Karissa Bell

Karissa Bell

@karissabe.bsky.social

Senior reporter 🗒️ for Engadget, covering social media. Say👋 at karissa.bell@engadget.com or on Signal: karissabe.51 DMs open.

5.5K followers797 following508 posts

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Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

👋 Here’s one I’ve been working on for a very long time: its about the business of viral Facebook content, Meta’s (often lack of) support for creators, and one man’s creative legal strategy to get the company’s help.

engadget.comHow an Oregon court became the stage for a $115,000 showdown between Meta and Facebook creatorsOne Facebook creator has filed dozens of small claims lawsuits against in an attempt to fight the company's "broken" payments system.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

New: Nonprofits and government entities that rely on Facebook pages have been notified they are no longer able to share links on their own pages unless they sign up for a Meta One subscription. Additional linking privileges start at $50/month (for 8 links). www.engadget.com/2295422/meta...

engadget.comMeta is charging government and nonprofit pages to post links on Facebook - EngadgetThe new restrictions are a test which is explicitly not supposed to impact these entities.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Meta recently updated its smart glasses to deter people who break the LED. I was able to use cheap stickers and after-market covers to block the light without triggering Meta’s privacy features on two pairs of glasses. www.engadget.com/2227710/a-do...

engadget.comA $2 sticker let me bypass the Meta Glasses' anti-creep feature - EngadgetMeta's smart glasses are supposed to alert bystanders when they're recording. Bypassing those safety features is trivially easy, unfortunately.

Karissa Bell reposted

Devindra Hardawar
@devindra.bsky.social

Let’s goooo! Static owns a lot of sites you may read, like @engadget.com and @slashfilm.bsky.social. I’m looking forward to building this union with our hard-working writers and editors

Static Media Union@staticmediaunion.bsky.social

Bluesky, we'd like to introduce ourselves. The staff of Static Media would like to announce that we have formed a union with @wgaeast.bsky.social. Much like Jalopnik has already unionized and been recognized, we would like to request a voluntary recognition for all the Static Media sites.

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

As someone who has had an editor's error lead to a broken embargo on an *extremely inconsequential* story ... I feel for Nina Totenberg. It is kind of amusing how NPR has to pretend like this is some random "misunderstanding" and not what it actually is, though.

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

In my case, it was an editor (at a previous job) mixing up ET and PT so my story about a certain company *launching an iPad app* (lol) was posted early and that company acted like I had intentionally leaked their biggest trade secret

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

As a resident of Connie Chan's district in SF I can tell you... she's not it. She has repeatedly blocked housing this neighborhood desperately needs and fear-mongered about upzoning. She thinks a *third* ballot initiative over reopening the Great Highway is a good use of her time and resources.

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Meta has acknowledged the Instagram account takeovers in which hackers used the AI support chatbot to change the email associated with accounts and request a password reset with this one-sentence statement.

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

This also isn't the first time the company has made an unblockable AI feature.. remember the AI Instagram profiles with weird personas? Meta blamed the inability to block those on a "bug" before it killed the project

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Bluesky has been wonky all day bc of a DDoS that they are apparently still trying to get under control

Bluesky@bsky.app

Our team received a report of intermittent app outages at about 11:40pm PDT on April 15, 2026. They worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day.

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

NEW: The uncertain future facing Meta's Oversight Board isn't just about funding. The group sees a new opportunity to work w/ Gen AI companies and has even gotten some signs of interest from a few firms. But Meta needs to agree and so far, the company hasn't. www.engadget.com/social-media...

engadget.comMeta isn't setting its Oversight Board free just yetThe Oversight Board has taken steps to formalize its long-contemplated desire to work with other companies, but Engadget has learned Meta has thus far declined to move forward with that process.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

idk seems kinda telling that OpenAI is simultaneously saying they spent untold $$$ on TBPN to promote more "constructive" narratives about the AI industry but also they plan to let them keep editorial independence (which, lol, TBPN not exactly a hard hitting enterprise)

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Some amazing details here, including SBF's parents filing a legal doc that was made to look like it was mailed by SBF from prison but was very obviously sent via FedEx (which isn't accessible in prison) in Palo Alto

Molly White@molly.wiki

As they angle for a presidential pardon in television interviews, Sam Bankman-Fried’s law professor parents file “pro se” motions for their adult son, leave voicemails with the judge, and sign documents claiming they're from him in prison.

citationneeded.newsSam Bankman-Fried’s helicopter parents crash into federal courtSBF praises Trump from prison, his parents beg for a pardon on CNN, and his legal ethics professor mother files court documents claiming to be from him — prompting a judge to demand he swear under oat...
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

NEW: Meta is offering creators who have large followings on other platforms (but who don't regularly post on Facebook) up to $3k a month in bonuses if they start posting on Facebook, it's the company's latest plan to bring higher quality content and more well-known creators to the platform.

engadget.comMeta's latest creator push comes with $3,000 bonuses for posting on FacebookMeta is launching a new initiative aimed at popular creators who already have large followings on other platforms and offering bonuses for posting on Facebook.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

welp the new, new Digg didn't last long. like 2 months after launching publicly they are laying off a bunch of people and bringing back Kevin Rose to... fight the bots?

