Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Uber announced a new rider verification feature aimed at giving drivers and couriers more peace of mind about their customers.
The rideshare company has tried to fight fraud and improve safety on its platform through a variety of methods, including safety check-ins, PIN verification, and audio recordings of rides. But to date, most of these efforts have focused on the safety of riders, not drivers. Some drivers have urged Uber to do more for them, leading to today’s announcement about a new rider verification process.

Uber customers who choose to be verified will have their personal information, like their name and phone number, cross-checked against third-party databases to make sure there aren’t any potential red flags. In addition, they can opt to upload their government-issued ID to the Uber app to further verify their identity. Customers who are verified will have a special badge attached to their account that will be visible to drivers before they accept trip requests.
At a safety event today in Washington, DC, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company has banned about 15,000 rider accounts after they were found to be using fake and inappropriate names. The changes being announced today are meant to give drivers more confidence that they aren’t being scammed or targeted when they accept trip or delivery requests.
“We recognize that driving and delivering in today’s world comes with its challenges, and we want you to know that we’re here to support you,” Khosrowshahi said to the drivers gathered at the event.
Rider verification is strictly voluntary, meaning the company will need to rely on the goodwill of riders in order for it to have a meaningful impact. Toward that end, Uber began testing rider verification in a number of cities earlier this year and was satisfied with the results: “the majority of riders” in those pilot markets got verified, and those that were “tend to give drivers 5 stars more often,” the company said. “Riders who are verified also get fewer serious complaints from drivers.”
Uber hopes that rider verification will provide another layer by which to protect drivers, who in many ways are the company’s core customers. While riders tend to be fickle and hop between apps based on wait times or prices, drivers are more likely to stick with the platform that pays them the most. And drivers have historically felt like they don’t have a voice with Uber, frequently railing against deactivation policies and calling for more reliable driver support services.
For its part, Uber says it’s open to changes sought by drivers. In 2019, the company started deactivating riders who consistently received poor ratings from drivers. And Uber has a list of community guidelines for riders, which include a lot of awful behaviors that will get you banned from the platform.
At the driver event, Khosrowshahi said the company was committed to maintaining an open dialogue with drivers. “Rest assured, we’ve got your back, we’re listening,” he said. “We’re committed to improving.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Uber announced a new rider verification feature aimed at giving drivers and couriers more peace of mind about their customers.

The rideshare company has tried to fight fraud and improve safety on its platform through a variety of methods, including safety check-ins, PIN verification, and audio recordings of rides. But to date, most of these efforts have focused on the safety of riders, not drivers. Some drivers have urged Uber to do more for them, leading to today’s announcement about a new rider verification process.

Uber customers who choose to be verified will have their personal information, like their name and phone number, cross-checked against third-party databases to make sure there aren’t any potential red flags. In addition, they can opt to upload their government-issued ID to the Uber app to further verify their identity. Customers who are verified will have a special badge attached to their account that will be visible to drivers before they accept trip requests.

At a safety event today in Washington, DC, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company has banned about 15,000 rider accounts after they were found to be using fake and inappropriate names. The changes being announced today are meant to give drivers more confidence that they aren’t being scammed or targeted when they accept trip or delivery requests.

“We recognize that driving and delivering in today’s world comes with its challenges, and we want you to know that we’re here to support you,” Khosrowshahi said to the drivers gathered at the event.

Rider verification is strictly voluntary, meaning the company will need to rely on the goodwill of riders in order for it to have a meaningful impact. Toward that end, Uber began testing rider verification in a number of cities earlier this year and was satisfied with the results: “the majority of riders” in those pilot markets got verified, and those that were “tend to give drivers 5 stars more often,” the company said. “Riders who are verified also get fewer serious complaints from drivers.”

Uber hopes that rider verification will provide another layer by which to protect drivers, who in many ways are the company’s core customers. While riders tend to be fickle and hop between apps based on wait times or prices, drivers are more likely to stick with the platform that pays them the most. And drivers have historically felt like they don’t have a voice with Uber, frequently railing against deactivation policies and calling for more reliable driver support services.

For its part, Uber says it’s open to changes sought by drivers. In 2019, the company started deactivating riders who consistently received poor ratings from drivers. And Uber has a list of community guidelines for riders, which include a lot of awful behaviors that will get you banned from the platform.

At the driver event, Khosrowshahi said the company was committed to maintaining an open dialogue with drivers. “Rest assured, we’ve got your back, we’re listening,” he said. “We’re committed to improving.”

Read More 

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

The word of the day in US v. Google was “parking.” As in: did Google buy some of its most ascendant and dangerous competitors in the online advertising business, all the while planning on parking them off in some far-flung corner of the company so that no one could possibly upset Google’s dominance? That is a central question of the government’s entire case against Google, and it came up over and over on Monday morning.
To kick off the second week of the landmark antitrust trial over Google’s control of online advertising, the Department of Justice called Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube and a longtime Google advertising executive. Mohan came to Google in 2008 through Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, which formed the basis of Google’s now-unstoppable advertising engine. Mohan also helped advocate for the acquisition of Admeld, another company at the center of the suit. He argued throughout his testimony that Google was never attempting to buy up and neuter its competitors; it was simply trying to compete.
The Justice Department grilled Mohan on one of the core tenets of its case: that Google has built an impenetrable ad empire by owning all three major parts of the adtech stack, including the system publishers use to offer ad inventory on their pages, the system advertisers use to buy and place ads around the web, and the exchange in the middle where all the buying and selling actually takes place. This empire, lawyers allege, allows no real competition and ultimately makes things worse for all parties involved, Google excepted. And whenever a possible challenger did arise, Google simply bought and shelved — or, perhaps, parked — them.
The “parking” concept came up during Mohan’s two-plus hours of testimony, when Justice Department lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum showed him an email exchange about whether Google should buy Admeld. Admeld used a technology called yield management and was making inroads into the online ad market by letting publishers assess demand from multiple ad exchanges at once.
In those emails, another Google executive wrote that “one way to make sure we don’t get further behind in the market is picking up the [company] with the most traction and parking it somewhere.” Acquiring the company in that way “would let us solve the problems from a position of strength.” In the government’s view, this seemed to be clear evidence that Google was trying to take a threat off the market.
“One way to make sure we don’t get further behind in the market is picking up the [company] with the most traction and parking it somewhere.”
In court, Mohan argued that’s not what “parking” means at all. He acknowledged that Google was interested in Admeld because Admeld was further ahead in development but said Google had no intention of shelving or shuttering the product. “That’s absolutely not what was going on,” he said.
Parking, he explained, refers to Google’s acquiring a company and then letting it operate more or less as before while it also begins to rebuild and integrate into Google’s technology stack. This process takes time — often years — and Mohan said that leaving the products running actually indicates their importance to Google as products and not vanquished enemies.
Mohan argued over and over, occasionally seeming frustrated to have to repeat himself, that Google was simply doing what it had to do to keep up. He told Teitelbaum that the goal was always “to build the best advertising stack for publishers, as well as tools for advertisers.”
In Mohan’s telling, the advertising business has always been fiercely competitive, and companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo even attempted to build similarly all-encompassing strategies. Controlling all three parts of the process, he said, is crucial to ensuring that only good ads are placed on only good websites, that everything happens quickly, and that no nefarious actors can cause trouble.
When Jeannie Rhee, one of the attorneys representing Google, began to cross-examine Mohan, she had him reiterate the parking point in several ways. She noted an annual update email Mohan had written to his team in 2008, after the DoubleClick acquisition, in which he compared the integration to “changing the engines on a plane while continuing to fly it.” Rhee had Mohan go through some of the DoubleClick team’s most impressive post-acquisition accomplishments, too, seemingly to show the product was still being actively developed.
Mohan said incorporating startups at Google is like “changing the engines on a plane while continuing to fly it”
Mohan’s testimony offered a fairly straightforward version of the arguments on both sides of this all-important trial. In the government’s eyes, Google has an insurmountable advantage in the ads business, built on the back of illegally tying various products to each other and by buying up any company that even looked like competition. According to Google, though, deep integration is the only way to build great ad products, and its acquisitions have only ever been in service of building better products in a competitive space.
The government has repeatedly presented evidence that it’s nearly impossible to leave Google’s platforms. Switching platforms for any reason is hard, and the prospect of leaving behind Google’s advertiser demand and access to platforms like Search and YouTube makes it untenable. Publishers have also argued that Google’s advertising products aren’t at all impressive. They say they feel stuck. And as the government sees it, Google is happy to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on startups to keep it that way.
In 2011, Google did acquire Admeld, for a reported price above $400 million. (A number, by the way, that the Justice Department argues is far above Google’s actual valuation of the company — allegedly a signal of Google’s willingness to overspend in the name of crushing threats.) The Justice Department briefly investigated the deal at the time but ultimately let it close. Now, the company’s technology is part of Google’s dominant ad exchange, known commonly as AdX. All that’s left of Admeld itself is a Google support page telling publishers why AdX is so great.
Is that the good kind of parking or the bad and possibly illegal kind? That’s up to Judge Leonie Brinkema. She didn’t have much to say during Monday’s testimony, but everyone in the room acknowledged she’s the only one who matters.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

