Steve Thomas - IT Consultant

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

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Top Stories

Twitter gets editable… do we still care?

After years of user demand for an edit button, Twitter’s news this week that such a feature was now entering testing felt a little anticlimactic.

Twitter broke its own embargo over the impending launch. There weren’t any interviews. Instead, Twitter just casually noted the edit feature was being tested internally, it said in a tweet published ahead of its blog post announcement. Here’s a feature you wanted. I guess we’ll ship it. 

And though the feature will roll out to users later this month, it won’t be broadly available. Instead, users can pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to access the edit feature, Twitter said. But only “some” Twitter Blue subscribers will even see the option, as it will still be in a test mode at first. Then there’s the fact that Twitter Blue subscribers have already been somewhat placated by the “Undo Tweet” feature — an option that lets you quickly unsend a tweet when you spot a typo. (It’s actually a delay to post, which makes the “unsending” possible.) This reduces the need for an edit button in many cases, as it turns out.

A true edit feature, meanwhile, introduces a layer of complexity on top of the increasingly cluttered social app. Although Twitter says the feature will have an edit log to minimize abuse, there’s concern that people will re-write tweets knowing that many won’t ever look at the past versions.

If anything, the demand for an edit button had become more a meme than a true user request. It was just sort of unfathomable to some Twitter users that a basic feature like this was not being built. But over the years, people have learned to work around the lack of editing. We’d delete and retweet things. We’d reply with a correction, cursing the lack of an edit button as we did. And then we moved on. Now Twitter wants everyone to pay for this long-requested functionality? Ouch.

Here come the BeReal clones

snapchat's dual camera feature uses both front and back cameras

Image Credits: Snapchat

Remember when every social app was copying Snapchat’s Stories — Instagram successfully so? More recently, that sort of copy-and-paste development cycle has been focused on shoehorning a TikTok-like vertical video feed into every other social app, including Instagram and Facebook (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), Snapchat (Spotlight) and otherseven Twitter gave it a shot for a time.

But now, the top social apps have set their sights on BeReal, the scrappy social app for unfiltered sharing that’s been sitting just a bit too long at the top of the App Store to keep calling it a “trend.” That has the major social platforms worried about the impact the newcomer is having on their respective user bases. In particular, BeReal seems to be succeeding in appealing to a younger, Gen Z audience in search of a more authentic social networking experience. It allows them to connect with their friends without all the embellishments that, for years, have been the hallmarks of social apps — filters, AR and advanced editing tools resulting in a curated, idealized feed. Instead, BeReal users are in search of imperfection — yet another nail in the coffin for the old “Instagram aesthetic” that’s since been replaced by intentionally poorly shot photos and lo-fi selfies.

Last week, we saw Instagram building out a new feature that’s clearly designed to be a BeReal clone, as it would send Instagram users a notification after which they’d have two minutes to capture and share an “IG Candid” photo to their Story. This is essentially the same mechanic BeReal uses today. Before that, it built a Dual camera feature that lets users shoot from both cameras at once. But that one missed the key component to BeReal’s draw: connecting with friends.

Now Snapchat is jumping on the BeReal bandwagon, with the launch of its own Dual Camera feature. Similar to BeReal, the new mode also lets users capture photos and videos from both their front and back cameras at the same time. But in its case, the app allows users to customize where and how their selfie photo appears — either picture-in-picture, in a horizontal or vertical side-by-side layout or in a unique “image cutout” mode. This latter option cuts out your selfie from the background, then overlays it on top of the footage from the back camera. This differentiates Snap’s feature from BeReal as it could inspire a different type of image-sharing experience to emerge.

It’s also the latest example of how advances in machine learning technologies have been allowing technology companies to do more with users’ photos. Apple, for instance, is introducing an image cutout feature in iOS 16 that lets you cut and paste the subject of a photo into other apps — like texting a picture of your dog’s image cutout in iMessage. This technology is also powering other areas involving photos across iOS — like the “copy subject” feature in mobile Safari or “remove background” in Files, for example.

Elsewhere, Pinterest’s buzzy new app Shuffles is also using image cutouts to allow users to grab images from their Pins for use in collages.

But whether or not an image cutout feature will prove a draw for Snapchat users is still unknown. After all, the dual camera photo-taking tech itself is not driving demand for BeReal — it’s the social connections it enables.

California advances an age-appropriate design code bill for apps

Lawmakers in California have passed a bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, that would require apps and websites to increase protections for children, in the absence of any sort of federal standards. The legislation supports the implementation of a range of design changes and features across sites and apps. For instance, companies would have to turn on the highest privacy settings for minors by default — something apps like Instagram have begun doing for minor users (at least new ones), in anticipation of such legislation.

It would also restrict companies from collecting users’ precise locations — a privacy protection that, coincidentally, just went viral on TikTok, as users warned each other how to disable precise location for Instagram’s app in their phone’s Settings. This prompted Instagram head Adam Mosseri to refute the claims users were making, noting that the app was not actually tracking users or sharing their location with others.

Additionally, the bill calls for protections around data collection, prohibiting companies from collecting any data beyond what’s absolutely necessary or using the data collection in a way that would negatively impact the physical or mental health of minors. Apps and sites would also have to have the strongest privacy protections in place, disabling features that personalize the experience based on prior behavior or browsing history, which could affect numerous apps using recommendation algorithms, like TikTok. And it could restrict apps in other ways, like limiting messaging with strangers, and disallowing techniques designed to addict kids into spending hours with the service, among other things.

While such guidelines sound good on paper, the broad and vague language used in the bill could create complications in implementing some of the changes, critics have argued. In addition, privacy advocates pointed out that this could increase the use of age-verification tech, which often requires users to submit personal data in order to use a service.

If signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, the bill could become law by 2024.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

  • Ahead of next week’s event, Apple released iOS 16, beta 8 to developers with additional bug fixes and performance improvements.
  • It also rolled out Xcode Cloud subscriptions to developers using Xcode 13.4.1 or later and are members of the Apple Developer Program. The subscription offers 25 compute hours per month for free (until the end of 2023 when it will become $15/mo). Pricing kicks in starting at $49.99/mo for 100 hours and goes up to 1,000 compute hours at $400/mo. Account holders can start, upgrade or downgrade a subscription at any time, Apple says.
  • An app developer’s lawsuit over App Store rejections, scams and fraud has ended in a settlement agreement after court filings show a request to dismiss the suit earlier this summer. The plaintiff, app developer and former Pinterest engineer Kosta Eleftheriou, made a name for himself in recent months calling out some of the worst App Store scams. This later culminated in a lawsuit of his own against Apple, filed in California’s Superior Court in Santa Clara County in March 2021, where he alleged his own app had been unfairly rejected from the App Store and then later targeted by scammers, leading to lost revenues. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Platforms: Google

  • Google blocked Trump’s social media app, Truth Social, from launching on the Play Store over its content moderation issues. Specifically, Google found the app contained physical threats and incitements to violence, which are banned by its policy. But the app remains live on iOS despite hosting some of the same dangerous content in violation of Apple’s rules. Meanwhile, Google has now reinstated the Parler app to the Play Store after initially removing it over similar content moderation issues following the January 6 Capitol attack.
  • Google rolled out third-party in-app billing in the Play Store to additional markets, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area, making the option available to end users. Interested non-gaming developers can apply for the program and, if they qualify, will be able to use third-party payment systems in their apps. The company announced the program earlier this year. It notes that “reasonable service fees” will still apply to those who make the switch, but didn’t disclose the percentages involved.

E-commerce

Meta and Jio launch grocery shopping on WhatsApp in India

Image Credits: WhatsApp

  • Meta partnered with India’s Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms to bring grocery shopping to WhatsApp. The launch will allow customers in India to browse JioMart’s grocery catalog on WhatsApp, then add items to a cart and make the payments via local payments rail UPI without leaving the messaging app.
  • Block’s Cash App will now allow users to make payments on e-commerce sites outside the Square network, including with new partners American Eagle, Aerie, Tommy Hilfiger, Finish Line and JD Sports. Other merchants will join in the following months, like Romwe, Savage x Fenty, SHEIN, thredUP and Wish.

Social

Meta Instagram NFT

Image Credits: Meta

  • Facebook and Instagram now let users post NFTs to their profiles by connecting their wallets, like Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet. NFTs minted on the Ethereum, Polygon and Flow blockchains are supported.
  • Facebook said it’s shutting down its Nextdoor clone called Neighborhoods next month after realizing that Facebook Groups was actually just fine for this purpose. It also recently shut down live shopping and its standalone gaming app.
  • Instagram began testing new features that will help users better control what they see on the app. This includes the option to mark multiple posts on the Explore page as “Not Interested,” and another option that will let you tell Instagram you want to stop seeing posts with content you’re no longer interested in.
  • Twitter launched its “close friends” feature, Twitter Circle, to global users. The feature allows users to add up to 150 people to their Twitter Circle in order to make some tweets available only to those they know and trust instead of to the wider public.

Twitter Circle on mobile

Image Credits: Twitter

  • Twitter was reportedly working on an OnlyFans competitor, The Verge reported, but ended those efforts due to issues with CSAM on the platform.
  • TikTok laid off employees from its U.S. ad department, amid a restructuring, The Information reported. The head of the ad sales team, former Meta executive Blake Chandlee, had forewarned about layoffs earlier this month.
  • Snap also confirmed it would lay off around 20% of its 6,400-plus staff, after The Verge reported on its plans. The company also said it would cancel its original shows and in-app games, and would shut down its Zenly and Voisey apps. The Zenly shutdown is most surprising, given the app is still fairly popular with 35 million MAUs.
  • Last summer’s hit social app Poparazzi’s parent company, TTYL, is prepping a new social app that adds the ability for users to post not only photos but also videos, and answers to questions and prompts to their friends’ profiles. The app, called Made With Friends, is due out in October.

