Instagram

the price of being on TikTok or Instagram all day

by

It’s quite a motherly phrase to hear that being in front of your phone all the time watching TikTok or playing the video game console has a very clear effect on the brain and that it ‘rots’. In English, this is something that is known as ‘brain rot’ and refers to this lightheadedness after several hours in front of screens, and science has now begun to take this concept as something very important and not like an internet meme. Its meaning. This concept related to the brain ‘rotting’ refers to the cognitive deterioration and mental exhaustion that people suffer, especially in adolescents and young adults, due to excessive exposure to low-quality online material. And although this started as a meme, it is today a neurocognitive syndrome confirmed by institutions like the American Psychological Association, where it has been seen that the brain is literally getting smaller. The dopamine trap. The design of short video platforms like TikTok it’s not accidentalbut it is created to retain the user’s attention so that they do not stop sliding the screen down. And it is something that is very well studied, since, as interaction on these social platforms increases, so does the brain’s need to receive a dopamine rush. It literally creates a dependency. Doomscrolling. This system in our brain, driven by dopamine, encourages a never-ending cycle of consumption, which has given rise to terms like ‘Doomscrolling‘ which is the compulsive action of scrolling through social media feeds focused on negative information or distressing. And this, rather than generating rejection, causes us to be in a state of hypervigilance linked to high levels of anxiety, stress and cognitive fatigue. There is also another concept quite important in the world of social networks such as ‘Zombie scrolling’, which consists of passively scrolling through social networks without any purpose or objective. In this way, this mentally absent consumption reduces the brain’s ability to maintain sustained attention. Brain effect. The act of constantly scrolling on the screen is something that has been widely studied today and points to measurable neurological consequences. What has been seen here is that the brain experience cognitive overload when you try to process the constant flow of fragmented information, with topics that are really disparate from one video to the next, making you not have time to process the first before starting to watch the second. Its consequences. Research published in Addictive Behaviors they point out that compulsive cell phone use reduces the volume of gray matter in key areas for empathy, memory and self-regulation. This means that literally the brain is reducing its size with the passage of time due to the fact of being like a zombie browsing TikTok all day. In addition to this, science has seen that addiction to short videos increases activity in reward and emotion regions, causing structural differences in the frontal cortex and increasing impulsivity. Something that adds to the memory impairmentfailures in long-term retention and also at a worse attention performance. How to avoid it. As alarming as this may seem, we must remember that we have brain neuroplasticity on our side to be able to reverse these effects. In this way, there are several strategies to mitigate the fact that the brain begins to be greatly affected by being on social networks for a large number of hours. One of the tips is undoubtedly to reduce the time we spend in front of the screen to reduce cognitive overload. Furthermore, stopping following accounts that provoke negative emotions and looking for environments that are positive or friendlier to avoid anxiety is something we should get used to in our daily lives. Images | Hoi An and Da Nang In Xataka | The science of “doomscrolling”: how technology hacked psychology so we can’t let go of our phones

Bad Bunny deleted his Instagram after the Super Bowl. Everything is part of a larger project

