Social

Snapchat has introduced a set of new lenses or filters to celebrate Friendship Day 2021. The exciting new lenses will allow users to share virtual hugs, fun moments, and other expressions with their friends on the platform. The lenses are designed for friends to express themselves with ease and create memorable moments together. Snapchatters can

Twitter said Friday it would offer a cash “bounty” to users and researchers to help root out algorithmic bias on the social media platform. The San Francisco tech firm said this would be “the industry’s first algorithmic bias bounty competition,” with prizes up to $3,500. The competition is based on the “bug bounty” programs some

The Delhi High Court Friday said it will hear on August 27 the pleas by Facebook and WhatsApp challenging the new IT rules for social media intermediaries, requiring the messaging app to “trace” chats and make provisions to identify the first originator of information, on the ground that they violate the right to privacy and

Twitter is rolling out another update to make Twitter Spaces easier to discover and share. The update will allow users to directly tweet from a Live Space on Android and iOS devices. While users could earlier publish a tweet while listening to a conversation on Spaces, the new tweet composer directly in the Space makes

EU privacy watchdog EDPB on Wednesday gave the Irish data protection agency a month to issue a long-delayed decision on compliance by Facebook’s WhatsApp after its peers objected to its draft finding. The agency, which leads oversight of Facebook because the company’s European headquarters are based in Ireland, has been investigating WhatsApp to see if

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the next hardware product from the company will be smart glasses being developed in collaboration with Ray-Ban owner Essilor Luxottica. The glasses are said to have the iconic frames that Ray-Ban is famous for, integrated with AR features. Zuckerberg announced this during the company’s Q2 2021 earnings call.

Twitter Shop Module, a new feature that allows users to explore as well as make purchases from businesses directly on the microblogging platform, was launched in the US on Thursday, July 29. The company says that the pilot is starting with a small number of brands in the country and only the people who use

Twitter is shutting its reopened offices in United States, while other big tech companies are making vaccination mandatory for on-campus employees, as the highly infectious Delta COVID-19 variant drives a resurgence in cases. Alphabet’s Google and Facebook said on Wednesday all US employees must get vaccinated to step into offices. Google is also planning to expand

Kazakhstan has blocked access to Microsoft subsidiary LinkedIn, over what the Central Asian country’s government said were online casino advertisements and fake accounts. The Ministry of Information and Social Development said in a statement it had asked LinkedIn to remove the items in question but the company has failed to comply. It said it would

Twitter is fast losing its sheen as a favoured communications tool for many Indian government departments and ministers keen to promote home-grown rival Koo while the US firm comes under fire for non-compliance with India’s laws. The most high-profile example has been India’s new IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Taking office this month, he opened a

Facebook is creating a product team to work on the “metaverse,” a digital world where people can move between different devices and communicate in a virtual environment, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday. The team will be part of the company’s virtual reality organization, the group’s executive Andrew Bosworth said in a Facebook post. “You

A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook and Microsoft is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters. Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter

Google’s Data Restore Tool may soon allow users to transfer their WhatsApp chats from iOS to Android devices. The latest update to the app that was recently added to the Google Play store reportedly shows references for copying WhatsApp chat history from an iPhone to an Android phone. The Data Restore Tool, present in Android

Users of social media giant- Instagram have expressed concern with the platform’s new sensitive content filter as the feature is blocking their posts. As per The Verge, while posting on both the feed and in Stories, account holders have been warning their followers that the setting is limiting their reach and that their followers should

Twitter is looking to hire a new grievance officer in India. The social network had hired an interim officer in June, who resigned, and then it had hired another grievance officer as an interim measure. The company has now placed a listing on LinkedIn over the weekend to hire someone for the role, something that

Twitter rolled out automated captions for voice tweets just a few days ago. Voice tweets is a new feature that was rolled out last year and it faced a lot of criticism after users pointed out Twitter’s disinterest in making it accessible for all types of users. For instance, this feature would be difficult to

Twitter introduced voice tweets on its platform last year to let users tweet using their voice. This helps to quickly post tweets on Twitter, without typing the matter in text. You can also add your text tweets as follow-ups — after posting your initial voice tweet. This enhances the overall experience not just for users

Facebook introduced the Soundmoji feature for Messenger users earlier this month. The feature, as the name suggests, offers audio alongside emojis to elevate the conversation between friends. Different kind of Soundmojis have been made available including fart, drums, laughing, violin, ghosts, shock, kisses, and more. Soundmojis are essentially next-level emojis that lets you send short

Twitter was non-compliant with the IT rules on May 26 when the new regulations came into effect but the microblogging platform has subsequently appointed a chief compliance officer and a resident grievance officer as a contingent arrangement, Parliament was informed on Thursday. Twitter has also informed the IT Ministry about its physical contact address in

The White House has YouTube, not just Facebook, on its list of social media platforms officials say are responsible for an alarming spread of misinformation about COVID vaccines and are not doing enough to stop it, sources familiar with the administration’s thinking said. The criticism comes just a week after President Joe Biden called Facebook

When Dogecoin was launched in 2013, it was started as a joke.The meme-based cryptocurrency remained in obscurity for a long time, until billionaire tycoon Elon Musk threw his weight behind it and popularised it. Even though Dogecoin has lost some gains in recent months, its ardent following seems to be of great appeal to businesses

Twitter on Thursday reported higher revenue growth than Wall Street had expected, as the social media platform rolled out ad targeting improvements to help brands reach potential customers. Shares of Twitter rose 5 percent to $73 (roughly Rs. 5,430) in trading after the bell. Since the start of the year, Twitter has raced to introduce

Snap on Thursday beat Wall Street estimates for users and revenue in the second quarter, notching the highest growth rates since late 2017 as new features on its messaging app Snapchat attracted more users. Shares of Santa Monica, California-based Snap rose about 10 percent to $69.20 (roughly Rs. 5,150) in extended trading, after its forecast for

Twitter India is an independent entity as its parent company Twitter does not have a single share in it, Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari claimed in the Karnataka High Court on Thursday. The submission was made during the hearing by a single judge bench on a petition by Maheshwari, challenging the notice issued by

Clubhouse is now open for everyone on iOS and Android, the developer has announced. The audio-only app has been an invite-only platform ever since it launched in beta last year. Initially, it was only available on iOS, but beta testing on Android started in May this year. Now, the developer Alpha Exploration has announced Clubhouse

A 22-year-old British citizen was arrested in Spain on Wednesday in connection with a July 2020 Twitter hack which compromised the accounts of high-profile politicians and celebrities, the US Justice Department said on Wednesday. It named the British man as Joseph James O’Connor and said he faced multiple charges. He was also accused in a criminal

There is no urgency now in hearing pleas challenging WhatsApp’s new privacy policy as the instant messaging platform has already made a statement that it would “not transfer data” to Facebook till the personal data protection bill is finalised, the Delhi High Court said on Thursday. The US-based firm also informed the high court that

US President Joe Biden nominated lawyer and Google critic Jonathan Kanter as the Justice Department’s antitrust chief on Tuesday in the latest sign the White House is determined to rein in the world’s biggest corporations, especially Big Tech. Progressives who advocate tougher enforcement of antitrust law pushed for the nomination of Kanter, who recently started

Instagram has announced the launch of a new feature called Collab, which is being rolled out in India. Using Collab, people can now invite another account to be shown as a collaborator on the feed posts or reels that they create, and the content will be shared to both sets of followers. India is one

witter is working on revamping TweetDeck and has rolled out a preview for select users of the redesigned app. The social media app shared a single image of the upcoming redesign on its platform, giving users a preview of how it may look once it is released. A reverse engineering expert also shared how users