Image Credits: Made With Friends

Messaging

  • Google brought back the Duo icon with an update to its Google Meet Android app after recently consolidating the Meet and Duo apps, making “Meet” the surviving brand. The company said this would help people who were searching for “Duo” to find and launch the newly merged application.
  • An Indian court ordered Telegram to disclose details of channels violating copyright in a lawsuit filed by a teacher. The teacher shared a list of channels circulating her lectures and books on competitive exams, which were being sold on these channels at discounted prices, she said.
  • Researchers at the University of Washington made an underwater communication app, AquaApp, that uses sonic signals to pass messages. The system uses the phone’s speaker to create high-frequency audio signals to communicate.

Streaming & Entertainment

  • Alongside its announcement of NBC’s Dateline as its latest podcast subscription, Apple shared that the number of Apple Podcast subscribers had grown by 300%+ since June 2021 and 25%+ of the top 100 shows in its Top Shows chart now offer a subscription.
  • Sony Music sued Triller over copyright infringement after missing payments, its lawsuit alleges.
  • Netflix snatched up two Snap executives to lead its new ad-supported business: Chief Business Officer Jeremi Gorman and VP of Sales for the Americas Peter Naylor, according to The Verge.

Dating

  • Video dating app Filter Off described to TechCrunch how it used GPT-3 to create a number of chatbots combined with a script to create human-like faces to trick scammers into interacting with fake dating app profiles. These profiles weren’t seen by normal app users, only by those the algorithm identified as scammers. This ended up with scammers trying to scam each other or scam other bots. Read the full story here.

Gaming

  • Facebook is shutting down its standalone Facebook Gaming app on iOS and Android on October 28, 2022 and will transfer games, content and groups over to the main Facebook app. The move comes as the company prioritizes its investments around discovery and recommendations in the main Facebook feed, leading to other closures like live shopping and its specialized neighborhood groups product.
  • Epic Games defeated another copyright infringement lawsuit over its Fortnite dances. This one had claimed Fortnite ripped off a choreographer’s routine for the “It’s Complicated” emote in the game. A judge ruled the two dances didn’t share enough creative elements for the emote to be considered infringement.
  • Meta renamed its Oculus Mobile app to “Meta Quest” as its continues it transition away from the Oculus branding to take on the Meta name.

Health & Fitness

  • Streaming music service Deezer entered the wellness market with the launch of an app called Zen featuring guided yoga, meditation and other inspiration that can be recommended based on mood or goals. The app will roll out more broadly in 2023, offering the company the opportunity to cross-sell content, it said.

Utilities

  • Keyboard tech licensing startup Fleksy expanded its SDK to indie devs and app makers who want to add more text input features — like text input autocorrection, prediction and swipe — to their apps.
  • Truecaller released an update to its iOS app featuring better spam detection, faster performance, quick onboarding and a smaller app size. The new app also addresses user concerns over call detection and spam identification that had previously worked better on Android.

Travel & Transportation

  • Uber updated its app with new safety features, including a new way to text 911 and others in partnership with ADT. Now, tapping the shield-shaped icon will bring up four options: contact 911, contact an ADT safety agent, share trip status or report a safety issue to the company.

Government & Policy

  • The U.S. Department of Justice is in the early stages of drafting an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, according to sources cited by Politico. While the report suggested a potential suit could arrive by the end of the year, it also stressed that a final decision about if or when to sue Apple had not yet been made.
  • The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against data broker Kochava Inc. for selling geolocation data from “hundreds of millions of mobile devices,” it says, which could be used to trace the movements of individuals, including those to and from sensitive locations.

Security & Privacy

  • Microsoft revealed how a high-severity vulnerability impacted TikTok users on Android. Though now patched, the vulnerability could have allowed attackers to take over user accounts that clicked on a malicious link.

Funding and M&A

🤝 Sony acquired mobile game developer Savage Game Studios for an undisclosed sum. The company will join Sony’s newly created and independently operating PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, which will focus on creating games based on new and existing PlayStation IP.

💰 OneSignal, a startup that helps businesses automate SMS, email and in-app campaigns, raised $50 million in Series C funding, led by BAM Elevate. The company has raised $80 million to date and counts around 6,000 paying customers.

💰 Investing app Landa, which lets users make fractional investments in rental properties, emerged from stealth with an $8 million seed and $25 million Series A, co-led by NFX, 83North and Viola. To date, users have invested in around 400 properties in the app across NYC and Atlanta. It’s soon launching in Charlotte, Birmingham, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida.

💰 PsycApps, a gamified mental health app for teens and adults, raised $1.7 in seed funding from U.S.-based Morningside Ventures. The startup has been through clinical trials, allowing it to secure contracts with schools in the U.K., including Regional College and Paragon Skills.

🤝 Reddit acquired audience contextualization company Spiketrap to boost its ads business for an undisclosed sum. Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit to improve in areas like ad quality scoring and will boost prediction models for powering auto-bidding.

🤝 Grocery delivery app Instacart is acquiring Eversight, an AI-powered pricing and promotions platform for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands and retailers, for an undisclosed sum.

💰 Triller reportedly raised $200 million in debt and equity per a report by The Wrap, and is targeting a $3 billion valuation in its expected IPO this year.

Downloads

Robin Games’ PLAYHOUSE

Image Credits: Robin Games

Women-led mobile gaming startup Robin Games raised funding around the idea of carving out a new niche in the market of “lifestyle gaming” by creating a fantasy gaming experience that’s more sophisticated and stylish — something more in line with the sort of content you’d typically find in a lifestyle magazine or Instagram influencer’s profile. This week, the startup released its first title to tackle this concept with the launch of a mobile game, PLAYHOUSE, which combines both gameplay and shopping in one experience.

Available on iOS and Android, PLAYHOUSE is a DIY design game that allows players to drag-and-drop furniture and décor into spaces to create original looks for rooms using elements like wall art, sofas, chairs, tables, plants and more. Unlike some competing design games, the pieces can be moved, rotated, resized or layered to create a unique look. But what makes this experience even more interesting is that users can shop the items in the game by clicking through to the retailer’s website. At launch, it’s partnering with over 100 brands like Arhaus, Article, 1stDibs, Chairish, One Kings Lane, ABC Carpet & Home, Jenni Kayne, Society6, Bloomscape, Room & Board and Lulu & Georgia, and others.

The app monetizes as a free-to-play title with in-app purchases, however, not affiliate commissions. (Read the full review on TechCrunch.)

Duolingo’s new Math app (waitlist)

Language learning app maker Duolingo has launched its latest creation, Duolingo Math, announced during its Duocon conference — after first being teased at the event the year prior. Similar to how Duolingo turns language learning into mini-games, the new app will teach third-grade math to users in a snack-sized experience aimed at making learning fun and accessible. The company says the new app will initially be available to iPhone and iPad users who sign up for the waitlist.

Google’s decision to block the Truth Social app’s launch on the Play Store over content moderation issues raises the question as to why Apple hasn’t taken similar action over the iOS version of the app that’s been live on the App Store since February. According to a report by Axios, Google found numerous posts that violated its Play Store content policies, blocking the app’s path to go live on its platform. But some of these same types of posts appear to be available on the iOS app, TechCrunch found.

This could trigger a re-review of Truth Social’s iOS app at some point, as both Apple’s and Google’s policies are largely aligned in terms of how apps with user-generated content must moderate their content.

Axios this week first reported Google’s decision to block the distribution of the Truth Social app on its platform, following an interview given by the app’s CEO, Devin Nunes. The former Congressman and member of Trump’s transition team, now social media CEO, suggested that the holdup with the app’s Android release was on Google’s side, saying, “We’re waiting on them to approve us, and I don’t know what’s taking so long.”

But this was a mischaracterization of the situation, Google said. After Google reviewed Truth Social’s latest submission to the Play Store, it found multiple policy violations, which it informed Truth Social about on August 19. Google also informed Truth Social as to how those problems could be addressed in order to gain entry into the Play Store, the company noted.

“Last week, Truth Social wrote back acknowledging our feedback and saying that they are working on addressing these issues,” a Google spokesperson shared in a statement. This communication between the parties was a week ahead of Nunes’s interview where he implied the ball was now in Google’s court. (The subtext to his comments, of course, was that conservative media was being censored by Big Tech once again.)

The issue at hand here stems from Google’s policy for apps that feature user-generated content, or UGC. According to this policy, apps of this nature must implement “robust, effective and ongoing UGC moderation, as is reasonable and consistent with the type of UGC hosted by the app.” Truth Social’s moderation, however, is not robust. The company has publicly said it relies on an automated AI moderation system, Hive, which is used to detect and censor content that violates its own policies. On its website, Truth Social notes that human moderators “oversee” the moderation process, suggesting that it uses an industry-standard blend of AI and human moderation. (Of note, the app store intelligence firm Apptopia told TechCrunch the Truth Social mobile app is not using the Hive AI. But it says the implementation could be server-side, which would be beyond the scope of what it can see.)

