youtube
Five big questions about the UK's under-16s social media ban
Five big questions about the UK's under-16s social media ban After the government's announcement on Monday, we know a social media ban is coming for under-16s in the UK . However, details on which apps are and are not included, besides those named by the government, and how the measures will extend to gaming sites like Roblox, remain sparse. And many are already asking whether enforcing the ban will mean cracking down on virtual private networks (VPNs), which can disguise someone's location online. Ministers have said they will provide an update on further restrictions like potential curfews, curbing of addictive features like infinite scroll and AI chatbots, in July. But here are some of the big unanswered questions about the UK social media ban.
Streamer IShowSpeed Is Gen Z's ESPN
At 21, Speed has pushed the limits of streaming by transforming a distinctly solo format into a global group chat. His song for this year's World Cup is becoming the tournament's unofficial anthem. Streamer IShowSpeed is a huge soccer fan who plans to bring this year's World Cup to his millions of followers. In the days leading up to the 2026 World Cup, the streamer IShowSpeed--one of the most watched people on the planet, who occasionally moonlights as a rapper--released the music video " World Cup (Champions)," a song about flexing national pride where he mentions all 48 teams. As with everything the 21-year-old born Darren Watkins Jr. does, the video was instantly everywhere. The song racked up over 7 million views on YouTube in under 24 hours. The internet rushed to christen it as the anthem of the tournament, even though the World Cup already has one. FIFA, following a ridiculous outpouring from fans and perhaps realizing the massive instant exposure he could bring, added the song to its official album.
VideoUFO: A Million-Scale User-Focused Dataset for Text-to-Video Generation
Text-to-video generative models convert textual prompts into dynamic visual content, offering wide-ranging applications in film production, gaming, and education. However, their real-world performance often falls short of user expectations. One key reason is that these models have not been trained on videos related to some topics users want to create. In this paper, we propose VideoUFO, the first Video dataset specifically curated to align with Users' FOcus in real-world scenarios. Beyond this, our VideoUFO also features: (1) minimal (0.29\%) overlap with existing video datasets, and (2) videos searched exclusively via YouTube's official API under the Creative Commons license.
Everything announced at Google I/O 2026
Eyes in the tech world have turned toward Mountain View, California this week. The San Francisco Bay Area city is where Google's headquarters is located, making it a logical place to hold the company's annual developer conference. That's right, gang, Google I/O 2026 kicked off on Tuesday with the usual opening keynote, which is where the company reveals what's arguably the event's most relevant info for consumers. Google made a ton of Android announcements last week, so its mobile ecosystem wasn't really on the agenda. But what else could the onus possibly have been on if not AI? We heard the word Gemini more times than I could possibly care to count, and the company had many updates to share on that front. Search, Google's longtime bread and butter, was a big focus of the event. The company talked up a new Ask YouTube feature as well as changes to AI subscription pricing and Workspace features like Docs and Gmail.
YouTube's AI deepfake detection tool is now available to all creators 18 and older
YouTube's AI deepfake detection tool is now available to all creators 18 and older YouTube's AI deepfake detection tool is now available to all creators 18 and older In the coming weeks, YouTube is giving all creators 18 and over access to a tool that can detect whether their likeness has been copied and used in AI videos uploaded to the website. Team YouTube made the announcement on the platform's community page, explaining that their goal is to provide [users] with more peace of mind by giving [them] easy access to request the removal of unauthorized content. While the likeness detection tool is technically only available to creators, spokesperson Jack Malon told The Verge that anybody can use it. With this expansion, we're making clear that whether creators have been uploading to YouTube for a decade or are just starting, the'll have access to the same level of protection, Malon said in a statement. It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between real and AI videos these days, and the tool's wider availability could end up helping even ordinary people who suddenly find their faces used in potentially malicious or misleading AI videos.
This Indigenous Language Survived Russian Occupation. Can It Survive YouTube?
This Indigenous Language Survived Russian Occupation. YouTube's search and recommendation algorithms are driving children to Russian-language content even when they seek out videos in Kyrgyz, creating a cultural shift that concerns some parents. When anthropology researcher Ashley McDermott was doing fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan a few years ago, she says many people voiced the same concern: Children were losing touch with their indigenous language. The Central Asian country of 7 million people was under Russian control for a century until 1991, but Kyrgyz (pronounced kur-giz) survived and remains widely spoken among adults. McDermott, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, says she also heard that some kids in rural villages where Kyrgyz dominated had spontaneously learned to speak Russian.
ADataset for Analyzing Streaming Media Performance over HTTP/3 Browsers
HTTP/3 is a new application layer protocol supported by most browsers. It uses QUIC as an underlying transport protocol. QUIC provides multiple benefits, like faster connection establishment, reduced latency, and improved connection migration. Hence, popular browsers like Chrome/Chromium, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox have started supporting it. This paper presents an HTTP/3-supported browser dataset collection tool named H3B.
YouTube was down for thousands of users in the US
Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2026 is Feb. 25 Valve's Steam Machine: Everything we know It was also down in some other countries. YouTube is experiencing an outage across the United States, with users in other countries like Canada, India, the Philippines, Australia and Russia also having problems with accessing the website. The issue seems to have started at around 8 PM Eastern time and reached 338,000 reports on Downdetector before starting to taper down. More users reported having issues accessing the app, but I personally lost access to the web homepage first. As of 9:22 PM, users are still reporting being unable to access YouTube on Reddit .