The Digital Services Act strikes again. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok Lite users in Europe will have to find another way to earn an extra 38 cents a day. The light version of the TikTok app, which launched in two EU countries a couple of weeks ago, included a reward feature that paid users a small amount each day to engage with videos. European regulators launched an inquiry soon after, citing the feature’s potential for encouraging addiction — particularly in young people. TikTok responded today by suspending the feature in the EU while it addresses the investigation. TikTo ..read more

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year. The divest-or-ban bill is now law, starting the clock for ByteDance to make its move. The company has an initial nine months to sort out a deal, though the president could extend that another three months if he sees progress. While just recently the legislation seemed like it would stall out in the Senate after being passed as a standalone bill in the House, political maneuv ..read more

Adobe claims its new VideoGigaGAN generative AI model can upscale video clips more consistently and in higher quality than other VSR methods. | Image: Adobe Adobe researchers have developed a new generative AI model called VideoGigaGAN that can upscale blurry videos at up to eight times their original resolution. Introduced in a paper published on April 18th, Adobe claims VideoGigaGAN is superior to other Video Super Resolution (VSR) methods as it can provide more fine-grained details without introducing any “AI weirdness” to the footage. In a nutshell, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) a ..read more

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images A bill that would force China-based company ByteDance to sell TikTok — or else face a US ban of the platform — is all but certain to become law after the Senate passed a foreign aid package including the measure. It now heads to President Joe Biden, who already committed to signing the TikTok legislation should it make it through both chambers of Congress. The House passed the foreign aid package that includes the TikTok bill on Saturday. Once signed by the president, ByteDance would have up to a year to complete a sale of TikT ..read more

Wattpad says DMs will be shut down on May 6th, alongside the deletion of all existing messages. | Image: Wattpad Community publishing platform Wattpad is removing the ability for users to send each other direct messages, claiming that the feature has “only been relevant to a small percentage” of its global user base. Users will retain access to their DMs until May 6th, after which all existing messages will be deleted and the feature will no longer be available, according to Wattpad’s help center. Wattpad is instead encouraging its users to communicate via the public commenting feature on stor ..read more

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge The TikTok ban appears to be for real this time. (Technically, “the TikTok ban or divesture but hopefully divesture” is probably more accurate, but everybody’s just calling it a ban.) Only a few weeks ago, all momentum for the ban seemed gone. Now, it’s back with a vengeance, with a couple of small tweaks and a new political strategy. And it could get a vote in the Senate in the next few days. There’s also a new bill, known as the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), starting to gain some traction among important people looking to pass comprehensive privacy regula ..read more

Unlike other Firefly-powered tools that generate sections of an image, Photoshop’s new Generate Image tool will fill the entire canvas. | Image: Adobe Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to its Photoshop creative software that aim to give users additional ways to control the designs they generate. Powered by Adobe’s new Firefly Image 3 foundation model, these new tools are available today via the Photoshop beta desktop app, and will be generally available “later this year” according to Adobe’s Press release. The most notable tool is Reference Image, which uses user-uploaded images to ..read more

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images Political strategists aren’t throwing away TikTok, even after their election candidates try to force its sale on national security grounds. Joe Biden faces the camera, casually dressed for a US president in khaki slacks and a quarter zip. He jovially answers a series of questions about the Super Bowl happening that day: Chiefs or Niners? Jason Kelce or Travis Kelce? And finally: Trump or Biden? “Are you kidding? Biden,” the president says with a smile. That video marked the presidential reelection campaigns’ debut on TikTok, the massively pop ..read more

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images The House once again passed a bill that could ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance divests it — but this time, it’s in a way that will be harder for the Senate to stall. The bill passed 360-58 as part of a larger bill related to sanctions on foreign adversaries like Russia. It’s part of a package of foreign aid bills that seek to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Due to the urgency of the funds, packaging the TikTok bill with these measures means that the Senate will need t ..read more

The Verge There are more digital subscriptions around than ever, and among them, you may well have a music streaming service (or two or three). What with “free” trials and trying to find a service you really like, it’s easy to suddenly realize you’re oversubscribed. Luckily, canceling a music subscription — or switching to a free tier — isn’t too difficult. And remember that you can always sign up again. It doesn’t have to be goodbye forever. Here’s how it’s done on the four best-known platforms. The options will be similar on other services. Spotify Spotify has a variety of plans for individu ..read more