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Britain will impose a new competition regime next year to prevent Google and Facebook using their dominance to push out smaller firms and disadvantage consumers. The code will be enforced by a dedicated unit within the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which this year said it needed new laws to keep the tech giants in

The US Treasury on Wednesday said it had extended by seven days the November 27 deadline given to the Chinese owner of TikTok to sell the popular social media platform’s American business. “The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has granted ByteDance a one-week extension, from November 27, 2020 to December 4,

The US presidential election is finished: votes cast, the transition, though delayed, begun.  But on Facebook, the fight against election misinformation continues, thanks to “super spreaders,” accounts that disseminate rumors and fabrications, falsely spreading the idea that the 2020 election was beset by organised, extensive fraud by the Democratic Party.  The US nonprofit Avaaz has identified 25

US software firm Salesforce plans to buy corporate messaging platform Slack, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, leading to a jump in stock prices for the young company. Slack, which has enjoyed increased popularity since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, saw its shares surge 32 percent. Trade was temporarily suspended but prices were still

Snapchat on Monday unveiled a new curated short-form video feed in a stepped up challenge to social media rivals like TikTok. The new format called Spotlight will allow Snapchatters to see content from influencers and other members of the network popular with young smartphone users. Spotlight is aimed at broadening the connections among Snapchat users

Indian cricketer Virat Kohli is now available as an AR effect on Instagram and Facebook. This comes ahead of India’s tour to Australia starting in a few days going all the way till January. The AR effect has been titled as ‘Bat Talk for India’ and it essentially puts Kohli’s AR figure into their picture.

Twitter on Tuesday released plans for its new policy on how people are “verified” on the site, an area the company has long promised to revamp to address confusion and criticisms over the blue check-mark badges it uses to authenticate the identity of prominent accounts. The social media company said in a blog post that it

Twitter will show a warning if you try to like a tweet that has been labelled for potentially including misleading information. Twitter already showed a similar warning to users when they attempted to retweet something that had been similarly labelled, to potentially include misleading information ahead of the 2020 US election. The micro-blogging site is

Tooter is a new social media platform that seems to be gaining traction for being “swadeshi” or made in India. Tooter, as the name suggests, is conspicuously modelled after the microblogging platform Twitter. Its interface with a white-and-blue colour scheme, however, is somewhat a cross-over between Facebook and Twitter. The platform follows the same mechanics

Twitter Fleets, a feature that allows users to share disappearing stories, reportedly has a bug that makes the stories accessible even after their 24-hour expiration period. The bug that was causing Fleets to not delete properly, leaving them viewable for more than 24 hours, has been reportedly acknowledged by Twitter. The company is also said

Social media giant Twitter Inc faced censure from Indian legislators for a second time in weeks for failing to take down posts critical of India’s top court and judges that a parliamentary panel called “obscene”. The renewed heat from Indian legislators comes a day after an Indian parliamentary panel said Twitter submitted a written apology

Facebook for the first time on Thursday disclosed numbers on the prevalence of hate speech on its platform, saying that out of every 10,000 content views in the third quarter, 10 to 11 included hate speech. The world’s largest social media company, under scrutiny over its policing of abuses, particularly around November’s US presidential election, released

Twitter will hand control of the presidential @POTUS account to Joe Biden when he is sworn in on inauguration day, even if US President Donald Trump has not conceded his election loss, US media reported Friday. The social media giant is “actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January

Instagram has announced new updates for branded content on its platform, including the ‘Branded Content Tag’ feature in Reels. Instagram has launched the branded content tag to Reels, and it will soon be launched to Live as well. “We want to ensure creators can clearly disclose when they’re creating branded content, no matter what format

Internet and technology companies have threatened to leave Pakistan after the government granted blanket powers to authorities to censor digital content, a move critics say was aimed at curtailing freedom of expression in the conservative Islamic nation. Thursday’s warning from the Asia Internet Coalition, which represents global technology giants including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, comes

Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform, a senior official at the US social media giant told Reuters. Facebook complied with a government request in April to significantly increase its censorship of “anti-state” posts for

Apple on Thursday slammed Facebook and other Internet giants for their advertisement-targeting practices in response to a letter questioning a decision by the iPhone maker to delay a new privacy feature. The Cupertino, California-based technology company criticised Facebook’s approach to advertising and user tracking, according to a written reply sent to several human rights and

Twitter has resolved most performance issues with its new ephemeral “fleets” product and expects to complete the global launch by Friday, the company’s product chief said in a live video on Thursday. “As we were rolling out over the first 24 hours, we stumbled into some load performance issues,” said Twitter Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour. “We

Earlier this month, WhatsApp had officially announced that it will be introducing disappearing Messages, a feature that automatically erases your WhatsApp messages after a certain period of time. The new feature is now finally rolling out for everyone. The details of the new feature are already there on an FAQ page created by WhatsApp, and

Instagram, a few months ago, started rolling out the option to connect Instagram direct messages with Messenger. During this big announcement, Instagram said that features like Watch Together, vanish mode, and chat themes will be added to Instagram direct messages and Facebook Messenger both, and now these features have been made available (one is rolling

Facebook has launched an app called E.gg for users in the US to offer them a “platform for freeform creative expression” and let them create zine-like webpages. The app, that was initially piloted earlier this year, is available for free download on Apple’s App Store. Unlike Facebook’s regular social networking platform where you can create

Facebook and Twitter defended their handling of US election misinformation at a heated congressional hearing Tuesday where one key senator assailed the platforms for being the “ultimate editor” of political news. The hearing, the second in less than a month, came with social media under fire from both the left and the right for their

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told US senators on Tuesday that a page which posted a “call to arms” during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August had not violated the company’s “call to arms” policy. “My understanding is that that post did not necessarily violate that call to arms policy at the time,” said Zuckerberg, referring to

Instagram is reportedly upgrading search on its platform to support keywords. The search tab on Instagram currently offers the ability to search hashtags and accounts only. However, that is about to change as Instagram has begun rolling out keyword-based search support for select users in English-speaking users in six countries. Separately, Instagram is also expanding

China’s Baidu reported third-quarter revenue above market expectations on Monday and said it would buy social media platform JOYY ‘s video-based live streaming business in China for about $3.6 billion (roughly Rs. 26,800 crores). The company said through the deal it aims to diversify its revenue source, the bulk of which comes from ad sales on

Facebook says it is improving the way it moderates content on its platform by using artificial intelligence (AI). The social networking giant, which has a content review team of around 15,000 reviewers who review content in over 50 timezones, receives a significant amount of user reports on objectionable content on an active basis. However, as

The Solomon Islands has banned the use of Facebook for a temporary period after inflammatory critique of the government was aired on the social media platform, the Solomon Times reported. The government, led by Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, earlier told Reuters it would issue a formal statement on its decision later on Tuesday. Solomon Times

The US government has decided against enforcing its ban on Chinese-owned social media sensation TikTok to comply with a federal court ruling issued in the national security case, a media report said Thursday. The Wall Street Journal reported the US Commerce Department had decided to hold off on enforcing a Trump administration order to ban

Social media platform Parler, which styles itself as a “free speech-driven” space, gets funding from hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer and his daughter and conservative activist Rebekah, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. US right-wing social media users have flocked to Parler, messaging app Telegram, and hands-off social site Gab, citing the more aggressive policing

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told an all-staff meeting on Thursday that former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon had not violated enough of the company’s policies to justify his suspension when he urged beheading two senior US officials, according to a recording heard by Reuters. Zuckerberg acknowledged criticism of Facebook by President-elect Joe Biden but said