from the ctrl-alt-speech dept

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on Patreon.

In this week’s episode, Mike and Ben cover:

And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters, they cover:

Our fun links this week are Roost, the “slow-cial” messaging app, and PlotLines for visualizing classic novels on a map.

If you’re already a Patreon supporter, you can get the extended episode on Patreon.

Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, china, content moderation, trust and safety

Companies: anthropic, google, meta, openai

A couple of days ago, I covered Meta’s announcement of the Muse Image, an AI tool that lets users generate images based on someone’s Instagram profile without asking the account owner. 

I also highlighted the risks associated with it in another piece, along with steps for opting out. Three days later, the feature is no longer available. 

What exactly happened there?

As more and more people picked up on Meta’s Muse Image and how it assumed you’re okay when someone else used your Instagram pictures as a reference for generating AI pictures, the tool started to face a massive backlash. 

Opt-out controls existed for users who wanted to protect their likeness, but the default was in, which meant millions of public Instagram users were enrolled in a system that could generate AI images of them without ever clicking anything to agree.

However, in a statement to Puck News’ Dylan Byers, Meta acknowledges that the feature “missed the mark” and is therefore “no longer available.”

What did Meta say about it?

“Earlier this week, we announced that one way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by @-mentioning public Instagram accounts that they want to reference,” says Meta in a statement to the outlet. 

“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way. We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

Byers highlights that the pushback from talent agencies, most notably CAA, one of the largest in the entertainment industry, could have played a major role in rolling the feature back. 

While I would have argued that turning it off by default for all Instagram accounts and allowing experimental users to opt in would have been the right approach, the feature is gone, and I beleive it’s for good. 

personal tech

ScrollPods is Mac-only, and you’ll need compatible AirPods

HANDS HEAD ON Have you ever felt so lazy that reaching up to scroll on your MacBook’s trackpad was too much work? Yeah, me too – especially with the summer heat blanketing much of the Northern Hemisphere, even reaching my remote corner of the US. 

Thankfully, there’s an app for that. 

ScrollPods is a simple macOS app that’s been out since last November but which just came to my attention thanks to a blog post this week from its creator, Ahmed Mohamed, who hails from Austria. It lets anyone with a compatible Mac and supported headphones scroll through webpages, documents, and other scrollable content using nothing but a head tilt. Look down, and the page scrolls down; look up, and your content will scroll back that way. You can continue typing as you scroll.

The idea, Mohamed wrote, was to allow himself to move up and down a document without taking his hands off the keyboard – not as a complete replacement for conventional navigation methods, but as a supplement.

“ScrollPods is not trying to replace the mouse but when it comes to intuitive scrolling, I think it gives traditional scrolling methods like the mouse, scroll wheel, trackpad and touchscreen a good run for their money,” Mohamed wrote. “I enjoy ScrollPods when I’m reading long documents, when my hands are occupied, when I’m drinking an iced coffee or when I simply want to rest my hands.”

With the ScrollPods website stating that the app is free, and its Mac App Store page reporting that it doesn’t collect any data, I decided to give it a shot. Installation was easy. It detected my second-gen AirPods Pro without issue, and we were off to the hands-free races. 

ScrollPods is responsive, easy to use, and isn’t too sensitive, either. It does tend to jump a bit if you slightly move your head, so if you’re fidgety you might want to turn the sensitivity down or enable the feature that automatically pauses the app with a quick tilt of the head.

Speaking of settings, there are a lot of options to get ScrollPods working to your liking. Sensitivity, the threshold at which the app starts to scroll, acceleration speed, and even how fast the scrolling stops can all be tweaked, as can how you actually scroll – if you’d prefer to move content up and down by turning left and right, you can do that, too. You can also reverse the order so that looking up scrolls down and looking down scrolls up, if you’re a crazy person. 

It’s also a great accessibility feature, but Mohamed told us that wasn’t his original goal. 

“This was initially designed for comfort, I initially came up with ScrollPods because I needed a hands-free way to scroll documents as I was soothing my baby, often stuck in the same position for an hour,” Mohamed told The Register via email, adding that he didn’t want to make an assumption that it would be a significant accessibility product since he’s an able-bodied person. That said, he has heard from a number of people using ScrollPods for accessibility, and the feedback has been positive. 