by

On Sunday, February 8, 2026, Bad Bunny starred in an unprecedented milestone in Super Bowl history by becoming the first solo Latin artist to star. the concert-show during the intermissionin a performance almost entirely in Spanish that reached more than 100 million viewers. Just hours later, the Puerto Rican artist deleted all of his content on Instagramleaving their more than 51 million followers in front of a completely empty profile. The avalanche of speculation has been immediate. What was seen? Bad Bunny’s approximately 13-minute concert turned the intermission into a visual love letter to Puerto Rico. The artist started walking through sugar cane fields, crossed a Puerto Rican street fair and incorporated La Casita, the iconic traditional Puerto Rican pink house that has become a distinctive element of his concerts. The fluidity of the camera, the variety of topics included, the surprise appearances of Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, or guests such as Pedro Pascal or Jessica Alba stood out. The irony of the scenario. The choice of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, as the setting for the largest celebration of Latino culture in the history of the Super Bowl takes on an ironic dimension in the context of 2026: California is going through one of the most intense episodes of immigration enforcement in decades. Immigration arrests in San Diego they shot up 1,500% compared to the previous year. For this reason, the political context surrounding the performance was especially tense. In October 2025, when the action was announced, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared on a conservative podcast that ICE would be “everywhere” at the Super Bowl and that “only law-abiding Americans who love this country should attend.” The Trump administration had intensified raids in Californian cities while the Puerto Rican artist publicly expressed his fear that “the damn ICE could be outside” his concerts, which is why he canceled several on the US mainland and focused on his residence. Bad Bunny closed his performance with a bright sign that read “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” Beyond music. ‘‘I should have taken more photos’, the artist’s latest album, has been described as “a cry of resistance” for Puerto Ricans everywhere: it is about preserving a culture in danger of disappearing. It was recorded entirely in Puerto Rico with collaborators exclusively from there. The 13-minute short film that accompanied the release of the album explores themes of loss, displacement and the fading of cultural identity. The project’s mascot is an endangered toad. And songs like ‘What Happened to Hawaii’ address issues like gentrification. This political charge is not new in the artist’s career. In July 2019, interrupted his European tour to return to Puerto Rico and join the massive protests demanding the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. In 2020, made visible on ‘The Tonight Show’ the murder of Alexa, a Puerto Rican trans woman. The Super Bowl performance was not an isolated event but the continuation of a narrative meticulously constructed across multiple platforms. The visual coherence (La Casita, the flags, the aesthetics) are the constant reminder that each performance is a chapter of the same project: pan-Latin representation in times of adversity. The strategy continues. The emptying of Bad Bunny’s Instagram profile just hours after his performance at the Super Bowl is not a break with his communication strategy, but rather its confirmation. In 2022, before the release of ‘A summer without you’, used the same tactic to generate expectation. That album would become the most successful Spanish album in history. In 2023 repeated the procedure after their world tour, announcing a period of hiatus. The difference in 2026 lies in the political context surrounding the gesture. While previous wipes functioned primarily as a prelude to new musical releases, this one comes on the heels of the most politicized performance of his career, which has included criticism of trump and threats from Secretary Noem. Unlike similar maneuvers that they already did Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, with this Bad Bunny continues with the construction of his transmedia project, whose next step is a world tour that will take the message to Australia, Japan or Spain, among other destinations. Each platform (the album, the stage, social networks) becomes a chapter in a story about Latin identity that transcends the merely commercial. In Xataka | Spotify killed the record and the industry pivoted to concerts. Netflix killed cinema and the industry was left with a “space crisis”

“You can’t trust your eyes to know what’s real anymore.” Instagram CEO announces that the feed is dead

by

That the Internet as we knew it no longer exists is not a surprise: it has been filled with search results generated by artificial intelligence and from ‘slop‘. The consequences are already visible: clicks have been reduced by halfwhich is catastrophic for the media. But not only the text is suffering from this barrage of AI that blurs everything: already We do not know how to distinguish if an image is real or notwe have gone from document our life on social networks to the era of influencer content favored by the algorithm to videos and images that are not real, but can pass as such. There are no longer four fingers that are worth it. Instagrammers, the feed is dead. And this is also going to take its toll on social networks. Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, closed 2025 with a publication in the form of a presentation of 20 images where he reflected in depth on what is coming: “the era of infinite synthetic content”, the antithesis of a more personal Instagram that has been dead for years. For Mosseri, AI has turned the carefully maintained grid with its algorithm into something of the past: “Unless you are under 25 years old and use Instagram, you probably think of the app as a feed of square photos. The aesthetics are careful: a lot of makeup, skin softening, high-contrast photography, beautiful landscapes,” Mosseri’s sentence falls like a stone on this millennial, who still uses Instagram as a kind of photo album. “That feed is dead. People largely stopped sharing personal moments on the feed years ago.” Tap to go to the post In search of something real. Mosseri explains that now its users keep their contacts up to date on their personal lives with “improvised photos of unflattering shoes and poses” shared via DM. And this also affects content creators: the omnipresence of images made by AI is going to bring a change: goodbye to those pro-looking photographs in favor of a more real and improvised aesthetic: “Flattering images are cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real.” In fact, the CEO of Instagram points to manufacturers, applicable to cameras and mobile phones, who he says are making a mistake by democratizing the ability to “look like a professional photographer from 2015.” Because RAW images with defects are still a sign of reality until AI is able to copy them. But what is real? The time has come to unlearn to believe what our eyes see, something we have been doing all our lives. Javier Lacort explained that our entire epistemology (ranging from court testimony to photo albums) is based on the fact that seeing is a way of knowing. If you see a tiger, there is a tiger. If you see a photo of a tiger, someone has been close to one. This no longer applies: the era of uncover organized fake news has made way for anyone with Nano Banana Pro can get such an absurdly realistic image with a basic prompt in just a few seconds. Now creating a deepfake is trivial. Adam Mosseri think equal. “For most of my life I was able to safely assume that photographs or videos were largely faithful captures of moments that actually happened. That’s clearly no longer the case, and it’s going to take years to adjust. We’re going to go from defaulting to assuming that what we see is real to starting from skepticism. To paying attention to who’s sharing something and why. This will be uncomfortable: we’re genetically predisposed to believe our eyes.” If you can’t beat them… The paradigm shift has already occurred, so now Instagram and other platforms have to adapt to this new reality: “we have to build the best creative tools. Label AI-generated content and verify authentic content. Show credibility signals about who is posting. Continue to improve the ranking of originality.” It is the apocalypse of what is a photo that we have been predicting for years. Focusing on Instagram, Mosseri talks about how “we like to complain about ‘AI junk content,’ but there is a lot of amazing content created with AI.” He doesn’t give concrete examples or talk about Meta tools to make this possible, but Meta has already added AI tools on Instagram and Facebook. Without going any further, his AI Studio allows you to create personalized chatbots to deal with your followers. New times, new identification measures. It is increasingly difficult to identify content in AI, so it proposes fingerprints and cryptographic signatures in cameras to identify real content, forgetting about labels or watermarks. In any case, it advocates greater transparency about who publishes on the platform and improve creativity so that its human users can compete with content made in AI. In Xataka | The future of the Internet is to be flooded with AI. And there are those who have already seen a business niche: content made by humans In Xataka | There is a generation working for free as a documentarian of their own life: they are not influencers but they act as if they were.

