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Did you know you can now use cool new special effects for your Instagram DMs? With a recent software update, Facebook has merged Messenger with Instagram DMs, and since then the latter has received some cool new features such as the ability to set up a custom chat colour, vanish mode, custom emoji reactions etc.

Russia’s leading media holding, which is controlled by state energy giant Gazprom, will launch an app similar to the video-sharing social network TikTok, the group’s CEO said Wednesday. The Kommersant business daily cited Gazprom-Media CEO Alexander Zharov as saying the holding had purchased a service called “Ya Molodets” (“I am great”). Zharov said the app

A coalition of human rights and press freedom groups have filed a brief supporting Facebook’s lawsuit against the Israeli surveillance technology company NSO Group, arguing that the “very core of the principles that America represents” are at stake in the case. Facebook last year initiated the lawsuit against NSO Group, accusing the company of reverse-engineering

Sixty-two percent of the cybercrime complaints lodged in 2020 were related to financial frauds, police said in a statement in New Delhi. The Delhi Police said a spurt was witnessed in incidents of cybercrime during the coronavirus lockdown. Twenty-four percent of the complaints were related to the social media, primarily online harassment, and the rest

WhatsApp will be thronged with greetings and wishes in groups and chats, wishing each other on the merry occasion of Christmas. The instant-messaging platform is a popular choice for such exchanges, and with stickers now being supported on WhatsApp, users can get creative with their wishes and greetings. WhatsApp also recently introduced animated stickers and

Facebook said on Thursday it has removed the page of Australian celebrity chef turned conspiracy theorist Pete Evans for spreading misinformation about COVID-19, the tech giant’s latest move to police false content about the pandemic. Evans, a former judge on prime time Australian cooking shows with a large catalogue of cookbooks, has become one of

Russian lawmakers on Wednesday moved a step closer to allowing regulators to block Internet platforms like Facebook and YouTube if they are deemed to have censored content produced by Russians. Russia’s lower house of parliament, which passed draft legislation in a third reading, said in a media release that authorities can target platforms if they

Twitter said Tuesday it would not automatically transfer the millions of followers of official Trump administration accounts to the incoming Biden administration, but instead give users the option to continue or not. The move affects followers of  government-led accounts such as @WhiteHouse and @POTUS, which will be transferred to Joe Biden when he takes over

Encrypted messaging app Telegram will launch pay-for services in 2021, its Russian-born founder Pavel Durov said Wednesday, as the growing company needed “at least a few hundred million dollars per year”. “Telegram will begin to generate revenue, starting next year,” Durov said in a statement. “We will be able to launch countless new features and

Bengaluru-based VerSe Innovation, the parent company of an Indian TikTok spinoff called Josh, has raised more than $100 million (roughly Rs. 700 crores) from investors including Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft, months after the Chinese-owned short-video app was banned in India. Josh is one of several home-grown short-video platforms that have sprung up since India blocked

Facebook and Google agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” in case of an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising, the Wall Street Journal reported late on Monday. The Journal report cited an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 states against Google last week. The states had accused Google

Facebook on Tuesday released the India-specific 2020 Year in Review and top pop-culture moments of the year on the social networking site. The passing of renowned personalities including Irrfan Khan and Sushant Singh Rajput echoed deeply in the conversations among Indian users on Facebook. One of the prominent trends the company observed this year was

Small advertisers that rely on Facebook to spread marketing messages are up in arms over the social network’s automated ad systems, complaining that inflexible account blocking tools and a lack of customer assistance are hurting business. One digital marketer, Chris Raines, was setting up an advertising campaign on Facebook last week when his account abruptly

Facebook on Monday clarified that it pulled the Kisan Ekta Morcha page as it was flagged as spam by its automated systems. The page is being used by farmers protesting the new agricultural laws. Facebook faced significant public outrage and criticism for taking down the page for around three hours on Sunday. The removal came

Facebook has taken down content that spread lies in Israel against coronavirus vaccinations as the government seeks to drum up support for the programme, the Justice Ministry said on Sunday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday became the first person to be vaccinated in Israel. Opinion polls show some two-thirds of the public want to