Truth Social’s use of AI-powered moderation doesn’t necessarily mean the system is sufficient to bring it into compliance with Google’s own policies. The quality of AI-detection systems varies, and those systems ultimately enforce a set of rules that a company itself decides to implement. According to Google, several Truth Social posts it encountered contained physical threats and incitements to violence — areas the Play Store policy prohibits.

Image Credits: Truth Social’s Play Store listing

We understand Google specifically pointed to the language in its User Generated Content policy and Inappropriate Content policy when making its determination about Truth Social. These policies include the following requirements:

Apps that contain or feature UGC must:

  • Require that users accept the app’s terms of use and/or user policy before users can create or upload UGC.

  • Define objectionable content and behaviors (in a way that complies with Play’s Developer Program Policies), and prohibit them in the app’s terms of use or user policies.

  • Implement robust, effective and ongoing UGC moderation, as is reasonable and consistent with the type of UGC hosted by the app.

And:

  • Hate Speech — We don’t allow apps that promote violence, or incite hatred against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, caste, immigration status, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.

  • Violence — We don’t allow apps that depict or facilitate gratuitous violence or other dangerous activities.

  • Terrorist Content — We don’t allow apps with content related to terrorism, such as content that promotes terrorist acts, incites violence, or celebrates terrorist attacks.

And while users may be able to initially post such content — no system is perfect — an app with user-generated content like Truth Social (or Facebook or Twitter, for that matter) would need to be able to take down those posts in a timely fashion in order to be considered in compliance.

In the interim, the Truth Social app is not technically “banned” from Google Play — in fact, Truth Social is still listed for preorder today, as Nunes also pointed out. It could still make changes to come into compliance, or it could choose another means of distribution.

Unlike on iOS devices, Android apps can be sideloaded or submitted to third-party app stores like those run by Amazon, Samsung, and others. Or, Truth Social could opt to do what the conservative social media app Parler did after its suspensions from the app stores last year. While Parler chose to make adjustments in order to return to Apple’s App Store, it now distributes the Android version of its app directly from its website — not the Play Store.

While Truth Social decides its course for Android, an examination of posts on Truth Social’s iOS version revealed a range of anti-Semitic content, including Holocaust denial, as well as posts promoting the hanging of public officials and others (including those in the LGBTQ+ community), posts advocating for civil war, posts in support of white supremacy, and many other categories that would seem to be in violation of Apple’s own policies around objectionable content and UGC apps. Few were behind a moderation screen.

It’s not clear why Apple has not taken action against Truth Social, as the company hasn’t commented. One possibility is that, at the time of Truth Social’s original submission to Apple’s App Store, the brand-new app had very little content for an App Review team to parse, so it didn’t have any violative content to flag. Truth Social does use content filtering screens on iOS to hide some posts behind a click-through warning, but TechCrunch found the use of those screens to be haphazard. While the content screens obscured some posts that appeared to break the app’s rules, the screens also obscured many posts that did not contain objectionable content.

Assuming Apple takes no action, Truth Social would not be the first app to grow out of the pro-Trump online ecosystem and find a home on the App Store. A number of other apps designed to lure the political right with lofty promises about an absence of censorship have also obtained a green light from Apple.

Social networks Gettr and Parler and video sharing app Rumble all court roughly the same audience with similar claims of “hands-off” moderation and are available for download on the App Store. Gettr and Rumble are both available on the Google Play Store, but Google removed Parler in January 2021 for inciting violence related to the Capitol attack and has not reinstated it since.

All three apps have ties to Trump. Gettr was created by former Trump advisor Jason Miller, while Parler launched with the financial blessing of major Trump donor Rebekah Mercer, who took a more active role in steering the company after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Late last year, Rumble struck a content deal with former President Trump’s media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), to provide video content for Truth Social.

Many social networks were implicated in the January 6 attack — both mainstream social networks and apps explicitly catering to Trump supporters. On Facebook, election conspiracy theorists flocked to popular groups and organized openly around hashtags such as #RiggedElection and #ElectionFraud. Parler users featured prominently among the rioters who rushed into the U.S. Capitol, and Gizmodo identified some of those users through GPS metadata attached to their video posts.

Today, Truth Social is a haven for political groups and individuals who were ousted from mainstream platforms over concerns that they might incite violence. Former president Trump, who founded the app, is the most prominent among deplatformed figures to set up shop there, but Truth Social also offers a refuge to QAnon, a cultlike political conspiracy theory that has been explicitly barred from mainstream social networks like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook due to its association with acts of violence.

Over the last few years alone, that includes a California father who said he shot his two children with a speargun due to his belief in QAnon delusions, a New York man who killed a mob boss and appeared with a “Q” written on his palm in court and various incidents of domestic terrorism that preceded the Capitol attack. In late 2020, Facebook and YouTube both tightened their platform rules to clean up QAnon content after years of allowing it to flourish. In January 2021, Twitter alone cracked down on a network of more than 70,000 accounts sharing QAnon-related content, with other social networks following suit and taking the threat seriously in light of the Capitol attack.

A report released this week by media watchdog NewsGuard details how the QAnon movement is alive and well on Truth Social, where a number of verified accounts continue to promote the conspiracy theory. Former president Trump, Truth Social CEO and former House representative Devin Nunes, and Patrick Orlando, CEO of Truth Social’s financial backer Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC) have all promoted QAnon content in recent months.

Earlier this week, former president Trump launched a blitz of posts explicitly promoting QAnon, openly citing the conspiracy theory linked to violence and domestic terrorism rather than relying on coded language to speak to its supporters as he has in the past. That escalation paired with the ongoing federal investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of high-stakes classified information — a situation that’s already inspired real-world violence — raises the stakes on a social app where the former president is able to openly communicate to his followers in real time.

That Google would take a preemptive action to keep Truth Social from the Play Store while Apple is, so far, allowing it to operate is an interesting shift in the two tech giant’s policies over app store moderation and policing. Historically, Apple has taken a heavier hand in App Store moderation — culling apps that weren’t up to standards, poorly designed, too adult, too spammy, or even just operating in a gray area that Apple later decides now needs enforcement. Why Apple is hands-off in this particular instance isn’t clear, but the company has come under intense federal scrutiny in recent months over its interventionist approach to the lucrative app marketplace.

 

The company behind last summer’s hot social app, Poparazzi, appears to be readying a round two following its $15 million Series A announced in June. A new listing in the App Store under the developer’s account, TTYL, is teasing a pre-release app called Made with Friends. The app offers a twist on Poparazzi’s original concept of social networking profiles crafted by a user’s friends, instead of by the users themselves, but adds support for other types of content.

Poparazzi had encouraged friends to post photos to each others’ social networking profiles as if they were their friends’ “paparazzi” — hence the name. Made with Friends, meanwhile, expands on that concept by asking users to post all sorts of things to their friends’ profiles — including text-based content like answers to questions or prompts, as well as photos and videos.

This Poparazzi spin-off seems partly inspired by today’s popular Q&A apps, like Sendit or NGL, which tie into other social networks, like Snapchat and Instagram. On those apps, users receive questions in an inbox that they can answer and share to their social profiles or Stories elsewhere. But in the case of Made with Friends, users aren’t posting questions anonymously, nor is the app itself delivering fake questions to create engagement as the anonymous Q&A apps had been doing (at least, until Apple’s App Review team caught on and requested changes to be made.)

However, based on some earlier screenshots of the new app, it does appear the Q&A responses in Made with Friends could be designed for social sharing to other platforms, like Instagram.

Image Credits: Made with Friends

TechCrunch reached out to the team behind Poparazzi to ask about its plans for the new app and whether or not this was an attempt to pivot into a new area. Our emails were not returned.

But according to data from Apptopia, the Made with Friends app was originally titled “Pop – Made with Friends,” and had described itself as a way you could “pop” someone by answering questions about them, tagging them on a prompt with a photo, video, GIF, quote or description. The updated version on the App Store today does away with the “pop” lingo and branding, but introduces the same concept of social profiles that are essentially made by friends.

It makes sense that Poparazzi’s team is beginning to test new options.

Despite Poparazzi’s early success, which led the app to top 5 million installs a year after its launch, it’s since lost ground to a new wave of social networking apps that are attracting a younger, Gen Z audience. Currently, this group is dominated by BeReal, which has been steadily holding onto its position as the No. 1 app on the U.S. iPhone App Store. In addition, younger audiences have also downloaded a range of other social apps in larger numbers than Poparazzi — like video networking app Yubo, which counted some 60 million sign-ups as of May, and homescreen social app Locket with around 20 million installs as of its $12.5 million seed funding announcement announced this month.

These trends could be driving TTYL to look for new twists on its friends-focused social networking concept.

This would not be the first time the team at TTYL experimented with a new social networking concept. Before delivering a hit with Poparazzi, the company had developed nearly a dozen other apps, including OMG, CampusFM, TYPO, Lynx, Yearbook 2020 as well as TTYL, the audio social network and Clubhouse rival the company’s name references.

As TTYL co-founder Alex Ma explained earlier this summer, most social networking apps fail and the best thing to do is to keep building and experimenting until one works. This multi-app business model has also been adopted by another consumer social app maker, 9count, which recently raised new funding as both Wink and its Gen Z dating app Summer took off.

We noticed TTYL has already begun to market the new app through TikTok influencers as there are posts that show Made with Friends in action, despite its pre-order status. One such video was also reposted to the new Made with Friends TikTok profile which teases the app as “coming soon.”

It’s not clear what this additional may mean for Poparazzi’s future, but it’s worth noting that TTYL’s flagship app has still not made its way to Android.

