Social

Twitter labeled 3,00,000 tweets related to the US presidential election as “potentially misleading” in the two weeks surrounding the vote, making up 0.2 percent of election-related posts, the company said Thursday. The social network said the labels were issued between October 27 and November 11, one week before and after the US presidential election on

Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican and a tough critic of the big tech companies, urged the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday to interview some former employees of Facebook as part of its probe of the social media giant. Both the FTC and groups of state attorneys general are widely believed to be planning litigation against

The Trump administration granted ByteDance a 15-day extension of a divestiture order that had directed the Chinese company to sell its TikTok short video-sharing app by Thursday. TikTok first disclosed the extension earlier in a court filing, saying it now has until November 27 to reach an agreement. Under pressure from the US government, ByteDance has

A former Facebook employee told a Delhi Assembly panel that violence in the national capital in February this year could have been easily averted if the social media giant had acted in a proactive and prompt manner. The Committee on Peace and Harmony, headed by Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha, had summoned the former

In a letter to employees, TikTok India Head Nikhil Gandhi said the company has taken steps to comply with data privacy and security requirements and is optimistic about a positive outcome. PUBG Mobile’s announcement on Thursday where it talked about new security arrangements and customisation for India could point to a path back to the

Instagram and Facebook Messenger are getting their own version of ephemeral messaging with the introduction of Vanish Mode. Disappearing messages were once a Snapchat signature, although now versions of this exist across platforms including WhatsApp and Telegram. Instagram has also brought changes to its homepage. The Reels tab, which was launched recently in India, is

Facebook on Wednesday said its post-election ban on political advertisements would likely last another month, raising concerns from campaigns and groups eager to reach voters for key Georgia races in January that will decide control of the Senate. The ban, one of Facebook’s measures to combat misinformation and other abuses on its site, was supposed

Mmhmm, the video camera app that was launched in beta by former Evernote CEO Phil Libin in July, is now generally available for Mac users. The app debuted at the time when virtual meetings were at a new height, owing to the coronavirus outbreak in the global markets. Although Libin decided to go with an

The popular video-sharing app TikTok, its future in limbo since President Donald Trump tried to shut it down earlier this fall, is asking a federal court to intervene. TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, has until Thursday to sell off its US operations under an executive order that Trump signed in August. Trump in September gave his

Twitter is reportedly working on an option that will let users decide whether to view or filter graphic media sent to them via direct messages or DMs. Reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong spotted the feature that could be exclusive to direct messages. According to the screenshot Wong shared, users will be able to enable

Federal regulators are requiring Zoom to strengthen its security in a proposed settlement of allegations that the video conferencing service misled users about its level of security for meetings. The settlement, approved by the Federal Trade Commission in a 3-2 vote, was announced Monday. A complaint filed by the agency accused Zoom of deceiving users

WhatsApp has started rolling out a new shopping button that will let users quickly look at the catalogues offered by businesses on the platform. The new button, which will replace the voice call button, will be featured directly on the chat screen to ease shopping on WhatsApp. In September, the Facebook-owned company was spotted adding

US President Donald Trump will be subject to the same Twitter rules as any other user when President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, the social media company confirmed this week. Twitter places “public interest” notices on some rule-breaking tweets from “world leaders” that would otherwise be removed. Such tweets from political candidates and elected

Hike, the Indian company that once gained popularity in the country’s instant messaging market by bringing a local alternative to WhatsApp, is aiming to expand its presence by introducing a mobile-first virtual space called HikeLand to the masses. First launched in June for initial testing, HikeLand has now been brought out of early preview. Hike

A US judge said on Wednesday he was uncertain if he had a legal basis to bar the US Commerce Department from imposing restrictions on video-sharing app TikTok after a Pennsylvania judge had already blocked the government’s plan on Friday. Beijing-based ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, argues that the previous ruling could still be overturned

WhatsApp has finally launched its payments feature in India. WhatsApp Pay is slowly being rolled out to people across the country, so if the feature hasn’t shown up for you yet, do not worry as it should show up soon. WhatsApp Payments has been designed in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India or

Before Facebook shut down a rapidly growing “Stop the Steal” Facebook Group on Thursday, the forum featured calls for members to ready their weapons should President Donald Trump lose his bid to remain in the White House. In disabling the group after coverage by Reuters and other news organizations, Facebook cited the forum’s efforts to

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was excited that WhatsApp has received approval to roll out its payments service in India. The Facebook-owned messaging service will soon roll out its payments service in the country starting with two crore users, the country’s flagship payments processor said on Thursday, giving WhatsApp an entry into a crowded

Facebook on Friday said it has dismantled seven separate networks of fake accounts and pages on its platform that were active in Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Myanmar, Georgia, and Ukraine due to “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. The social media platform announced it had taken down the new networks as part of its monthly report into

Facebook on Thursday shut down a pro-Trump group organising protests against vote-counting, saying it was being used to delegitimise the election process and included “worrying” calls for violence. The group, called “Stop the Steal,” was just days old but had topped 3,00,000 members by the time it was removed for violating Facebook policies. The social

Snapchat has come out with a new feature where creators will now be able to publicise the number of subscribers they have, marking a first for the social media platform. If the user chooses not to make their metrics visible, the feature can be toggled on and off as well. According to a report by

Social media companies put warning labels on multiple posts by President Donald Trump that falsely claimed victory in the US election and pushed unfounded allegations about the counting of legitimate ballots. The companies differ in how directly they challenge false statements. Twitter labelled tweets as “misleading” and limited how they could be shared and seen. Facebook acted

As US President Donald Trump and his allies flooded social media on Wednesday with false claims of victory and unsupported allegations of voter fraud, social media companies warned users that the presidential election had yet to be decided. The posts on Twitter, Facebook and other sites are imposing a real-time test of Silicon Valley’s much-touted

Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday suspended several recently created and mostly right-leaning news accounts posting information about voting in the hotly contested US election for violating their policies. Twitter said the accounts had been suspended for violating its policy against “coordination” by posting identical content while appearing independent or engaging in other covertly automated behaviour. One

Turkey on Wednesday fined Facebook, Twitter and three other social media companies for failing to appoint a country representative under a controversial law which came into force last month. The legislation, passed in July, requires platforms with more than one million users to appoint representatives in Turkey that could implement court orders to remove contentious

Twitter’s board on Monday said Jack Dorsey will remain chief after a management review prompted by an activist investor’s effort to push him out of the job. Twitter in March made a deal with key investors to end an effort to oust Dorsey, creating a new committee on the board of directors to keep tabs

Short video-sharing app TikTok said on Monday it had signed a deal with Sony Music Entertainment that will give all its users access to Sony’s portfolio of music including global artists such as Beyoncé, Martin Garrix, and Harry Styles. The deal will allow Sony Music to use TikTok’s platform, home to several viral Internet trends

WhatsApp is rolling out a redesigned storage management tool to remove junk messages. This tool was spotted online earlier this year. The new storage management tool helps WhatsApp users easily identify, review, and bulk delete content to free up storage capacity on their phones. The tool also makes it easier to spot and delete unnecessary

Facebook confirmed on Friday it was temporarily halting recommendations for all political groups and any new groups in the run-up to Tuesday’s US presidential election. Facebook’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg referred to one of the changes during a Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying: “We have taken the steps to stop recommendations in groups for all

The US Commerce Department said on Sunday it would “vigorously defend” an executive order that seeks to bar transactions with Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok after a federal judge halted the action. US District Judge Wendy Beetlestone on Friday blocked the Commerce Department order set to take effect on November 12 that would have effectively barred