Instagram tries to change image with altered algorithms

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s revelation to Congress that the app was planning to go back to offering a chronological feed of photos and videos attracted as many headlines on Wednesday as his more serious attempt to defend its record and make fresh promises on protecting young people.

What both stories have in common though is that the Meta-owned company is being pressed into reducing the power of its algorithms to shape our social media habits and drive its sales.

On the eve of his first testimony on the Hill, Mosseri had sought to soften expected criticisms from senators by announcing more tools to protect teens and support their parents, including being “stricter about what we recommend to teens in search, explore, hashtags and suggested accounts”.

At the hearing, he supported “giving people the option to have a chronological feed,” which has been missing for more than five years but is set to return in early 2022. This would mean users could opt out of the current algorithmic feed based on content they have been looking at or commenting on, and which offers suggestions about who else they should be following.

Algorithms can be a force for good in social media, argues Jemima Kelly in this opinion piece. She suggests Twitter’s new CEO (profiled here by Richard Waters) should introduce a “challenger mode”, an option that would show you as many different points of view as possible on a topic, improving the level of discourse and providing a fantastic resource for those trying to understand the various arguments around a given subject.

The full and free expression of views was made even harder in Russia last week, with the country’s dominant social media company VKontakte coming under state control through energy provider Gazprom gaining a majority stake. As Polina Ivanova reports, Moscow has deployed a range of different tools to exert control over Russian’s internet, from using law enforcement to tackle dissent online to attempting to slow down some websites or ban certain VPNs and apps outright. In recent months, it has focused on targeting foreign internet giants with fines and lawsuits in an attempt to force them to remove some content. It has also put pressure on those at the top of domestic internet companies such as Yandex, where it has made it answer to a foundation that could remove management if it deemed it was in the national interest.

In these current cases, the obvious difference between the approaches of the US Senate and the Kremlin to tackling the power of social media is that one seeks to protect the individual, the other, the state.

The Internet of (Five) Things

1. Italy fines Amazon €1.1bn in antitrust case
The online shopping giant said it would appeal against a €1.1bn fine from Italy after antitrust investigators found it had given unfair preference to sellers who also ship their goods through the group’s logistics service. Lex says the decision suggests EU regulators will take the same view. John Thornhill has thoughts on the four big themes emerging on taming Big Tech.

2. SenseTime set for US censure
The US will put the Chinese AI company that specialises in facial recognition software on an investment blacklist on Friday, the same day that it prices its Hong Kong initial public offering. Washington says the company enables human rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

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3. Nubank’s $40bn IPO day, Miro plots $17bn valuation
Nubank, the Brazilian fintech backed by Warren Buffett and Tencent, has hit a valuation above $40bn in its New York IPO as trading starts on Thursday. Online collaborative whiteboard app Miro is in talks to raise funding that would value it at $17bn, making it the latest start-up to capitalise on pandemic demand for software tools that help remote teams work together.

4. Synthetic data help Syrian human rights
Computer-simulated images of RBK-250 cluster bombs have trained an AI program that detected their use more than 200 times from a cache of more than 100,000 videos of the Syrian conflict. Madhumita Murgia reports on the progress being made through synthetic data.

5. China’s Shein shines in fast fashion in the West
Shein has become one of the few Chinese consumer brands to break through in the US and European markets, with its fast-fashion model, rock-bottom pricing and growing dominance in mobile apps and social media favoured by Gen-Z. The Big Read looks at whether its model is sustainable.

Forwarded from Sifted — the European start-up week

While gloomy news about the Omicron coronavirus variant dominated the headlines this week, venture capitalists were busy making large bets on the global return to physical events and travel. Easol, an ecommerce platform for businesses selling experiences, raised $25m in a Series A round led by Tiger Global. It’s the 29th European start-up the US VC giant has backed this year. This follows recent rounds by hospitality data start-up OTA Insights, which bagged $80m, and Düsseldorf-based events ticketing company Vivenu, which raised $50m. Events platform Feast It has snapped up €5m.

Elsewhere in European start-ups this week, digital bank Monzo closed a $500m funding round at an increased valuation of $4.5bn. It will be a sigh of relief for the fintech, which suffered setbacks in 2020 — including having its valuation slashed, struggling to break into the US and suffering heavy financial losses.

Tech tools — Pixray pictures

This AI experiment is creating some interesting artwork and anyone can try their hand by visiting Pixray’s website and inputting their own text phrase at the prompt. You may have to wait in a queue for the result but the AI will pair your text with images it finds and generate art that often surprises and is sometimes beautiful. Pixray’s Twitter feed has some of the best examples and Forbes has interviewed the developers.