The App Store shows an expected release date of October 1, 2022 for Made with Friends, which is now available for pre-order.

The U.S. Department of Justice is in the early stages of drafting an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, according to sources cited by Politico in a report released just ahead of the weekend. While the new report suggested a potential suit could arrive by the end of the year, it also stressed that a final decision about if or when to sue Apple had not yet been made.

A 2019 deal between U.S. regulators had allowed the Justice Department to take on the investigations of Apple and Google, while the Federal Trade Commission was to take the reins of other Big Tech investigations, like Amazon and Facebook. In Apple’s case, the DoJ has been examining whether or not Apple abused its market power to dominate smaller tech companies, including both hardware and software makers.

Apple’s tight control of its App Store has angered developers who want to be able to market their apps directly to consumers and take their own payments without having to pay commissions to Apple. This is also the subject of Fortnite developer Epic Games’ lawsuit against the tech giant, now under appeal.

The DoJ’s investigation into Apple’s business has been taking place for some time. The Reuters news agency in February 2020 noted that the Department of Justice had begun reaching out to app developers as part of its examination of Apple’s business practices. Those initial discussions had included the makers of parental control apps that were pulled from the App Store for non-compliance with Apple’s rules. One developer had said their app was pulled for six months, causing it to lose half its business, for example.

Separately, Apple has been accused by AirTag rival Tile (now owned by Life360) as engaging in unfair competition. When Apple’s AirTag launched it did so with direct access to the iPhone’s ultra-wideband technology for precision finding capabilities and deep integration into Apple’s own “Find My” app. Tile had argued that it shouldn’t have to give up its direct relationship with its customers through its own app in order compete with Apple’s hardware by becoming just another “Find My” partner. In addition, Tile had said that Apple’s decision to enter this market would allow it to easily dominate because of its first-party advantage and ecosystem power.

Politico said that DoJ lawyers in San Francisco are leading the Apple investigation and have been reaching out to companies that partner with Tile. Those meetings indicated the lawyers were looking to frame a case that was about not just the App Store, but Apple’s mobile OS more broadly, the report noted.

The investigation comes at a time when Apple is also under increased scrutiny for the way it reports revenues from its Services business, which includes advertising, cloud services, the App Store, subscription services like Apple TV+ and Apple Music, AppleCare, and more.

Analysts are pushing Apple to be more transparent about this “$70 billion black box” consisting of multiple businesses, Bloomberg recently reported in an op-ed. In particular, it’s difficult to get a sense of how much money Apple is making from any one business in that division — like the App Store, whose revenues Apple stopped breaking out separately after 2014. Now, as more countries push Apple to open up the App Store to support alternative payments — as the Netherlands and South Korea have done in limited ways — it’s difficult to tell what impact those changes are having on the App Store, the Services’ sector’s largest business by revenues. This makes it difficult for investors to make decisions about Apple’s stock.

While the timing of a DoJ lawsuit against Apple is still unknown, Politico’s report suggested the Justice Department could be awaiting the judge’s decision in the Apple-Epic Games trial before moving forward.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Twitter whistleblower’s impact (or lack thereof!) on the Elon Musk lawsuit

The headlines this week were dominated by Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s, explosive whistleblower complaint.

The former Twitter employee accused the company of cybersecurity negligence that ranged from a lack of basic security controls to national security threats and foreign intelligence risks. But one more immediate question on everyone’s minds is whether or not Zatko’s statements about bots on the platform will help or hurt Elon Musk’s case.

To some, it may appear that Zatko has backed up Musk’s claims when he notes that there are millions of active accounts on the platform which Twitter is not including in its mDAU metric — a metric Twitter itself invented to count only those users it could monetize by way of advertisements. (That is, mDAUs are mostly people, not spambots.)

“These millions of non-mDAU accounts are part of the median user’s experience on the platform,” states the complaint. “And for this vast set of non-mDAU active accounts, Musk is correct: Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence of spam bots,” it reads.

The complaint then goes on to say that Twitter, when asked in 2021, couldn’t identify the total number of spam bots on its platform, and couldn’t provide an accurate upper bound on that figure.

Ah ha!, right? Even Twitter doesn’t know how much spam it has!

Well, maybe that’s not the smoking gun you might think.

Musk’s legal argument is that Twitter has been misleading its users and investors about the number of bots on its platform, which the company has estimated to be less than 5%. (Because surely this all hasn’t come about because Musk overpaid for the deal and now wants out!)

However, Twitter has been reporting to the SEC that spam and bots are less than 5% of its mDAUs — a figure that’s essentially already scrubbed of bots so advertisers know how many real eyeballs they’re able to reach. What’s more, while Zatko may have a point that this sort of made-up, proprietary metric is ripe for manipulation, he also says in the complaint that Twitter execs are “incentivized to avoid counting spam bots as mDAUs.” In other words, it seems likely that Twitter’s statements to the SEC are correct when Twitter says its mDAU figures are “less than 5%” spam.

Plus, even if Twitter doesn’t know how much total spam is on the platform at any given time, that doesn’t mean it can’t figure out how much spam is in its mDAU figure — a figure Twitter has explained it calculates using private data. Twitter looks at things like IP addresses, phone numbers, geolocation, client/browser signatures and more, CEO Parag Agrawal noted in a Twitter thread. This helps it to come up with its mDAU figure, by classifying accounts that appear to belong to “real” users as such.

It’s worth noting the total spam on Twitter’s platform is always in flux — when Twitter does a big sweep for spam and bots, users have noticed their follower counts drop. However, Twitter wasn’t monetizing based on those bots nor was it reporting inflated user metrics to the SEC by including spambots in its user figures — at least, not since its invention of the mDAU in 2019.

And while it’s true that mDAUs are not a representation of the spam-filled Twitter user experience today — an experience, remember, that Musk claimed he was buying Twitter to fix! — they are an indicator of how many real people are on the site. And that’s what a new owner would want to know anyway, right?

Whether or not mDAUs represent Twitter as it truly is misses the point. Sure, mDAUs may be a non-standard metric. It might not be comparable to the metrics used by other social platforms. It may even be a bad metric! But that’s not relevant to the case. The fact is, it’s not a new metric. Twitter defined it years ago and was using mDAUs long before Musk committed to buying Twitter. It’s what Twitter reports to the SEC.

So good luck using this as proof of being lied to, Mr. Musk. Can’t wait to see how that works in court!

In other news, Twitter expands into podcasting

Image Credits: Twitter

While the whistleblower news may have been the biggest news story of the week, Twitter dropped some pretty significant product news as well. It’s turning itself into a podcast app.

The company announced an update to its Twitter Spaces tab that would see it integrating podcasts into a revamped experience where content is now organized into hubs called “Stations.” These Stations group content by topics — like news, sports, music and more. The app will also make recommendations based on who you follow and how you engage with content. Twitter Spaces — including both live and prerecorded audio — will also continue to be available in the Spaces tab.

TechCrunch had previously reported that Twitter was developing Stations and a personalized audio digest as part of a makeover coming to its Spaces tab, but we didn’t know the extent of the podcast integrations at the time. The company tells us it’s making over 2 million podcasts available at launch, which are programmatically recommended to users.

Podcasts are ingested as RSS feeds, which means the 2 million figure is not a hard limit — Twitter could expand. Still, it’s a notable out-of-the-gate start, as Spotify today has more than 4 million podcasts, many of which are produced in-house, exclusives or shows recorded in its Anchor app.

Twitter, of course, is home to its own sort of exclusives, known as Twitter Spaces. These live audio programs can be recorded for later listening — similar to podcasts. If the creator doesn’t download, edit and package the Space to send it out to other services on a podcast RSS feed, then these Spaces remain something you could only find on Twitter. (Of note, Twitter says it would include both the recorded Twitter Space and the resulting podcast of that Space in its app — allowing it to count the same show twice.)

Twitter will make recommendations of podcasts to individuals based on how they listen and engage with people and topics. This could also be a competitive advantage of sorts.

As to why it felt the need to do podcasts? That’s less clear. Twitter told us it wants to be “the home for audio conversations.” It also sees an overlap between podcast listeners and Twitter users. Based on its own internal research, 45% of U.S. Twitter users listen to podcasts monthly. More realistically, it likely sees the ability to monetize audio with ads — if this effort pays off.

However, Twitter falls short in terms of key features that would make its app an alternative to your favorite podcast player. There’s no offline listening, no download capability, no support for paid podcasts and no exclusive partnerships. So who, exactly, does the podcast feature serve — those so addicted to Twitter they can’t even leave the app to stream a favorite program, we suppose.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

  • Apple announced its iPhone event will take place on September 7 at 10 AM PT. The company is expected to announce a new iPhone 14 with an improved camera and a faster chip. An updated Apple Watch may also show up along with…maybe…a AR/VR headset?!
  • Apple confirmed iPadOS 16 is delayed. Bloomberg originally reported it and macOS Ventura would have a slightly later release this year.
  • Apple shipped the seventh beta of iOS 16, likely a final or near-final version before the official September launch of the new OS. It also released the seventh betas for watchOS 9 and tvOS 16, as well as the first beta of iPadOS 16.1.

Platforms: Google

  • Android Auto 8.0 arrived, but lacks the redesign Google teased in May that would introduce a three-section split screen layout and better adaptability with regard to supporting differently shaped car infotainment screens.
  • Google launched a developer Preview of the new Cross device SDK for Android, first announced during Google I/O. The new SDK allows developers to build “rich multi-device experiences with a simple and intuitive set of APIs,” Google says.

