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Creator Weekly: Twitch Updates, Android Adobe Photoshop, Reddit Custom Profiles

Creator Weekly: Twitch Updates, Android Adobe Photoshop, Reddit Custom Profiles

Peggy K
June 07, 2025

We are in the midst of tech company convention season. This week it was TwitchCon, with a slew of new features Twitch will be rolling out this year. Next week it’s the Apple WWDC.

After Google I/O and last week’s slew of YouTube updates it’s not surprising they are a bit quiet this week.

What we do have are future-looking updates from Twitch, post visibility customization options for your Reddit profile, free Photoshop for Android, Bing’s new Sora AI-powered video creator and more.

🔴 Join me live on Sunday to chat about this week’s updates
✅ What do you know about live streaming platforms? Take this week’s quiz.

Top news and updates this week

News from TwitchCon: Dual format & 2K streaming, easier Clips creation, Rewind a stream, and more
Twitch makes it easier to become an Affiliate
Choose which posts and comments appear on your Reddit profile
Use the new Sora-powered Bing Video Generator for free.
YouTube blurs thumbnails in the results of “sensitive” searches.
Edits video editor by Instagram has new transitions, more precise clip trimming
On your iPhone or iPad use StreamYard in any browser to livestream and capture a local recording.
TikTok lets you tune your For You feed.
Adobe Photoshop mobile beta is now available on Android, and is free for now.
Google Photos now lets you put search terms in quotes for exact matches.
AdSense is deprecating the “Additional ad technology vendors" opt-out control.
Bounce lets you migrate your social graph between Mastodon and Bluesky.
Meta has a problem with ads using celebrity deepfakes.
Meet added the option to present content from a camera feed or other video sources.
Gemini in Google Drive can “catch you up” on updates to your files.
ChatGPT has added meeting recordings and connections to cloud storage (Drive, Dropbox, etc) so you can ask questions about your files.
You can publicly share your NotebookLM notebook.
Plus Gemini updates, SEO drama, journalists on YouTube and the US Congressional Creators Caucus.

🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: Secure your Google Account!

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.

Ten years ago the Google My Account hub made managing privacy and security settings easier.

Now is the time to sign in to myaccount.google.com and run Privacy and Security checkups, check your backup email and phone numbers, and remove connections to unused 3rd party sites. Do it so that you can still access your Google Account in another ten years.

June is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month

To Do & Try

Portraits is a new experimental feature from Google Labs that “lets you interact conversationally with AI representations of trusted experts built in partnership with the experts themselves”. The first Portrait to try is Kim Scott, author of “Radical Candor”. Give it a try at labs.google/portraits. If you are a “trusted expert” and would like to be turned into an AI-powered Portrait, fill out the interest form.

If you use a Mac or iPhone, want to see Apple’s latest gadgets and tools, or are interested in “Apple Intelligence” tune in to the Apple WWDC Keynote on June 9th.

News from TwitchCon

This week at TwitchCon Rotterdam Twitch announced a number of updates that will be available over the coming months.

Creator Updates

Dual format streaming: simultaneous horizontal and vertical streaming, to help improve the mobile experience. They will begin testing this summer.
2K (1440p) streaming for Partners and Affiliates, using a newer HEVC codec. That means higher quality streams with lower bitrates. Enhanced Broadcasting technology automatically adjusts stream quality based on viewer bandwidth. This is currently in beta.
Combos let viewers add an effect (like “dancing dinos”). Other viewers can add theirs “to keep the Combo going and unleash bigger and bigger effects”. This also supports the streamer with Bits. This is currently in closed beta.
Streamers can run their own gift sub promotions. Partners and Affiliates will have 70 hours of promotional time to use per year, with discounted bundles of gift subs.
New Clips creation tools, with suggested Clips from your streams, and an option for viewers to clip without leaving the stream.
New Clips Leaderboard that lists the viewers who created the most viewed clips from your channel’s content.
Viewers won’t lose their Watch Streak by missing a stream if they watch a clip or VOD from the stream.
Rewind a stream lets you rewind to view stream content you missed while the stream is live. (This sounds similar to YouTube’s live stream DVR). This will be tested later this summer, and apparently will require a paid subscription to the channel or an Active Turbo Subscription.
Collaborators have Shared Chat on mobile. This will roll out to all streamers next month.
There’s a new Twitch Moderators Club private Discord. This is a community to connect with other Mods. Mods can apply to join.

Twitch also just updated the Stream Summary Tab with “cleaner look, clearer time-based insights, new collab stats.

Monetization for more streamers

Twitch says they are “giving all streamers access to select monetization and community tools before they reach Affiliate", starting later this summer.

There is a catch: only Partners and Affiliates can get a payout. Other creators can use their earnings to purchase gift subs and Bits.

It’s also easier to achieve Affiliate status.

Check your Twitch Creator Dashboard > Analytics > Achievements > Path to Affiliate for more details about the requirements.
Here’s the requirements I see:

At least 25 followers (previously 50 followers)
Stream for at least 4 hours in the past 30 days (previously 8 hours)
Stream on at least 4 different days in the past 30 days (previously 7 different days)
Minimum average of 3 viewers on 4 different days (same)

“To be eligible to apply to the Affiliate Program, you must meet all four requirements within the same 30-day period. All calculations exclude Premieres, Reruns, Subscriber Streams, and Watch Parties.”

I don’t stream on Twitch, but this sounds achievable. (Although I may be underestimating how difficult it is).

Customized Reddit Profiles

Reddit now lets you customize the posts and comments that appear on your profile by subreddit. Previously every post and comment in a public subreddit was visible on your profile.