“Feedback from the accessibility community … has been phenomenal and is also my current main focus,” Mohamed added. “Updates with a bigger emphasis on accessibility will follow.” 

As for whether Apple, famous for baking accessibility features into its products, could snipe his idea, he said he’s not entirely surprised it hasn’t happened yet. 

“Based on the simplicity, it seems so straightforward,” Mohamed said. “With an original concept, this is part of the game and I can’t influence what another company does.” 

If you want to try ScrollPods out, the link is included above. You’ll need a Mac running macOS 14 or newer and a pair of AirPods 3rd gen or newer, or any version of AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, and Beats Fit Pro. 

ScrollPods is free right now, but it might not stay that way – Mohamed said he hasn’t settled on final pricing. “Due to the accessibility element of ScrollPods, I do foresee a free tier,” he told us. ®

from the truth-and-fiction-and-ai dept

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

Last month, my colleagues and I published an investigation into a Texas oil refinery startup, America First Refining, that had secretly gotten investment from Donald Trump Jr. We discovered a saga involving the Trump administration’s tariff policy, sanctioned Russian oil and an Indian billionaire family’s private zoo. 

At the center of the story was the CEO of the refinery company, Texas businessman John Calce. We’d spent weeks examining Calce — pulling old lawsuits, property records, corporate registry filings — and had pieced together a portrait of what appeared to be an obscure serial entrepreneur who’d for years tried and failed to secure funding for his long-shot refinery project.

Then, not long before our story was set to publish, we decided to do a scrub on a separate company he had incorporated called Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals.

Pulling up the company’s website, I felt a brief flash of panic: Had we somehow missed the existence of a major business owned by the man at the center of our next story? 

“From Houston to Rotterdam, Jurong to Fujairah. Our network connects the world’s most vital energy markets with speed, safety, and precision bulk oil storage,” announced the front page of the company’s website.

Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals, per the website, had more than 850 employees and 28 million barrels of oil storage capacity across six global hubs. This was puzzling: Our reporting had led us to believe Calce was struggling to raise enough money for a single project in the U.S., not overseeing a massive, multinational oil storage corporation. 

Had we been wrong? 

We turned to Google to learn more about the company’s top executives. Its CEO, Sarah Jenkins, had more than 20 years of experience at major energy firms. And its chief technology officer, David Chen, “built the company’s proprietary inventory management portal and integrated AI-driven predictive maintenance systems,” according to his bio. But we couldn’t find any trace of either of them online. Chalk it up to common names? 

We then Googled one of the more distinct names: Vice President for Sustainability Dr. Sofia Rossi, who had “spearheaded the ‘Future Fuels’ program, preparing assets for biofuels and hydrogen.” But, again, nothing. The links to their LinkedIn profiles were dead.

When we searched the company’s Texas phone numbers, we found the same numbers listed online for a Houston baklava caterer, a Dallas-area taxi service and an OB-GYN office.

We called the Texas numbers: dead. Then we tried the numbers for the company’s facilities in the Netherlands, Singapore and China. Also dead. 

We were beginning to suspect this company did not actually exist, at least as described on its website. 

What was going on with this website? We looked at the source code and noticed an odd notation, “This feature isn’t implemented yet, but don’t worry! You can request it in your next prompt!”

We checked the site’s domain registration, and we had our (apparent) answer: It was created this year and traced back to a company called Hostinger that offers an AI website builder for $2.99 per month. “Describe it, and AI builds it,” its homepage says. “Appear on Google and AI search automatically.”

Indeed, Google’s “AI Overview” search response, now thrust on users by default with more and more regularity, seemed to ratify the company’s bona fides:

When I searched for an award the company claimed on its website to have won, the Google AI Overview said that “Recent notable recipients include Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals, recognized for their rapid expansion in the independent oil and terminal operations sector.”

Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals is a real LLC. But everything on its website — from its history of the company, to its job postings, a diversity and inclusion policy — appears to be fictional. But perhaps more troubling is that Google, the proprietor of the world’s primary research tool, has rolled out AI Overviews that can indiscriminately take in fake material and authoritatively spit it back out as real.

In response to questions, a Google spokesperson said in a statement: “AI Overviews are rooted in our core Search ranking systems, surfacing reliable and high-quality information for the vast majority of queries. For uncommon search terms like these, there might not be high quality information published that matches the query — and we use these examples to improve our search systems.”