You feel like going to Sri Lanka because you saw it on Instagram. The problem is that the person who recommended it to you was an AI

by

The image is familiar. A young woman smiles from a beach with turquoise waters. In the following publication, he appears walking along a cobblestone street in Marrakech. Below, he poses at a luxury hotel in the Maldives. The skin is perfect, the body responds to the prevailing canons and the text accompanies with inspirational phrases about traveling, discovering cultures and “living in the moment.” Nothing seems out of place. Until you discover the reality. That traveler has not flown, she has not walked those streets or tried the food she recommends. It doesn’t exist. She is an influencer generated by artificial intelligence and is part of a phenomenon that is growing quietly: the normalization of artificial profiles that influence the real decisions of millions of people. A silent, but massive boom. In the last two years, Instagram and other social networks have been filled with virtual influencers: characters created with generative AI who pretend to be real people and publish travel content, lifestyle or fashion, the best known case in Spain is Aitana Lopez. Some indicate it more or less clearly in their biography; others do so ambiguously or almost invisibly. However, what is interesting here is how the examples multiply in the tourism sector. Sena Z has been presented as “the first travel and hospitality influencer created with AI”, It’s a collaboration between the luxury group Cenizaro Hotels & Resorts and the technology firm Bracai. Sena publishes cultural recommendations, messages about sustainability and photographs from exotic destinations. Another notable case is Emma, ​​the official influencer and chatbot of the German National Tourism Office. Emma not only publish content on Instagrambut answers questions in more than 20 languages ​​from the official website of the organization. As explained from the entity to the Washington Postits creation is part of a strategy to “stay at the forefront of digital innovation.” Other profiles are added to these profiles, such as Radhika, Emily Pellegrinior corporate avatars like Samathe Qatar Airways virtual stewardess who appears both on the airline’s website and on social networks, publishing as if she were living real experiences. These are not isolated experiments. As detailed by The New York Timesairlines, tourist offices and brands are increasingly turning to these avatars because they are cheaper, faster and completely controllable. An AI influencer does not get sick, does not get tired, does not age and does not generate personal controversies. Inexperienced influencers. The question is inevitable: what happens when the experience is not real? Just look through these profiles to see it: they recommend destinations, restaurants and cultures that they have not experienced. Even so, they generate engagementaccumulate thousands of likes and comments, and influence travel decisions. From the brands’ point of view, the appeal is evident. According to data collected by the New York mediacreating an advanced avatar can cost between $5,000 and $15,000, compared to traditional campaigns that easily exceed six figures. In addition, content can be produced without travel, without filming equipment and without negotiating with human talent. However, for real creators, the impact is already being felt. Human influencers cited by the same medium explain that brands are reducing payments, eliminating extras and offering less advantageous collaborations. AI thus becomes a new direct competition within the creative economy, a sector valued at more than 200 billion dollars globally. Is someone regulating it? While Technology advances quickly, regulation tries to catch up. Going home, in Europe, the clearest answer comes through the Artificial Intelligence Regulations (AI Act). Article 50, which will come into force in August 2026establishes transparency obligations for providers and users of AI systems. Among them: Report when a person interacts with an AI system. Mark content generated or manipulated by AI (text, image, audio or video) in detectable format. Force deepfakes and AI-generated texts that report on matters of public interest to be declared, unless there is human editorial review. The European Commission has already started the preparation of a Code of Good Practices for the marking and labeling of content generated by AI, with the participation of experts, platforms and civil society. The goal is to facilitate compliance before the law is fully applicable. However, many virtual profiles do not clearly indicate either their artificial nature or their commercial links, leaving the user in a field of ambiguity. Unreal bodies, algorithmic authority. Beyond destination promotion, most AI influencers share common traits: eternal youth, slim bodies, perfect skin and a total absence of imperfections. This phenomenon coincides with the return of Y2K aesthetics and extreme thinness on social networks, a trend that has been linked to a decline in body diversity. The most notable case was due to advertising campaigns with models generated by AI, like Guess in Vogue. Mental health experts warned that constant exposure to unreal bodies can aggravate self-esteem problems and increase risk of eating disorders. The difference, they point out, is key: while traditional retouching started from a real body, AI creates bodies that have never existedimpossible to achieve even in theory. This logic has been taken to the extreme with phenomena such as the Miss IA pageantwhere artificially generated models compete showing bodies without pores, without age and without history. According to plastic surgeonsmore and more patients come to consultation with images created by AI asking for impossible interventions and pointing out the risk of frustration, obsession and psychological damage. The underlying problem: we no longer know what is real. All of this occurs in a broader context: a crisis of visual confidence. As my colleague in Xataka has analyzedthe massive generation of hyperrealistic images has broken a chain that for centuries seemed solid: if something was seen, it had probably existed. Today, that presumption has disappeared. Seeing is no longer equivalent to knowing. In this new scenario, we not only doubt whether an influencer has really traveled, but also whether the image itself corresponds to something that happened. The consequence is a permanent suspicion that affects memory, attention and the way we relate to digital reality. The technical solution—seals, metadata, … Read more

