Social Media

Facebook To Launch Instagram For Kids Under Age 13

Buzzfeed News reports: Executives at Instagram are planning to build a version of the popular photo-sharing app that can be used by children under the age of 13, according to an internal company post obtained by BuzzFeed News. Current Instagram policy forbids children under the age of 13 from using the service. According to the post, the work would be …

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Teen Gets 3 Years In Hack Of Celebrity Twitter Users

The Washington Post reports: A Florida teenager who was involved in the high-profile and massive hack of Twitter last year has reached a plea deal with prosecutors and will serve three years in a juvenile facility, followed by three years of probation. Graham Ivan Clark, now 18, was the “mastermind” of the so-called “Bit-Con” hack, authorities said, and one of …

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MAGA World Flocks To Chinese Cult Platform “SafeChat”

Politico reports: As former President Donald Trump’s supporters have flocked to alternative social media networks, many are turning to SafeChat, a fast-growing platform known for its tolerance of high-octane MAGA content. In the nine weeks since the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, SafeChat’s app has been downloaded more times than in all of 2020, quickly becoming a hotbed of conspiracy …

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Facebook To Label All Posts About COVID Vaccines

ABC News reports: Facebook will start labeling all posts that discuss COVID-19 vaccines in an effort to combat misinformation, the company said Monday. Facebook will initially add labels with information from the World Health Organization to posts that discuss the safety of vaccines, Facebook said in a blog post. The labels will state that vaccines go through testing for safety …

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Apple Denies Return Of “Racist” Parler To App Store

ABC News reports: Parler, the controversial conservative social media app, was denied re-entry to Apple Inc.’s App Store recently after it was kicked off the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, documents show. On Wednesday, Parler LLC cut its three remaining iOS developers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company eliminated seven workers …

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Russia Throttles, Threatens To Block Twitter Entirely

Reuters reports: Russia said on Wednesday it was slowing down the speed of Twitter in retaliation for its alleged failure to remove banned content, and threatened a total block if the U.S. platform did not comply with its deletion demands. The move, which escalates a growing stand-off between Moscow and U.S. social media firms, comes weeks after Russian authorities accused …

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Twitter Sues TX AG Over Probe Into Banning Practices

Politico reports: Twitter on Monday filed a complaint in U.S. District Court against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, seeking to stop the state’s investigation into its content moderation practices. The social media giant said in its filing that the investigation requested by Paxton was an abuse of his power and a retaliatory action over Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Donald …

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Gingrich Whines That He’s Been Suspended By Twitter

Mediaite reports: “I just got suspended by Twitter, so I’m part of the censored group because I did a tweet saying that having illegal immigrants come in without any controls is a public health issue in the time of Covid,” said Gingrich. “So I just want to report, I’m part of the same effort by Twitter to censor the country …

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Texas Gov: Our Bill To Outlaw Bans By Social Media Will End “Silencing Of Conservative Ideas, Religious Beliefs”

The Texas Tribune reports: Decrying “a dangerous movement” to “silence conservative ideas [and] religious beliefs,” Gov. Greg Abbott touted a bill Friday that aims to crack down on the perceived censorship of conservative voices by social media companies. “They are controlling the flow of information — and sometimes denying the flow of information,” the Republican governor said at a press …

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Twitter Tests “Undo Send” Feature For Paying Users

Reuters reports: Twitter Inc is testing an “undo send” function that would give users a short time to withdraw a tweet before it is posted, the company confirmed on Friday. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who discovers unannounced social media features by looking at the sites’ code, tweeted an animation showing a tweet with a spelling error where an ‘undo’ …

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TX Gov Backs Bill To Outlaw Bannings By Social Media

Dallas’s NBC News affiliate reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) are set to discuss a bill that aims to “help prohibit social media companies from censoring Texans based on the viewpoints they express,” the governor’s office says. According to the Texas Legislature, Senate Bill 12 would give Texans a way to get back online if …

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YouTube Suspends Streamer Over Trump CPAC Speech

From Right Side Broadcasting: RSBN has been suspended from YouTube for two weeks, with live streaming and the ability to upload new videos revoked.  According to YouTube, this is due to our video of President Trump’s speech at CPAC, which violated their policies on election misinformation. YouTube has also removed the video from their platform, which at last check was …

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YouTube CEO: We’ll Reinstate Trump’s Channel Once We Determine That The “Risk Of Violence Has Decreased”

Politico reports: YouTube will reinstate former President Donald Trump’s channel once the “elevated risk of violence” has passed, the Google-owned video sharing site’s CEO said Thursday. “We will lift the suspension of the Donald Trump channel when we determine the risk of violence has decreased,” Susan Wojcicki said at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council. “We will turn the …

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Trump’s Gab “Account” Actually Belong To Site’s CEO

I thought it was weird that we never heard about Trump having an account on Gab: Former President Donald Trump’s verified Gab account was among those that were compromised (though the account’s description says it’s “reserved” for Trump, and Torba has stated that Trump himself doesn’t use it). When I got my hands on the Gab data, the first thing …

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Fired Parler CEO Was Stripped Of His Company Stake

NPR reports: The power struggle that led to conservative social media site Parler abruptly firing its founder and CEO John Matze last month became so acrimonious that when Matze was sacked, he was also involuntarily stripped of his entire stake in the company, according to people familiar with Matze’s exit. Matze became locked in a dispute with Rebekah Mercer, the …

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Instagram Aims At Zoom With “Live Rooms” Feature

Mashable reports: Instagram is introducing a new feature today that will allow users to run joint live streams with three other people, letting you broadcast the group video chat for the world to see. Called Live Rooms, the feature ups the number of accounts that can join an IG Live from two to four. So it’s kind of like Zoom, …

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Debate Arises Over “Boastful” COVID Vaccine Selfies

The Washington Post reports: “Cool it with the vaccine selfies for a while,” read the headline of a Boston Globe opinion column. “Go ahead, share your vaccine selfie,” the Atlantic’s Brit Trogen wrote. Posting a vaccine selfie when many are still not on the priority lists is boastful and could end up inflaming people’s fear of missing out (otherwise identified …

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Hacker Calls Gab Breach “Gold Mine Of Research”

Wired reports: DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says that the hacked data includes not only all of Gab’s public posts and profiles—with the exception of any photos or videos uploaded to the site—but also private group and private individual account posts and messages, as well as user passwords and group passwords. “It contains pretty much everything on Gab, including user data …

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Court Approves $650M Facebook Privacy Settlement

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users. U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illlinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in …

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Facebook Unfriends Australia In War With Lawmakers

CBS News reports: Facebook announced Thursday it has blocked Australians from viewing and sharing news on the platform because of proposed laws in the country to make digital giants pay for journalism. Australian publishers can continue to publish news content on Facebook, but links and posts can’t be viewed or shared by Australian audiences, the U.S.-based company said in a …

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