E-commerce

  • Beauty Retail and Direct-to-Consumer Apparel apps are driving more DAUs in the last 30 days than they did during the peak of 2021 holiday shopping, according to Apptopia. Daily users engaging with D2C Apparel apps have increased 5% from December 2021, and 2% for Beauty Retail apps, a report found.
  • 65% of social networking app users consider Meta apps a shopping destination according to a commerce report from SimplicityDX. This data excludes Facebook Marketplace. If the marketplace is kept in the equation, the figure jumps to 83%.
  • Walmart’s mobile app is getting a cashback feature — but only for Walmart+ subscribers. Via a partnership with Ibotta, Walmart+ members will be able to save offers, then scan a QR code at checkout to automatically receive money back in the in-app wallet, which they can use on a later purchase.

Image Credits: Walmart

Social

  • Instagram updated its teen safety features, which will now default users under the age of 16 to the app’s most restrictive content setting. It will also prompt existing teen users to do the same, and will introduce a new “Settings check-up” feature that guides teens to update their safety and privacy settings. Teens under 18 can only choose between the “Standard” and “Less” options for how much sensitive content they want to see on the app. But even though new users will be defaulted to the most restrictive setting, they can still change it. The features, first announced in December before Instagram’s Senate testimony, are rolling out to global users now. Privacy advocates say they’re a good first step, but suggest that Instagram should route its youngest users to the most restrictive setting, including if it suspects they’re younger than they indicated when signing up. And they point out that Instagram’s list of what it considers sensitive content doesn’t include content that promotes self-harm or disordered eating.

Image Credits: Instagram

  • It’s not a verified label but…Twitter began tests of a special tag that would highlight accounts that had a verified phone number. This signals the account is less likely to be spam. Also this week the team working on spam bots, the Twitter service team, merged with those working to reduce toxic content, the platform health experience team.
  • TikTok tries out a “Nearby” feed that displays local content to users. The test is only live in Southeast Asia and is currently limited in scope. When available, the feed is shown as a third option alongside For You and Following on the app’s homepage.
  • Snap settled an Illinois class action lawsuit that accused Snapchat’s filters and lenses of violating the Biometric Information Privacy Act. The settlement totaled $35 million and will go toward individual payouts that are estimated to be between $58 and $117. Users who think they may be eligible for compensation can submit a claim online. Despite settling the claims, Snap still denies it violated the BIPA, saying its Lenses “do not collect biometric data that can be used to identify a specific person, or engage in facial identification.”
  • Instagram added a feature that allows users to share anyone’s posts or Reels through a QR code. Users also can share a QR code location through its searchable Map experience.
  • Pinterest confirmed it’s facing a probe by California’s Civil Rights Department over unlawful discrimination. The department reached out to former Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma and others as possible witnesses, all of them women. Ozoma and another former Pinterest employee, Aerica Shimizu Banks, had accused the company around two years ago of discrimination and retaliation.

Messaging

Image Credits: WhatsApp

  • WhatsApp confirmed that users in select markets are gaining access to WhatsApp Communities, its new group discussions platform offers admin controls, sub-groups, file sharing, 32-person group calls and emoji reactions.
  • WhatsApp is working on a feature to make Stories — or, as it’s known on the app, Status Updates — a bigger part of the experience by adding blue rings around users’ profile photos in the main chat list that link to their updates. It’s also planning to add the ability to retrieve deleted messages and let admins erase messages from group chats, reports said.
  • Telegram founder Pavel Durov said he wants to integrate web3 into the messaging app, TechCrunch reported. Specifically, Durvo referenced the TON project and how it’s used for domain name/wallet auctions. He said he’d be inclined to try out TON’s blockchain on Telegram.
  • Facebook Messenger received an update making it compatible with M1 and M2 Macs.

Photos

Image Credits: Lightricks

Dating

  • Match Group’s COO and CFO Gary Swidler has warned that Tinder signups aren’t back at pre-pandemic levels and new user acquisition remains a challenge, per The FT.
  • Tinder’s parent company Match filed a new antitrust case in India against Apple over its App Store fees, calling them excessive.

Streaming & Entertainment

  • YouTube TV is developing a new viewing mode that would allow users to watch four different streams at once in a mosaic interface. It’s also said to be working on a way to bring YouTube Shorts to the TV.
  • A hacker compromised Plex’s streaming media platform and was able to access usernames, emails and encrypted passwords. Plex informed users by email and suggested a password reset.
  • SiriusXM began offering a bundle that combines Stitcher Premium with its SiriusXM Platinum Plan.

Gaming

Heads Up games on Netflix

Image Credits: Netflix

  • Netflix launched its own version of the popular Heads Up! game to subscribers, which features decks referencing popular Netflix shows like “Bridgerton,” “Selling Sunset,” “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game” and others.
  • Netflix job postings suggest the company is expanding into cloud gaming. So far, the streamer’s some two-dozen mobile games are only used by less than 1% of its subscriber base, according to third-party data.
  • The New York Times integrated its popular word game app, Wordle, into its existing NYT’s Crossword app. This now allows it to rank above other Wordle clones and copycats in app store searches.
  • Google launched its Google Play Games for PC program into open beta in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia. The program had only been available through a waitlist, previously. It now offers more than 50 PC-compatible games for Windows users — including Summoners War, Cookie Run: Kingdom, Last Fortress: Underground and Top War. The games can be played using the same Google ID on Windows as on users’ Android devices.
  • Valve is now beta testing a redesigned Steam mobile app for iOS and Android, which includes a rebuilt framework and modernized design. The app hasn’t gotten a major revamp in years. Valve says the beta will help it learn what users like and don’t, and find bugs that need to be fixed.

Productivity

  • Microsoft is introducing more ads inside its Outlook Mobile app for iOS and Android. Before, the company only included ads in the “Other” tab of the inbox — the one with all the junk — for those who use the two-tabbed mode for filtering their emails. It will now include ads in the inbox for those who use a single inbox interface, too.

Travel & Transportation

  • Google’s Waze is shutting down its six-year-old service Waze Carpool starting next month. The company said driving behaviors changed following the pandemic as more people are working from home, which reduced the need for a service aimed at commuters.

Utilities

  • Bloomberg doubled down on its earlier reporting of more ads coming to Apple’s first-party apps with confirmation that Apple Maps will start serving ads next year.
  • Apple kicked off fundraising for U.S. National Parks through Apple Pay donations running August 21-28. As a part of this initiative, it also rolled out a new national parks guide to highlight those that honor Native American heritage inside the Apple Maps app. While these sort of initiatives may help to drive users to Apple Pay, the company may no longer need to do this in the future as now three-quarters of U.S. iPhone users have enabled Apple Pay on their devices. 
  • Both Yelp and Google Maps rolled out updates to make it clearer which listings were abortion providers versus crisis pregnancy centers. Yelp labeled the latter as providing “limited medical services” while Google labeled abortion care providers as “provides abortions.” It’s not taking action on crisis pregnancy centers, however.
  • Google Wallet (previously known as Google Pay) rolled out to six more regions, making the app available now in 45 global markets.
  • Apple’s Wallet app can be deleted in iOS 16.1, code suggests, as Apple responds to regulatory pressure focused on how it may push its first-party apps on iPhone users.

Security & Privacy

  • VICE goes hands-on with Pretty Good Phone Privacy, a data service for Android that offers increased security when using mobile phone networks. They concluded the service could be suited to those who want a layer or two of additional protections but cautioned PGPP was still in early phases and a little buggy.
  • Food delivery app DoorDash confirmed a data breach that exposed customers’ personal information, including names, email addresses, delivery addresses and phone numbers. A subset of users also had partial payment card information stolen.
  • Twilio confirmed the same hackers compromised the accounts of some users of its 2FA app, Authy, as part of a wider breach of its systems.
  • Google said it has pulled over 2,000 personal loan apps from its Play Store in India this year amid a crackdown on apps engaged in predatory lending practices and abuse and harassment of their users.

Reading Rec’s

  • How the Find My App Became an Accidental Friendship Fixture — The New York Times dug into how young people are using Apple’s Find My app to keep up with their friends, no matter the cost to personal privacy and interpersonal dynamics.
  • It’s a modern-day Facebook’ – how BeReal became Gen Z’s favourite app”— this hot Gen Z app is profiled by The Guardian, which dubs it the “modern-day Facebook” for keeping up with real-life friends.
  • Authenticator app developer Kevin Archer detailed in a Twitter thread how he continues to face subscription scammers on the App Store who have copied his legitimate app, then beg for reviews during onboarding and push a subscription on consumers before users even start using the app. Archer says they’ve reported the scam several times using the “Report a Problem” feature and Apple has not taken action.

Funding and M&A

💰 Consumer social app maker 9count raised an additional $6 million on top of its $21.5 million Series A to help fund development of its flagship app, Wink, and its newer dating app, Summer.

💰 Bengaluru-based healthcare app Mojocare raised $20.6 million in Series A funding led by B Capital Group. The app offers consultations with doctors, therapists and nutritionists and sells products.

💰 Dubai-based Zywa, a neobank aimed at Gen Z users, raised $3 million in seed funding at over $30 million (110 million AED) valuation. The startup aims to expand further into Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

💰 Seattle mental health Alongside raised $5.5 million for its in-development adolescent mental health app. The app would allow users to interact with a chatbot and guide them to resources.

