Social

Twitter said on Monday it would pay $809.5 million (roughly Rs. 5,960 crores) to settle a shareholder class action lawsuit accusing the social media company of deceiving investors about how often people used its platform. The settlement resolved a case that had been on the verge of going to trial. Jury selection had been scheduled to

WhatsApp is testing a new feature to allow users to report specific messages on the platform. This will be an extension to the existing report option that allows WhatsApp users to report individuals and businesses on the basis of the entire chat. WhatsApp is currently testing the new feature with beta testers on Android and

Facebook on Saturday slammed a Wall Street Journal series of articles about the social media company’s platform as containing “deliberate mischaracterisations” and said the articles “conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees.” The Wall Street Journal, citing a review of internal company documents that included research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of

Telegram has announced a major update that will now let users record livestreams and video chats on the app itself. The instant messaging platform’s latest update also introduces eight chat themes. Each theme comes with a day and night version and will follow the night mode settings of the app settings. The app has also

Facebook India on Monday said it has appointed ex-IAS officer and former Uber executive Rajiv Aggarwal as the Director of Public Policy. He succeeds Ankhi Das, who quit in October last year. She was embroiled in a controversy for opposing enforcement of hate-speech rules against right-wing leaders in the country. Aggarwal, in this role, will

Instagram is a popular social platform for sharing links about work or some articles and stories worth mentioning. Influencers and creators also often use links to ask their followers to go and visit their work online, promote other brands, or advertise products. Earlier, Instagram offered the ‘Swipe Up’ option for adding links to Instagram Stories but

Facebook is rolling out new ways for businesses to find and chat with potential customers on its apps, the social media company said Thursday, as it seeks to become an online shopping destination. The new features will help Facebook, already a leader in digital advertising, offer personalised shopping experiences to its users, said Karandeep Anand, vice

Facebook is taking a more aggressive approach to shut down coordinated groups of real-user accounts engaging in certain harmful activities on its platform, using the same strategy its security teams take against campaigns using fake accounts, the company told Reuters. The new approach, reported here for the first time, uses the tactics usually taken by

Tencent Holdings’s popular WeChat messaging app will start allowing users to access external links from Friday, days after regulators told the company and its rivals to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other’s links. China’s technology giants have historically prevented links and services by rivals from being shared on their platforms. On Monday, however,

Alphabet’s Google and Apple have removed jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s tactical voting app from their stores, his team said on Friday, after Russia accused the US tech firms of meddling in its internal affairs. Russia goes to the polls on Friday to elect a new parliament in a three-day vote that the ruling United Russia

Facebook has removed a network of accounts linked to an anti-COVID restrictions movement in Germany as it announced a new crackdown on coordinated campaigns of real users that cause harm on and off its platforms. Reuters exclusively reported on Thursday that Facebook’s security teams were expanding the tactics used to take down influence operations using

TikTok’s lead data privacy regulator in the European Union has opened two inquiries into the Chinese-owned short-video platform related to the processing of children’s personal data and transfers of personal data to China. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which is lead EU regulator for many of the world’s top Internet firms due to the location of

Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp on Wednesday launched a new feature to make it possible to search for businesses within its app for the first time, the company told Reuters. The test in São Paulo, Brazil, which allows WhatsApp users to find shops and services through a directory in the app, is the latest feature in

Discord has raised $500 million (roughly Rs. 3,680 cores) in a new funding round led by investment firm Dragoneer Investment Group, a company spokesperson said. The deal values the company at about $15 billion (roughly Rs. 1,10,160 crores), Bloomberg News had reported earlier. Discord declined to comment on the valuation. Baillie Gifford & Co, Coatue

Becoming a social media influencer requires minimum capital but a lot of talent. It gives a person flexibility in terms of working hours among other perks that come with being famous. Naturally, the competition is fierce. But artificial intelligence (AI) is now taking humans out of the game. Using AI, companies are creating virtual human models that