Researchers removed Instagram and TikTok from 300 young people to see if their anxiety decreased. The results speak for themselves

by

The debate about whether social networks are the new tobacco for the mental health of the generation Z It’s been on for years. There are many young people who They can’t go without watching TikTok completing the streak with their friends, uploading stories of what they eat to Instagram or simply away from the cell phone. And this is something that can be tremendously harmful. What we knew. Until now we could make one of them, and parents undoubtedly remember this message when they spend many hours in front of the phone. Even companies offer the tools to be able to limit the amount of time that we spend in an app and it even applies limits to us. With numbers. But now science has shed light on this problem with a published study in JAMA Network Open that provides concrete data. The premise was simple: ask a group of young adults (ages 18 to 24) to reduce their consumption of social networks this week. Once done, we wanted to see if the symptoms of anxiety, depression or insomnia were reduced. And it is precisely the excessive use of social networks is related to depressionsince it generates social isolation, low self-esteem, cyberbullying or even physical disorders due to the effects of blue light from the screen. So… Does giving up the cell phone also improve the quality of life of young people? The study. To do so, they not only focused on what users said they did with their mobile phones, since lying can be very easy in this case. What they did was passively record what was done with the phone through the ‘digital phenotyping‘. In total, there were 373 participants in this study, of which only 295 were able to complete the intervention, which was completely voluntary. They only had to reduce consumption for one week of the main social networks: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and X. The results. Simply put, the results showed significant clinical improvement across key areas after just seven days. The data indicated that depression symptoms were reduced by 24.8%, anxiety by 16.1% and sleep problems fell by 14.5%. Interestingly, the study found that the effects were much more pronounced in those participants who already had symptoms of moderate or severe depression at the start of the experiment. Don’t let go of your cell phone. A priori, one might think that when a young person automatically leaves social networks aside, their cell phone will be of absolutely no use to them. But nothing could be further from the truth. He digital phenotyping revealed that although social media use fell from about 2 hours a day to just 30 minutes, total screen time increased slightly by 4.5% and participants spent 6.3% more time at home. In this way, users replaced the infinite scrolling of TikTok with other digital activities such as messaging, browsing the internet or even playing games. However, despite still being glued to the screen, mental health improved. This reinforces a theory that is gaining weight among experts: the problem is not the screen itself, but how we use it. The study points out that objective use time has a weak association with mental health, since what is really harmful is “problematic use”, such as negative social comparison or emotional addiction to platforms. Easier apps to leave. We can all have more ‘affection’ for a specific social network, which is surely more difficult to stop using. In this case, it was seen that it was easier for users to reduce the time they spent on TikTok or X. But Instagram or Snapchat were the “hard bones” to beat. Specifically, 67.8% of Instagram users and 48.8% of Snapchat users failed to comply with the reduction and continued to use them significantly during the detox process. It is not a treatment. Although the percentages sound like a victory, it is necessary to maintain the usual scientific skepticism. Dr. John Torous, co-author of the study, warns in statements collected for him New York Times that reducing networks “would certainly not be your first or only form of treatment (for mental health problems),” although it is worth experimenting with. This focuses on the fact that the study has some limitations such as the lack of a reference control group and it was not seen how long the detoxification process from social networks lasted. But what did not improve was loneliness, since eliminating these social networks in people can have the opposite effect by also cutting the connection link that unites them with other people. Images | Panos Sakalakis Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | Social networks were once a place to tell our lives. Now the trend is different: “zero posts”