The word of the day in US v. Google was “parking.” As in: did Google buy some of its most ascendant and dangerous competitors in the online advertising business, all the while planning on parking them off in some far-flung corner of the company so that no one could possibly upset Google’s dominance? That is a central question of the government’s entire case against Google, and it came up over and over on Monday morning.

To kick off the second week of the landmark antitrust trial over Google’s control of online advertising, the Department of Justice called Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube and a longtime Google advertising executive. Mohan came to Google in 2008 through Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, which formed the basis of Google’s now-unstoppable advertising engine. Mohan also helped advocate for the acquisition of Admeld, another company at the center of the suit. He argued throughout his testimony that Google was never attempting to buy up and neuter its competitors; it was simply trying to compete.

The Justice Department grilled Mohan on one of the core tenets of its case: that Google has built an impenetrable ad empire by owning all three major parts of the adtech stack, including the system publishers use to offer ad inventory on their pages, the system advertisers use to buy and place ads around the web, and the exchange in the middle where all the buying and selling actually takes place. This empire, lawyers allege, allows no real competition and ultimately makes things worse for all parties involved, Google excepted. And whenever a possible challenger did arise, Google simply bought and shelved — or, perhaps, parked — them.

The “parking” concept came up during Mohan’s two-plus hours of testimony, when Justice Department lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum showed him an email exchange about whether Google should buy Admeld. Admeld used a technology called yield management and was making inroads into the online ad market by letting publishers assess demand from multiple ad exchanges at once.

In those emails, another Google executive wrote that “one way to make sure we don’t get further behind in the market is picking up the [company] with the most traction and parking it somewhere.” Acquiring the company in that way “would let us solve the problems from a position of strength.” In the government’s view, this seemed to be clear evidence that Google was trying to take a threat off the market.

In court, Mohan argued that’s not what “parking” means at all. He acknowledged that Google was interested in Admeld because Admeld was further ahead in development but said Google had no intention of shelving or shuttering the product. “That’s absolutely not what was going on,” he said.

Parking, he explained, refers to Google’s acquiring a company and then letting it operate more or less as before while it also begins to rebuild and integrate into Google’s technology stack. This process takes time — often years — and Mohan said that leaving the products running actually indicates their importance to Google as products and not vanquished enemies.

Mohan argued over and over, occasionally seeming frustrated to have to repeat himself, that Google was simply doing what it had to do to keep up. He told Teitelbaum that the goal was always “to build the best advertising stack for publishers, as well as tools for advertisers.”

In Mohan’s telling, the advertising business has always been fiercely competitive, and companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo even attempted to build similarly all-encompassing strategies. Controlling all three parts of the process, he said, is crucial to ensuring that only good ads are placed on only good websites, that everything happens quickly, and that no nefarious actors can cause trouble.

When Jeannie Rhee, one of the attorneys representing Google, began to cross-examine Mohan, she had him reiterate the parking point in several ways. She noted an annual update email Mohan had written to his team in 2008, after the DoubleClick acquisition, in which he compared the integration to “changing the engines on a plane while continuing to fly it.” Rhee had Mohan go through some of the DoubleClick team’s most impressive post-acquisition accomplishments, too, seemingly to show the product was still being actively developed.

Mohan’s testimony offered a fairly straightforward version of the arguments on both sides of this all-important trial. In the government’s eyes, Google has an insurmountable advantage in the ads business, built on the back of illegally tying various products to each other and by buying up any company that even looked like competition. According to Google, though, deep integration is the only way to build great ad products, and its acquisitions have only ever been in service of building better products in a competitive space.

The government has repeatedly presented evidence that it’s nearly impossible to leave Google’s platforms. Switching platforms for any reason is hard, and the prospect of leaving behind Google’s advertiser demand and access to platforms like Search and YouTube makes it untenable. Publishers have also argued that Google’s advertising products aren’t at all impressive. They say they feel stuck. And as the government sees it, Google is happy to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on startups to keep it that way.

In 2011, Google did acquire Admeld, for a reported price above $400 million. (A number, by the way, that the Justice Department argues is far above Google’s actual valuation of the company — allegedly a signal of Google’s willingness to overspend in the name of crushing threats.) The Justice Department briefly investigated the deal at the time but ultimately let it close. Now, the company’s technology is part of Google’s dominant ad exchange, known commonly as AdX. All that’s left of Admeld itself is a Google support page telling publishers why AdX is so great.

Is that the good kind of parking or the bad and possibly illegal kind? That’s up to Judge Leonie Brinkema. She didn’t have much to say during Monday’s testimony, but everyone in the room acknowledged she’s the only one who matters.

Read More 

Image: Epic Games

The Epic Games Store has arrived on the iPad for users in the European Union, making games like Fortnite and Fall Guys available to play from the device.
The launch comes as part of Monday’s iPadOS 18 update, which lets EU users download apps from third-party app stores on the iPad. The Epic Games Store — and several other alternative app marketplaces — launched on the iPhone in the EU last month.

Where can I get the Epic Games Store in the European Union?✅ PC✅ Mac✅ Android✅ iPhone✅ and now…iPad! Download iPadOS 18 and install now: https://t.co/u1wKQ9bxks pic.twitter.com/ArCdcddGVl— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) September 16, 2024

After designating iPadOS as a “gatekeeper” service under the Digital Markets Act in April, the EU gave Apple six months to comply with the regulations. Just like on the iPhone, Apple is required to let iPad users in the EU select their default browser and uninstall built-in apps.
Along with the Epic Games Store, the third-party marketplace AltStore PAL (which now costs nothing to download) has arrived on the iPad, offering access to the retro Nintendo game emulator Delta and more.

Image: Epic Games

The Epic Games Store has arrived on the iPad for users in the European Union, making games like Fortnite and Fall Guys available to play from the device.

The launch comes as part of Monday’s iPadOS 18 update, which lets EU users download apps from third-party app stores on the iPad. The Epic Games Store — and several other alternative app marketplaces — launched on the iPhone in the EU last month.

After designating iPadOS as a “gatekeeper” service under the Digital Markets Act in April, the EU gave Apple six months to comply with the regulations. Just like on the iPhone, Apple is required to let iPad users in the EU select their default browser and uninstall built-in apps.

Along with the Epic Games Store, the third-party marketplace AltStore PAL (which now costs nothing to download) has arrived on the iPad, offering access to the retro Nintendo game emulator Delta and more.