Downloads

Shuffles

Pinterest Shuffles collage

Image Credits: Pinterest

Collage-style video “mood boards” are going viral on TikTok — and so is the app that is making them possible. Pinterest’s recently soft-launched collage-maker Shuffles has been climbing up the App Store’s Top Charts thanks to demand from Gen Z users who are leveraging the new creative expression tool to makepublish and share visual content. These “aesthetic” collages are then set to music and posted to TikTok or shared privately with friends or with the broader Shuffles community.

Despite being in invite-only status, Shuffles has already spent some time as the No. 1 Lifestyle app on the U.S. App Store.

During the week of August 15-22, 2022, Shuffles ranked No. 5 in the Top Lifestyle Apps by downloads on iPhone in the U.S., according to metrics provided by app intelligence firm data.ai — an increase of 72 places in the rankings compared to the week prior. It was the No. 1 Lifestyle app on iPhone by Sunday, August 21st, and broke into the Top 20 non-gaming apps on iOS as a whole in the U.S. that same day, after jumping up 22 ranks from the day prior.

But this app isn’t available to all. You need to know someone with an invite to get in. You can try our invite codes FTSNFUFC or L5JI8QCS to try to get in.

Read more about Shuffles here on TechCrunch

In December, just ahead of Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s testimony before the U.S. Senate over the impacts of its app on teen users, the company announced plans to roll out a series of safety features and parental controls. This morning, Instagram is updating a critical set of these features which will now default teen users under the age of 16 to the app’s most restrictive content setting. It will also prompt existing teens to do the same, and will introduce a new “Settings check-up” feature that guides teens to update their safety and privacy settings.

The changes are rolling out to global users across platforms amid increased regulatory pressure over social media apps and their accompanying minor safety issues.

In last year’s Senate hearing, Mosseri defended Instagram’s teen safety track record in light of concerns emerging from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, whose leaked documents had painted a picture of a company that was aware of the negative mental health impacts of its app on its younger users. Though the company had then argued it took adequate precautions in this area, in 2021 Instagram began to make changes with regard to teen use of its app and what they could see and do.

In March of this year, for instance, Instagram rolled out parental controls and safety features to protect teens from interactions with unknown adult users. In June, it updated its Sensitive Content Control, launched the year prior, to cover all the surfaces in the app where it makes recommendations. This allowed users to control sensitive content across places like Search, Reels, Accounts You Might Follow, Hashtag Pages and In-Feed Recommendations.

It’s this Content Control feature that’s receiving the update today.

The June release had put in the infrastructure to allow users to adjust their settings around “sensitive content” — that is, content that could depict graphic violence, is sexualized in nature, or content about restricted goods, among other things. At the time, it presented three options to restrict this content — “More,” “Less,” or “Standard.”

Before, all teens under 18 were only able to choose to see content in the “Standard” or “Less” categories. They could not switch over to “More” until they were an adult.

Image Credits: Instagram

Now, with today’s update, teens under the age of 16 will be defaulted to the “Less” control if they are new to Instagram. (They can still later change this to Standard if they choose.)

Existing teens will be pushed a prompt that encourages them — though does not require — to choose the “Less” control, as well.

As before, this impacts the content and accounts seen across Search, Explore, Hashtag Pages, Reels, Feed Recommendations and Suggested Accounts, Instagram notes.

“It’s all in an effort for teams to basically have a safer search experience, to not see so much sensitive content and to automatically see less than any adult would on the platform,” said Jeanne Moran, Instagram Policy Communications Manager, Youth Safety & Well-Being, in a conversation with TechCrunch. “…we’re nudging teens to choose ‘Less,’ but if they feel like they can handle the ‘Standard’ then they can do that.”

Of course, to what extent this change is effective relies on whether or not teens will actually follow the prompt’s suggestion — and whether they’ve entered their correct age in the app, to begin with. Many younger users lie about their birthdate when they join apps in order to not be defaulted to more restrictive experiences. Instagram has been attempting to address this problem through the use of A.I. and other technologies, including those that now require users to provide their birthdays if they had not, A.I. that scans for possible fake ages (e.g. by finding birthday posts where the age doesn’t match the birthdate on file), and, more recently, via tests of new tools like video selfies.

The company hasn’t said how many accounts it’s caught and adjusted through the use of these technologies, however.

Separately from the news about its Sensitive Content Control changes, the company is rolling out a new “Settings check-up” designed to encourage all teens under 18 on the app to update their safety and privacy settings.

This prompt focuses on pointing teens to tools for adjusting things like who can reshare their content, who can message and content them, and their time spent on Instagram, as well as the Sensitive Content Control settings.

The changes are a part of a broader response in consumer technology about how apps need to do better with regard to how they serve younger users. The E.U., in particular, has had its eye on social apps like Instagram through conditions set under its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Age Appropriate Design Code. Related to teen usage of its app, Instagram is now awaiting a decision about a complaint over its handling of children’s data in the E.U., in fact. Elsewhere, including in the U.S., lawmakers are weighing options that would further regulate social apps and consumer tech in a similar fashion, including a revamp of COPPA and the implementation of new laws.

In response to the new features, child-friendly policy advocate Common Sense Media‘s founder and CEO Jim Steyer suggested there’s still more Instagram could do to make its app safe.

“The safety measures for minors implemented by Instagram today are a step in the right direction that, after much delay, start to address the harms to teens from algorithmic amplification,” Steyer said, in a prepared statement. “Defaulting young users to a safer version of the platform is a substantial move that could help lessen the amount of harmful content teens see on their feeds. However, the efforts to create a safer platform for young users are more complicated than this one step and more needs to be done.”

He said Instagram should completely block harmful and inappropriate posts from teens’ profiles and should route users to this platform version if it even suspects the user is under 16, despite what the user entered at sign-up. And he pushed Instagram to add more harmful behaviors to its list of “sensitive content,” including content that promotes self-harm and disordered eating.

Instagram says the Sensitive Content Control changes are rolling out now. The Settings check-up, meanwhile, has just entered testing.

Collage-style video “mood boards” are going viral on TikTok — and so is the app making them possible. Pinterest’s recently soft-launched collage-maker Shuffles has been climbing up the App Store’s Top Charts thanks to demand from Gen Z users who are leveraging the new creative expression tool to make, publish and share visual content. These “aestheticcollages are then set to music and posted to TikTok or shared privately with friends or with the broader Shuffles community.

Despite being in invite-only status, Shuffles has already spent some time as the No. 1 Lifestyle app on the U.S. App Store.

During the week of August 15-22, 2022, Shuffles ranked No. 5 in the Top Lifestyle Apps by downloads on iPhone in the U.S., according to metrics provided by app intelligence firm data.ai — an increase of 72 places in the rankings compared to the week prior. It was the No. 1 Lifestyle app on iPhone by Sunday, August 21st, and broke into the Top 20 non-gaming apps on iOS as a whole in the U.S. that same day, after jumping up 22 ranks from the day prior.

Additionally, the firm Sensor Tower found the app is now No. 66 Overall on the U.S. iPhone App Store and is the No. 1 Overall app in Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.K. It’s No. 2 Overall in Australia and No. 3 in Canada.

First launched in late July 2022, the app has seen 211,000 iOS downloads worldwide in the month it’s been live. 160,000 of those downloads were in the U.S., data.ai says. Sensor Tower, meanwhile, estimates the app has seen approximately 338,000 installs during this time.

Considering it’s still not “publicly launched,” Shuffles appears to be an out-the-gate hit for Pinterest, which has been trying to reinvent itself for the creator-driven, video-first era with products like Idea Pins, similar to TikTok, and live video shopping on Pinterest TV. 

Similarly, Shuffles is also targeting a younger demographic who’s using social media in a new way: for self-expression, not just networking.

The new app allows users to build their own collages using Pinterest’s photo library or by snapping photos of objects they want to include using the camera. One clever feature involves its use of technology, built in-house, that allows users to cut out objects from their photos, their Pinterest boards, or by searching for new Pins.

This is similar to iOS 16’s forthcoming image cutout feature that is, arguably, one of the more fun additions to ship with Apple’s new mobile operating system. Here, you can effortlessly copy an object from one of your photos — like your dog, for instance — then paste that cutout anywhere you choose, like in an iMessage chat. This feels a bit magical, as you only need to touch and hold to lift the image away from the background.

Shuffles, meanwhile, makes image cutouts even easier. When you either search for or snap a photo, the app often automatically identifies the object in the photos and you only have to tap the “Add” button to place it into your collage where it can be resized and moved around the screen. At other times, you can use the included tool to cut out the portion of the image you want to utilize in your creation.

You can also choose to add effects and motion to the images to make them shake, spin, pulse, swivel and more. For instance, you could add an image of a record player, then animate it so it actually spins.

Image Credits: Pinterest

The final product can be saved locally to your device, shared in a message with friends, or published to a dedicated community using a hashtag. These hashtags are browsable in the app’s discovery section where collages tagged with popular hashtags — like #moodboard, #vintage or #aesthetic, for instance — are also showcased.

While the app does make for good TikToks, it helps drive traffic to Pinterest too. The objects in users’ collages are linked to Pinterest and a tap will bring you to a dedicated page for the item in question, which you can then open to view directly in Pinterest. In the case of items that are available for purchase — like fall fashion or home decor, for instance — users could also buy the item by clicking through to the retailer’s website.

Demand for the app has been aided by its exclusivity, for the time being.

Users need an invite code to get in — and they can only get it from an existing Shuffles user who has just 5 invites to share.

Invite codes have often been used to drive demand for new products, after seeing outsized success as a growth mechanism for Google’s new email system Gmail in the early 2000s. But in later years, their usage has felt less authentic, as they became a way for app marketers to push users to post to social media in exchange for early access to a new product.

With Pinterest, however, the use of the invite code mechanism is not tied to a request that users must take some sort of action to be let in. Instead, you have to know someone to get an invite, which has led some TikTokers to lament how they’ve had to beg friends for codes.

(Beg no more: Pinterest provided TechCrunch readers with an invite code to use for Shuffles: FTSNFUFC. If that runs out, you can visit Pinterest’s Instagram or Twitter account for future code drops. This is not an advertisement or paid promotion, we’re just sharing the code!) 

Pinterest told TechCrunch the app is invite-only because, technically, it hasn’t publicly launched.

Shuffles, we’re told, is the first-ever standalone app created by Pinterest’s in-house incubator, TwoTwenty. The team, which also had a hand in the creation of Pinterest TV, is focused on researching and testing new product ideas and iterating on those that gain traction.

As to why the app is resonating with Gen Z, it seems to be the combination of the technology used to simplify collage making with the desire for creative expression tools that serve the demographic’s social habits.

“The app is seeing budding download momentum, targeting younger users. It’s building off the empowerment of creativity and user-generated content, popularized in many ways by TikTok,” Lexi Sydow, Head of Insights at data.ai, told TechCrunch. “Especially for younger generations, photo editing and creative projects are mobile-first more than ever, leveraging robust mobile apps to create robust projects that once required sophisticated desktop software. The app takes collaging one step further with simple embedded tools that would require multiple steps or coordination across multiple apps,” she explained.

“Users curate their mood boards and ‘vibes’, which touches on a similar cultural thread to visual-first campaigns by Spotify showing your unique music tastes. The app inherently relies on Gen Z’s social habits where users leverage social media apps to share with their networks and close circles of friends. The app has received 4.31 out of 5 stars to date since launch, with 72% of all reviews being 5 stars,” Sydow added.

Shuffles is currently iOS-only and a free download on the App Store.

WhatsApp Communities, the messaging app’s anticipated expansion aimed at supporting larger discussion groups, has now rolled out to additional users as it nears a public launch. The company declined to share specific details as to how many users or which countries were seeing the new feature as testing expands, but confirmed that more users have now been given early access.

First announced in April, WhatsApp Communities is a significant attempt to re-create the popularity of Facebook’s Groups within a messaging app environment. Created by the app’s end users, communities include features designed to add structure to larger group chats such as support for file sharing, 32-person group calls, emoji reactions, as well as admin tools and moderation controls, among other things.

In addition to capitalizing on WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption and users’ growing desire to network within private communities outside of larger social networks, WhatsApp Communities also present a challenge to other messaging apps that have grown in popularity, like Telegram. The feature could also appeal to clubs or organizations that today engage in group chats across private platforms and apps like Apple’s iMessage, GroupMe, Band, Remind and others.

What makes the feature appealing to larger groups is that not all the discussions take place in a single chat, which can get busy. Instead, only admins have the ability to share announcements to all Community members through the main announcement group, which can support thousands of users. Meanwhile, members can chat in smaller sub-groups that admins have created or approved.

Unlike Facebook Groups, WhatsApp Communities aren’t public or discoverable on the platform. Users have to be invited to a Community in order to join.

Image Credits: WhatsApp screenshot via WABetaInfo

According to reports by sites including Android Police and WABetaInfo, some WhatsApp beta testers were newly reporting they had gained the ability to create a community in the app. The reports noted that the ability to hide your phone number from other sub-group members wasn’t immediately supported — though it’s expected to be available when the feature publicly launches.

However, the reports claimed it was WhatsApp beta app users who were gaining access to this feature. This isn’t quite accurate, we understand. WhatsApp clarified to TechCrunch it’s the full feature that’s rolling out to a small number of users in a few countries at the moment.

The company declined to share which countries were among those with access but at least one report claims that Malaysia is among them.

Among the many damning allegations in the newly released Twitter whistleblower complaint, is the disquieting revelation that Twitter was unable to seal its production environment to guard against any potential insider threats amid the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Twitter’s former head of security Peiter “Mudge” Zatko has accused Twitter of serious cybersecurity negligence in an expansive new complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Justice Department. Among allegations that range from poor data protection to FTC violations, the complaint indicates Twitter lacked the ability to protect itself if any of its own employees went rogue.

This issue was discovered on January 6, after a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol Building. As a precaution, Zatko had wanted to lock down Twitter’s internal systems and found that was not an option.

Zatko said he asked the executive in charge of engineering how Twitter could seal its production environment to keep it protected from any internal threats from staff who may have supported the rioters. The complaint explains that Zatko didn’t want any employees to access or potentially damage the production environment as the Capitol attack was underway.

What he found, however, was that such a lockdown wasn’t just difficult — it was allegedly impossible.

“All engineers had access,” the complaint states. “There was no logging of who went into the environment or what they did. When Mudge [Peiter Zatko] asked what could be done to protect the integrity and stability of the service from a rogue or disgruntled engineer during this heightened period of risk he learned it was basically nothing. There were no logs, nobody knew where data lived or whether it was critical, and all engineers had some form of critical access to the production environment,” the complaint reads.

Twitter hired Zatko in late 2020 to lead the security division following a high-profile attack that compromised the Twitter accounts of several high-profile individuals, including Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. During Zatko’s time at Twitter, the security professional claims to have witnessed a company that lacked basic security controls and procedures, and where around 5,000 people — or half of Twitter’s staff at the time — had been given access to “sensitive live production systems and user data” in order to do their jobs.

This goes against standard engineering and security principles which typically lock down access to live production environments. Engineers at tech companies of Twitter’s size would normally utilize staging environments and test data, as opposed to live customer data. Twitter did not, Zatko found. Instead, he discovered that employees built, tested and developed new software directly in production with live customer data and other sensitive information, he said. In addition, much of this access wasn’t monitored or logged, the complaint indicates.

As a result of Twitter’s compromised security, Zatko says it was vulnerable to insider threats during the Capitol insurrection.

The complaint also highlights how Twitter’s lack of logging could have allowed employees to take various actions without being caught. Twitter’s issues around proper logging were already known thanks to the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) investigation into the July 15, 2020 hack into the Twitter accounts of cryptocurrency firms and other well-known figures. DFS had discovered that Twitter lacked adequate cybersecurity protections, including “adequate access controls and identity management, and adequate security monitoring.”

In addition, the complaint points out Twitter didn’t have a chief information security officer (CISO) at the time of the 2020 Twitter hack — then the largest hack of a social media platform in history. Zatko had flagged this in the complaint as one of the ways Twitter was in violation of its 2011 FTC Consent Order. (The FTC order had come about after multiple other security incidents in 2009 had allowed hackers to take administrative control of Twitter’s systems. Under the terms of the FTC agreement, Twitter was ordered to establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program that would be assessed by an outside auditor.)

The complaint states Twitter didn’t have either a CISO or an executive versed in information security and privacy engineering when it was attacked in 2020 — just months before the Capitol attack. The company had lost its previous security chief, Mike Convertino, in December 2019 after he left to join a cyber resilience firm, Arceo. Twitter didn’t bring on a replacement until late September 2020, when it hired Rinki Sethi, previously of cloud data management company Rubrik, to serve as CISO. That meant Twitter went for a good part of a year leading up to January 6 without a chief information security officer.

Zatko later joined Twitter in November 2020 to head security.

In the absence of a CISO, Parag Agrawal — then Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer, now CEO — was the key decision maker for correcting the security vulnerabilities exposed by the 2020 Twitter hack, the complaint said.

Later, both Zatko and Sethi were among those who left the company when Agrawal shook up Twitter’s executive leadership in January of this year after he took over as CEO following Jack Dorsey’s November 2021 departure. Twitter then appointed Lea Kissner as CISO on an interim basis after Sethi left.

Twitter has dismissed Zatko’s whistleblowing as a “false narrative” that’s “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies,” in statements made to the press — including those provided to TechCrunch.

Agrawal has also sent this same message in a memo to company employees, included below.

Earlier this year, reports emerged that YouTube would soon add a dedicated podcasts homepage — a signal the company was getting more serious about its investments in podcasts and the potential ad revenue they could deliver. Today, YouTube confirmed to TechCrunch the new podcasts destination is now live for U.S. users, after the URL was discovered to be live ahead of any formal announcement.

According to a report by 9to5Google, the dedicated podcast page YouTube.com/podcasts went live sometime last month and is now linked, at least for some users, on YouTube’s existing Explore page alongside other top destinations like Gaming, Sports, Learning, Fashion and others. It did not appear in the website’s sidebar navigation, however.

Reached for comment, YouTube told TechCrucnh the URL is not globally available at this time.

“The podcast destination page on YouTube helps users explore new and popular podcast episodes, shows and Creators, as well as recommend podcast content,” said YouTube spokesperson, Paul Pennigton. “It’s currently available in the U.S. only.”

YouTube declined to answer further questions about the company’s plans for podcasts in general or the destination itself — hinting that a broader announcement was still to come. (It’s possible this will be one of the announcements planned for a YouTube creator event scheduled for next month, if we had to guess.)

Before today, there were already a number of hints that YouTube was getting more serious about podcasts — particularly after Spotify entered the space with its support for video podcasts.

