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Threads is readying a feature inspired by Blueskys Starter Packs, according to reporting by TechCrunch and others. Chris Messina, who invented the hashtag, posted a screenshot of the tool to the social media app. He also says you can see an early version of the tool yourself by pasting "installedbarcelona://recommended_follow_lists" into Safari on iOS if you have the latest Threads app. We gave this a shot and, lo and behold, it worked. Meta/Threads For those who have yet to wander over to Bluesky, Starter Packs are curated lists of people to follow that help newcomers get started on the app. These packs can be built in a number of different ways. Engadget has one with many of its writers and editors, myself included. Come for the promise of tech news, but stay for random photos of my cats. The version likely coming to Threads looks to work in a similar way. The lists of users are handpicked by people on Threads and can be about pretty much anything. Messina showed off a list called NBA Threads," as seen above. The feature has become so popular on Bluesky that theres even a searchable database, complete with over 37,000 of these bundles of humans. The packs can also be shared directly in feeds, though we dont know if Threads will allow that. Bluesky Bluesky has responded to this move with snark, writing on Threads that if this app is going to keep copying our features, you might as well just join Bluesky. For those who have been paying attention, Threads has been paying homage to all kinds of pre-existing Bluesky features in recent days and months. The platform recently rolled out custom feeds and the ability to change the default feed to people you follow. This is like Sega and Nintendo all over again, only with pithy messages instead of genre-defining gaming classics. Why is Threads so eager to mimic some of Blueskys most popular features? Well, the latter has seen tremendous growth spikes over the last couple of months, recently hitting 20 million users. Folks are fleeing the sinking ship that is X in droves and looking for a replacement app. Threads wants to be the one. Bluesky also wants to be the one. You know the drill. Threads may be acting like the underdog here by adopting some of Blueskys features, but it actually has a massive head start. The platform recently announced that it had over 35 million signups in November alone.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/starter-packs-are-the-latest-bluesky-feature-that-threads-is-going-to-shamelessly-adopt-193159548.html?src=rss
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(David Eulitt/Getty Images)David Eulitt via Getty Images Maybe you're a huge football fan, maybe you're someone who wants to kick up your feet on the couch and enjoy something on in the background while you scroll for Black Friday deals on your phone and recover from Thanksgiving. Either way, we (and the Las Vegas Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs) have got you covered. This Friday, the Chiefs (10-1) host the Raiders (2-9) in a game that the home team is unsurprisingly favored to win. But last holiday season the two teams faced off on Christmas just for the Raiders to win in a shocking upset proof that anything could happen on Friday afternoon. And if that's not enough drama for you, odds are Taylor Swift may show up to support Travis Kelce. Are you ready to watch yet? The game kicks off on Friday, November 29 at 3PM ET (12PM PT) inside Allegiant Stadium. Here's what you need to know before tuning in. Stream Black Friday football on Amazon Prime Video Black Friday football game time The Raiders vs. Chiefs Black Friday game kicks off at 3PM ET on Amazon Prime Video and locally on KSHB-TV 41 (Kansas City market). You can tune into pregame coverage starting at 1:30PM ET. How to watch the Las Vegas Raiders vs. Kansas City Chiefs game Stream Black Friday football on Amazon Prime Video Unlike the NFL's usual Sunday slate, which airs across several channels and live streaming platforms, this year's Black Friday football game will stream nationally only on Amazon Prime Video (which is also the exclusive home for the NFL's regular season Thursday night games). Game coverage will include play-by-play by Al Michaels, Color Analysis by Kirk Herbstreit and sideline reporting from Kaylee Hartung. Amazon Prime Video is included in a standard Amazon Prime subscription ($15 per month or $139 per year), but you can also subscribe directly to the video streaming platform for $9 per month. Amazon Prime offers a 30-day free trial, so you could tune into Fridays game totally free. How to watch the Raiders vs. Chiefs game locally For out-of-market viewers, the Black Friday game airs on Amazon Prime Video. But for those in the Kansas City market, the game will air on KSHB-TV 41. For Las Vegas viewers the channel is still TBA. Are there any Black Friday deals tied to the game? Last year was the debut of a Black Friday NFL game, and Amazon used the occasion to proffer a handful of deals to the captive audience. We expect the same