Read More 

Illustration: The Verge

Google is planning to roll out a technology that will identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software like Photoshop, or produced by generative AI models. In the coming months, Google’s search results will include an updated “about this image feature” to let people know if an image was created or edited with AI tools.
The system Google is using is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), one of the largest groups trying to address AI-generated imagery. C2PA’s authentication is a technical standard that includes information about where images originate and works across both hardware and software to create a digital trail. Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Arm, OpenAI, Intel, Truepic, and Google have all backed C2PA authentication, but adoption has been slow. Google’s integration into search results will be a first big test for the initiative.
Google has helped develop the latest C2PA technical standard (version 2.1) and will use it alongside a forthcoming C2PA trust list, which allows platforms like Google Search to confirm the origin of content. “For example, if the data shows an image was taken by a specific camera model, the trust list helps validate that this piece of information is accurate,” says Laurie Richardson, vice president of trust and safety at Google.

Google also plans to integrate C2PA metadata into its ad systems. “Our goal is to ramp this up over time and use C2PA signals to inform how we enforce key policies,” says Richardson. “We’re also exploring ways to relay C2PA information to viewers on YouTube when content is captured with a camera, and we’ll have more updates on that later in the year.”
While Google stands out as one of the first big tech companies to adopt C2PA’s authentication standard, there are plenty of adoption and interoperability challenges ahead to get this working across a broad variety of hardware and software. Only a handful of cameras from Leica and Sony support the C2PA’s open technical standard, which adds camera settings metadata as well as the data and location of where an image was taken to photographs. Nikon and Canon have both pledged to adopt the C2PA standard, and we’re still waiting to hear whether Apple and Google will implement C2PA support into iPhones and Android devices.
Adobe’s Photoshop and Lightroom apps can add C2PA data, but Affinity Photo, Gimp, and many others don’t. There are also challenges around how to view the data once it’s added to a photo, with most big online platforms not offering labels. Google’s adoption in search results may encourage others to roll out similar labels, though.
“Establishing and signaling content provenance remains a complex challenge, with a range of considerations based on the product or service,” admits Richardson. “And while we know there’s no silver bullet solution for all content online, working with others in the industry is critical to create sustainable and interoperable solutions.”

Illustration: The Verge

Google is planning to roll out a technology that will identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software like Photoshop, or produced by generative AI models. In the coming months, Google’s search results will include an updated “about this image feature” to let people know if an image was created or edited with AI tools.

The system Google is using is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), one of the largest groups trying to address AI-generated imagery. C2PA’s authentication is a technical standard that includes information about where images originate and works across both hardware and software to create a digital trail. Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Arm, OpenAI, Intel, Truepic, and Google have all backed C2PA authentication, but adoption has been slow. Google’s integration into search results will be a first big test for the initiative.

Google has helped develop the latest C2PA technical standard (version 2.1) and will use it alongside a forthcoming C2PA trust list, which allows platforms like Google Search to confirm the origin of content. “For example, if the data shows an image was taken by a specific camera model, the trust list helps validate that this piece of information is accurate,” says Laurie Richardson, vice president of trust and safety at Google.

Google also plans to integrate C2PA metadata into its ad systems. “Our goal is to ramp this up over time and use C2PA signals to inform how we enforce key policies,” says Richardson. “We’re also exploring ways to relay C2PA information to viewers on YouTube when content is captured with a camera, and we’ll have more updates on that later in the year.”

While Google stands out as one of the first big tech companies to adopt C2PA’s authentication standard, there are plenty of adoption and interoperability challenges ahead to get this working across a broad variety of hardware and software. Only a handful of cameras from Leica and Sony support the C2PA’s open technical standard, which adds camera settings metadata as well as the data and location of where an image was taken to photographs. Nikon and Canon have both pledged to adopt the C2PA standard, and we’re still waiting to hear whether Apple and Google will implement C2PA support into iPhones and Android devices.

Adobe’s Photoshop and Lightroom apps can add C2PA data, but Affinity Photo, Gimp, and many others don’t. There are also challenges around how to view the data once it’s added to a photo, with most big online platforms not offering labels. Google’s adoption in search results may encourage others to roll out similar labels, though.

“Establishing and signaling content provenance remains a complex challenge, with a range of considerations based on the product or service,” admits Richardson. “And while we know there’s no silver bullet solution for all content online, working with others in the industry is critical to create sustainable and interoperable solutions.”

Read More 

Image: Meta

Starting today, Instagram will begin putting new and existing users under the age of 18 into “Teen Accounts” — a move that will affect how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a set of protections to young users, and only users 16 years of age and older can loosen some of these settings.
For starters, the accounts of all minors on Instagram will be private by default (not just teens under 16) and will come with some of Instagram’s existing restrictions for young users, such as those that prevent strangers from direct messaging them. But other new features are coming, too, including a Sleep Mode that silences notifications from 10PM to 7AM.
“This really standardizes a lot of the work that we’ve done, simplifies it, and brings it to all teens,” Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said during an interview with The Verge. “It provides essentially a set of protections that are in place and are already populated.”
Teens will also get to pick age-appropriate topics they can see more of in Instagram’s recommendations and on the Explore page, such as “sports,” “animal & pets,” “travel,” and more. Instagram will continue limiting the types of content teens see on Reels or on the Explore page. It will also send alerts reminding teens to take breaks from the app.

Image: Instagram
Parents can now decide when Sleep Mode is enabled and see who their teen has messaged in the past week.

Along with these changes, Instagram is updating some of its parental controls. Parents who want to supervise their teen on the app will be able to see who their child has messaged in the past seven days (without seeing the contents of the messages). They’ll also get to see which topics their teen has chosen to view most often.
While Instagram will let teens over the age of 16 tweak these settings, younger teens will need the permission of a parent to make any changes, like making their account public. Parents will then have to set up Instagram’s supervisory tools to approve the change.
Instagram’s teen accounts are rolling out gradually to users in the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada. Teens who sign up for new accounts will see the change first, followed by existing users within about a week. Meta plans on bringing Teen Accounts to the European Union later this year and will expand the feature across its other platforms in 2025.
“We know some teens are going to try to lie about their age to get around these protections”
But even with these protections coming to all teens on Instagram, questions remain about how well Meta can apply them. “We know some teens are going to try to lie about their age to get around these protections,” Davis says. “Which is why we are going to be building up new opportunities to verify a teen’s age.” Users who attempt to change their age from under 18 to over 18 are already required to record a video selfie, upload their ID, or have other users vouch for their age, but Instagram’s new systems take things a step further.
The platform can now use AI to scan for signals that may indicate a user is under 18. For example, if a user says they’re 18 when creating an account but someone on the app tells them “Happy 14th birthday,” Instagram can use that to inform their real age. “One of the challenges for age broadly is it can be very hard to know,” Davis says. “We have to take a multi-layered approach because there’s no one foolproof way to do this.”

Since Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked a trove of internal documents detailing the company’s studies on the mental health of teens in 2021, lawmakers have taken a harder stance on social platforms and their effect on kids. Instagram has rolled out a slew of child safety features over the past few years and launched parental controls in 2022 in response. The platform has even agreed to help researchers study its impact on the mental health of teens and young adults.
All of this still hasn’t put lawmakers at ease. Nearly 40 US states are backing the surgeon general’s proposal to put warning labels on social media platforms, while the Senate passed landmark online child safety legislation in July.

Image: Meta

Starting today, Instagram will begin putting new and existing users under the age of 18 into “Teen Accounts” — a move that will affect how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a set of protections to young users, and only users 16 years of age and older can loosen some of these settings.

For starters, the accounts of all minors on Instagram will be private by default (not just teens under 16) and will come with some of Instagram’s existing restrictions for young users, such as those that prevent strangers from direct messaging them. But other new features are coming, too, including a Sleep Mode that silences notifications from 10PM to 7AM.

“This really standardizes a lot of the work that we’ve done, simplifies it, and brings it to all teens,” Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said during an interview with The Verge. “It provides essentially a set of protections that are in place and are already populated.”

