Facebook will begin testing Accounts Center this week on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger From Facebook, calling it a way “to control connected experiences that work across our applications.”

Accounts Center is completely optional.

Users can turn connected experiences on and off, including single sign on, which enables people to log into and recover accounts more easily, and cross-posting, which allows them to share the same Stories or posts to Facebook and Instagram.

Later this year, Facebook Pay will be added to the mix, enabling users to enter their payment information once and make secure purchases and donations across Facebook and Instagram.

Product manager Oren Hod said in a Newsroom post that people using Accounts Center are not required to have the same identity across Facebook’s family of apps, but should they choose to do so, they can sync their name and profile photo across the apps.

He added, “We use information across our apps to personalize your experience and show you more relevant content, including ads. Setting up and using Accounts Center won’t change that. We also use information about activity on our apps to improve our services and keep them safe—for example, to help identify and remove accounts that violate our policies, and to keep your accounts secure. To ensure that these new features work seamlessly, we’ll continue to use information across our apps when you set up your Accounts Center. We’ll also use your information to personalize experiences across accounts, like suggested friends and accounts to follow. To learn more about the information Facebook collects and how it’s used, check out our Data Policy and How Ads Work.”

YouTube started seeing #WithMe trends on its platform in 2010 as a way to encourage people to do things together, and in late March, in the early stages of the pandemic, it incorporated #WithMe into its #StayHome effort to stress the importance of adhering to social distancing guidelines.

The Google-owned video site introduced its latest #WithMe spot Tuesday, Find a Way #WithMe, to showcase the creative ways that people are getting through 2020, while spotlighting the importance of mental health ahead of Mental Illness Awareness Week in October.

YouTube said views of videos containing #WithMe in their titles are up 600% since March 15 compared with average views for the rest of the year, adding that it has tallied 2.13 billion social impressions for #WithMe, making it the video site’s most-talked-about brand campaign ever, as well as 1.1 billion global views of #WithMe videos and 504 curated playlists across 29 markets.

The campaign’s first video, which debuted in March, totaled 33 million views and featured celebrities including Emma Chamberlain, Demi Lovato, Markiplier, Casey Neistat, Lele Poons and Sam Smith encouraging viewers to stay home.

Other spots in the campaign included Get By Together #WithMe, which debuted in late April and racked up 78 million views, and Graduate #WithMe, which premiered in late May and totaled 2.2 million views.

The first presidential candidates’ debate between incumbent Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden will take place Tuesday night, and Twitter already has several initiatives in place.

The debate will be livestreamed free-of-charge on Twitter at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday, featured atop the timelines of many users and accessible via the social network’s new 2020 U.S Election Hub under its Explore tab.

Twitter users can go to this tweet and hit the “set reminder” button in order to receive a push alert with a link to the live debate when it starts.

The social network outlined steps it is taking to monitor and protect conversation about the debate:

• Violations of the Twitter Rules, including the new civic integrity policy, will result in human and automated review of content, including hashtags and accounts.
• Twitter continues to work closely with outside organizations, including: federal, state and local election officials; campaigns; the Commission on Presidential Debates; and other trusted partners.
• The social network will monitor Trending Topics in order to add informative context for voters.
• Twitter Moments that accurately summarize news around the debate will be added to the 2020 U.S Election Hub.
• Accurate voter registration resources will be automatically generated when people search for them.

The return of Carne Asada to the Chipotle menu spurred a run of Carne Duets on TikTok.

The fast-casual chain said earlier this week that its Carne Asada premium steak option was returning to locations in Canada and the U.S. for a limited time, as well as debuting in France.

Chipotle teamed up with TikTok creators Angry Reactions, Brittany Broski, Kate From TikTok, Lady Efron and Newt to create Duets capturing their reactions to the return of Carne Asada.

Hungry TikTok users can Duet the original video from Chipotle and order Carne Asada via the Chipotle application or website (https://www.chipotle.com/) through Sept. 27, and Carne Asada will be available in-restaurant starting Sept. 28.

