-“You can now also enjoy video calls in Landscape mode for a wider and more immersive viewing and sharing experience on your phone,” Meta said
-Premium subscribers can also freely download video, stream offline and host Google Meet session to watch videos in groups
-YouTube, its India director said, is committed to enforcing its policies consistently globally, and especially in India
-YouTube has the watch history toggle available in a dedicated section on the My Google Activity settings page
New Delhi, NFAPost: Meta-owned social media messaging application WhatsApp has rolled out screen sharing and landscape mode features for video calls, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced.
“We’re adding the ability to share your screen during a video call on WhatsApp,” Zuckerberg posted on Facebook.
Screen sharing allows users to share a live view of their screen during a call. The feature can be initiated by clicking on the ‘share’ icon and choosing between sharing a specific application or sharing the entire screen, the company said in a release.
“You can now also enjoy video calls in Landscape mode for a wider and more immersive viewing and sharing experience on your phone,” Meta said.
YouTube now offers high quality 1080p video on web for premium subscribers
YouTube, one of the largest video streaming platforms, has enabled high-quality 1080p viewing experience on its web interface for its premium subscribers, according to a report by TechCrunch. This comes months after the enhanced bitrate option was made available for premium members on mobile devices. The platform had initially rolled this out as an experiment in February before launching it for iOS users in April.
According to YouTube’s blogpost on this new update in April, this new feature allows users to experience an “even deeper visual quality”. Aside from this, premium members can download videos to view offline, user progress in videos is saved so they can pick up where they left off even after switching devices, and even watch videos with other members through Google Meet.
The non-enhanced version of 1080p is still available to non-premium members as it has been since November 2009.
YouTube had recently increased its premium plan to $13.99/month from the previous $11.99 in the United States. However, the plans seem to have stayed the same for Indian subscribers. In India, one month plan costs Rs 139 while auto-renewal plans cost Rs 129 per month. There are also three-month (Rs 399) and annual (Rs 1159) plans with family and student price variations also available.
According to the TechCrunch report, the company is also testing a higher bitrate for live 1080p content.
This comes after the platform added new features to its Shorts to attract more creators onto the platform. These features include six new tools such as collab for remixing videos in side-by-side format, suggestions for remixing videos and replying to comments with a Shorts video and saving them to playlists, among others. The company is also testing a mobile-first vertical live experience for creators to get discovered on the Shorts feed.
Curbing misinformation critical as AI-powered tools come in: YouTube
YouTube said curbing misinformation is critical for platforms and society as tech evolves and AI powered tools come in, and asserted that the video streaming platform will act swiftly against technically manipulated content that aims to mislead users and cause real world harm.
YouTube has has well established community guidelines in place that determine what kind of content is allowed on the platform, Ishan John Chatterjee, Director, India, YouTube, said at a media briefing.
“Content moderation is a critical challenge for YouTube and also for society as whole as tech evolves,” he said to a question on YouTube’s content moderation approach in the backdrop of AI moving to point where humans on screen are being replaced by AI avatars and powerful newage tools.
“One of the policies besides different things like violence and graphic content is…about misinformation and content that is technically manipulated to mislead users and cause real world harm…That is not allowed on our platform and we will act against it,” he vowed.
YouTube, he said, is committed to enforcing its policies consistently globally, and especially in India.
“We are constantly evolving processes and technologies to make sure we are able to meet this challenge. Earlier this year… Sundar Pichai announced two things we will be looking at… Meta data and watermarks that will come….on content AI generated and those are ways for viewers and us to use AI to detect it,” he said.
Crackdown on misinformation is an area of critical importance to the platform, according to Chatterjee.
“We have made significant investment and advances in doing it. But we know that our work here is never done, so we’ll continuously keep investing in this area,” he said.
YouTube, which is celebrating 15 years of launch of localised version in India, also shared insights into how the ingenuity of Indian creators coupled with evolving preferences of fans are defining significant trends in creation, consumption and pop culture.
YouTube said it continues to expand creative tools, ways to monetise and help creators engage with audiences in meaningful ways, at the same time giving creators and viewers a safe experience to create and connect.
“We will continue to be laser focused on making YouTube the best platform for long-term success,” Chatterjee added.
Listing out the key trends that showcase the impact of Indian creators and fans in shaping the digital video landscape and creator economy in India, he mentioned that creation has become frictionless, and that consumption is multiformat and seamless.
More creative tools have spurred an expansion of formats, which in turn resulted in more stories, more scale, and greater impact.
In fact, 69 per cent of Gen Z in India (surveyed) like it when their favorite creators are creating in different formats like short form, long form, podcasts, and live streams.
“With 71 per cent of people watching videos about a specific topic that they are into in multiple different formats, consumption has become boundless and seamless,” YouTube said in a release.
YouTube to show video recommendations only if watch history feature is on
American software giant Google’s video sharing platform YouTube will stop showing video recommendations to users who have their watch history switched off, the company said in a blog post. For users who prefer to turn off their watch history, the YouTube homepage could look a lot different. The feed of recommended videos will be empty. Some users could also see a largely blank YouTube homepage both on mobile and the web.
“Starting today, if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled — like your YouTube home feed,” the company said in a blog post.
The change will result in a more streamlined browsing experience, showing only the search bar and guide menu, the company said.
The changes will roll out gradually over the next few months, YouTube said. The company said the change should make it more clear which YouTube features rely on watch history to provide video recommendations and make it more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search rather than browse recommendations.
YouTube also said that once the change rolls out to the user’s account, one can change the watch history settings to switch views at any time. The toggle is located in a dedicated section on the My Google Activity settings page.
At the current moment, YouTube provides a page full of recommended videos thumbnails that the users may want to watch. Once the change takes place, users can switch their watch history anytime they want to. However, some users may prefer to look out for videos directly on the website rather than getting recommendations based on YouTube’s algorithms.
Agencies