How to share Spotify Wrapped 2025 on Instagram, WhatsApp or other apps

by

Let’s tell you how to share your Spotify Wrapped data on social networks or any application. He Spotify Wrapped 2025 has already been released, and the best thing about this annual round of statistics is always sharing it and comparing it with your contacts and friends. That’s why we are going to tell you several ways you can do it. We will tell you how to share any slide, something quite simple but which option you may not have noticed. We will also tell you how to share the statistics page that appears at the end, and even the playlist. Remember that in addition to apps, you can also share all the statistics internally with Spotify contacts through its private messaging system. Share any slide from the Wrapped The Wrapped is made up of several slides. To share them, you have to wait for them to finish playing. These slides usually have animations, and nothing happens while they are running. But when they finish a button appears Share this story down at all. This button displays the sharing options of your mobile operating system. you should have shortcut to share it on Instagram Storiesbut also to send it on WhatsApp or share it in any other app. Besides, you will also see your Spotify contacts to send it as an internal message. You will also see an option Dischargewhich what it does is download the slide to your mobile memory so that you can share it manually through the medium or application you want. Share your Wrapped summary When you finish viewing all the stories in your Wrapped, you will see a final slide in the form of a summary. In it, you will be able to move it laterally to choose different color combinations, and when you have chosen one press the button Share. This will allow you to share it on social networks, messaging apps or download the slide to share it by hand wherever you want. In the section Wrapped from the Spotify app A category will also appear especially for you. In case you have not saved it while viewing the slides, here you will have the Wrapped playlistwith your most listened to songs of 2025. When you enter the playlist, you will only have to press the button Share that appears as with any other playlist. With it you can share the playlist with whoever you want in apps or internal messages, or even copy the link to paste it in other applications. In Xataka Basics | 53 third-party tools and apps to get the most out of Spotify with statistics, playlists and new features

There’s a reason you spend hours watching reels on Instagram until 3:00 AM: the science of doomscrolling

