Twitter today is temporarily disabling it’s Tweeting via SMS feature, after it was abused by a hacking group to compromise the account of Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey. When hacked, the account posted a series of racist and otherwise offensive tweets to Dorsey’s over 4 million followers. Dorsey’s Twitter account wasContinue Reading
In an effort to reduce the immense pressure of using social media, and possibly the ability for advertisers to judge the engagement competitors receive, Facebook Inc. is testing removing the ‘Like’ count shown on the news feed. The possibility was first discovered by researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who noticed theContinue Reading
In a blog post, YouTube says it has removed over 100,000 videos and more than 17,000 channels from April to June for violating its new hate speech rules. This is five times more than YouTube removed in the previous three months. The company also took down over 500 million commentsContinue Reading
Politico reports that Google will be shelling out between $150 and $200 million to settle an FTC regulatory probe into children’s privacy on YouTube. The investigation launched last year following an massive joint appeal from 20 advocacy groups. Who claim YouTube violated the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) by collecting dataContinue Reading
“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news,” — That’s the quote racing in my head after having written about 300 words, largely based on a Facebook Press Release. Let me tell you about Facebook’s announcement, and thenContinue Reading
“Getting people to spend more quality time with each other via their mobile devices” would be tattooed on the head of Instagram if they were a person. And according to an unconfirmed report by The Verge, a new messaging feature called “Threads” for Instagram is being developed to do just that.Continue Reading
Security researchers from Sophos Group reported a phishing scam attempting to trick users of Instagram with fake two-factor authentication messages. The messages, claiming that someone has tried to access a user’s Instagram account, appear deceptively close to official Instagram messages. “Apart from a few punctuation errors and the missing space beforeContinue Reading
Officials from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and Federal Trade Commission are reportedly resistant to a proposal that would task them with regulating the editorial policies of social media companies’. The officials, reportedly responding to a drafted executive order have raised First Amendment concerns with discouraging web companies from removing or censoringContinue Reading
Bloomberg reports that YouTube executives are finalizing plans to end “targeted” advertisements on videos kids are likely to watch. This is widely believed to be the result of a Federal Trade Commission investigation into whether YouTube breached the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA). Reportedly the FTC reached a settlement with YouTube, butContinue Reading