Creator Weekly: Google Podcasts, Reddit Contributors, Meta AI

I sometimes feel like everything is about AI, as all the big tech companies add generative AI features wherever they can squeeze them in. But that’s not all that’s happening this week. Reddit has a new Contributor program that lets you earn real money, Google will be shutting down Google Podcasts and Jamboard whiteboards next year, YouTube has more stats in Analytics and more.

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Top news and updates this week

• Google Podcasts is shutting down, podcasts will be in YouTube Music
• YouTube Advertiser Friendly Guidelines update
• New Reddit Contributor Program lets you earn money from “gold”
• New YouTube Analytics stats
• Google-Extended AI training controls for web publishers
• Meta’s new celebrity based AI chatbots
• Generative AI updates from Google, Bing, and ChatGPT
• Photoshop is available on the web
• Bandcamp sold to Songtradr
• Google Jamboard will shut down in 2024
• New timeline for the conversion of Chat Spaces to in-line threading
• Google Meet’s visual effects are now supported in Firefox

Read on for details and additional updates!

Google Podcasts Shutdown

Google Podcasts (podcasts.google.com) will be shutting down in favor of podcasts in YouTube Music.

Here’s what you need to know if you are a listener:

• This will happen in 2024, with more details to come.
• There will be a migration tool to move your podcast subscriptions from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music. You will also be able to export your subscription list to migrate to a different service.
• You will be able to add podcast RSS feeds to YouTube Music.
• Currently US users can “enjoy podcasts on-demand, offline, in the background, while casting and seamlessly switch between audio-video versions on YouTube Music”. These options will expand to more countries.
• You can find podcasts by topic in YouTube Music (in select countries)

For creators:

• Find official information here: Become a podcast creator on YouTube
• Soon there will be an option to upload an existing podcast RSS feed in YouTube Studio.
• If you upload podcast videos you can turn them into a podcast in YouTube Studio.

I don’t think this is a particularly surprising move, with YouTube investing in new creator tools for podcasts and new options for listening. Instead of two Google podcast apps, there will be just one.

YouTube Advertiser-Friendly Guidelines Update: Controversial Issues

YouTube has updated the advertiser friendly guidelines around these controversial issues:

• Sexual and domestic abuse: fully monetize non-descriptive non-graphic content
• Abortion: fully monetize non-graphic content
• Eating disorders: content promoting binge eating, hiding & hoarding food or abusing laxatives will not earn revenue

Watch the video from Creator Insider for more information or see the examples in the Advertiser Friendly Guidelines.

Use Google-Extended to control use of your website for AI training

Google-Extended is a new control that lets web publishers manage whether their site content can be used to improve Google’s Bard (bard.google.com) and Vertex AI (enterprise product) generative APIs.

Add the Google-Extended user agent token to your robots.txt file to specify what part of your site can (and cannot) be used for AI training. Get the technical details.

Related:

• Use NOCACHE or NOARCHIVE to remove your website from Bing Chat.
• Use the GPTBot user agent token to control OpenAI web crawler access.
• Medium’s new policy is Default No to AI Training on Your Stories

Reddit Contributor Program lets you earn money from “gold”

This week Reddit launched a new Contributor Program that allows eligible Redditors to earn money on the platform.

At the beginning of September, Reddit “sunsetted” coins and awards. These appeared on people’s posts.

Now people can “gild” posts with “gold”, purchased with real money.

The new program’s current eligibility requirements:

• US residents at least 18 years old
• Identity verification completed
• Account in good standing
• In the last year, you must have received 100 karma (calculated from the first day you receive gold, and not before) and at least 10 gold from other Redditors (who pay for it)

Contributions in quarantined communities, NSFW communities, sexual, violent or other restricted content are not eligible.

It sounds like Reddit has at least been thinking about how to prevent spammers and scammers from taking part. But some of the features aren’t great. For example if a post is taken down for copyright infringement, people who gave it gold are not refunded.

More information: Reddit Contributor Monetization Policy

More Video Creator Updates

New in YouTube Analytics: see how new viewers and returning viewers view your content. There are also more detailed stats on members and memberships. Do a deep dive in your Analytics to see these metrics. (watch announcement)

Sarah Ali, YouTube’s Director of Product Management answered frequent questions about the new YouTube Create app and the AI tools that are coming soon. (video link)

In Fortune: Top Twitch streamers call on company to fix a hack that lets users rack up fake views and defraud advertisers: 'It's just yucky and deceptive'

Music and Podcasting

Less than 2 years after the online music store for independent artists and community platform Bandcamp was acquired by Epic Games, it’s been sold to music licensing company Songtradr. They say they believe in “ensuring artists are fairly compensated for their work” and will offer options for musicians and bands to license their music. Songtradr offers artists options to monetize and distribute their content through YouTube Content ID, Spotify for Artists and other platforms.