After we reached out to Hostinger, the company pulled down the site. “After receiving your inquiry, we carried out an internal review. Based on the violations identified, we suspended the website and the account behind it in line with our Terms of Service,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

What we encountered is a particular species of a larger problem that is beginning to be better understood. In April, The New York Times reported on an analysis that found Google’s AI Overviews were accurate approximately 9 out of 10 times, noting that that added up to “tens of millions of erroneous answers every hour” given vast search volumes. (A Google spokesperson told the Times that the study has “serious holes.” The company has acknowledged that AI Overviews “can make mistakes.”) 

A BBC reporter wrote a fictional article naming himself the best tech journalist at eating hot dogs, and Google’s AI as well as ChatGPT quickly picked it up and parroted it back.  

And the source material for the AI Overviews also appears eminently gameable, even when not trafficking in actual fiction. “It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests,” ran a recent headline in 404 Media. 

The mystery website ended up as just a single paragraph in our story. But the larger implication is obvious: fakes, counterfeits and frauds that would have taken considerable effort to create just a few years ago can now be churned out pretty much instantly.

While preparing this piece, we reached out to Calce asking about the site. An attorney for his company, America First Refining, replied to us with a letter dated June 24 that the attorney sent to Hostinger. The attorney also addressed the letter to several email addresses listed on the Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals website.  

“I write to demand immediate removal from the brownsvilleenergyterminals.com website of all unauthorized references to America First’s office address on your website,” the letter said. “As you are aware, America First has no connection or affiliation with the brownsvilleenergyterminals.com website and has not authorized the use of its corporate address there.”

I’m left with lingering questions about the website: What was it for? Was it put up by some malicious actor who simply found the company’s LLC records and decided to create a website? Was it a test site that was mistakenly put online? Or could it have been designed for consumption by someone who was meant to think it was real? 

We don’t know, and our emails to the press contact listed on the website, media@brownsvilleenergyterminals.com, bounced back.

Filed Under: ai, ai overviews, hallucinations, john calce, reporting

Companies: brownsville energy storage terminals, google, hostinger

The researchers aim for a future in which winged robots could used for research in aquatic regions often deemed too dangerous for traditional ocean vessels.

Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a robot with the ability to plunge underwater then emerge and continue flying through the air, much like how a bird dives and flies. 

Inspired by aquatic aviators – such as loons, gulls and puffins – engineers at MIT and EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, worked on the flapping wing aerial aquatic vehicle (FAAV), which weighs about half a pound and is designed to aid scientists in the study of the mechanics that enable real birds to navigate the air and water. 

Researchers also hope that the design could result in the development of a new class of aerial-aquatic drones and vehicles, noting that winged robots could be deployed in oceanography to fly to and carry out research in aquatic regions considered too dangerous for traditional ocean vessels to travel to. 

The robot has a central body or fuselage, two flexible wings capable of flapping and a tail designed for steering. 

Both the wings and the tail can be replaced with ones of a different size as it was noted during the experimentation phase that a combination of wing size, flapping frequency and tail angle enabled the robot to smoothly transition from swimming through the water, breaking through the surface and flying through the air.

To help wick away any water, the wings are made using thin membranes coated with hydrophobic nanoparticles.

“Our dream is for oceanographers, marine biologists and members of coastal communities to launch this robot from a boat, or from shore and it would fly close to the area of interest, such as an iceberg or a port facility, or over a pod of whales,” said Raphael Zufferey, the lead author of the study. 

“It would dive into the water to take a measurement or collect a sample and fly back to deliver the data at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Then it could go back out to dive for more.”

He explained that to make the transition from air and water, back to air significant adaptations have to be made. 

“Birds like puffins can fly very fast through the air and can dive and swim through water at speeds of 3 meters per second. They’re able to do pretty amazing things. So we knew it was possible. Just no one had tried this in a mobile robotic system.”

Future alterations include redesigning the wings to allow for turn. The team will also test the robot’s ability to perform in turbulent conditions, such as choppy water or high winds. 

Zufferey said: “One of the major challenges in ocean science is collecting data both frequently and across many locations, which is something this robot could do in the future. You could send this out not just every week, but every hour. It could fly out at high speeds, dive in, fly back, deliver its data and go back out, multiple times.”

