Unlike stories on platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, Pinterest’s Story Pins are not ephemeral. A spokesperson said, “We want good ideas to stick around. Story Pins can be saved and discovered over time.”

Select creators in the U.S. invited by Pinterest are testing its second rendition of Story Pins, but the feature is not available and there is no application process for creators to join the test group.

A Pinterest spokesperson said, “Content creators are the heart of Pinterest and have always been a core part of the platform, as they provide the inspiration that millions engage with every day. We’re always testing new ways to respond to creator feedback and give them more tools to bring their ideas to a growing audience. As such, we’ve been testing a new Pin format, Story Pins, that enables creators to develop longer-form, long lasting content with videos, images and text. Story Pins give creators new editing and publishing capabilities, as well as options to include how-to instructions for ideas like recipes, do-it-yourself projects and beauty tutorials, that Pinners can then discover and save to their own boards. We’ll keep you posted on further updates.”

Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reported that unlike the first version of Story Pins tested by Pinterest last year, content is contained within the Pin, rather than off-platform, as early feedback from Pinners indicated that they did not want to have to leave the application in order to progress on a project.

Perez added that Story Pins can be discovered in new places within the platform, such as the recently introduced Today tab.

The social network said in a blog post that all accounts and content associated with those accounts has been permanently removed, and relevant data has been shared with research partners the Australian Strategic Policy institute and Stanford Internet Observatory.

Two interconnected sets of accounts were removed in China: 23,750 that made up the core of the network, and about 150,000 that were designed to boost its content.

Twitter said the core accounts were detected early, before they could achieve traction, and the majority of the amplifier accounts had few or no followers.

Twitter Safety wrote, “In general, this entire network was involved in a range of manipulative and coordinated activities. They were tweeting predominantly in Chinese languages and spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China, while continuing to push deceptive narratives about the political dynamics in Hong Kong.”

A total of 1,152 accounts were deleted in Russia for engaging in state-backed political propaganda within the country, specifically cross-posting and amplifying content in an inauthentic, coordinated manner for political ends.

The social network said activities included promoting the United Russia party and attacking political dissidents.

And in Turkey, action was taken against 7,340 accounts for amplifying political narratives favorable to the AK Parti and demonstrating strong support for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Twitter Safety elaborated, “Technical signals point to the network being associated with the youth wing of the party and a centralized network that maintained a significant number of compromised accounts. As a result, the network we’re disclosing today includes several compromised accounts associated with organizations critical of President Erdogan and the Turkish government. These compromised accounts have been repeated targets of account hacking and takeover efforts by the state actors identified above. The broader network was also used for commercial activities, such as cryptocurrency-related spam.”

The company reached multiyear extensions of commitments with partners including Disney, ESPN, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS, covering new Shows and Snap Originals, as well as returns of existing original franchises including E! News’ The Rundown, ESPN’s SportsCenter, MTV’s Teen Code and NBC News’ Stay Tuned.

Snap’s partners will also deliver up-to-the-minute highlights of key entertainment, news and sports moments.

Speaking of news, Snap introduced a dedicated news product, Happening Now, to quickly deliver breaking news to Snapchatters, saying that more than 125 million people have watched news stories on its platform this year.

Happening Now will focus on topics including entertainment, politics and sports, and partners in the initiative include Bloomberg, BuzzFeed News, E! News, ESPN, NBC News, NowThis, Reuters and The Washington Post.

Publicly submitted Snaps will also be featured in Happening Now, as will personalized weather from Bitmoji, in partnership with AccuWeather, and horoscopes from Sanctuary.

Finally, Snap detailed a new slate of Snap Originals that will premiere over the next year, covering unscripted series, character-driven docuseries and scripted dramas and comedies. Some of these new offerings will incorporate augmented reality to deliver immersive experiences.

The new unscripted series are:

• Coach Kev, from Laugh Out Loud, features Kevin Hart as coach, best friend and mentor, all rolled into one. It debuts later this year.
• Fake Up, from Mission Control Media, is a competition between optical illusion makeup artists, complete with custom lenses that bring those illusions to life. The first two seasons will debut in 2020.
• Move It, from Stellar Studios and Little Engine Productions, is an immersive dance show featuring dance influencers, hits and Snapchat’s AR camera platform. It debuts later in 2020.

Upcoming new docuseries are:

• Road Trippin’, from Bunim/Murray Productions, follows best friends and creators Rickey Thompson and Denzel Dion on a road trip across the rural U.S. It is executive-produced by Anthony Anderson and will debut later this year.
• Queen of Stylez, from Glass Entertainment Group, follows hairstylist Tokyo Stylez and debuts in 2020.
• Life By the Horns, from 21st Street Creative, follows 22-year-old Ezekiel Mitchell on his quest to be the first African American to win the title of best bull rider in the world in over 35 years. It will premiere sometime this year.

And the new scripted series that were introduced are:

• Frogtown, from Alcon Television Group, tells the story of a skater living in her car who falls in with an all-girl crew at the Frogtown skatepark in East Los Angeles. It is directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and it will debut in 2021.
• Action Royale, from Portal A, is a thriller about a teenager who starts an underground esports gambling ring to pay off his father’s debts. It debuts later this year.
• Total Badass Wrestling, from Comedy Bang! Bang! Productions, is a comedy about a charismatic young wrestler who becomes an overnight viral sensation and is mentored by a washed-up veteran seeking to reclaim the spotlight. It will make its debut sometime in 2020.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the existence of the fund, saying, “Just as the NPE group experiments with products, the team is also experimenting with ways to support external startups, including with capital. This is an extension of what Facebook has already been doing through grants for hackathons and contributions to accelerators for years.”