Photos and Image Design on the Web

Adobe Photoshop is now available on the web at photoshop.adobe.com . If you do not have an Adobe subscription there is a free 7 day trial.

Getty Images has a new AI image generation tool that’s “commercially safe” because it’s only trained on the Getty Images database. They say creators will be compensated.

Social Media

Reddit has updated their user ad settings. You will be able to opt out of specific ad categories, but you will no longer be able to opt out of ad personalization based on your Reddit activity.

X news filed under I can’t even: Elon Fires Half Of ExTwitter’s Election Integrity Team, Because A Manager Liked A Tweet Calling Him A Fucking Dipshit
Privacy and Security

More AI Updates

Among other AI-related updates announced last week, images created using Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator now include an invisible watermark that indicates it is AI-created, and the time and date of creation. This meets the specifications of the C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity), which is an alliance between Adobe, Arm, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic. It’s not clear if this is the same AI image labeling that Google announced in May, or if there are (bleh) competing standards.

It’s AI everywhere in the latest announcements from Meta. Create AI-generated stickers (for WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Facebook) and use Restyle and Backdrop to edit your Instagram images (which will have the invisible AI-generated tag). Learn more about Meta’s privacy practices around AI.

Meta AI is the new chat assistant for Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, with information powered by Bing. If you don’t want to use the boring official chat, you can try celebrity-based AI chatbots with their own social media profiles. Most of the celebrities I barely recognize (although you can’t miss Mr. Beast). And while the chatbots look like the celebs, they have their own personas. I confess that it all seems pretty weird, but I’m clearly not the target user.

ChatGPT now offers voice chat, in addition to text chat. You’ll also be able to chat about an image you provide. And it can now browse the internet (currently paid only), so answers can be based on data available after September 2021.

US teens (age 13-17) can now opt in to Google’s AI in Search (SGE).

Zoom wants you to try their AI Companion, that can generate meeting summaries or answer questions about the meeting.

The Atlantic has a search tool that lets you find authors and their books that were used to train AI.

Communication and Collaboration

Jamboard is both a collaborative whiteboarding app (jamboard.google.com) and Google’s large physical whiteboarding devices. Both will be retired on October 1, 2024. Google instead will be integrating 3rd party collaboration tools such as Figma’s FigJam, Lucid’s Lucidspark, and Miro across Google Workspace. You will be able to export your Jam files until December 31, 2024. The Jamboard device will be usable offline or as a touchscreen display for your laptop. See the FAQ for more details.

Mozilla wants everyone to know how great Firefox works with Google Workspace. If you have Firefox 115 or higher, you can add Google Meet visual effects in your next meeting.

In Google Chat you will soon be able to get the link to a specific message in a 1:1 conversation, group chat or Space.

Google has started the conversion of Google Chat Spaces with individual topics to Spaces with in-line threading. This will be completed by March 2024. They have also teased some upcoming features, including a resizeable threads panel, “Home” feed, more notification options and displaying thread participants.

Google Space Managers can now manage apps and webhooks in a space. And they will also soon be able to use the Bulk Member Manager app to do that (manage members in bulk).

If you use Google Groups to send messages, you can now create and save messages as a template.

More

Longzijun has an interesting article detailing his experiments with the Kaiber AI video generator to create a video to complement his latest instrumental song.

Taylor Lorenz @ Washington Post: Inside the secret meeting of Vine stars that ushered in the app's demise

Joseph Cox @ 404 Media: The End of Privacy is a Taylor Swift Fan TikTok Account Armed with Facial Recognition Tech

From Open Culture: Stream Hundreds of Hours of Studio Ghibli Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax: My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away & More

And finally, for Google’s 25th birthday: Google at 25: By the numbers ; Celebrating 25 years of Google Search: developer trends and history, Our 10 biggest AI moments so far, 25 fun facts about Google offices and data centers

That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get the September 23 edition here.

Image: Euro coins, by Image4You from Pixabay. Free for commercial use.