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Florida man Angelo Martino has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for conspiring with hackers to deploy ransomware during his job as a ransomware negotiator for a U.S. cybersecurity company.

The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the sentence on Thursday, noting that the government seized more than $10 million worth of cryptocurrency and assets. Martino allegedly bought these assets, which include a food truck and a luxury fishing boat, with money stolen in the hacks.

Martino is the third person to be jailed for the scheme, following the earlier incarceration of cybersecurity professionals Kevin Martin and Ryan Goldberg. The trio, prosecutors say, worked together to deploy the BlackCat ransomware against companies in the United States throughout 2023. In one successful attack, the cyber professionals moonlighting as criminals extorted a company for about $1.2 million, which they then split three ways after laundering the funds.

The investigation highlights a rare case of security professionals working for malicious hackers while on the job. Governments have long advised victims of hacking and extortion not to pay any ransom and prevent cybercriminals from profiting, some companies do so anyway in attempts to prevent their customers’ private data from being leaked.

Extortion attacks have helped create an entire insurance sub-sector in the U.S. for responding to ransomware and extortion attacks. Some companies in this space employ negotiators to try to bring down the cost of ransoms.

BlackCat (also known as ALPHV) is a ransomware-as-a-service operation that allows independent hackers, known as affiliates, to rent access to the gang’s file-encrypting malware in exchange for a cut of the profits from cyberattacks. 

The group’s ransomware was famously used to steal highly sensitive medical and billing data of more than 192 million people in America during a hack at U.S. health technology giant Change Healthcare in February 2024, though the affiliate hackers responsible for the 2024 data breach were never identified.

All of Apple’s processors are scattered throughout different MacBook models, and you can find older models at specific third-party retailers online, either completely new or refurbished. If you do stumble upon its older chips (which came out four years ago), you might be wondering how they compare to other options. Here, get a breakdown of the differences to consider.

M5 Series

M5: The M5 chips are the latest options from Apple, having arrived in late 2025 with the launch of the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro. The base M5 still has up to a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, though there’s also a lower-tier 9-core CPU that’s available on the iPad Pro. The M5 is around 10 to 15 percent faster in CPU performance but also takes a significant step up in GPU, AI workloads, and even storage speed. Like Apple’s mobile chips, the M5 is now also available on the MacBook Air.

M5 Pro: Currently available exclusively on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, the M5 Pro comes with up to an 18-core CPU and a 20-core GPU. The base configuration starts with only a 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU. As with previous generations, the “Pro” chip gets all the same benefits as those in the M5 architecture but adds more cores and improved memory bandwidth. The biggest advantage is in GPU and on-device AI performance. This time around, however, both the M5 Pro and M5 Max also debuted an update: “Fusion Architecture” is a new version of UltraFusion (which was previously used only on the Ultra chips) that combines two dies together across a superfast interconnect.

M5 Max: The M5 Max is the M5 Pro—only with more GPU power. You get the option for up to 40 GPU cores, which puts the MacBook Pro on the level of high-end gaming laptops in terms of graphics performance. Add in the neural accelerators that are now built into each GPU core, and you’ve got one of the most powerful AI laptops on the market. In terms of Apple rankings, it’s only bested in GPU performance by the M3 Ultra, which is currently available only in the Mac Studio.

M4 Series

M4: The M4 originally launched in 2024. It has a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU. Apple claims the M4 delivers 1.8 times faster CPU performance and 2.2 times faster GPU performance than the M1. Meanwhile, the neural engine is more than three times faster than the original and twice as fast as the M3. It also starts with 16 GB of unified memory, which helps to power Apple Intelligence (the company’s suite of artificial intelligence features) more smoothly. It’s available on the 14-inch MacBook Pro (2024), iMac (2024), and MacBook Air (13-inch and 15-inch, 2025).

M4 Pro: The M4 Pro has a 14-core CPU (which Apple claims is up to 1.9 times faster than the M1 Pro) and up to a 20-core GPU, with up to 64 GB of unified memory. Built on a second-generation 3-nanometer process, it also supports enhanced GPU features like mesh shading and ray tracing—the latter of which is now twice as fast as on M3 chips. You’ll find it on the 2024 MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch) and Mac Mini (2024).

