Social Media

Reddit today revealed it’s testing its own livestreaming service, called RPAN or Reddit Public Access Network. It’ll be running all week, presumably to see what kind of shows redditors put on before the site rolls it out to everyone. The R/PAN subreddit includes a series of short videos comparing the service to public access TV. The videos, which appeared over the weekend before the official announcement, appeared intentionally vague to tease the coming announcement. It seemed to work, because there’s nothing Reddit likes more than a good mystery to solve. How will blockchain impact finance and business? Find out at TNW’s Hard Fork Summit Take me there According to the RPAN sub, the feature will be available from 9am to 5pm PT every day this week. According to Alex Le, Reddit’s VP of Product speaking to Wired, no more than 100 streams will be allowed concurrently and they have a cap of 30 mins. Redditors can upvote or downvote broadcasts they like, and … [Read more...] about Reddit tests live broadcasting with a Public Access Network

The world of social media — already awash in conspiracy thinking in the Trump era — erupted with new theories Saturday after the news broke that Jeffrey Epstein had died by suicide under mysterious circumstances in his jail cell. Many of the theories ventured into the realm of outlandish conjecture, amplified by conservative commentators and at least two Republican officials. Many people who have spent the last few years blaming the nation’s problems on either the Clinton or the Trump administrations found new reasons to pin Epstein’s death to their favorite targets — despite a complete lack of evidence at this point explaining how Epstein was able to kill himself. The conspiracies spanned a wide range of topics from Epstein’s connections to the Clinton family and President Donald Trump to fringe theories including QAnon. Others simply questioned the circumstances around Epstein’s death. Travis View, an independent conspiracy theory researcher, … [Read more...] about After Epstein’s suicide, conspiracy theories flourish online

Discord today announced it’s premiering its own internal livestreaming feature, appropriately titled Go Live. It’s essentially a very small video stream where a few friends can comment on your gameplay — but it sounds like a fun alternative to other livestreaming services. Go Live lets Discord users broadcast their gameplay over a voice chat channel in a server. That means, given the limitations of voice chat rooms, that up to ten people can watch you play. Hard Fork! Hard Fork? Hard Fork This update adds a game bar to the bottom of your server’s room list. It shows what game you’re currently playing and the Go Live button. Once you go live, your gameplay is broadcast to everyone who’s in the same voice chat channel as you are. It’s nothing fancy — just gameplay, with no extra adornments, and viewers can stop watching the stream any time they want (presumably without exiting the voice chat itself). It looks like it’s somewhat … [Read more...] about Discord launches its own mini-livestreaming service

If you’ve opened Twitter today, you’ll likely have been inundated with a single theme: feral hogs. Yep, when I stirred, and flipped open my phone this morning, my feed was filled with memes about garden-roaming, kid-attacking wild swine. I was utterly confuddled. Hard Fork! Hard Fork? Hard Fork After a bit of digging, I found the tweet that started it all: Now, anyone who spends any sort of time online knows memes aren’t newsworthy by themselves. Yes, they’re an integral and longstanding part of internet culture, but are generally fast moving and light by nature. But the feral hog meme is different. It stood out in a way that’s representative of a very online way of dealing with tragedy. Of course, things on the internet spread quickly, but the feral hog appeared faster than most. When I went to sleep, it was nowhere. When I woke up, it was unavoidable. This graph from Jason Baumgartner highlights its sheer scale: But the real meat of the meme is … [Read more...] about The ‘feral hog’ meme encapsulates the best side of the internet

Microsoft-owned streaming service Mixer is catching some heat over its rules concerning appropriate clothes, which seem to penalize women specifically. They certainly seem unnecessarily specific about restricting all but the most conservatively-dressed streamers to 18+ channels. After Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, formerly the world’s most popular Twitch streamer, revealed he’d be streaming with Mixer full time, the site got more of a spotlight than it’s had up to this point. Before now, it was a curious Twitch alternative, Microsoft‘s attempt to dethrone the Amazon-owned juggernaut. I don’t want to say Ninja’s migration somehow legitimizes the platform — but it’s sure getting much more attention now than it did before. Hard Fork! Hard Fork? Hard Fork With that attention comes scrutiny, and one of the things new users found questionable was Mixer’s rules on how streamers can dress. One of the first people to … [Read more...] about Mixer is taking heat over its oddly conservative dress code