by

It’s one in the morning. We should be sleeping but the finger is still sliding across the screen, scrolling through videos on TikTokreels on Instagram or posts on X. A viral meme, a new fire in the area or a new political crisis has us hooked on the screen. And although we may be exhausted, it cannot be stopped. If this scene sounds familiar to you, then welcome to the club. doomscrolling. A term that became massively popular during the pandemic and which can be defined as the habit of consuming prolonged form negative news or distressing, mainly through social networks. But behind this process, which may be very common in society right now, there are numerous chemical processes in the brain that science has not hesitated to investigate. The trap mechanism. To understand why we do doomscrollingwe must first understand that our brain did not evolve to have X or TikTok, but rather it evolved to survive. And it is not so long ago that humans were hunting for food or fleeing from a threat in nature, and it is something that our brain is still very much aware of. According to the most recent scientific literaturethe fact of sliding our screen down activates our reward brain circuits such as the dopaminergic system in each interaction. This drives us at all times to continue searching for information and evolutionarily knowing “where the danger is” was vital. The problem is that in this case the algorithm has no purpose, and we can spend 24 hours watching this type of news. But the reward system, which gives us ‘pleasure’ when knowing where the danger is, is not alone. It is accompanied by the amygdala which is the fear center in our brain. When seeing all this information, such as a war nearby in our territory, the brain interprets it as a potential threat that results in a large release of cortisol. This hormone is precisely known as the ‘stress hormone’, because it keeps the body in a state of hypervigilance. The result of these two circuits is quite clear as point out publications in Frontiers in Psychiatry and Brain Behavior: The brain seeks relief from information, but only finds more threats. This results in a toxic cycle being generated in which one seeks to calm down, becomes more scared, and searches again. The rotten brain. On social networks there is already a lot of talk of the term brain rot which translates to ‘brain rot’ like a real meme. but science has a very different opinionsince recent research suggests that repeated exposure to these fragmented stimuli with high emotional impact, with 15-second videos and alarmist headlines, have a high physical cost. The impact is located above all in executive functions (planning, organization, decision making…). And the constant alternation of these catastrophic contexts forces the brain to jump from one idea to another in milliseconds, and it is not something free. The cost we have to pay can be summarized in three points: Mental fatigue due to the high consumption of glucose that the brain has to make by having to constantly change focus. Deterioration of the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with a reduction in the efficiency of the area responsible for planning and impulse control. Processing blockage when the brain is on hyperalert. This makes it difficult to transfer information to long-term memory. Do we no longer know how to concentrate? This is the question we can all ask ourselves due to this phenomenon. The short answer from science is: we know, but it is much harder for us to “get started.” Studies on digital multitasking indicate that it is not that we have lost ability physiological of sustained attention, but we have trained our brain to expect interruptions. Deep attention (what you need to read a book for example) requires a “warm-up” time. He doomscrolling and the constant stream of notifications resets that counter constantly. Research collected in BMC Public Health they point out that attention remains “anchored” waiting for the next update. Even when you are not looking at your phone, a part of your cognitive resources is focused on it, reducing your performance on the task in front of you. It is not an irreversible decline, it is an atrophy due to lack of use of deep concentration circuits. There is hope. Despite the apocalyptic tone of the studies themselves on the subject, the scientific conclusion It’s not that we’re doomed. to be distracted automatons glued to a phone. The great advantage that humans have is neuroplasticity. With this term we mean that just as the brain learns to scroll compulsively, it can “unlearn.” Experts agree that the damage is not permanent unless the behavior becomes chronic for years without intervention. Evidence-supported strategies for breaking the cortisol-dopamine loop include: Set strict times to inform yourself and never before bed. Do exercises mindfulness as a tool to restore the default neural network. Allowing the brain to rest and ‘get bored’ without stimuli to help cleanse itself and regain the ability to focus. Images | Yazid N In Xataka | Young people have decided to stop posting (so much) on Facebook and Instagram. “AI-generated garbage” has free rein

Instagram has become a Chinese bazaar. My last purchase is the best proof of this

by

Instagram is becoming a Chinese bazaar. And this is not a criticism, it is the truest definition of how companies are taking advantage of the platform to make gold by selling products that come from Chinese suppliers like Alibaba. The showcase cool and aspirational Instagram is transforming into a bazaar where dropshipping reigns with low-cost products made up of exclusive rarities. The fever for analog lenses that They simulate the look of old cameras disposables are the best example. With a faithful ally and a little patience you can discover, one by one, where those striking and apparently exclusive products that they try to sell us come from. 21 INSTAGRAM TRICKS – Tutorial with all the secrets! It all starts with an advertisement (well, with many). Three stories, one ad. We have long normalized that Instagram is full of advertisingsomething that companies know very well. In my particular case, my feed is quite full of content related to photography. And, for months, they were bombarding me with some very specific advertisements. 65,000 followers on one of the accounts and 30,000 on the other. Collaborations with influencers and a product that, to be honest, attracted a lot of attention. A lens shaped like an Oreo cookie that promises to emulate the look of the “disposable cameras“, the disposable cameras that you may have played with if you have a few years under your belt. a good business. One of the companies sells this product for 34.95 euros, the other for 44.95 euros. Taking into account that a good goal It costs more than 1,000 euros and since even the most mediocre kit lenses exceed 100 euros, it seems like a bargain. An economical, fun and different product, outside the catalog of the big camera brands. As a good Spaniard, my first reaction was to wonder if it could be even cheaper. Google Lens, my best ally. I have been obsessed with passing him for some time Google LenIt is any product from which I deduce Chinese origin. From electric motorcycles that sell in Spain for thousands of euros and cost just $600 on Alibaba to… targets shaped like an Oreo cookie and features clonal to those of the brands that advertise them. It didn’t take me even five seconds to find the target on AliExpress. 14 euros. This is how much it costs to buy an Oreo lens on AliExpress. One with a 32mm fixed focal length and f/10 aperture. The lens sold by its rival Instagrammers is also a 32mm, in this case with f/11 as described. It is something impossible to verify, since this lens does not have electronic pins, it does not communicate with the camera (it is literally putting a piece of plastic in front of the sensor) and it does not offer data on focal length or aperture. “Brand” objective | AliExpress target. Everyone draws their own conclusions. I’m not saying they are the same, but they are the same.. E-commerce through platforms like Shopify is a good thing for the user. You buy a product with fast shipping, seller guarantees and packaging that is probably more attractive than the plastic in which AliExpress delivers its products. The important issue is paying double or triple for the same product. The objective delivers what it promises, by the way. On Instagram you don’t sell a product, you sell a narrative. Instagram is, by far, one of the best showcases for selling cheap products with high margins. Profiles dressed in aspirations desired by users, collaborations with influencers. The algorithm is also your best accomplice by surgically adjusting the ads. Photography, motor, cooking, technology. Each and every potential storefront has a huge marketplace of easy-to-wrap products on Alibaba. Instagram is no longer a social network. It is a marketplace with a social network aesthetic. A perfect platform for high-margin dropshipping, disguised as a brand with values ​​aligned with your target. Image | Xataka In Xataka | If you buy on a website, it’s most likely Shopify: how three friends devoured the ecommerce industry

