Category: Social Media

Twitter is standing by its earlier decision to keep up a series of graphic anti-Muslim videos retweeted by President Trump earlier this week — though it’s attempting to reframe its reason for doing so. CEO Jack Dorsey took to the site to retract an earlier statement that Twitter support had left the videos live due… Continue reading Twitter changes reason for not removing anti-Muslim videos retweeted by Trump

Twitter is rolling out its “Lite” version, after a successful trial in the Philippines. The Android app will become available in two dozen countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Not too different from Facebook Lite, Twitter has also built a version of its app that’s optimized for developing countries. Twitter Lite… Continue reading Twitter Lite with lower data usage becomes available in 24 new countries

Facebook has been under fire for its practices and policies that enable advertisers to exclude “multicultural affinity” groups from the audiences they reach via the social network. Now, in light of a ProPublica investigation and pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus, Facebook says it’s committed to taking a closer look at its advertising policies, its… Continue reading Facebook will temporarily disable a tool that lets advertisers exclude people of color

Farmers Business Network has raised $110 million in new venture funding to support a business that may sound boring to some Silicon Valley technologists but which appears to have addressed a very real need: it’s a social network for farmers that invites them to share their data, pool their know-how, and bargain more effectively for better… Continue reading Farmers Business Network just raked in a whopping $110 million in Series D funding

A s Twitter tries to figure out how to lock down the parts of its platform that enable harassment, as well as the spread of misleading information and illicit content, there have been a number of moments that highlight how the service, and its levers of control, are far from perfect. One such moment took… Continue reading Meet the man who deactivated Trump’s Twitter account

Even YouTube is adding Stories. The popular format introduced by Snapchat, then adopted by Instagram, Skype, Facebook, Messenger and even some dating apps, is now making its way to YouTube as a new feature the company is calling “Reels.” To be clear, Reels is YouTube’s spin on Stories, not an exact copy. And Reels won’t… Continue reading YouTube is launching its own take Stories with a new video format called ‘Reels’

Instagram has tweaked a couple of its direct messaging features to make them a bit more flexible and interactive. You can now automatically capture and remix photos sent to you in replies back to friends, and allow photo and video replays to be replayed more than once. The remix feature lets you capture the original… Continue reading Instagram now allows optional photo and video message replays

A UK parliamentary committee that’s investing fake news has been told by Facebook and Twitter they will provide information relating to Russian interference during the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum vote in the coming weeks. With election disinformation being publicly interrogated in the US, questions have increasingly been asked in the UK about whether foreign government… Continue reading Facebook and Twitter to provide Brexit disinformation reports soon

Over the holiday weekend, The New York Times found that one of its Twitter accounts had been locked. @nytimesworld was frozen for a full 24 hours over an innocuous tweet about a story in which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for the country’s treatment of indigenous school children. Twitter restored the account Sunday afternoon,… Continue reading Twitter blames human error after blocking a New York Times account over the weekend

YouTube is firefighting another child safety content moderation scandal which has led several major brands to suspend advertising on its platform. On Friday investigations by the BBC and The Times reported finding obscene comments on videos of children uploaded to YouTube. Only a small minority of the comments were removed after being flagged to the company… Continue reading YouTube faces brand freeze over ads and obscene comments on videos of kids