Teens will also get to pick age-appropriate topics they can see more of in Instagram’s recommendations and on the Explore page, such as “sports,” “animal & pets,” “travel,” and more. Instagram will continue limiting the types of content teens see on Reels or on the Explore page. It will also send alerts reminding teens to take breaks from the app.

Image: Instagram
Parents can now decide when Sleep Mode is enabled and see who their teen has messaged in the past week.

Along with these changes, Instagram is updating some of its parental controls. Parents who want to supervise their teen on the app will be able to see who their child has messaged in the past seven days (without seeing the contents of the messages). They’ll also get to see which topics their teen has chosen to view most often.

While Instagram will let teens over the age of 16 tweak these settings, younger teens will need the permission of a parent to make any changes, like making their account public. Parents will then have to set up Instagram’s supervisory tools to approve the change.

Instagram’s teen accounts are rolling out gradually to users in the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada. Teens who sign up for new accounts will see the change first, followed by existing users within about a week. Meta plans on bringing Teen Accounts to the European Union later this year and will expand the feature across its other platforms in 2025.

But even with these protections coming to all teens on Instagram, questions remain about how well Meta can apply them. “We know some teens are going to try to lie about their age to get around these protections,” Davis says. “Which is why we are going to be building up new opportunities to verify a teen’s age.” Users who attempt to change their age from under 18 to over 18 are already required to record a video selfie, upload their ID, or have other users vouch for their age, but Instagram’s new systems take things a step further.

The platform can now use AI to scan for signals that may indicate a user is under 18. For example, if a user says they’re 18 when creating an account but someone on the app tells them “Happy 14th birthday,” Instagram can use that to inform their real age. “One of the challenges for age broadly is it can be very hard to know,” Davis says. “We have to take a multi-layered approach because there’s no one foolproof way to do this.”

Since Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked a trove of internal documents detailing the company’s studies on the mental health of teens in 2021, lawmakers have taken a harder stance on social platforms and their effect on kids. Instagram has rolled out a slew of child safety features over the past few years and launched parental controls in 2022 in response. The platform has even agreed to help researchers study its impact on the mental health of teens and young adults.

All of this still hasn’t put lawmakers at ease. Nearly 40 US states are backing the surgeon general’s proposal to put warning labels on social media platforms, while the Senate passed landmark online child safety legislation in July.

Read More 

The Series 10 bets big on a larger display and a more wearable design. As far as iterative updates go, that’s a savvy choice. The Apple Watch is 10 years old. That’s an incredible milestone in the gadget world — and rarer still when it comes to wearables. Part of me thought Apple might pull out all the stops, do something with a lot of fanfare to commemorate the occasion. Instead, the Apple Watch Series 10 is another steady, incremental refinement in a long line of steady, incremental refinements.
But not all iterative updates are created equal. With the Series 10, it feels like Apple set out to answer one question: how do we get the biggest display possible without sacrificing comfort and battery life?

This is a tough nut to crack. Between a big display, comfort, and great battery life, you only get to pick two with most smartwatches. The Series 10 is the closest Apple’s gotten to nailing all three. On top of having the biggest display of any Apple Watch ever, the Series 10 is the thinnest, lightest, and fastest-charging. watchOS 11 also brings several training-focused fitness features to the device. The end result is the Ultrafication of the Series 10. It may not be the splashiest update, but if you can’t wow’em, you might as well make smart refinements. And that’s the Series 10 to a tee.
A more wearable Ultra
The embiggening of the Apple Watch is nothing new. The original Apple Watch measured 38mm and 42mm. The Series 4 bumped that up to 40mm and 44mm. The Series 7 made it 41mm and 45mm. Today, the Series 10 measures 42mm and 46mm. Normally, I rail against the trend toward larger watches, but the Series 10’s display is worth every millimeter.
I say this as someone with crappy vision, small wrists, and sausage fingers. Bigger displays usually mean a less comfortable watch, but sometimes that’s a worthwhile trade. A major reason why I picked the Ultra 2 over the Series 9 as my daily driver was the bigger display made reading texts and notifications so much easier. That’s despite the fact the Ultra 2 feels like a mini brick on my arm. It made such a difference, I was apprehensive about making the switch to the 42mm Series 10’s slightly smaller display. (Only the 46mm Series 10 is bigger than the Ultra.) Turns out, I was worried for nothing.

The wide-angle OLED means it’s easier to view the display from all sorts of angles.

I haven’t missed the Ultra’s display at all. The Series 10 is about half the weight, and at 9.7mm thick, it’s about 30 percent thinner than the Ultra too. It fits easily under jacket cuffs, doesn’t catch on the straps at my Pilates class, and doesn’t slide up and down my arm when I run. Plus, the on-screen buttons are also slightly larger. When I have press-on nails, it’s not a total pain to enter my passcode or hit a complication!

Also unexpected: I love the wide-angle OLED. I can see the time from just about every angle. I, of course, would never suggest anyone peep a gossipy text from the wrist during an important meeting. But I can confirm it’s 100 percent easier to do so now. I only ask you to use this power for good.
The bottom line is the Series 10 is a sleeker, more wearable Ultra. It lacks sportier features like dual-frequency GPS, the Action Button, and an 80db siren. The Ultra also has better battery life. But I can’t emphasize enough how many people prize screen size and wearability over bells and whistles — particularly folks who are more casual athletes or fashion-conscious. When you factor in that the new titanium version with sapphire glass is $699 – a whole $100 less than the Ultra? I can easily see plenty of folks trading in their Ultras for a titanium Series 10.
My one concern is I feel like we’ve hit the upper limit of how big the small Apple Watch can be. I slipped on the original 38mm Apple Watch and compared it to a Series 10, and it’s a noticeable jump in size. Right now, Apple’s hit the sweet spot for smaller wrists. I just hope it stays there.

The Series 10’s bezels appear larger, but it’s also because there’s less metal casing on the sides.

The red circle denoting LTE is also gone this year.

Faster charging
Usually, a bigger watch also means better battery life because it has a bigger battery. That’s not the case here. Most of the hardware tweaks this year were laser-focused on getting everything thinner and lighter. And yet battery life wasn’t a problem for the Series 10. That’s because inside the new all-metal back is a larger charging coil that enables significantly faster charging.
You can now go from zero to 80 percent in 30 minutes. A 15-minute charge will get you eight hours, and eight minutes gets you eight hours of sleep tracking. Not only is it an extremely convenient improvement, combined with the more comfortable design, it makes the Apple Watch a better option for sleep tracking.

You can now play music or podcasts from the watch. Just don’t be a jerk in public about it.

Folks balk that Apple hasn’t budged from the Apple Watch’s 18-hour battery life estimate in 10 years, but it’s also basically a non-issue with faster charging. I plop my Series 10 on the charger when I go shower and get ready in the morning. It’s topped up by the time I’m done. In a week, I’ve never gotten a single low-battery notification. For the average person, this is the next best thing to multi day battery life.
Sleep apnea
Sleep apnea detection is the biggest health update this year, but unfortunately, I can’t weigh in yet on how well it works. The feature was just cleared by the FDA, and while I’ve had some time with it, it’s not enough to pass any judgment. Expect an update to this review in the next month.

Even so, Apple’s take on sleep apnea detection is an interesting one. Sleep apnea is a condition where you intermittently stop breathing during the night. It can contribute to excessive daytime fatigue, as well as cardiovascular and metabolic issues down the line. Most wearables detect breathing disturbances — a proxy metric for sleep apnea — using a blood oxygen sensor. Apple is currently locked in a patent battle over blood oxygen sensors with Masimo, so U.S. models can’t make use of this method. The Series 10 uses the accelerometer instead.
Once enabled, you’ll get a reading that says Elevated or Not Elevated. After 30 days, you may or may not get a notification that you show signs of sleep apnea and to talk with your healthcare providers. Setup is easy — you just have to confirm that you’re older than 18 and don’t already have a sleep apnea diagnosis. Like with Apple’s other advanced health features, this is meant to be a warning flag, not a diagnostic tool.
Even if I’d had a whole month of testing, features like this are hard for any one reviewer to evaluate. For one, this feature is designed to monitor breathing disturbances over a long period to rule out the odd night of poor sleep. Also, if I don’t have sleep apnea, I should never get a notification. We’ll have to see how things play out on a larger scale, but on paper, I prefer this to Samsung’s implementation — which only evaluates two night’s worth of sleep data at a time.

