Psychologist Niels Birbaumer has spent a great part of his career dealing with people whose bodies have failed them. He published a paper in 2008 about the quality of life among people who have lost the ability to control their bodies, many of whom needed a breathing tube to live. In new research published this week, Birbaumer reports he has found a way to communicate with people who are literally trapped in their bodies. VOA’s Kevin Enochs has details.
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Alphabet’s YouTube said it was rolling out live streaming from mobile devices for users with more than 10,000 subscribers, adding a feature that will help them make money, as it takes on Facebook Live.

YouTube said in a blog post Tuesday it would roll out the feature to other contributors soon.

YouTube also launched Super Chat, allowing users to highlight their messages for a fee. “Super Chat is like paying for that front-row seat in the digital age,” YouTube said.

Any fan watching a live stream would be able to purchase chat messages that are highlighted in bright colors and stay pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours.

Live video is becoming a highly competitive feature on social platforms, with companies competing to stream major sports events and exclusive videos from high-profile events such as the Oscar and Grammy awards shows.

While YouTube has been supporting live streaming on its website since 2011, Facebook Live, which offers streaming video in real time, was launched in 2015.

Twitter started allowing live broadcasts from its mobile app last year.

The live videos will have all the same features as regular YouTube videos as they can be searched for, found via recommendations or playlists, and protected from unauthorized use, YouTube said.
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Twitter says it is stepping up efforts to prevent “abuse and harassment” on its microblogging platform.

On Tuesday, the company announced several steps it is taking.

First, Twitter says it will identify people who have been banned for online abuse and prevent them from creating new accounts.

Additionally, the company says it will create a “safe search” feature so that “tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and tweets from blocked and muted accounts” will be removed from search results. Those tweets will still exist, but Twitter says they will not clutter search results any longer.

The company also says it will begin “identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward.”

Twitter has been failing to keep up with other social media platforms such as Facebook. Twitter recently reduced staff and an attempt to sell the company failed.

The 10-year-old Twitter has never made a profit, and despite tweaks to the format, has continued to see its user base shrink.
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