Unicode Consortium — the non-profit organisation that approves and standardises emojis — on Tuesday, September 15, announced the launch of Unicode 14.0 that brings a bunch of new characters and emojis. The Unicode Consortium has released a list of 37 new emoji characters that will be available on Android, iPhone, and other devices later this

WhatsApp is reportedly receiving an update that will further extend its multi-device functionality. The update now makes it possible for non-beta users to join the multi-device beta program for a future update, as per WABetaInfo. The multi-device functionality lets users link up to four devices apart from their primary device. With the new functionality, users

Facebook exempts certain celebrities, politicians, and other high-profile users from some its own rules for posts as part of a programme launched as a quality-control mechanism, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The programme, referred to as “cross check” or “XCheck,” shields millions of elite users from rules that Facebook claims to apply equally

Zoom is introducing a range of new features to make video meetings more productive and assist the hybrid and remote working culture. At its annual Zoomtopia conference, Zoom announced that it is adding real-time, multi-language transcription and translation for Zoom calls soon. The new real-time translation feature will help to reduce language barriers during video

WhatsApp for Android is reportedly testing timer settings for its Disappearing messages feature. The instant messaging app owned by Facebook is currently working on Disappearing Mode and, as per a new report, it is working to let Android users set different timings for its ephemeral messages in its privacy. The latest update is reportedly spotted

Facebook-owned social media platform Instagram has been testing a new feature that will allow its users to mark other users as their Favourites. According to The Verge, Favourites will let users categorize their most important Instagram accounts (friends and creators) as their priorities so that the posts by these marked handles will land “higher” in the

China fired a fresh regulatory shot at its tech giants on Monday, telling them to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other’s links on their sites or face consequences. The comments, made by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) at a news briefing, mark the latest step in Beijing’s broad regulatory crackdown that

WhatsApp is reportedly working on a feature to transcribe voice messages. The new feature is said to be currently in testing on the iOS version of the instant messaging app, though it may reach both Android and iPhone users over time. At present, WhatsApp doesn’t provide transcription of voice messages. There are instead third-party apps

US Democratic Representative Adam Schiff called on Facebook and Amazon.com Inc on Thursday to provide a more thorough explanation of their efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. “Despite some concrete and positive steps previously taken, these companies owe both the public and the Congress additional answers about the exponential and dangerous proliferation of

Yahoo on Friday named dating app Tinder’s boss Jim Lanzone as its chief executive officer, just days after Apollo Global Management Inc completed its purchase of the online media company from Verizon Communications Inc. Apollo on September 1 closed its $5 billion acquisition of Verizon Media and renamed it Yahoo after Verizon’s iconic digital brand. AOL,

Facebook executive Andrew “Boz” Bosworth recently shared a short video that showed Mark Zuckerberg getting pelted with pillows. And Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is impressed. “Throwing pillows of various sizes at Mark Zuckerberg looks fun,” Dorsey wrote in a tweet. What he possibly wanted to say was that the way in which the video was shot

WhatsApp is set to soon roll out end-to-end encrypted cloud backups on Android and iOS. The new move will help users keep their chats end-to-end encrypted even when they are a part of WhatsApp backups stored on a cloud service such as Apple iCloud or Google Drive. WhatsApp has worked from scratch to enable anticipated end-to-end

Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories ‘smart’ glasses were launched on Thursday, September 9. The wearable is available in three designs and multiple colour options for frames. Customers will also have the option to select different kinds of lenses, depending on their needs. Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories come with dual 5-megapixel cameras that can capture images and 30-second videos.

Facebook has made a case for not selling Giphy in a strongly worded response to Britain’s competition regulator, and the tech firm questioned the watchdog’s call for divesting the GIF website over access and anti-competitive concerns. Facebook argued that “the inability of the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) to issue any order against Giphy raises

Snapchat has introduced a new Birthdays Mini feature in India and other countries to allow users to keep a track of all their friends’ birthdays easily. With the latest feature, users can also get personal greetings and birthday messages from their friends on the platform. The new feature on the photo- and video-sharing platform will