That Instagram and Facebook are plagued by fraudulent ads is bad. That Meta is making money with them is even worse

by

Congratulations! You have won an iPhone. the king Felipe VI announcing investments. Work at Primor and get paid up to 160 euros per hour. These are just three examples of fraudulent ads that have appeared on Facebook and Instagram, but there are many more. So many, that Meta is making money with them. What has happened? An investigation of Reuters has revealed that Meta estimated that 10% of all revenue volume would come from fraudulent ads, which would total $16 billion. In an internal document from December 2024, Meta estimated that its platform serves about 15 billion “high-risk” scam ads every day. By “high risk” they mean those that are clearly frauds, like those we mentioned in the introduction, so the real number would be even higher. It seems like fraud, because we charge you more. Meta has automated systems to detect these types of ads, the problem is that the policy to block them is quite lax. The documents reveal that ads are only blocked if the system identifies it as a scam with 95% certainty. If the percentage is lower, what they do is raise the advertiser’s fee to supposedly discourage them. That is, if they continue to advertise, Meta makes even more money from frauds. The favorite site of scammers. There is more. In another document, Meta admits that “It is easier to advertise scams on Meta platforms than on Google.” The information comes from channels in which scammers discuss their methods, although they do not specify the reasons for their choice. They also estimate that a third of all successful scams in the United States occur through their platforms. Regulation. Meta is in the crosshairs of regulators around the world. The European Commission initiated action against the company for the use of data to serve advertising to users. In United Kingdom took them to trial for the same reason and more recently the United States Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating them for the financial frauds advertised on their platform. In documents published by Reuters, Meta shows its intention to reduce illegal ads, but is concerned that a sudden reduction would negatively affect its revenue. Don’t touch my publi. Meta is in a delicate moment for the huge increase in spending on AI which, despite having achieved positive results in the last quarter, has caused its shares to fall 8%. Considering that targeted advertising is Meta’s main revenue stream, a reduction on this front could shake the entire house of cards. Meta responds. Speaking to Reuters, a Meta spokesperson criticized the news, saying the documents “present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams.” He says the estimate of 10% profit from scam ads was excessive and the actual figure was much lower, although he declined to give an updated figure. According to Meta, in the last year and a half, fraudulent ad notices have been reduced by 58% and in 2025 they will have eliminated more than 134 million scams from their platform. Image | Generated with AI. background Pixabay In Xataka | The majority of medical discharges that are investigated are fraud. The nuance is that they are only investigated if there are signs of fraud