A new Twitter-powered tool was added to the NFL Game Pass subscription service, which gives National Football League fans access to replays of games as soon as the live broadcasts end.

Social Season analyzes tweets from fans and pundits and crunches the data in near-real-time to provide a list of the most popular players, as well as game predictions.

The most discussed players on Twitter at each position are ranked in a fantasy-style lineup.

NFL Game Pass said in a statement, “As NFL fans are adjusting to go from stadium to screen, virtual fan participation is more important than ever. NFL Game Pass has developed the Social Season tool to keep fans entertained despite the continued uncertainty around physical game attendance.”

Other new features that were added to the NFL Game Pass experience for this season include instant highlights, exclusive recap show Sunday in 60, the ability for viewers to resume where they left off and a redesigned application and website.

Did you know that you can add text to your Instagram Reels videos? Our guide will show you how this is done.

Note: These screenshots were captured in the Instagram application on iOS.

Step 1: Once you’ve taken one or more clips in Reels, tap the right arrow (“>”) in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Step 2: Tap the text icon in the top-right corner of the screen.

Step 3: Type the text you want to add to your Reel. Note: You can edit the text’s appearance in a number of ways. From left to right across the top of the screen, there are buttons for changing the text’s alignment (left, right or center), changing the text’s color, adding a background highlight to the text and making the text move. You can also tap various font icons above your device’s keyboard to change to a different font. Finally, you can change the size of the text by using the vertical slider on the left side of the screen.

Step 4: When you’re done typing and editing this text, tap “Done” in the top-right corner of the screen.

From there, you can continue editing your post as normal.

LinkedIn has earned the trust of social network users in the U.S., according to the annual U.S. Digital Trust Survey from Insider Intelligence. Facebook? Not so much.

Insider Intelligence polled 1,865 people in the U.S. aged 18 through 74 from May 28 through June 3, seeking their perceptions of nine major social networks in five categories of trust: ad experience, ad relevance, community, legitimacy and security. Here’s how the rankings turned out:\

• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Snapchat
• Reddit
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Twitter
• TikTok
• Facebook

Facebook was the least-trusted social platform when it came to data privacy, with 32% of Facebook users surveyed at least somewhat disagreeing that they had confidence in the platform to protect their data and privacy, compared with just 10% for LinkedIn.

Insider Intelligence senior research analyst Audrey Schomer said in a statement, “Two years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we expect that Facebook’s massive data privacy issues during that time have persisted in public memory and continue to be a black mark on its record. This is likely driving nearly one-third of U.S. Facebook users to continue to view Facebook as a platform that doesn’t adequately protect their data. Our research highlights the great importance of data privacy protections by social networks to ensure that user engagement data isn’t mishandled or misappropriated.”

While 53% of Facebook users polled at least somewhat agreed that the platform protects their data and privacy, that figure still ranked lowest among the nine sites in the study.

Insider Intelligence research associate Daniel Carnahan said in a statement, “To Facebook’s credit, it has made efforts to give users more control over their data through opt-in and opt-out features tied to what data is shared and what ads they’re shown, as well as by increasing its own transparency into what data is collected. Nevertheless, it appears that these efforts are still having only minimal effects on U.S. user sentiment.”

TikTok and Twitter did not fare well, either, as 22% and 21% of respondents, respectively, said they at least somewhat lacked confidence in those platforms’ ability to protect their data and privacy.

Meanwhile, 73% of LinkedIn users in the study and 68% of Pinterest users said they at least somewhat agreed that those platforms protected their privacy and data.

Insider Intelligence said, “Digital trust is important for brands and advertisers to consider because U.S. social users say it impacts whether they will interact with the ads they see on social platforms. Even if security scandals don’t drive users to cease engagement, our data indicates that the trust users have—or don’t have—in social platforms could impact their interactions with ads or sponsored content. In fact, 79% of respondents said whether a platform protects their privacy and data was either extremely or very impactful when it comes to their decision to engage with ads. And 30% of respondents said that whether a platform shows them relevant ads had an extremely or very high impact.”

