I’ve been a mom for four years. For half that time, I pumped breast milk. Like many working mothers, I spent countless hours locked in windowless rooms, half undressed with what looked like two airhorns latched to my chest and surrounded by the loud grating noise of the motor. By comparison, using an pump by Elvie — …

Not far from a frenzy of screaming tweens chasing online video stars, in a glass building overlooking Disneyland, VidCon introduced a new celebrity to its pantheon: video forgeries known as deepfakes. But with the ability to manipulate video to make anyone do anything, people may instead be running in fear.  VidCon, which started in earnest Thursday, is the world’s biggest conference …

Facebook is giving videos on its social network more ways to make money, pulling inspiration from other platforms to let you throw cash at your favorite video creators in the form of subscriptions or tokenized “stars” that pay them a penny. It’s also going to start taking a cut of the money that superfans send to creators in paid subscriptions. …

The world’s most-streamed artists are a parade of major-label household names: Ariana Grande, Post Malone, Billie Eilish. But hidden below the top rankings are the independent artists and labels taking over a greater share of the music in your headphones.  “If there’s one thing that streaming has done for sure, it’s created a new independent music industry,” said Jorge Brea, …

Apple Music has surpassed 60 million subscribers, as Apple resumed counting people with free accounts. In January, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple Music had hit 50 million paid members, not including people who are listening free with its trademark three-month trial period. The last time the company included free trials was more than a year ago, when it disclosed 50 million total members …

The creators of DeepNude, a desktop app that used artificial intelligence to morph a photo of a clothed woman into a picture of her naked, have shut down the app and renounced using the software, a day after an article focused attention on the program. “We don’t want to make money this way,” said a message posted on the app’s …

Spotify pays Apple a 15% fee for only about 0.5% of its paid members, according to Apple’s response to Spotify’s complaint about App Store fees. In March, Spotify filed a complaint against Apple to Europe’s antitrust watchdog, claiming that Apple uses App Store policies and a system of fees to smother competition.  In its response, Apple said that Spotify doesn’t currently …

Amazon Music launched Thursday on its first pay TV service. Joining Comcast’s Xfinity X1 high-end pay TV service as well as its Xfinity Flex bundle of streaming apps, Amazon Music can now stream tunes through Comcast customers’ TVs. Subscribers to Amazon Music, the e-commerce giant’s competitor to Spotify, will have access to its full music library on Comcast as the partnership rolls out to set-top boxes over …

Deepfakes of world leaders may be easier to debunk ahead of the 2020 US presidential election with a new detection method. The rest of us are still out of luck, though. And the technique works only for a specific style of talking-head-style deepfake. Oh, and it’s only a matter of time before manipulators figure out how to dodge this kind of …

Social media companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter weren’t anywhere near a US House hearing on deepfakes Thursday, but they were still the stars of the show. The hearing, which focused on how manipulated media like deepfakes could threaten democracy, repeatedly harped on the social networks’ role in the threat, with experts suggesting policies sure to give those companies pause.  One crucial suggestion? …