6 million active users although it has long been aware of the issue. According to experts, there is a simple tweak that would protect users, but Grindr hasn’t implemented it.

As part of the launch, Instagram will let sellers add stickers to their ephemeral Stories for the first time, letting buyers make purchases from the Stories feed by tapping on merchandise

In a post published Thursday, the website Queer Europe detailed how easy it is to find any Grindr user’s location using an app called Fuckr, which employs a technique called “trilateration” to find users. Fuckr, which can be downloaded for free and is not affiliated with Grindr, is built on top of unauthorized access to Grindr’s private API, or “application programming interface,” which provides Fuckr with information in Grindr’s database.

I was startled to find dozens of videos I had deleted before posting or sharing with friends, an embarrassment of outtakes. There I was, lower-resolution and smoother-skinned, staring at the computer camera and adjusting my bangs, looking for a good angle from my dorm room, my parents’ senior friend finder kitchen, a temp job. It was like watching B-roll for a documentary about my insecurities. (Facebook has since announced that the inclusion of deleted videos was the result of a bug, and said it was planning to discard the data from its servers.) The videos were jarring to discover-and suggested questionable data-retention practices at Facebook-but they were not entirely unwelcome. In an era of personal brands and social-media curation, I was amused, and a little wistful, to have a realistic glimpse of what I had been like as an awkward college student.

The download also included a reverse-chronologically organized list of “friends,” everyone I had connected to-and disconnected from-on the platform. Scrolling through it, I could see the contours of a life taking shape. I’d made an initial flurry of connections around the time I first created an account, the summer before I left for college: relatives and elementary-school friends along with summer-camp crushes and future classmates. At the top of the list were the solutions engineers and CrossFit evangelists I’d met when I’d moved out West to work in tech. It was like looking at the guest list for a party I would never throw.

Launches

With under 50 days to go until the 2018 U.S. midterms, this feels a little late for a pilot project. But we’ll take it!

The social media giant on Monday announced a pilot program open to any campaign for state or federal office that would offer additional security protections for their Facebook pages and accounts.

Under the program, campaigns as well as campaign committees that opt in to the program would be designated potential high-priority users and be able to take advantage of expedited troubleshooting if they detect any unusual behavior involving their accounts.

Ahead of the launch of a standalone shopping app, Instagram is bringing more commerce to the flagship. The company said today that it will add a shopping tab to the Explore page, allowing you to thumb through a dedicated feed of shoppable merchandise from various sellers.

Here’s some Cambridge Analytica fallout: Starting Monday, Facebook will pay at least $600 to researchers who spot third-party apps behaving badly on its platform, Lily Hay Newman reports:

Facebook will now accept reports about not just about vulnerabilities in its own products, but in third-party apps and services that connect to Facebook user accounts. Third-party interactions create user risk on the social network, since Facebook vets but doesn’t develop the outside apps and can’t ensure their integrity as thoroughly as it can its own platform. Users are also responsible for managing the permissions of third-party apps, which can be a confusing and opaque process.