There’s a larger charging coil in the back, but the blood oxygen feature is disabled in the US.

Ultra or Series 10?
This is the rare year where the Series 10’s overall design and charging improvements are worth upgrading for. Especially if you’ve got a Series 5 or older. But if you have a newer Apple Watch — particularly one with active blood oxygen sensors — it’s sensible to hold off until your current watch craps out.
The trickier calculation is for people stuck between an Ultra 2 and a Series 10. I’m right there with you. watchOS 11 adds several new training features, but those come to both the Ultra 2 and the Series 10. So on the software front, the Series 10 is now pretty good for all but the most intense endurance training. Also, the Series 10’s lighter design and bigger screen erases a ton of the Ultra’s advantages. I thought battery life would be a major factor, but for me, it simply wasn’t. The only times I miss the Ultra 2 is when I run. And even then, it’s only aspects of the Ultra 2, specifically the Action Button, and precision start for GPS activities. It’s silly, but the main thing stopping me from switching to a Series 10 is its GPS maps. They’re a smidge more squiggly compared to the Ultra 2. But for reasonable people, the Series 10 is undeniably the better everyday watch.

One of my favorite watchOS 11 updates is the smarter widgets. It’s like a mini Dynamic Island.

Ultimately, the Series 10 is not revolutionary like the Series 3 and 4, or a major shakeup within the category like the Ultra 2. It doesn’t have a marquee feature like blood oxygen or double tap. But I’ve said time and time again that wearability is actually the most important thing for a smartwatch to get right. By that measure, the Series 10 is the most wearable, readable Apple Watch in years.

The Series 10 bets big on a larger display and a more wearable design. As far as iterative updates go, that’s a savvy choice.

The Apple Watch is 10 years old. That’s an incredible milestone in the gadget world — and rarer still when it comes to wearables. Part of me thought Apple might pull out all the stops, do something with a lot of fanfare to commemorate the occasion. Instead, the Apple Watch Series 10 is another steady, incremental refinement in a long line of steady, incremental refinements.

But not all iterative updates are created equal. With the Series 10, it feels like Apple set out to answer one question: how do we get the biggest display possible without sacrificing comfort and battery life?

This is a tough nut to crack. Between a big display, comfort, and great battery life, you only get to pick two with most smartwatches. The Series 10 is the closest Apple’s gotten to nailing all three. On top of having the biggest display of any Apple Watch ever, the Series 10 is the thinnest, lightest, and fastest-charging. watchOS 11 also brings several training-focused fitness features to the device. The end result is the Ultrafication of the Series 10. It may not be the splashiest update, but if you can’t wow’em, you might as well make smart refinements. And that’s the Series 10 to a tee.

A more wearable Ultra

The embiggening of the Apple Watch is nothing new. The original Apple Watch measured 38mm and 42mm. The Series 4 bumped that up to 40mm and 44mm. The Series 7 made it 41mm and 45mm. Today, the Series 10 measures 42mm and 46mm. Normally, I rail against the trend toward larger watches, but the Series 10’s display is worth every millimeter.

I say this as someone with crappy vision, small wrists, and sausage fingers. Bigger displays usually mean a less comfortable watch, but sometimes that’s a worthwhile trade. A major reason why I picked the Ultra 2 over the Series 9 as my daily driver was the bigger display made reading texts and notifications so much easier. That’s despite the fact the Ultra 2 feels like a mini brick on my arm. It made such a difference, I was apprehensive about making the switch to the 42mm Series 10’s slightly smaller display. (Only the 46mm Series 10 is bigger than the Ultra.) Turns out, I was worried for nothing.

I haven’t missed the Ultra’s display at all. The Series 10 is about half the weight, and at 9.7mm thick, it’s about 30 percent thinner than the Ultra too. It fits easily under jacket cuffs, doesn’t catch on the straps at my Pilates class, and doesn’t slide up and down my arm when I run. Plus, the on-screen buttons are also slightly larger. When I have press-on nails, it’s not a total pain to enter my passcode or hit a complication!

Also unexpected: I love the wide-angle OLED. I can see the time from just about every angle. I, of course, would never suggest anyone peep a gossipy text from the wrist during an important meeting. But I can confirm it’s 100 percent easier to do so now. I only ask you to use this power for good.

The bottom line is the Series 10 is a sleeker, more wearable Ultra. It lacks sportier features like dual-frequency GPS, the Action Button, and an 80db siren. The Ultra also has better battery life. But I can’t emphasize enough how many people prize screen size and wearability over bells and whistles — particularly folks who are more casual athletes or fashion-conscious. When you factor in that the new titanium version with sapphire glass is $699 – a whole $100 less than the Ultra? I can easily see plenty of folks trading in their Ultras for a titanium Series 10.

My one concern is I feel like we’ve hit the upper limit of how big the small Apple Watch can be. I slipped on the original 38mm Apple Watch and compared it to a Series 10, and it’s a noticeable jump in size. Right now, Apple’s hit the sweet spot for smaller wrists. I just hope it stays there.

Faster charging

Usually, a bigger watch also means better battery life because it has a bigger battery. That’s not the case here. Most of the hardware tweaks this year were laser-focused on getting everything thinner and lighter. And yet battery life wasn’t a problem for the Series 10. That’s because inside the new all-metal back is a larger charging coil that enables significantly faster charging.

You can now go from zero to 80 percent in 30 minutes. A 15-minute charge will get you eight hours, and eight minutes gets you eight hours of sleep tracking. Not only is it an extremely convenient improvement, combined with the more comfortable design, it makes the Apple Watch a better option for sleep tracking.

You can now play music or podcasts from the watch. Just don’t be a jerk in public about it.

Folks balk that Apple hasn’t budged from the Apple Watch’s 18-hour battery life estimate in 10 years, but it’s also basically a non-issue with faster charging. I plop my Series 10 on the charger when I go shower and get ready in the morning. It’s topped up by the time I’m done. In a week, I’ve never gotten a single low-battery notification. For the average person, this is the next best thing to multi day battery life.

Sleep apnea

Sleep apnea detection is the biggest health update this year, but unfortunately, I can’t weigh in yet on how well it works. The feature was just cleared by the FDA, and while I’ve had some time with it, it’s not enough to pass any judgment. Expect an update to this review in the next month.

Even so, Apple’s take on sleep apnea detection is an interesting one. Sleep apnea is a condition where you intermittently stop breathing during the night. It can contribute to excessive daytime fatigue, as well as cardiovascular and metabolic issues down the line. Most wearables detect breathing disturbances — a proxy metric for sleep apnea — using a blood oxygen sensor. Apple is currently locked in a patent battle over blood oxygen sensors with Masimo, so U.S. models can’t make use of this method. The Series 10 uses the accelerometer instead.

Once enabled, you’ll get a reading that says Elevated or Not Elevated. After 30 days, you may or may not get a notification that you show signs of sleep apnea and to talk with your healthcare providers. Setup is easy — you just have to confirm that you’re older than 18 and don’t already have a sleep apnea diagnosis. Like with Apple’s other advanced health features, this is meant to be a warning flag, not a diagnostic tool.

Even if I’d had a whole month of testing, features like this are hard for any one reviewer to evaluate. For one, this feature is designed to monitor breathing disturbances over a long period to rule out the odd night of poor sleep. Also, if I don’t have sleep apnea, I should never get a notification. We’ll have to see how things play out on a larger scale, but on paper, I prefer this to Samsung’s implementation — which only evaluates two night’s worth of sleep data at a time.