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Meta is now facing a class action lawsuit over its smart glasses' privacy claims following reports that users' footage has been reviewed by human contractors in Kenya. www.engadget.com/social-media...

engadget.comMeta hit with a class action lawsuit over smart glasses' privacy claimsMeta is facing a class action lawsuit for false advertising related to its AI glasses following reports about the company's use of human contractors to review footage captured from users' glasses.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

X recently released a new open-source version of its algorithm, but researchers say it's not exactly a win for transparency. Here's my deep dive about what we can actually learn about it from the code that was shared, and allll the parts that are still missing. www.engadget.com/social-media...

engadget.comX's 'open source' algorithm isn't a win for transparency, researchers sayResearchers say that the recommendation algorithm published by X doesn't offer the kind of transparency that would actually be useful for anyone trying to understand how X works in 2026.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

X's head of product says the platform will soon feature "starterpacks" to make it easier for people to find other users to follow.. wonder where I've heard that before

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Here it is, our robot recap of CES 206. We saw a bunch of cute robot “pets,” humanoids, laundry-doing robots and even a new AI robot friend from will.i.am (yes he’s at it again!) www.engadget.com/ai/the-robot...

engadget.comThe robots we saw at CES 2026: The lovable, the creepy and the utterly confusingFrom sassy humanoids, to AI-powered pets and chore-handling assistants, we sought out as many cute, strange and capable robots as we could find during CES.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Instagram's top exec Adam Mosseri just published a little manifesto on the state of Instagram and AI going into 2026 and .. it's quite telling! He basically says Meta should give up trying to proactively label AI content and that camera companies should be in charge of verifying what's real.

engadget.comInstagram chief: AI is so ubiquitous 'it will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media'Adam Mosseri offered a notably candid assessment on how AI is upending Instagram.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

I don't really have an opinion on pretty pics vs blurry, raw "aesthetic" shots but when the head of Instagram says creators should post "unflattering" pics to prove they are real and not AI I feel like that says a whole lot about where AI is going

Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Meta describes this as a very "limited" test but there are some pretty big implications to making link-sharing a paid feature. Lots of people already assume Meta throttles posts w/ links but this suggests there may be a wider effort to reduce links across Facebook www.engadget.com/social-media...

engadget.comA Facebook test makes link-sharing a paid feature for creatorsMeta is testing out a new scheme that effectively puts link-sharing behind a paywall for creators on Facebook.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

New exclusive from me: Reddit is starting a new verification program beginning w/ public figures and brands, though the company hopes to make it available more widely in the future. Verified accounts get a gray checkmark (this will also replace the "official" badge). More details over @engadget.com

engadget.comReddit is starting to verify public figuresReddit is starting a "limited alpha test" of verification for public figures, who will get a familiar gray checkmark added to their username.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

Pew just published its first look at how teens are using AI chatbots and there are some 👀 stats here.. close to a third of US teens say they are using AI chatbots daily or more and ChatGPT is the most widely used among teens by a fairly sizable margin. More ⬇ www.engadget.com/ai/nearly-on...

engadget.comNearly one-third of teens use AI chatbots dailyNearly one-third of US teens report using AI chatbots daily or more, according to a new report from Pew Research.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

The Oversight Board is looking to expand its scope, starting w/ a pilot to explore account-level decisions (suspensions, etc.) which could allow it to take appeals related to account suspensions. The board also tells me it's had "very preliminary" conversations about working w/ other platforms.

engadget.comMeta's Oversight Board wants to expand its powers in 2026The Oversight Board is getting ready to tackle a new pain point for Facebook and Instagram users as it looks to expand its purview in 2026.
Karissa Bell
@karissabe.bsky.social

It's kind of incredible how much YouTube content there is that's just tutorials for engagement farming/monetizing accounts on social media. Most of the ones I've seen also heavily rely on gen AI tools for streamlining this too.. it's literally never been easier to make fake content for fake accounts

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social

How to make "monetized USA Accounts" and how to populate them with content is an incredibly popular global YouTube side hustle type of content. Look at this: