Social Media Instagram users have more control over their data than many realize. By adjusting a few privacy settings, you can prevent Meta from tracking your off-app behavior — such as websites you visit or purchases you make elsewhere — to build ad profiles and train its AI systems.
Source: Engadget 8/22/2026
Social Media LinkedIn's recently launched tool for flagging AI-generated content has already been used more than a million times, signaling widespread user frustration with automated posts flooding the platform. The feature arrives amid findings that nearly half of LinkedIn's longer posts may be fully machine-written.
Source: The Verge 8/21/2026
Social Media LinkedIn reports that its tool allowing users to flag AI-generated content is proving effective. The feature, designed to combat the growing flood of low-effort, algorithmically produced posts cluttering the platform, appears to be gaining traction as professionals grow increasingly frustrated with synthetic filler content.
Source: Engadget 8/21/2026
Social Media Patreon is rolling out more than 30 new and revamped features, with a key focus on tweaking its discovery algorithm to give smaller creators a better shot at being found. CEO Jack Conte framed the push as a deliberate alternative to the algorithmic decay he says has plagued mainstream internet platforms.
Source: The Verge 8/21/2026
Social Media TikTok is reportedly testing a person-to-person payment feature embedded within its direct messaging system. The functionality would build on TikTok Pay, the platform's existing payment infrastructure already deployed across Southeast Asia for in-app shopping, signaling the company's ambitions to deepen its fintech footprint globally.
Source: TechCrunch 8/18/2026
Social Media YouTube is overhauling how it counts video views, applying a consistent measurement methodology across all video formats. The change, rolling out next week, means publicly displayed view totals will likely climb noticeably as previously uncounted or separately tracked interactions get folded into a unified metric.
Source: Engadget 8/17/2026
Social Media Reddit is testing a new feature that would let users experience posts as video or audio content, transforming written discussions into watchable or listenable formats. The move signals Reddit's ambition to compete more directly with multimedia platforms and broaden how its communities consume content.
Source: Engadget 8/17/2026