There’s a larger charging coil in the back, but the blood oxygen feature is disabled in the US.

Ultra or Series 10?

This is the rare year where the Series 10’s overall design and charging improvements are worth upgrading for. Especially if you’ve got a Series 5 or older. But if you have a newer Apple Watch — particularly one with active blood oxygen sensors — it’s sensible to hold off until your current watch craps out.

The trickier calculation is for people stuck between an Ultra 2 and a Series 10. I’m right there with you. watchOS 11 adds several new training features, but those come to both the Ultra 2 and the Series 10. So on the software front, the Series 10 is now pretty good for all but the most intense endurance training. Also, the Series 10’s lighter design and bigger screen erases a ton of the Ultra’s advantages. I thought battery life would be a major factor, but for me, it simply wasn’t. The only times I miss the Ultra 2 is when I run. And even then, it’s only aspects of the Ultra 2, specifically the Action Button, and precision start for GPS activities. It’s silly, but the main thing stopping me from switching to a Series 10 is its GPS maps. They’re a smidge more squiggly compared to the Ultra 2. But for reasonable people, the Series 10 is undeniably the better everyday watch.

One of my favorite watchOS 11 updates is the smarter widgets. It’s like a mini Dynamic Island.

Ultimately, the Series 10 is not revolutionary like the Series 3 and 4, or a major shakeup within the category like the Ultra 2. It doesn’t have a marquee feature like blood oxygen or double tap. But I’ve said time and time again that wearability is actually the most important thing for a smartwatch to get right. By that measure, the Series 10 is the most wearable, readable Apple Watch in years.

Read More 

Apple announced a new set of AirPods Max during its event last week, updating them with USB-C and in a new set of colors. The switch to USB-C is a welcome one, to be sure, but Apple changed nothing else about them. And that feels weird, right? What gives?
Apple’s high-end luxury headphones were impressive when they launched in 2020. They had all the features of the AirPods Pro and made clever use of the Apple Watch’s digital crown for volume control. They also sounded fantastic — still do, in fact! But the rest of the market didn’t sit still; alternatives from Sony, Bose, and more recently, Sonos, all offer comparable features and sound — most notably, they each compete with the AirPods Max when it comes to noise cancellation (Bose does this the best) and transparency modes (AirPods Max still reign, but the Sonos Ace are close).
Despite being among the most expensive headphones you can buy without going into ultra-high-end audiophile territory, the AirPods Max seem to have caught on in recent years. Apple doesn’t break the headphones’ numbers out when it reports its earnings, but they’re all over the place in New York City, and I even see them on a lot of heads in my home city of Milwaukee too. You’ll see them in airports and planes, city transit, or just walking around the block. There was a whole trend at one point of people sharing AirPods Max accessories on TikTok. I’m fond of the crocheted ones:

@alexandriamasse crochet airpods max covers (i uploaded a tutorial to youtube) ♬ DARE – izzy

There’s also a very visible market for “dupes,” or knockoffs. They have a hefty presence in Reptronics, a 115,000-member-strong subreddit where people share deals on cheaper fake versions of popular products. (TikTok, again, has tons of videos about dupes.)

Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge
This was a fun surprise.

27 minutes into episode 6 of the splashy Netflix drama The Accident, a teenager is wearing AirPods Max knockoffs that I’m certain are the exact pair I bought a couple of years ago. I gave mine to my child, who quickly broke them.
So why didn’t Apple update the AirPods Max? Is it because it’s focused on Beats and doesn’t have time for the AirPods Max? Did it just need to get something out the door so the EU doesn’t come down on it for not switching over to USB-C before the region’s December deadline requiring it to? Does Apple think that it did a perfect, no-notes job for its first over-ear headphones right out of the gate, even with its several-years-old H1 chip?
They’re so, so expensive, but they’re also a stellar pair of headphones that I love listening to music through. The ecosystem benefits like being able to pair them to my Apple TV to watch a movie at night or quickly switch them from my computer to my phone to my iPad are great. And they still feel as solid now, two years after I bought mine, as ever.
But in their original iteration, they’re extremely Apple — you need a special cable that only Apple sells for wired listening because they don’t have a 3.5mm audio jack. They don’t have a power button, so you have to trust that they’ll go into low-power mode and will be ready for you next time you put them on. (This has been very inconsistent for me.)
Apple didn’t change any of that, and now it’s hard to feel like they’re the most premium headphones of Apple’s lineup, thanks to the glaring omission of the AirPods Pro H2 chip that was introduced two years ago. Without it, they won’t get features like Adaptive Audio or Conversational Awareness — or those coming to the AirPods Pro later, like doubling as hearing aids.
I wouldn’t upgrade for those features, and I don’t necessarily think anyone else should either. But the AirPods Pro being more “advanced” sure takes the premium shine off of the AirPods Max, doesn’t it? It doesn’t help that the market has more or less caught up, either. All of that really makes their $549 pricetag a hard pill to swallow in 2024.

Apple announced a new set of AirPods Max during its event last week, updating them with USB-C and in a new set of colors. The switch to USB-C is a welcome one, to be sure, but Apple changed nothing else about them. And that feels weird, right? What gives?

Apple’s high-end luxury headphones were impressive when they launched in 2020. They had all the features of the AirPods Pro and made clever use of the Apple Watch’s digital crown for volume control. They also sounded fantastic — still do, in fact! But the rest of the market didn’t sit still; alternatives from Sony, Bose, and more recently, Sonos, all offer comparable features and sound — most notably, they each compete with the AirPods Max when it comes to noise cancellation (Bose does this the best) and transparency modes (AirPods Max still reign, but the Sonos Ace are close).

Despite being among the most expensive headphones you can buy without going into ultra-high-end audiophile territory, the AirPods Max seem to have caught on in recent years. Apple doesn’t break the headphones’ numbers out when it reports its earnings, but they’re all over the place in New York City, and I even see them on a lot of heads in my home city of Milwaukee too. You’ll see them in airports and planes, city transit, or just walking around the block. There was a whole trend at one point of people sharing AirPods Max accessories on TikTok. I’m fond of the crocheted ones:

There’s also a very visible market for “dupes,” or knockoffs. They have a hefty presence in Reptronics, a 115,000-member-strong subreddit where people share deals on cheaper fake versions of popular products. (TikTok, again, has tons of videos about dupes.)

Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge
This was a fun surprise.

27 minutes into episode 6 of the splashy Netflix drama The Accident, a teenager is wearing AirPods Max knockoffs that I’m certain are the exact pair I bought a couple of years ago. I gave mine to my child, who quickly broke them.

So why didn’t Apple update the AirPods Max? Is it because it’s focused on Beats and doesn’t have time for the AirPods Max? Did it just need to get something out the door so the EU doesn’t come down on it for not switching over to USB-C before the region’s December deadline requiring it to? Does Apple think that it did a perfect, no-notes job for its first over-ear headphones right out of the gate, even with its several-years-old H1 chip?

They’re so, so expensive, but they’re also a stellar pair of headphones that I love listening to music through. The ecosystem benefits like being able to pair them to my Apple TV to watch a movie at night or quickly switch them from my computer to my phone to my iPad are great. And they still feel as solid now, two years after I bought mine, as ever.

But in their original iteration, they’re extremely Apple — you need a special cable that only Apple sells for wired listening because they don’t have a 3.5mm audio jack. They don’t have a power button, so you have to trust that they’ll go into low-power mode and will be ready for you next time you put them on. (This has been very inconsistent for me.)

Apple didn’t change any of that, and now it’s hard to feel like they’re the most premium headphones of Apple’s lineup, thanks to the glaring omission of the AirPods Pro H2 chip that was introduced two years ago. Without it, they won’t get features like Adaptive Audio or Conversational Awareness — or those coming to the AirPods Pro later, like doubling as hearing aids.

