Social Media

Variety reports: Twitter was experiencing significant problems with its site and apps Friday, according to user reports. According to DownDetector.com, user reports that Twitter was having technical issues began to spike at 12:13 p.m. ET. Problems that users reported on other social platforms included that their tweets weren’t loading (with the error message, “Something went wrong. Try reloading) or they …

The Hill reports: Parler announced on Wednesday that it is engaging in a social media “special arrangement” with former first lady Melania Trump where she will share “exclusive communications” on the social media network. Parler said that Trump would share “exclusive communications on Parler,” noting it is already powering her blockchain technology and non-fungible token (NFT) platform, MelaniaTrump.com. In a …

“Dear Joe, We stand with you, your guests, and your legion of fans in desire for real conversation. So we’d like to offer you 100 million reasons to make the world a better place. How about you bring all your shows to Rumble, both old and new, with no censorship, for 100 million bucks over four years? This is our …

Mashable reports: Buried in Meta’s dense annual report for the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed Thursday, is a surprisingly stark sentence laying out a scenario in which The Company Formerly Known as Facebook might have to entirely stop operating Instagram and Facebook in Europe. Yep, no Instagram, no Facebook, for all Europeans. At issue are European data regulations that prevent …

The right wing Washington Examiner reports: Social media upstart GETTR fired over a dozen staff members late last year, including two key executives and its entire IT and cybersecurity teams, amid rapid growth and what former employees said were funding problems. The layoffs came even as interest in the company, founded by Jason Miller, a spokesman for former President Donald …

The Verge reports: Twitter has banned @wordlinator, a bot that replied to people’s Wordle posts with rude messages that include spoilers for the next day’s game. The account’s spoilers appeared to be accurate (the key is easily accessible in the game’s code, so it’s not necessarily a surprise), which could end up ruining the game for anyone who sees them. …

Fox Business reports: When TRUTH Social launches later this quarter, the Trump Media & Technology Group social media platform will already have stringent content moderation practices in place to ensure it is a “family-friendly” online community, company CEO Devin Nunes told Fox Business. Those involved in the final stages of the platform’s development told Fox Business that they anticipate that …

The Washington Post reports: A Washington Post analysis of audience data for 47 prominent right-wing influencers who flocked last year to alternative social networks Gab and Gettr, the video-streaming site Rumble and the chat service Telegram found that their followings surged immediately after President Donald Trump was banned on the mainstream sites. But those audiences have barely grown in the …

CNBC reports: The House select committee investigating the deadly Capitol riot has subpoenaed social media giants Twitter, Reddit and the parent companies of Facebook and Google, the panel’s chairman said Thursday. The bipartisan committee had asked for a trove of records last summer from those and other social companies, but said it received “inadequate responses” from some of the largest …

NBC News reports: GETTR, the pro-Trump social media platform set up to promote free speech, has banned a right-wing pundit for using the N-word in his profile. The platform told The Daily Beast that Jon Miller, a former Blaze TV host, was barred from the platform after using the word. “Jon Miller was suspended from GETTR because he used the …

The Daily Beast reports: Right-wing pundit and Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton has been banned from TikTok, the short video-sharing platform. He now joins the likes of fellow right-wing activist Roger Stone, who was also banned last year. “This account was banned due to multiple Community Guidelines violations,” a notice reads on Fitton’s now blank user profile. “Well, the communists …

Protocol reports: TikTok has dethroned Google as the most popular domain in 2021, according to Cloudflare’s 2021 Year in Review for internet traffic. In 2020, the video-sharing platform was ranked No. 7 while Google came in at No. 1. This year, TikTok came in first, followed by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, in that order Read the full article. TikTok …

The Daily Beast reports: Jason Miller’s right-wing “free speech” social media alternative Gettr “suspended” the account of white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes on Monday. “My official Gettr account has been permanently suspended,” Fuentes wrote on Telegram, a messaging platform beloved by the far-right. “Nice free speech platform.” The Unite the Right attendee’s Gettr page currently displays an “account suspended” notice. The …

The Verge reports: TikTok is changing its For You Page algorithm to prevent users from seeing too many similar videos that could be harmful when viewed in clusters, the company said today. The goal is to steer users away from clusters of videos that might “reinforce a negative personal experience,” listing extreme dieting, sadness, and breakup content as examples. Read …

NBC News reports: Spies for hire are secretly targeting journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents on behalf of corporations and governments to an extent not previously understood, Facebook’s parent company says in a new report, while banning six companies and a Chinese network named in the report from its social media platforms. “The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across …

The Verge reports: Twitter says it is testing an overhaul to the process for reporting tweets, which it says will ultimately make it easier for users to alert the company to abusive or suspicious behavior. The approach being tested with a small group of users in the US streamlines the current reporting process so that a person reporting a tweet …

The Verge reports: Twitter has removed a total of 2,160 accounts linked to Chinese regional and state propaganda campaigns, the social network has announced as part of its latest data release on misinformation campaigns. The accounts were attempting to push back against allegations of human rights abuses by the Chinese government against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Twitter says 2,048 …

CNBC reports: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is expected to step down from his executive role, sources tell CNBC’s David Faber. Twitter stock jumped more than 11% on the news. Dorsey currently serves as both the CEO of Twitter and Square, his digital payments company. Twitter stakeholder Elliott Management had sought to replace Jack Dorsey as CEO in 2020 before the …

Raw Story reports: Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi tweeted about an analysis of the tweets from the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse came largely from outside of the United States. Figliuzzi noted that this is more of the “divide and conquer” approach that Americans saw around the Black Lives Matter movement to pit different races against each other. “Throughout the campaign, …

The Verge reports: YouTube has announced that it’ll be hiding public dislike counts on videos across its site, starting today. The company says the change is to keep smaller creators from being targeted by dislike attacks or harassment, and to promote “respectful interactions between viewers and creators.” The dislike button will still be there, but it’ll be for private feedback, …