for this year, but the vast majority of Amazon's Black Friday deals are already up and running, including the usual bevy of Black Friday discounts on Amazon devices, including Kindle readers, Ring doorbells, Fire tablets and Echo smart displays. There's no need to wait for Friday. NFL Thanksgiving week schedule This game is squarely in the middle of the NFL's holiday weekend schedule. If you want to catch all of the action, the games start on Thanksgiving day proper and finish up on Monday night with the Browns taking on the Broncos. All times Eastern Thursday, Nov. 28 Chicago Bears v. Detroit Lions: 12:30PM (CBS) New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys: 4:30PM (FOX) Miami Dolphins vs. Green Bay Packers: 8:20PM (NBC, Peacock) Friday, Nov. 29 Las Vegas Raiders vs. Kansas City Chiefs: 3:00PM (Prime Video) Sunday, Dec. 1 Los Angeles Chargers vs. Atlanta Falcons: 1PM (CBS) Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Cincinnati Bengals: 1PM (CBS) Arizona Cardinals vs. Minnesota Vikings: 1PM (FOX) Indianapolis Colts vs. New England Patriots: 1PM (CBS) Seattle Seahawks vs. New York Jets: 1PM (FOX) Tennessee Titans vs. Washington Commanders: 1PM (CBS) Houston Texans vs. Jacksonville Jaguars: 1PM (FOX) Los Angeles Rams vs. New Orleans Saints: 4:05PM (FOX) Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Carolina Panthers: 4:05PM (FOX) Philadelphia Eagles vs. Baltimore Ravens: 4:25PM (CBS) San Francisco 49ers vs. Buffalo Bills: 8:20PM (NBC, Peacock) Monday, Dec. 2 Cleveland Browns vs. Denver Broncos: 8:15PM (ABC, ESPN+) This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/how-to-watch-the-2024-black-friday-nfl-game-192547550.html?src=rss
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Bluesky is bigger than ever. But as the upstart social media service surges, the platform is facing some growing pains. Among them: The influx of new users has opened up new opportunities for scammers and impersonators hoping to capitalize on the attention and Blueskys lack of a conventional verification system. A recent analysis by Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security Trust and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech found that 44 percent of the top 100 most-followed accounts on Bluesky had at least one doppelganger, with most looking like cheap knock-offs of the bigger account, down to the same bio and profile picture, Mantzarlis wrote in his newsletter Faked Up. Unlike many of its counterparts, which offer checkmarks and official badges to government officials, celebrities and other high profile accounts, Bluesky has a more hands-off approach to verification. Instead of proactively verifying notable accounts itself, the company encourages users to use a custom domain name as their handle in order to self-verify. For example, my employer Engadget currently has the Bluesky handle engadget.bsky.social. But if we wanted to verify our account, we could opt to change it to Engadget.com. Some media organizations, like The New York Times, Bloomberg and The Onion have done this for their official accounts. Individuals are also able to verify by using a personal website. But, the process is more complicated than simply changing your handle. It also requires entities to add a string of text to the DNS record associated with their domain. While in some ways its a clever solution to verification only the actual owner of a website would be able to access the DNS record for a domain it also has a number of drawbacks. Its a manual process thats not readily accessible to everyone who might wish to be verified. (Bluesky does sell custom domains for users who dont already have one.) Verification is even more complex for those wishing to verify multiple accounts associated with the same domain, which may explain why some outlets, like The New York Times and NPR have custom handles, but dont extend that verification to their reporters on Bluesky. Even Blueskys own tutorial suggests organizations seek assistance from their IT departments. There are other issues. Once you change your handle to match a domain you own, your old alias (engadget.bksy.social, for instance) becomes available again. So youll either need to set up a new account to squat on your old handle, or risk an impersonator scooping it up. And even if you add a custom domain, it doesnt offer foolproof protection against impersonation. A dedicated scammer could use a lookalike domain and verify an imposter account. Both accounts belong to AOC, but only the top one is "verified" under Bluesky's current system. Screenshot via Bluesky To make things more confusing, Bluesky itself gives no indication, other than the handle name, that an account has been verified. Verified accounts dont have a visual indicator like a check or a badge that differentiates them from unverified ones, To combat this, some Bluesky users are coming up with their own makeshift workarounds. Hunter Walker, an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo and early Bluesky user, has been proactively verifying journalists, celebrities and other high-profile