Tag Archives: social media

The Guardian reports: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he is considering crowd sourcing as a new model for Facebook’s third-party fact checking partnerships. “I think that the real thing that we want to try to get to over time is more of a crowdsourced model where people, it’s not that people are trusting some sort, some basic set …

CBS News reports: Senior managers at Facebook knew about a data breach associated with campaign consulting firm Cambridge Analytica before it was first reported in the media in 2015, according to a U.K. Parliament report that concludes the company “deliberately misled” a wide-ranging investigation into disinformation, “fake news” and election interference. “Some malicious forces use Facebook to threaten and harass …

TechCrunch reports: Starting February 28th, Facebook’s “Why am I seeing this?” button in the drop-down menu of feed posts will reveal more than the brand that paid for the ad, some biographical details they targeted and if they’d uploaded your contact info. Facebook will start to show when your contact info was uploaded, if it was by the brand or …

The Daily Beast reports: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who has been under fire for failing to police hate speech, harassment, and outright racism on his platform, told podcast host Joe Rogan that “everyone has a right” to social media and that Donald Trump’s use of Twitter wasn’t much different from how previous presidents have used media, comparing him to Barack …

Mediaite reports: Facebook announced that it has removed hundreds of pages “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior” as part of a disinformation campaign being run by employees of Russian news outlet Sputnik. The stunning announcement, made early Thursday, revealed that Facebook has removed 364 pages — boasting 790,000 followers and $135,000 in ad buys between them — that were “part …

Mashable reports: YouTube has toughened its stance on dangerous pranks and challenges. While silly antics are a prevalent part of the video platform’s culture, a spate of troubling incidents from the Bird Box challenge, the fire challenge, and the Tide Pod challenge has spurred YouTube into action. YouTube has unveiled updated community guidelines for creators, with a new section on …

CNN reports: Facebook says it is making by far its biggest investment yet into struggling sectors of the news industry. On Tuesday the company is announcing a three-year commitment to invest $300 million in “news programs, partnerships and content.” Some of the funds will go directly to nonprofit organizations like the Pulitzer Center and Report for America. The cash infusion …

Singapore’s Straits Times reports: Chinese gay dating app Blued is halting new user registration for a week, it said on Sunday (Jan 6), following media reports that underage users caught HIV after going on dates set up via the world’s largest networking app for the LGBT community. On Saturday (Jan 5), citing academic research, financial magazine Caixin said juveniles were …

The Verge reports: Netflix has warned fans against participating in a potentially dangerous online challenge that’s inspired by its recent original horror film Bird Box. The challenge takes the core concept of Bird Box — wearing a blindfold at all times while wandering around outside — and applies it to a certain period of time. Some people, like YouTube creator …

The New York Times reports: For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews. The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York …

The Independent reports: Months after President Donald Trump took office, Russia‘s disinformation teams trained their sites on a new target: special counsel Robert Mueller III. Having worked to help get Mr Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralise the biggest threat to his staying there. The Russian operatives unloaded on Mr Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, …

The BBC reports: New rules about adult content on blogging site Tumblr, which have upset many of its users, have come into force. The site no longer allows such material but said existing posts that fell foul of its new policy would be hidden, not deleted. It also tried to reassure users that Tumblr would remain a place for free …

The New York Times reports: The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of posts on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its Facebook operations, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence …

CBS News reports: Facebook said Friday that a security glitch may have let third-party apps access the private photos of as many as 6.8 million users, the latest example of the social-media company failing to protect people’s online content. The incident, which took place during a 12-day period in September, included images never fully uploaded to the platform and those …

The Verge reports: Tumblr is permanently banning adult content from its platform as of December 17th in a move that will eradicate porn-related communities on the platform and fundamentally alter how the service is used. The ban includes explicit sexual content and nudity with a few exceptions, the company tells The Verge. Its announcement comes just days after Tumblr was …

The New York Times reports: Sheryl Sandberg asked Facebook’s communications staff to research George Soros’s financial interests in the wake of his high-profile attacks on tech companies, according to three people with knowledge of her request, indicating that Facebook’s second in command was directly involved in the social network’s response to the liberal billionaire. Ms. Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, …

The Verge reports: Tumblr says that child pornography was the reason for its app’s sudden disappearance from the iOS App Store. The app has been missing from the store since November 16th, but until now the reason for its absence was unclear — initially Tumblr simply said it was “working to resolve the issue with the iOS app.” However, after …

Market Watch reports: Spending too much time on “social media” sites like Facebook is making people more than just miserable. It may also be making them depressed. A new study conducted by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania has shown — for the first time — a causal link between time spent on social media and depression and loneliness, the …

STAT News reports: For years, so-called influencers — celebrities, former reality television contestants and sometimes, former lawyers or other professionals — have hawked diet teas and hair products everywhere from Facebook to Snapchat. And now, pharma is catching on. An entire industry has cropped up to link drug makers with the industry’s own version of an influencer — people, usually …

Reuters reports: Twitter deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages that discouraged people from voting in Tuesday’s U.S. election and wrongly appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading tweets to the social media company. The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in …