Twitter provided an update on some of the behind-the-scenes work it has been doing to keep its platform secure.

Chief technology officer Parag Agrawal and data protection officer Damien Kieran said in a blog post Thursday that the social network has been strengthening the checks that team members with access to its customer data, features and proprietary tools must undergo, reducing the potential for unauthorized access.

They wrote, “We have strict principles around who is allowed access to which tools and at what time, and we require specific justifications for customer data to be accessed.”

Twitter is constantly refining its internal detection and monitoring tools, which help surface unusual behavior or unauthorized attempts to access its internal tools.

Agrawal and Kieran also pointed to the security measures the social network put in place last week for high-profile election-related accounts, including requiring stronger passwords and requiring the use of two-factor authentication.

New hires at Twitter were already required to undergo security and privacy and data protection training, and Twitter added new coursed and increased the frequency and availability of existing courses for all employees.

Agrawal and Kieran provided the example that employees with access to non-public information now have two new mandatory training sessions to complete.

The social network also enhanced training in areas including privacy by design, privacy impact assessments, secure coding and threat modeling.

Agrawal and Kieran added, “Our teams have also been investing in additional penetration testing and scenario planning to help secure Twitter from a range of possible threats, including in the context of the upcoming 2020 U.S. elections. Specifically, over a five-month period from March 1 through Aug. 1, Twitter’s cross-functional elections team conducted tabletop exercises internally on specific election scenarios. Some of the topics included: hacks and other security incidents, leaks of hacked materials, platform manipulation activity, foreign interference, coordinated online voter suppression campaigns and the post-Election Day period.”

Internally, Twitter is requiring its team to use phishing-resistant security keys when authenticating to systems around the world.

And the social network has elevated the number of privacy reviews and impact assessments it conducts, going from roughly 100 in 2018, to nearly 500 in 2019, to over 300 in the first six months of 2020.

Agrawal and Kieran wrote, “We are continuing to invest more in the teams, technology and resources to support this critical work. We also know that we can do more to make it easier for you to find and use the settings and controls we offer, so we’re working on rolling out improvements to the design and navigation of our privacy settings. You’ll see these improvements in Twitter soon.”

They concluded, “We want you to have peace of mind when you come to Twitter that the data you share with us is secure, and that you understand and feel empowered to use the controls we offer you to keep your account secure. This will always be ongoing work for us, but trust that we are committed to acting in the interest of the people who use our service. Where we discover an issue, we will work quickly to fix it, learn from it and hold ourselves accountable by keeping you informed.”

The Facebook NPE Team detailed updates to its Tuned app for couples, dividing them into three tenses: present, past and future.

Tuned was released for iOS in April, when it was described in its iTunes App Store listing as, “A private space where you and your significant other can just be yourselves. With Tuned, you can be as mushy, quirky and silly as you are together in person, even when you’re apart. Creatively express your love, share your mood, exchange music and build a digital scrapbook of your special moments.”

Product lead Sunita Mohanty detailed the updates in a blog post.

Be present with each other

• Set your moods so that you can stay tuned in to how you’re both feeling throughout the day without having to ask.
• Exchange notes, voice messages, cards, stickers and music to effortlessly show your romantic side and connect with your partner on a deeper level.
• Take couple’s challenges to learn new things about each other and have some fun.

Celebrate your past

• Reminisce on all your shared artifacts, like photos and milestones.
• Turn your favorite memories into a highlights video you can share with friends and family if you’d like.

Look forward to your future

• Add important dates in your relationship (like birthdays and anniversaries).
• Create shared lists for all special moments big and small (like bucket lists, date night ideas and inside jokes).

Tuned is only available in Canada and the U.S., and only for iOS.