I wouldn’t upgrade for those features, and I don’t necessarily think anyone else should either. But the AirPods Pro being more “advanced” sure takes the premium shine off of the AirPods Max, doesn’t it? It doesn’t help that the market has more or less caught up, either. All of that really makes their $549 pricetag a hard pill to swallow in 2024.

Read More 

Setapp Mobile is now available in open beta in the EU following invite-only testing. | Image: Setapp

The Setapp Mobile alternative app store is now available in open beta for iPhone users in the European Union, featuring 50 different productivity- and lifestyle-focused apps at launch. While most of these apps, like the Tripsy itinerary planner and MindNode mind mapping tool, are already available on the official iOS App Store, Setapp creator MacPaw says its own platform provides a simplified user experience and a fair, performance-based compensation model for app developers.
Setapp was originally released as an app marketplace for macOS before the company launched a mobile version for iOS users. Setapp Mobile launched as a closed beta in May, shortly after the European Union’s Digital Markets Act forced Apple to start allowing iPhones to support third-party app marketplaces.

Joining the Setapp Mobile open beta requires iOS 17.4 or later and an EU-based Apple ID. New EU subscribers can get a seven-day free trial for the platform’s monthly $9.99 / €9.49 “iOS Advanced” plan, which allows users to download any iPhone apps they like from both the Setapp Mobile iOS app and Setapp’s desktop / web marketplace. Many of the apps it offers, however, are free to download via the Apple App Store. Users who joined the previous invite-only beta on other Setapp plans will need to upgrade, or they’ll lose access on September 17th.
The Verge found the process of actually installing apps using Setapp to be cumbersome in our initial hands-on review, but that’s fairly typical for these third-party iOS app platforms. By contrast, the separate Setapp Mobile service should be easier to use, as it allows users to download iOS apps directly from their iPhones without jumping through additional hoops.

Setapp Mobile is now available in open beta in the EU following invite-only testing. | Image: Setapp

The Setapp Mobile alternative app store is now available in open beta for iPhone users in the European Union, featuring 50 different productivity- and lifestyle-focused apps at launch. While most of these apps, like the Tripsy itinerary planner and MindNode mind mapping tool, are already available on the official iOS App Store, Setapp creator MacPaw says its own platform provides a simplified user experience and a fair, performance-based compensation model for app developers.

Setapp was originally released as an app marketplace for macOS before the company launched a mobile version for iOS users. Setapp Mobile launched as a closed beta in May, shortly after the European Union’s Digital Markets Act forced Apple to start allowing iPhones to support third-party app marketplaces.

Joining the Setapp Mobile open beta requires iOS 17.4 or later and an EU-based Apple ID. New EU subscribers can get a seven-day free trial for the platform’s monthly $9.99 / €9.49 “iOS Advanced” plan, which allows users to download any iPhone apps they like from both the Setapp Mobile iOS app and Setapp’s desktop / web marketplace. Many of the apps it offers, however, are free to download via the Apple App Store. Users who joined the previous invite-only beta on other Setapp plans will need to upgrade, or they’ll lose access on September 17th.

The Verge found the process of actually installing apps using Setapp to be cumbersome in our initial hands-on review, but that’s fairly typical for these third-party iOS app platforms. By contrast, the separate Setapp Mobile service should be easier to use, as it allows users to download iOS apps directly from their iPhones without jumping through additional hoops.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s official: Amazon’s second Prime Day event of the year will take place at the beginning of October. The two-day shopping event — which Amazon is calling Prime Big Deal Days for the second year in a row — will begin at 12:01AM PT / 3:01AM ET on Tuesday, October 8th, and run through Wednesday, October 9th, the company announced on Tuesday.
Like last year, Amazon is running the 48-hour promo in an attempt to jumpstart the holiday shopping season, giving Amazon Prime members another chance outside of Prime Day proper to save on everything from home goods to everyday essentials. Although we typically see the lowest sale prices during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon’s fall sale often provides solid deals on a range of tech, including all-time lows on Amazon devices and discounts from third-party sellers.

This time around, Amazon says it will offer up to 55 percent off select Amazon devices, including security cameras like the Blink Outdoor 4, Fire TVs, Eero mesh Wi-Fi systems, and controllers for its cloud gaming service, Luna. You can also expect to see deals from independent sellers and a hodgepodge of non-Amazon brands — including Lego, Fujifilm, Samsung, Beats, and more — some of which will be available in the run-up to the event. Amazon will be running exclusive promos on a variety of digital goods and services, too, including Grub Hub Plus and Amazon Music, the latter of which will be available to new subscribers for free for a limited time.
Of course, the big caveat with Prime Big Deal Days is that most deals are gated behind an Amazon Prime subscription, which runs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. That said, not all deals require a membership, and it’s likely that we’ll see similar sales at Walmart, Best Buy, and other retailers looking to compete with Amazon’s October Prime Day.
Like Amazon’s most recent Prime Day event in July, Prime Big Deal Days will take place in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Poland, and a handful of other regions around the globe (Amazon says it will hold a separate Prime Day event in Japan later in October). As usual, we’ll be flagging the best deals on 4K TVs, laptops, noise-canceling earbuds, and other tech ahead of the main event on October 8th, so be sure to keep an eye on all of our deal coverage for a closer look at what Amazon has in store.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s official: Amazon’s second Prime Day event of the year will take place at the beginning of October. The two-day shopping event — which Amazon is calling Prime Big Deal Days for the second year in a row — will begin at 12:01AM PT / 3:01AM ET on Tuesday, October 8th, and run through Wednesday, October 9th, the company announced on Tuesday.

Like last year, Amazon is running the 48-hour promo in an attempt to jumpstart the holiday shopping season, giving Amazon Prime members another chance outside of Prime Day proper to save on everything from home goods to everyday essentials. Although we typically see the lowest sale prices during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon’s fall sale often provides solid deals on a range of tech, including all-time lows on Amazon devices and discounts from third-party sellers.

This time around, Amazon says it will offer up to 55 percent off select Amazon devices, including security cameras like the Blink Outdoor 4, Fire TVs, Eero mesh Wi-Fi systems, and controllers for its cloud gaming service, Luna. You can also expect to see deals from independent sellers and a hodgepodge of non-Amazon brands — including Lego, Fujifilm, Samsung, Beats, and more — some of which will be available in the run-up to the event. Amazon will be running exclusive promos on a variety of digital goods and services, too, including Grub Hub Plus and Amazon Music, the latter of which will be available to new subscribers for free for a limited time.

Of course, the big caveat with Prime Big Deal Days is that most deals are gated behind an Amazon Prime subscription, which runs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. That said, not all deals require a membership, and it’s likely that we’ll see similar sales at Walmart, Best Buy, and other retailers looking to compete with Amazon’s October Prime Day.

Like Amazon’s most recent Prime Day event in July, Prime Big Deal Days will take place in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Poland, and a handful of other regions around the globe (Amazon says it will hold a separate Prime Day event in Japan later in October). As usual, we’ll be flagging the best deals on 4K TVs, laptops, noise-canceling earbuds, and other tech ahead of the main event on October 8th, so be sure to keep an eye on all of our deal coverage for a closer look at what Amazon has in store.