accounts himself. So far, hes verified more than 330 people, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Flavor Flav, Mark Cuban and Barbra Streisand. I have a pretty high standard for journalism and reporting, and everything I say, I like to triple check the sources, Walker tells Engadget. I like to make sure it's confirmed. And it became apparent to me, participating in Bluesky, that on a basic level, nothing was confirmed. Walker estimates hes spent about 16 hours over the last couple weeks verifying accounts. He has different methods depending on the user, but it often involves communicating with someone from another account officially linked to them, like a company email address. For celebrities, their representatives are often able to confirm their official Bluesky handles. Ive caught so many scammers and imposters, and it's not always who you would expect, Walker says. Regular journalists sometimes have three or four imposters. He says hes been inundated with requests for his unofficial verification, and notes that a number of people hes verified also use a custom domain. They want something else because a domain is not verification of identity. Walker maintains starter packs of journalists and other prominent accounts hes verified. Recently, he took it a step further, working with another user to create a custom labeling service that will append different emojis to accounts hes verified to make his verification more prominent. Users who subscribe to the service will see a next to celebrities and public figures, and a next to journalists. The labeling service that uses emojis to show accounts verified by Walker.Screenshot via Bluesky While these kinds of efforts can act as a stopgap, Walker wont be able to verify every notable account on Bluesky himself. Hes suggested that other communities, like university researchers, could undertake a similar ad hoc verification effort. But, without help from Bluesky o a third-party identity service, he expects impersonation to remain an issue. And widespread impersonation can often lead to bigger problems for a platform like Bluesky. Sloppy verification is an early signal of broader deception and catnip for organized disinformation actors, Cornell Techs Mantzarlis wrote, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris at one point had 20 impersonator accounts on Bluesky even though shes never had an official presence on the platform. On its part, Bluesky has acknowledged that impersonation is an issue. In an update this week, the company said it had seen a predictable uptick in harmful content that coincided with its recent growth. In a statement to Engadget, Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said the company had quadrupled its moderation team, which would help ensure reports of impersonation are handled more quickly. Liu also said that Bluesky was working on easier visual signals we could use for verification so it's a better user experience, though its not yet clear what form that might take. But Bluesky, which currently has just 20 full-time employees, seems reluctant to consider other approaches to verification outside of custom domains. We've been working behind the scenes with official organizations and high-profile individuals like celebrities and elected officials to get their accounts verified on Bluesky with their website, Liu said. With domains as verification, we want to put the tools of verification in each org's hands, instead of making Bluesky the company the sole arbiter of who deserves to be verified on the network. Blueskys hesitation to play the role of verifier is in many ways understandable. Verification has a long and messy history on other platforms. On Twitter, a symbol that was originally created to fight impersonators quickly morphed into a sometimes divisive status symbol. On Instagram, verification has often been exploited by scammers. Now, both companies allow users to buy blue checkmarks, though both platforms also proactively verify certain types of accounts, like those belonging to government officials. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, however, has signaled that shes potentially open to alternate approaches to verification. In a livestream on Twitch this week, she said the company might at some point become a verification provider. TechCrunch, which reported the remarks, said that her comments suggested a future system in which there are multiple providers of verification. Graber added that shes not sure when such a scenario would play out. Walker, who repeated several times his firm belief that Bluesky has the juice, hopes that his verification project might be able to nudge Bluesky to take a different approach. I'm really hoping that people pay attention to the question of trust and the question of identity. The cool thing about the open source nature of it all, is we have a chance to build things on this and make it how we want it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-has-a-verification-problem-190047733.html?src=rss
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