Ina Fried and Kia Kokalitcheva of Axios reported that a recent job opening posted by Facebook for a head of investments for the NPE Team sought candidates with a minimum of 10 years of tech experience and read, “In this role, you will manage a multimillion-dollar fund that invests in leading private companies alongside top venture capital firms and angel investors. You will develop investment and impact theses, lead the execution of new investments and support existing portfolio companies as needed.”

Facebook confirmed that the position was filled but would not provide further details, nor would it discuss Axios’ report that Shabih Rizvi is helping manage the fund. Rizvi worked in a business development role at Google, following stints at venture capital firms Gradient Ventures (owned by Google parent Alphabet) and Kleiner Perkins.

The social network said in a Twitter Support tweet, “Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you tweet it.”

The test marks the latest effort by Twitter to improve the health of conversation on its platform, following a test that kicked off on iOS last month, in which a prompt appears if someone uses potentially harmful language in a reply, giving that person the option of revising that reply before sending it.

The holiday—also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Cel-Liberation Day—marks the day in 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation was read to enslaved African Americans in Texas, the last ones to be freed.

Dorsey shared the news in a tweet, saying in a follow-up tweet, “Countries and regions around the world have their own days to celebrate emancipation, and we will do the work to make those dates company holidays everywhere we are present.”

Nick Caldwell will join the company June 15 as consumer engineering lead.

Caldwell had been chief product and engineering officer at Looker until its acquisition by Google last June, after which he became senior director, product and engineering at Google.

He also spent two years as vice president of engineering at Reddit following a 15-year-plus stint at Microsoft.

A Twitter spokesperson said, “Throughout his career, Nick has been a leading voice calling for diversity and inclusion in engineering and tech. He has been a champion in recruiting and mentoring with nonprofit organization dev/color, where he is a board member, and is co-founder of Color Code, an executive development network dedicated to serving people of color in tech.”

Twitter head of engineering Mike Montano said in a tweet, “’I’m excited to welcome @nickcald to Twitter as our new consumer engineering Lead. Nick will lead the teams responsible for building Twitter across client, backend and machine learning, focused on accelerating how we serve the public conversation.”

After nearly six years with Twitter’s revenue engineering team, Helen Friedland joined the Twitter platform team as director of engineering effectiveness, with a focus on helping engineers iterate quicker and ship high-quality products.

New head of data science Max Schmeiser comes from digital freight network Convoy. He will oversee the teams informing product direction as it relates to consumer behavior.

And Avinash Joshi joined Twitter as director of quality engineering, overseeing all testing across consumer and revenue features. He held the same role at LogMein.

These moves follow last week’s addition of Nikkia Reveillac as head of research. She had been with Colgate-Palmolive.

Chief information security officer Roland Cloutier said in a blog post that the company will expand its security teams in its offices in Mountain View, Calif., and Washington, D.C., adding, “We are creating a centralized global security function, headquartered out of the U.S. and internationally deployed across all markets we serve. This will ensure consistency, availability and faster responses to emerging global issues and threats to our users and platform.”

The video-creation platform will also expand response efforts in Europe, the Middle East and Asia with a focus on cyber defense, user data access assurance, digital crimes, insider threats, cyber threat intelligence and risk management.

Cloutier said the Transparency Center TikTok opened in Los Angeles, giving outside experts a day-to-day look at content moderation on its platform, will be joined by a second one in Washington, D.C., adding, “Both of these centers will give lawmakers and experts the opportunity to look under the hood of TikTok and assess our security practices and infrastructure.”

The company will also release its Transparency Report twice per year to provide information on accounts it has taken action on for violating its terms of service, unlawful acts and other issues that threaten user safety.

TikTok has been working with leading global security firms to ensure that it complies with globally recognized standards such as like ISO 27001, SOC2 and NIST CSF, and it plans to announce more partnerships in the coming months.

Cloutier wrote, “While we have worked very hard to build best-in-class security infrastructure, we know that it’s not enough to build it. We have to test it, validate it and work with our partners to make sure we’re addressing the entirety of the threat surface we face every day. We must challenge our own concepts on vulnerabilities and our ability to defend against them.”

Developer and blogger Jane Manchun Wong shared a screenshot via tweet that depicts an “add status” option on her profile on the professional network, and she said the status looks to be temporary.

A LinkedIn spokesperson said, “We’re always exploring new ways to improve our members’ experience on LinkedIn, including features to help best represent themselves on their LinkedIn profile and with their LinkedIn community,” offering no further details on whether the professional network will actually roll out the feature.

The social network said Facebook News will appear as a tab for people who frequently visit it via the bookmark.

A local news section was added to the feature, bringing content from thousands of local and regional outlets.

And in the coming weeks, Facebook said it will combine its Today In news discovery experience into Facebook News, giving people access to local and national reporting in the same place.

Other features that have recently been incorporated into Facebook News include a test of news video, targeted push notifications, breaking news alerts and new digests on timely topics, such as Covid-19 News and Unrest in America.