Read More 

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

After a disclaimer that nothing we’d hear tonight is financial or legal advice, followed by a 40-minute interview with former President Donald Trump — which touched on the apparent attempt on his life at a Florida golf course, the border, the “evil forces” conspiring against him, and his granddaughter’s foreign language skills — and subsequent conversations with Trump’s sons and associates, the X Space dedicated to announcing Trump’s “crypto platform” more or less got to the point.
The goal of World Liberty Financial, Trump’s new decentralized finance project, is to drive “the mass adoption of stablecoins and decentralized finance,” according to a statement posted on its X account earlier this month. But over the course of the lengthy “announcement” on Monday night, neither Trump nor any of his business partners explained how exactly that would work.
Finally, more than two hours into the stream, Corey Caplan — the co-founder of the decentralized lending platform Dolomite, who is working as an adviser for Trump’s project — said World Liberty Financial would “sell and otherwise distribute governance tokens called WLFI.” The token sales will be limited to “certain persons who would be eligible to participate in transactions that are exempt from registration under US federal securities law,” meaning only accredited investors under Regulation D and Regulation S can buy the token. Three people with knowledge of the project told the New York Times that World Liberty Financial has been pitched as a borrowing and lending platform.
Earlier in the stream, a bevy of Trump relatives and associates described World Liberty Financial as a way of helping the “huge, approachable class of people who have either been debanked … or they just don’t have a bank that they can go to, and they don’t have a bank that will listen to them.”
The details started to emerge a little over an hour and a half into the announcement, when two of Trump’s other business partners — Chase Herro and Zak Folkman — revealed some details of the “crypto platform” Trump and his sons have been teasing for over a month. World Liberty Financial will “onboard as many people through simple products where they can actually start to earn yield on their assets,” said Folkman, the co-founder of Dough Finance, a crypto platform that was hacked earlier this year.
“I think crypto is one of those things we have to do whether we like it or not”
Trump first announced the project in August. “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites. It’s time we take a stand—together. #BeDefiant,” he posted on Truth Social. Aside from a link to a Telegram channel, the post included no other details about the platform or what it entailed. The uncertainty around the announcement has let opportunists — and hackers — take advantage of Trump’s fans. Earlier this month, hackers breached the X accounts of Tiffany Trump and Lara Trump, on which they posted links to a fake World Liberty Financial website announcing that the venture had launched.
Donald Trump Jr. and real estate developer and landlord Steve Witkoff, both of whom are also involved in World Liberty Financial, framed the project as a way of helping underserved and unbanked communities.
“If you want to borrow money today, you have to be almost anointed. You have to be a member of the privileged class,” said Witkoff, who in 2017 purchased the Fontainebleau Resort Las Vegas for $600 million.
Don Jr., who described himself as “still a neophyte” in the crypto space, said decentralized finance can help people who have been excluded from traditional financial markets. The announcement played up a popular fear among the crypto crowd: being debanked, potentially as punishment for political dissent.
“There was a time period where the Trumps, we could’ve picked up the phone and called and CEO of any bank,” Don Jr. said. “We went from being people who would have been the elite in that world to just being, like, totally canceled.” It’s possible that cancellation has more to do with Trump’s history of lying about his wealth or running a scammy for-profit college than it does with his political views.
Despite claims that World Liberty Financial will put “the power of finance back in the hands of the people,” initial reports suggested that its founding token would mostly be distributed to people involved in the project. A white paper obtained by CoinDesk said 70 percent of WLFI would be held by the founding members, team, and service providers.
During the stream, however, Caplan chastised the “fake news media” reports of how the token would be distributed and said approximately 63 percent of the tokens will be sold to the public, while 20 percent would be “reserved for team compensation.”
World Liberty Financial appears to be part of a broader Trump outreach campaign to the crypto community. Trump headlined this year’s Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he said he’d never sell the US’s Bitcoin holdings but stopped short of promising to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He’s also released four NFT collections, which netted him at least $7.2 million, according to August financial disclosure forms.
It’s evident that Trump, who disappeared from the stream after the first 40 minutes, is the face of a product he knows almost nothing about. He had little to say about cryptocurrency aside from some vague comments about the “very hostile environment” the Securities and Exchange Commission has created for the crypto community — and an admission that politicians know that embracing crypto could help them win voters.
“You’re going to be happy, and you’re going to love your crypto, and as long as you have crypto, you’re happy,” Trump said early in the stream. “I think crypto is one of those things we have to do whether we like it or not.”

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

After a disclaimer that nothing we’d hear tonight is financial or legal advice, followed by a 40-minute interview with former President Donald Trump — which touched on the apparent attempt on his life at a Florida golf course, the border, the “evil forces” conspiring against him, and his granddaughter’s foreign language skills — and subsequent conversations with Trump’s sons and associates, the X Space dedicated to announcing Trump’s “crypto platform” more or less got to the point.

The goal of World Liberty Financial, Trump’s new decentralized finance project, is to drive “the mass adoption of stablecoins and decentralized finance,” according to a statement posted on its X account earlier this month. But over the course of the lengthy “announcement” on Monday night, neither Trump nor any of his business partners explained how exactly that would work.

Finally, more than two hours into the stream, Corey Caplan — the co-founder of the decentralized lending platform Dolomite, who is working as an adviser for Trump’s project — said World Liberty Financial would “sell and otherwise distribute governance tokens called WLFI.” The token sales will be limited to “certain persons who would be eligible to participate in transactions that are exempt from registration under US federal securities law,” meaning only accredited investors under Regulation D and Regulation S can buy the token. Three people with knowledge of the project told the New York Times that World Liberty Financial has been pitched as a borrowing and lending platform.

Earlier in the stream, a bevy of Trump relatives and associates described World Liberty Financial as a way of helping the “huge, approachable class of people who have either been debanked … or they just don’t have a bank that they can go to, and they don’t have a bank that will listen to them.”

The details started to emerge a little over an hour and a half into the announcement, when two of Trump’s other business partners — Chase Herro and Zak Folkman — revealed some details of the “crypto platform” Trump and his sons have been teasing for over a month. World Liberty Financial will “onboard as many people through simple products where they can actually start to earn yield on their assets,” said Folkman, the co-founder of Dough Finance, a crypto platform that was hacked earlier this year.

Trump first announced the project in August. “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites. It’s time we take a stand—together. #BeDefiant,” he posted on Truth Social. Aside from a link to a Telegram channel, the post included no other details about the platform or what it entailed. The uncertainty around the announcement has let opportunists — and hackers — take advantage of Trump’s fans. Earlier this month, hackers breached the X accounts of Tiffany Trump and Lara Trump, on which they posted links to a fake World Liberty Financial website announcing that the venture had launched.

Donald Trump Jr. and real estate developer and landlord Steve Witkoff, both of whom are also involved in World Liberty Financial, framed the project as a way of helping underserved and unbanked communities.

“If you want to borrow money today, you have to be almost anointed. You have to be a member of the privileged class,” said Witkoff, who in 2017 purchased the Fontainebleau Resort Las Vegas for $600 million.

Don Jr., who described himself as “still a neophyte” in the crypto space, said decentralized finance can help people who have been excluded from traditional financial markets. The announcement played up a popular fear among the crypto crowd: being debanked, potentially as punishment for political dissent.

“There was a time period where the Trumps, we could’ve picked up the phone and called and CEO of any bank,” Don Jr. said. “We went from being people who would have been the elite in that world to just being, like, totally canceled.” It’s possible that cancellation has more to do with Trump’s history of lying about his wealth or running a scammy for-profit college than it does with his political views.

Despite claims that World Liberty Financial will put “the power of finance back in the hands of the people,” initial reports suggested that its founding token would mostly be distributed to people involved in the project. A white paper obtained by CoinDesk said 70 percent of WLFI would be held by the founding members, team, and service providers.

During the stream, however, Caplan chastised the “fake news media” reports of how the token would be distributed and said approximately 63 percent of the tokens will be sold to the public, while 20 percent would be “reserved for team compensation.”

World Liberty Financial appears to be part of a broader Trump outreach campaign to the crypto community. Trump headlined this year’s Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he said he’d never sell the US’s Bitcoin holdings but stopped short of promising to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He’s also released four NFT collections, which netted him at least $7.2 million, according to August financial disclosure forms.

It’s evident that Trump, who disappeared from the stream after the first 40 minutes, is the face of a product he knows almost nothing about. He had little to say about cryptocurrency aside from some vague comments about the “very hostile environment” the Securities and Exchange Commission has created for the crypto community — and an admission that politicians know that embracing crypto could help them win voters.

“You’re going to be happy, and you’re going to love your crypto, and as long as you have crypto, you’re happy,” Trump said early in the stream. “I think crypto is one of those things we have to do whether we like it or not.”

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