Individuals linked to Russia and the French military used fake Facebook and Instagram accounts to wage a covert disinformation campaign in the Central African Republic ahead of elections there this month, Facebook announced this week. Facebook said it took down hundreds of accounts and groups linked to France and Russia accused of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”

WhatsApp appears to have started rolling out voice and video calls to select desktop users. This will allow users to make WhatsApp calls directly through their desktops. Up until now, voice and video calls were limited to the WhatsApp app for mobile devices. Some recent reports, however, suggested the development of WhatsApp calls for both

Twitter is planning to create a new type of account for bots next year that will identify them as automated, the company said in a blog post on Thursday finalising plans for a reboot of its long-paused verification programme. The company said bot accounts “can bring a lot of value to the service,” but acknowledged

Walmart, which is looking to invest in TikTok, said on Thursday it would partner with the Chinese-owned video-sharing app to sell items seen on a livestream by creators featuring the retailer’s fashion merchandise. Walmart said viewers on TikTok, which reaches 100 million US users a month, can shop for fashion items featured in content from

Twitter’s verification policy has been revamped and it will be implemented on January 20, 2021. The company shared the development through a blog post and stated that it will also start automatically removing the verified badge from inactive and incomplete accounts. Last month, the social media platform revealed its plans to relaunch the verification programme

Instagram Lite app is being tested by Facebook in India, revealed Vishal Shah, VP of Product, Instagram, at the Facebook Fuel for India virtual event on Wednesday. The new app comes in less than 2MB of size. Facebook initially tested the Instagram Lite app in the country back in June 2018. That app, however, went

Twitter is reversing changes made to its retweet function intended to curb the spread of misinformation during the US presidential election, the company said. The microblogging site had in October made it difficult for users to retweet a tweet with misinformation and promoted the use of quote tweets, which included commentary from the user. It

WhatsApp is planning to start rolling out health insurance and micro-pension offerings in India. India Head Abhijit Bose revealed WhatsApp’s roadmap towards bringing “critical financial and livelihood services” to mobile users in the country at the Facebook Fuel for India event. The Facebook-owned company is working with SBI General to launch health insurance products, while

Twitter said on Wednesday that it will start removing false or misleading tweets about COVID-19 vaccinations that could be harmful, including false claims the vaccines will intentionally cause harm or control populations or that invoke “a deliberate conspiracy.” Twitter’s policy update, announced in a blog post the same week that the first Americans received COVID-19

Facebook is planning on building a neural sensor that will be able to detect people’s thoughts and translate them into action, as per a report. Facebook held a year-end meeting with its employees on Tuesday, where the company told its employees about plans for 2021 and demonstrated new technology. Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer

Facebook’s India head Ajit Mohan deposed before a parliamentary panel on Wednesday and was questioned about a recent report that the social media giant is reluctant to ban the Bajrang Dal due to concerns over the security of its staff. Mohan deposed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, chaired by Congress leader Shashi

Facebook on Tuesday said it hopes new draft rules by the European Union aimed at curbing powers of big US companies could set boundaries for Apple Inc, its latest volley in an ongoing feud. The companies went up against each other after Apple announced a privacy feature allowing users to block advertisers from tracking them

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said India is a very special and important country with a remarkable entrepreneurship culture, as he sought to push deeper the just-launched payments services that allow users to make payments over WhatsApp. Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for

Ireland’s data regulator has fined Twitter EUR 4,50,000 (roughly Rs. 4 crores) for a bug that made some private tweets public, in the first sanction against a US firm under a new European Union data privacy system. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) “One Stop Shop” regime makes Ireland’s Data Protection Commission lead regulator

Messaging service WhatsApp on Monday refuted before the Supreme Court the claims that it’s payment services system was not secure and reliable and can be hacked by Israeli spy software Pegasus. The Pegasus issue was referred by senior advocate Krishnan Venugopal, appearing for Rajya Sabha MP Binoy Viswam, who has filed a plea alleging breach of