With this change you can have your profile show posts and comments you made (for example) in r/knitting, but not r/politics.You can also choose to hide all your posts and comments from NSFW Communities or just hide everything.

The Reddit profile has also been redesigned to make it easier to see someone’s karma, post counts and engagement. There’s also a “smarter” “Active In” profile section that updates based on your content and activity settings.

A few limitations.

Your public posts will still be visible in their subreddits, even if they aren’t displayed on your profile.
You can only curate content on your profile at the subreddit level. You can’t hide individual posts or comments.
If you interact with the mod team, Moderators can see all your posts and comments on your profile for 28 days.

Will it be good or bad?

Some people are concerned that being able to hide some public activity will make it easier for scammers and spammers to operate.

On the other hand, this may mean fewer legitimate users need to create multiple accounts to keep their activity separate.

These changes are rolling out on Android, iOS and the web over the next few weeks .

Free Bing Video Generator

The AI-Powered Bing Video Creator launched, powered by OpenAI’s Sora video generation model. And it’s (mostly) free.

It’s only in the Bing mobile app, but there will be a web option soon.
Generates 5 second videos.
Output is 9:16 vertical, but 16:9 landscape is coming soon.
Generate up to 3 videos simultaneously.
Creations are stored up to 90 days
Videos have “content credentials and provenance based on the C2PA standard”

The cost? You get 10 Fast creations for free. Once you use those, you can get additional Fast creations by redeeming Microsoft Rewards points. You can get points by doing Bing searches, taking quizzes, making purchases and other tasks. You can also continue to create at Standard speeds for free.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube now blurs thumbnails on "sensitive" searches that frequently return sexual themes. Inline video playback is also turned off. Video title, details and channel name are not blurred. You can choose to turn off the blurring if you want to see the thumbnails. (If this sounds familiar, YouTube started testing this feature in April.)

New to Edits (by Instagram): apply a volume change to all clips, more transitions to add between clips, more precise clip trimming.

StreamYard now makes it easier to stream on iOS devices. Mobile streaming now works in all major browsers, rather than just Safari. And you can capture a local recording of your stream on your iPhone and iPad (this was previously desktop-only).

TikTok launched tools to tune your For You Feed. Use Manage Topics to control how often 10 popular topics (from Creative Arts to Sports) are suggested in your feed. And there are AI-powered Smart Keyword Filters to block content you don’t want to see at all. The “smart” part is blocking synonyms and similar keywords. Learn how the TikTok For You feed works.

TikTok also launched TikTok for Artists, an “all-in-one music insights platform”. It includes performance metrics for songs, posts, and followers.

Images

Adobe Photoshop mobile beta is now available for Android devices. It includes core Photoshop tools like layers, Spot Healing Brush, and Clone Stamp; “intuitive” Tap Select to select parts of an image; Firefly-powered generative AI features; and free Adobe Stock images and video. All features are free during the initial beta period. Install it from the Google Play store.

In Google Photos you can now use quotation marks to find exact text matches in file names, captions or text within photos. Without quotation marks it will also include visual matches.

Web Publishers

AdSense notes that the “Additional ad technology vendors” opt-out control is now deprecated. Publishers don’t need to do anything, and AdSense notes you can use your Consent Management Platform (CMP) to manage ad technology vendors and user consent.

A New Social has a new tool called Bounce that lets you migrate your social graph between Mastodon (ActivityPub) and Bluesky (ATProto). You keep all of your followers and many of your follows.

Bluesky added a share button to all posts. Share to your DMs or other apps.

Stuart A. Thompson @ New York Times: Right-wing influencer Dominick McGee is a Master of Outrage on X. The Pay Isn’t Great. This is a puff piece on a guy who is apparently a professional troll, who once posted CSAM on Twitter, supposedly to show it’s bad. His account was reinstated by Musk.

According to the Meta Oversight Board, Meta has a problem with ads that use deepfakes of celebrities. They determined Meta is “likely allowing significant amounts of scam content on its platforms to avoid potentially overenforcing a small subset of genuine celebrity endorsements." In response, Meta said its ad review system, which primarily relies on automation, is “designed to review all ads before they go live.” Clearly something isn’t working well, but it’s not clear that Meta has the incentive to fix things.

Communication and Collaboration

Meet is adding the option to present content from a camera feed, including document cameras, external video sources (camera, microscope) or produced video content up to 1080p/30fps. This is available to personal Google Accounts with a Workspace Individual subscription, or Google Workspace Business, Enterprise and Education standard and plus. Learn more.

Gemini in Google Drive can now “Catch me up”, identifying relevant files with changes since it was last viewed, and includes an overview of those changes.

ChatGPT can now record meetings, and connect to your Cloud storage (like Google Drive or Dropbox) so you can use the AI chat to ask about them.

You can now mark a thread in a Google Chat Space as unread.

More AI Updates

James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart @ MIT Technology Review: We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.

From Microsoft: Multi-agent orchestration, maker controls, and more: Microsoft Copilot Studio announcements at Microsoft Build 2025

And Researcher and Analyst are now generally available in Microsoft 365 Copilot. These Copilot tools are built on OpenAI’s various models. Get all the latest Copilot Studio updates.

You can now publicly share a NotebookLM notebook with a link. Viewers can ask questions or explore generated content.

Google Search AI Mode can now generate interactive graphs and charts.

Gemini 2.5 has advanced speech capabilities, including natural conversation, controllable text-to-speech, multi-speaker dialog (like a podcast), and multilinguality.

You can now ask the Gemini app to perform an action at a specific time. For example, it can have a summary of your calendar and unread emails ready when you wake up. This is available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, and Google Workspace users.

Import your GitHub repositories or code folders to Gemini, then ask questions, improve the code, generate code or debug.