Last year, YouTube hired a podcast executive, Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and has been offering cash to popular podcasters to film their shows, reports said. This March, a site called Podnews leaked an 84-page presentation that detailed YouTube’s podcast roadmap. In the document, YouTube revealed it had plans to pilot the feature by ingesting RSS feeds. It also mentioned a new URL, YouTube.com/podcasts but the link didn’t work at the time.

The document also help to clarify some of YouTube’s thinking around podcasts, as it suggested YouTube had plans to feature audio ads sold by Google and other partners. This could present a potential new revenue stream for the tech giant at a time when the younger generation has shifted their search behavior from Google to other platforms, like TikTok.  The document said YouTube planned to roll out audio-first metrics to creators and integrate YouTube data into podcast measurement platforms including Nielsen, Chartable and Podtrac, as well.

The addition of a top-level landing page for podcasts is a fairly significant move for the company.

As different YouTube verticals have grown in importance and popularity, YouTube would highlight these categories by offering them their own homepages on its site and feature them as a link in its main navigation. Notably, it did this with YouTube Gaming back in 2015 and with YouTube Fashion (now Fashion & Beauty) in 2019. On mobile, it also features a prominent link to YouTube Music that opens the companion app for YouTube’s Music service. Presumably, it could do the same with podcasts in the future, it it wanted to capitalize on its ability to drive traffic from its flagship app to its streaming service.

YouTube’s advances in podcasting follow significant investments on Spotify’s part into the medium. The company has spent more than $1 billion on related acquisitions. It brought studios and exclusive shows in-house, launched paid podcast subscriptions, and developed podcast ad tech platforms and services. Spotify hyped the revenue potential for its podcast efforts this June, noting that its podcasting business generated roughly €200 million last year, up 300% from 2020.

Facebook this year has been struggling to maintain its position among the Top 10 apps on the U.S. App Store, according to an analysis of iPhone App Store data. As younger consumers shift to newer social networking experiences like TikTok and now BeReal, the tech giant’s big blue app has lost traction in the App Store’s Top Charts.

Last year, for instance, Facebook only fell out of the Top 10 free iPhone apps in the U.S. seven times. But in 2022, that figure has already soared to 97 — an indication that Facebook may be losing ground as new apps push their way into the App Store’s top rankings.

For a more direct comparison, Facebook’s app fell out of the App Store’s Top 10 apps just six times during the first half of 2021. In the first half of 2022, however, it has dropped out of this grouping a total of 59 times, per data provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

It even once stayed out of the Top 10 as long as 37 consecutive days in 2022, the firm noted, up from just two consecutive days in 2021.

Additional analysis provided by another App Store data provider, data.ai (previously App Annie), also supported this conclusion. It found Facebook’s drop-off times this year were mainly concentrated in April, May and June. April was Facebook’s worst month so far, as the app’s rank fell into the 30s on April 18, and then reached as low as No. 44 on April 21. Notably, this was around the time that BeReal was climbing the App Store’s Top Charts, breaking into the Top 5. Today, BeReal is the No. 1 non-gaming app on the U.S. App Store.

To what extent this trend should be concerning for Facebook is less clear.

The company hasn’t consistently held onto a strong position in the Top 10 in prior years, either. Plus, a ranking in Top 10 Apps is only one means of measuring an app’s success — it’s an indicator of a company’s ability to attract new users, but not its ability to maintain traction with existing ones. On that front, Facebook hasn’t yet conceded. It’s still the top app by monthly active users as of the most recent quarter, per data.ai’s analysis.

That said, when Facebook is losing its Top 10 position to newcomers in social networking — like the current No. 1 app BeReal — it’s more problematic than if it were losing its rank due to growth from COVID-era necessities, like Zoom.

Image Credits: Maskot (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

A failure to inspire a new generation of users is something the company is concerned about and a topic Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken candidly about before.

Last fall, the exec told investors the company has been “retooling” its teams to make serving young adults its north star, rather than “optimizing for the larger number of older people” using its apps. He admitted this sort of shift could take years, not months, to accomplish. Unspoken was whether the company would be successful marketing Facebook to a new generation — especially at a time when the company was betting billions on the so-called metaverse.

But Meta has been well aware of its teen issues long before we saw the signs reflected in the Top Charts.

Last October, Bloomberg reported Facebook had been compiling internal reports showing the “time spent” metric for U.S. teenagers on Facebook was down 16% year over year as of March 2021. Young adults in the U.S. were spending 5% less time on Facebook, the data showed, and the number of new teen signups was declining, too. (The report was one of the hundreds released by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.)

This year, Meta announced another concerning metric.

In February 2022, the company reported to investors Facebook had lost daily active users for the first time in its history and its monthly active users remained flat. While the daily active users grew slightly in subsequent quarters, the platform lost more monthly actives after a ban in Russia — a signal that a single market loss could dampen Facebook’s growth.

As of the most recent quarter, Facebook’s daily active users had climbed back up from the 1.929 billion reported in February, when the figure had dropped, to now 1.97 billion.

Sizable numbers like these, combined with the slight upward tick, can make Facebook’s issues difficult to spot. It’s not dead yet, after all! And the flagship app is not the only arrow in the company’s quiver.

Last year, Meta-owned apps scored all four of the top spots in terms of monthly active users worldwide, led by Facebook at No. 1, per data.ai’s “State of Mobile” annual report. It was followed by WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram — well ahead of TikTok at No. 6. This past quarter still sees Facebook at No. 1, but is now followed by Messenger, Amazon, then Instagram. TikTok has moved up to No. 5.

What these figures mask, however, is that Meta’s apps — and particularly Facebook — are boosted by older adults combined with strong usage in both large and emerging internet markets. India has the highest number of Facebook users due to its large population, for instance. This clouds the picture as to where Facebook may be headed in the long term. After all, it’s the upcoming generation of social networking users who will drive the platforms of the future.

To forecast where that market could be headed, it helps to keep an eye on the App Store’s Top Charts. These charts are largely a window into new app installations, combined with the velocity of installations and other factors. U.S. data is also important to examine as it’s one of the largest markets for social networking apps, and one that — perhaps more critically — helps drive significant revenues.

The downloads fueling the Top Charts include people installing an app for the first time — a metric that can skew younger as, today, it represents the Gen Alpha demographic and tail end of Gen Z — groups who may be getting their first smartphones, such as kids, tweens or teens. In 2022, those people are not downloading Facebook in large enough numbers for the app to easily maintain its Top 10 position. Instead, newer apps like TikTok, BeReal and perennial Gen Z favorite Snapchat, are dominating the Top Charts.

Other third-party research also suggests Facebook is losing its ability to reach a new generation of U.S. users. A recent Pew Research Center study, published this month, found that only 32% of U.S. teens aged 13-17 said they use Facebook, while a previous survey from 2014-2015 saw that figure at 71%. But Pew’s studies, while relevant, are based on what users say they are doing, while the App Store’s charts are an indication of what people are actually doing.

And for now, it seems, what people are doing is seeking out Facebook alternatives in the form of novel social networking experiences driven by recommendation engines, like TikTok, or by real-world friendships, like BeReal and Snapchat.

Facebook and Instagram may be busy trying to clone TikTok within their own apps as Reels, but a new feature rolling out now from TikTok will see the short-form video app’s content showing up in more places across Meta’s social networking platforms. TikTok confirmed to TechCrunch it’s launching a new sharing feature that will allow users to publish their TikTok Stories — a feature it has been piloting since last year — to rival social networks, including both Facebook and Instagram.

The feature only recently began rolling out to TikTok users, the company said, so you may not see the option in your own app just yet.

The move could give TikTok’s content increased visibility on Meta’s platforms, as the tech giant has been working to downrank recirculated TikTok videos in Reels. Specifically, Meta advised its creators that it would prioritize original content on Reels across Instagram and Facebook, noting its algorithms would be on the lookout for watermarks — like the one TikTok includes on its videos, for example.

Reposting TikTlok Stories, however, could be a new way for TikTok creators to share their work with followers on other social networks — without having to compete for attention with Reels.

The feature, first uncovered in changes discovered by product intelligence firm Watchful.ai, introduces a new sharing interface for TikTok Stories. Previously, users could share their TikTok Stories directly with TikTok friends by tapping their profile picture in the share sheet that pops up when you click the three-dot menu on a Story. The same interface also allows users to save the videos to their device, delete it, or change its privacy settings.

Now, this sharing option will include a row of popular social apps, as well as an option to copy a link to the video, according to images provided by Watchful.ai and confirmed by TikTok.

Image Credits: TikTok screenshot via Watchful

The new row includes quick-tap options to share to Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and Instagram Stories (as opposed to the Instagram Feed). To be clear, this does not include the ability to cross-post to Facebook Reels or Instagram Reels. And again, this is about sharing TikTok Stories, not TikTok videos. Stories can consist of either static images or videos, much like they can on other social platforms. In other words, unless TikTok creators are already cross-posting their TikTok videos to their TikTok Stories, it’s not a backdoor way to share TikToks to other Facebook or Instagram surfaces outside of Reels.

TikTok Stories wouldn’t be a good fit for Reels anyway, as they tend to consist of more casual or personal posts, or Q&As between the creator and fans (e.g. “Ask Me Anything”) — the same sort of content you often see on Instagram Stories. But the new feature could be a way for a creator who primarily publishes to TikTok to reach followers who more often use other popular social networking apps, with little additional effort required on their part.

TikTok did not confirm when the feature would fully roll out to its global user base.