is preparing it to appear on your Instagram and Facebook feeds

by

Do you remember the metaverse? The technological news orbits around the artificial intelligencethe AI agents and all its implications, but not so long ago, the buzzwords were ‘metaverse’ and ‘NFTs‘. The seconds were fleeting and they hit an anthological ‘chestnut’but something different happened with the metaverse: it deflatedbut it didn’t go away completely. Meta is one of the companies that invested the most in the metaverse, to the point that until four years ago they were known as ‘Facebook‘ and changed to ‘Meta’ after the company’s new focus. His boss, Mark Zuckerberg, dedicated himself to the metaverse and its benefits and, although now he is more focused on the artificial intelligence models and in which all let’s wear glasses with a camera and connection to their serversit seems that he has not forgotten that parallel virtual life. That platform is ‘Horizon Worlds‘ and, although not even Meta employees they used itthe company is creating a new push to Your multimillion-dollar investment comes together at once for everyone in the real world. As? Taking the metaverse everywhere. Meta returns to the fray with the metaverse Before telling the new adventure that Meta has in mind, some context is necessary, and we have to go back to 2019. That’s when Facebook premiered ‘Horizon‘, an open world game that wanted to become something more: a new ‘Second Life‘. The idea was that users They will spend their free time doing activities in that virtual worldbut no one called it ‘metaverse’. Two years later the word arrived. Zuckerberg’s company started betting on a virtual world in which, thanks to virtual reality glasses (your Oculus), we could dive in for a second life. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, there were companies that opted for that “metaverse”, with many quotes, to hold meetings and events in which we were present through our avatars. Mesh for Microsoft Teams The bet was of such magnitude that Facebook changed its name to Meta and announced ‘Horizon Worlds’, that virtual world. However, after a multi-million dollar investmentthe promised metaverse was nothing more than a crappy version of ‘Wii Sports’. The years have passed and we still don’t have that second virtual life, but the company still believes in the metaverse. And its new strategy will be to take it beyond virtual reality. The Oculus Quest seemed like the ideal gadget for the metaverse by offering almost total immersion, but there is a problem: device adoption. Not everyone wants invest money in a VR headset nor does he want to isolate himself from the outside, but what everyone does have is a smartphone. And it is very possible that they also have instagram or Facebook. The ‘Horizon Worlds’ games are built with the Unity engine. It is a great engine that has been used to countless independent video gamesbut in The VergeVishal Shah, deputy director of metaverse at Meta, says he has a problem: “it was the right place to start, but we needed to build something tailored to our needs.” Shah comments that, like great social games like ‘Roblox‘ either ‘minecraft‘are developed with their own engines or deeply modified versions of other engines, they needed tools like that. Meta Horizon Engine is the answer, an engine that the company has designed to speed up game development for its platform, allow the creation of multiplayer worlds with ease, speed up loading times and, above all, integrate artificial intelligence to give a boost to development times. That detail of loading times is crucial for the company. “You feel like something takes a long time to load if you have to wait more than 15 seconds. Below 15, it feels fast, but the magic number is seven seconds or less,” says Shah. Meta has built an engine as an umbrella for all its ‘Horizon Worlds’ games and systems, and it is what will allow you to take it everywhere This engine optimization allows us to click on a game and, almost instantly, we’re playingfreeing us from the entry wall that for many players can mean waiting those 15 or 20 seconds of loading. It seems like a short time, but for TikTok generationit can be a lot. But optimization is just one leg of Meta’s new approach to the metaverse. The other is to bring the experience where the potential players are (and we already told you that, right now, at least, they are not in the virtual reality glasses). Therefore, Shah comments that they are starting to add ‘Horizon’ games on other platforms, such as Facebook. “If you go to the games tab on Facebook, you can find ‘Horizon’ experiences,” he says. In addition, he states that the company is also studying how to integrate these games into Instagram. Until now, these were the ways to access the metaverse. Instagram and Facebook will soon join Scaling to these platforms is something that would have been much more complex with engines like Unity, but with the new Meta Horizon Engine, it is much easier to develop for your other applications, creating an ecosystem that, now, can be the gateway to ‘Horizon Central’, the social plaza where the Meta metaverse adventure begins. (This is all a bit confusing, but it’s just that Meta has a gigantic mess with names). Shah says the new tools They will be implemented little by little in all corners of ‘Horizon Worlds’arriving first at the square, but gradually also at other sections such as ‘Horizon Arena‘, which is Meta’s concert and event space in virtual reality. Now, what about the true metaverse? If the idea was for us to live a virtual world, the ideal is to do it with a VR viewer and with gesture control elements like the new ones launched by the companybut that doesn’t go hand in hand with playing a Facebook game. Shah mentions in The Verge that logic tells them that “once users discover Horizon games on mobile devices, they are more likely to try them in virtual reality.” It’s … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.