Instagram desktop is finally getting the ability to add new photos and videos, a long-overdue update that's part of a set of new features the Facebook-owned social network is launching this week. Currently, while you can log into Instagram from a desktop browser and look through your timeline, actually creating posts requires the mobile apps.
Many people worldwide rely heavily on Instagram to keep in touch with friends and family or make a living. Instagram has announced a new commitment to share more information about what's going on behind the scenes on the social network. Two new features have been revealed designed to give people information about outages and their account status directly within the Instagram app.
Facebook is no stranger to scandals, including ones that land it in court or grilled by Congress, but there are a few notable ones that really rouse people's ire. While its meddling in a past US election still haunts it to this day, Facebook's latest debacle doesn't even involve its main social network but one of its biggest properties. Then again, the social tech giant has been blamed for how things are run at Instagram, and it is now promising to take stronger measures to protect its young users' mental health.
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are experiencing a widespread outage, with the social networks and instant messaging platform all offline for users in multiple locations. The outage comes amid renewed criticism of Facebook, after a whistleblower came forward with the company's own internal research that suggests it could have a negative impact on users.
How in the world has this not already been a feature for Google accounts on all platforms? Today Google released a new system for profile imagery in Google accounts of all sorts, starting with Gmail. Google Illustrations are a collection of images provided by Google to the public for free to take the place of what'd otherwise be a profile photo.
Instagram Kids, the version of the social network that Facebook hoped to hook children 10-12 years old on, is being put on pause, the company has confirmed today. The service, details of which leaked earlier this year, has been increasingly under fire by parents and child privacy advocates, particularly given recent revelations about Facebook's own research on how damaging social media can be to younger users.
![WhatsApp transcription for voice message audio tipped to work with Apple [Updated]](https://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/whatsapp-1-1278x720.jpg)
An ability to transcribe messages was leaked as a potential upcoming feature in WhatsApp. Information about the feature has not yet been confirmed by WhatsApp or Facebook, but details leaked this week suggest the "Transcription" system will work with Apple (and likely Google) to transcribe text and improve speech recognition. The first bit of this leak appeared in an iOS build of the app - so we'll likely see other angles soon.
The Snapchat Spectacles came in 2016 with a lot of hype but turned out to be a bloated bubble that ultimately burst. While Snapchat users might disagree with this judgment, the glasses are pretty much useless for anything other than Snapchat. Now Facebook is looking to change that image with Ray-Ban Stories glasses developed in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company.
WhatsApp has a cut-off date for a set of smartphones by the end of the year 2021. These devices will start to see their "end of service" message in WhatsApp starting on November 1, 2021. Before then, though, WhatsApp has a set of requirements that stand at Android OS 4.1 and newer, so long as that device is able to receive SMS or calls during the verification process. WhatsApp does not support Wi-Fi only devices.
Facebook and Ray-Ban revealed a pair of glasses with two cameras, microphones, and speakers inside. These glasses are very, very similar to the SnapChat Spectacles released in several iterations a few years ago. These glasses from Ray-Ban and Facebook connect to your phone to share video clips and photos, too. But why do these glasses exist?
Facebook seems to have something like a reverse Midas touch where it infects anything it buys with a certain curse. Social networks that were thriving before they became Facebook properties have been transformed into questionable businesses that rely on violating privacy to make a profit. That even includes WhatsApp, whose claim to fame has always been its end-to-end encryption and privacy guarantee. Now it turns out that there might be a small loophole that gives Facebook a bit of wiggle room to actually break that trust, usually under the guise of observing the law.
Twitter is testing a new feature this week that'll make the whole platform a lot more like Instagram. Starting on iOS devices (of course), Twitter is testing what they're calling "edge-to-edge" images. This goes for individual images as well as sets of images in a gallery. With this feature, there'll be no space between images posted in a Tweet and the edge of a display screen.