TikTok is launching an in-app restaurant guide in a challenge to other platforms like Yelp and even Google Maps.

The company on Wednesday announced the launch of Must Eat, a new section of the TikTok app built on 40 million posts, reviews, and comments about dining on the platform. The new feature uses videos and discussions of buzzy local businesses to create restaurant recommendation guides. Users can leave reviews of restaurants, call and make reservations, and search for nearby businesses on a map.

At a launch event this week, TikTok US CEO Adam Presser called Must Eat "the compilation of all of the conversation that's happening on the …

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On October 2nd, just as Major League Baseball's Division Series was kicking off, the main MLB Instagram and TikTok accounts posted a video hyping up the teams still in the running for the World Series. It featured clips of players from the Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, and more sliding into home plate, hitting homers, and celebrating hits - standard fare for a highlight reel. What really makes the montage, though, is that it's set to an Olivia Rodrigo song.

The song, "My Way," is an album track - not even a single - from Rodrigo's latest record. It's not exactly the soundtrack one might expect from an MLB-produc …

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Instagram is announcing a big push into longform horizontal video, which the platform is calling "Features."

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has been against doing longform video on the platform "for a long time," he says in a six-and-a-half-minute video (here's the widescreen version) with VP of product Tessa Lyons, saying that "one of my concerns has been, how do we make sure that we keep Instagram not just about entertainment, but about connecting with friends. If you watch a longform video, that's "it's a lot of Reels, photos, and carousels that you might not have sent to a friend," meaning less likes and shares.

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Etsy is announcing stricter rules about how AI can be used in listings to reduce the volume of AI slop on the platform. In a post, the company says that "many active buyers say they can't tell which items involve AI-generated content" and that sellers are "concerned about your work appearing alongside items that use AI in misleading ways," spurring the new policies and restrictions.

Under the new policies, every listing must include "at least one unedited photo of the actual item against a real background," and all photos must "accurately represent the item a buyer will receive." The photos that aren't the first one can be edited with softw …

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Canva is diving even deeper into AI with the launch of an image generation model that competes directly with those from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The model, called Canva Craft, uses a two-stage architecture that allows it to plan a design before generating an image, allowing for "greater precision, consistency and control," according to an announcement on Thursday.

Canva Craft can generate images at up to 2K resolution and in more than 30 aspect ratios. In addition to generating social media posts and marketing content, it's also supposed to create realistic scenes, digital art, environmental imagery, and more. The model's two-stage sy …

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On Tuesday, I published a story about how YouTube appeared to be testing hiding the dislike button on videos, with at least two users on X sharing screenshots of the dislike button moved into the three-dot menu. But a YouTube spokesperson, in a Wednesday statement to The Verge, confirmed that YouTube is "not testing hiding the dislike button on YouTube for users."

However, YouTube is introducing a new UI for creators on their uploaded videos where the dislike button will be moved.

Here's the full statement, from spokesperson Kimberly Taylor:

We are not testing hiding the dislike button on YouTube for users. We're introducing a new UI for …

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It remains to be seen if people really want to watch vertical content on horizontal TV screens, but many filmmakers and creators were confident that their latest projects would play well at Alza - New York City's first microdrama film festival. Founded by former Tribeca Festival chief operating officer Pete Torres, Alza, which took place October 16th through 18th, was billed as a showcase for the "the creativity, innovation, and growing cultural impact of stories made for the vertical screen." The festival featured a selection of microdrama and film premieres as well as industry-focused panels with executives who all seemed to genuinely beli …

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