M4 Max: This chip has a 16-core CPU and up to a 40-core GPU with support for up to 128 GB of unified memory. Apple says the CPU is up to 2.2 times faster than the M1 Max, while the GPU is up to 1.9 times faster. As with the M4 Pro, it packs support for mesh shading and ray tracing. The M4 Max is available as an option on the 2024 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, and you can also get it as an option in the current Mac Studio.

M3 Series

M3: The M3 was available on the 14-inch MacBook Pro (late 2023), 13-inch MacBook Air (2024), 15-inch MacBook Air (2024), and 24-inch iMac (2023). It packs an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU with 24 GB of unified memory. When compared with the M1, Apple claimed CPU performance was up to 35 percent faster, and GPU performance was up to 65 percent faster. The company said the CPU and GPU are both 20 percent faster than the M2. As with the M1 and M2, it was great for basic tasks like word processing, sending emails, using spreadsheets, and light gaming. With the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air, you also had support for two external displays (one display with up to 6K resolution at 60 Hz and another with up to 5K resolution at 60 Hz).

M3 Pro: With a 12-core CPU and an 18-core GPU, Apple claimed the M3 Pro’s GPU was only up to 10 percent faster than the M2 Pro, making it a marginal upgrade from its predecessor. Compared with the M1 Pro, however, the M2 Pro was up to 40 percent faster in GPU performance and 20 percent faster in CPU performance. It was available on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2023. It was the ideal in-between for those who needed a chip that was more powerful than the M3 but wouldn’t use the full power of the M3 Max.

M3 Max: This was the next step up from the M2 Max. It had a 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, and up to 128 GB of unified memory. According to Apple, the CPU performance was up to 80 percent faster than the M1 Max and up to 50 percent faster than the M2 Max. As for GPU performance, it was said to be up to 50 percent faster than the M1 Max and 20 percent faster than the M2 Max. The M3 Max was available on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro (late 2023).

M3 Ultra: While the M3 lineup was introduced in 2023, Apple announced an M3 Ultra in 2025. Confusingly, it remains the most powerful chip in the M-series lineup—even better than the latest M4 Max and M5. It has a CPU of up to 32 cores (with 24 performance cores) and a GPU with up to 80 cores. Apple claims it’s up to 2.5 times faster than the M1 Ultra. It also comes with 96 GB of unified memory, with the option to upgrade up to 512 GB, while SSD storage can be increased to 16 TB. This chip is currently available only on the 2025 Mac Studio.

M2 Series

M2: The M2 was an entry-level chip like the M1, with slightly more processing power. It packed an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU (two more GPU cores than its predecessor), along with support for up to 24 GB of unified memory. Apple said the second-generation chip has an 18 percent faster CPU and a GPU that’s 35 percent more powerful than its earlier version. The M2 was great for daily tasks like word processing and web browsing, but such tasks as editing multiple streams of 4K footage and 3D rendering should be reserved for the M1 Pro or M1 Max (or the next two chips). It was available in the MacBook Air (13-inch, 2022), MacBook Air (15-inch, 2022), and MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2022).

M2 Pro: The M2 Pro was the next step up from the M2. It had up to 12 cores in the CPU and up to a 19-core GPU, with up to 32 GB of unified memory. Apple claimed performance was up to 20 percent faster than with the 10-core M1 Pro and graphics were 30 percent faster. We recommended this chip for intermediate video and photo editors. It was a marginal upgrade compared with the M1 Pro, but it was the best option for those who wanted a more future-proof processor. You could find it in the MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch) from early 2023 and the Mac Mini (2023).

M2 Max: The M2 Max packs up to a 12-core CPU and up to a 38-core GPU (with support for up to 96 GB of unified memory). According to Apple, graphics are 30 percent faster than on the M1 Max. The M2 Max is an excellent choice for those who work with graphics-intensive content, including graphic design, 3D modeling, and heavy-duty video footage. But as with the M2 Pro, it’s an incremental upgrade if you’re coming from an M1 Max. It’s available in the MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch) that came out early in 2023 and the Mac Studio (2023).

M2 Ultra: Successor to the M1 Ultra, the M2 Ultra was available on the second-generation Mac Studio and the Mac Pro (2023). Composed of two M2 Max chips, using Apple’s UltraFusion technology, the M2 Ultra had a 24-core CPU and a GPU configurable with 60 or 76 cores. Apple claimed the CPU delivered up to 20 percent faster performance and a 30 percent faster GPU than the M1 Ultra. This was the chip to get if you were working with extremely heavy-duty content that you believed the M1 Ultra, M2 Pro, or M2 Max simply wouldn’t be able to handle. You’d have known if you needed a chip this robust.

