on October 30. The Star Wars spin-off series (created by Jon Favreau) was the biggest original offering when Disney+ launched in November of last year. With its story of a mysterious bounty hunter (played by Pedro Pasc

Last year, Google launched a personalized playlist of audio news, called “Your News Update,” for Google Assistant. The feature leverages machine learning techniques to understand the news content and how it relates to the listener’s own likes and interests. Today, the company says

India has banned more than 100 additional apps with linkage to China, including popular mobile game PUBG, citing cybersecurity concerns as geopolitical tensions escalate at the two neighboring nations’ disputed border. On Wednesday, India's IT Ministry ordered to ban 118 apps that it said

Microsoft has added to the slowly growing pile of technologies aimed at spotting synthetic media (aka deepfakes) with the launch of a tool for analyzing videos and still photos to generate a manipulation score. The tool, called Video Authenticator, provides what Microsoft calls “a percentage