M1 Series

M1: For years, Apple continued to sell the M1 MacBook Air through Walmart for just $599, which was a killer price for this laptop. The MacBook Neo has since replaced it, using the A18 Pro iPhone chip. The M1 was the first custom silicon Apple debuted for its MacBook Air in 2020. It has an 8-core CPU and up to an 8-core GPU. Originally, there was support for up to 16 GB of unified memory (RAM) at an extra cost, but nowadays you can only purchase the 8-GB model. It was much faster than any previous Intel-powered MacBook Pro, and it was the practical choice for most people, as it was inside the most affordable MacBook Air you could buy (from third-party retailers). It packed more than enough processing power to get you through common day-to-day tasks and even light gaming. It could also handle more intense jobs, like photo editing.

M1 Pro: From there, the next step up was the M1 Pro. It had up to 10 cores in the CPU and up to a 16-core GPU, with up to 32 GB of unified memory. Apple said the performance and graphics were both twice as fast as on the M1. We found it to be considerably more capable than the base chip, making it ideal for anyone who works heavily on MacBooks for music production or photo and video editing. Only the MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch) from 2021 used this chip.

M1 Max: Like the M1 Pro, the M1 Max had a 10-core CPU but a heftier 32-core GPU (with support for up to 64 GB of unified memory). Apple said it was four times faster than the M1 in terms of graphics. As proved in testing, this chip was extremely powerful and handled every heavy-duty task with ease. It was the go-to choice if you needed a computer that could handle multiple streams of 8K or 4K video footage, 3D rendering, or developing apps and running demos. You probably already knew whether you needed this much power. It was available in the MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch) from 2021.

M1 Ultra: The M1 Ultra was the most powerful of them all. It’s two M1 Max chips connected with a technology called UltraFusion. It packs a 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU (which can be configured with up to 128 GB of unified memory), and a 32-core neural engine—complete with seven times more transistors than the base M1. Even with the M3 Ultra now available, the M1 Ultra remains powerful and a solid option for anyone who needs a heavy-duty processor for working with intense visuals and graphics. It was available only on the first-generation Mac Studio.

ScreenshotCourtesy of Simon Hill

ScreenshotCourtesy of Simon Hill

ScreenshotCourtesy of Simon Hill

You can stop sharing your location on the same People tab by tapping on the relevant person and choosing Stop Sharing My Location. You can quickly stop sharing with everyone by selecting the Me tab and turning off Share My Location.

How to Share Your Location Using Facebook Messenger

If you are already chatting to the person or group you want to send your location to in Facebook’s popular Messenger app, then you can share your location right there without exiting it. This works on Android and iOS.

1. Open Messenger and select the relevant conversation with the person or people you want to share your location with.
2. Tap the Options icon (plus) at the bottom left, then the Location icon (arrow).
3. You may be prompted to grant the Messenger app location privileges.
4. Tap Start sharing live location or if you’d rather share a static point, search for it in the search bar or tap the location pin at the bottom right and drag the map to place it where you want, then tap Send location.
5. When you choose to share your live location, it is shared for one hour, and you will see the option to Stop Sharing with a countdown clock next to it.

How to Share Your Location Using WhatsApp

If the person or people you want to share with use WhatsApp, it’s easy to share your location with them. This is available on both Android and iOS.

1. Open WhatsApp and select the Chats tab.
2. Choose the person or group you want to share with.
3. On an iPhone, tap the plus icon at the bottom left. On an Android phone, tap the paperclip icon at the bottom right.
4. Choose Location. You may have to tap Continue and Allow to give WhatsApp access to your location data.
5. Click Send Your Current Location for a snapshot of where you are now, or Share Live Location to share your real-time position as you move around for the period you specify (from 15 minutes up to 8 hours).

How to Use Emergency SOS on an iPhone

Apple’s iPhone has a feature called Emergency SOS. When triggered, it sends a text message and shares your location with your emergency contacts.

ScreenshotCourtesy of Simon Hill

ScreenshotCourtesy of Simon Hill

ScreenshotCourtesy of Simon Hill