Facebook is so far removed from the platform it first started as, it is hardly the same product. Many users would say it is not even the same platform it was a couple of years ago, and one of the biggest changes -- and irritants -- is the sheer volume of worthless content.

By this, we mean spam-like rubbish rather than stuff you’re just not interested in, and Meta has announced that it is finally taking action that it hopes will effectively reduce and discourage “spammy content”.

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Social media has managed to make everyone more connected and informed than ever before, but it has also created a confusing mix of fact and misinformation. Part of the problem is knowing whether to trust that an individual on a particular platform is who they say they are.

Becoming verified on Twitter used to be a goal -- a dream, even -- for many people, but this changed when Twitter morphed into X and verification became a paid-for label available to anyone. Now rival platform Bluesky has unveiled a new component to its existing system of verification. It is an approach that others may learn from.

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Despite the popularity of WhatsApp and other messaging apps, Meta’s Messenger (or Facebook Messenger) maintains an incredibly healthy userbase. Millions of people continue to use this stalwart of social messaging even though it has various limitations when compared to its rivals.

But Meta has just addressed an issue that has irked users for a long time: the size of file attachments. For far too long, a file size limit of 10MB has been in place -- a limit that is way out of line with modern file sizes (although it was higher for some users). Now it has been increased.

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Teen use of social media platforms is something that is concerning for many parents and has become the subject of political and legal debates. Having introduced Instagram Teen Accounts, last year, Meta has now done the same for both Facebook and Messenger.

Just as with Instagram, Teen Accounts on the social and messaging platforms have built-in protections and restrictions.  At the same time, the company is also introducing additional controls and restrictions for teenage users on Instagram.

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Back at the beginning of the year, Meta announced that third-party fact checking would become a thing of the past on its platforms. The company revealed plans to go down a similar route to X and use Community Notes to allows for crowd-sourced fact-checking instead.

After a short period of testing -- less than a month, in fact -- Community Notes are now starting to appear on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Meta has also confirmed that, with immediate effect, there will be no new fact check labels on content in many parts of the world.

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The creation of the Start menu was revolutionary all those years ago. Since then, Microsoft has, variously, refined, improved, messed up, broken, and ruined this central component of Windows.

The version of the Start menu seen in Windows 11 has proved quite unpopular, but there is a revamp on the way that could win over a lot of users who fell out of love with it. We’re talking a new layout and -- even better -- “recommended” sections that can be disabled.

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WhatsApp is primarily about keeping in touch with people, be that friends, family, colleagues, businesses or some other group. But there is also the option to update your Status to indicate what you’re up to, how you’re feeling, or any other number of creative possibilities.

Now WhatsApp has opened up a new option -- adding music to Status updates. This gives you the option of complementing a photo or video Status with a backing track, and WhatsApp says it has millions of songs that you can use.

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Life online, particularly on social media platforms, is driven by algorithms that make constant recommendations to users in an attempt to keep them engaged for longer. While algorithms have their place, there has been a massive backlash against their incessant use on the likes of Facebook, partly because they gobble up personal data, but also because the recommendations are often rubbish.

This is something that apparently even Facebook is aware of. The social media giant has just announced that it is going back to its roots with a massive update to the Friends tab. Here, users are promised that they will be shown only content from their friends and no recommended content at all.

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Embattled social platform TikTok has announced a new Security Checkup tool. It has been designed as a one-stop dashboard where users can check and update all of their account security settings.

The security tool is similar to those provided by the likes of Google and Meta, and it helps to promote the idea of users being proactive in ensuring account security. Importantly, there is a lot of hand-holding to eliminate the feeling of intimidation that some people may otherwise have felt about security issues such as passkeys and two-step verification.

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There is much said about the negative impact of social media on mental health and general welfare, but a new study suggests that there are benefits too -- especially for minority and marginalized groups such as the LGBTQIA+ community.

In particular, Instagram has been found to be a boost to the wellbeing of queer young people. Surveys of Instagram users in the United States and Poland showed that access to supportive online communities brought about a range of psychological benefits.

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Meta has made a surprise announcement about Facebook Live video. The company has updated its video storage policy, and this means that live streams will no longer be stored indefinitely.

This is a significant change from the social media giant. Meta says that it is aligning its storage policies with industry standards, and the impact will be noticed by many. Videos that were once stored forever will now be automatically deleted after just 30 days -- so you need to act now.

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Across pretty much every social platform there is a strange focus on responding positively to content through the use of a ‘like’ button. Instagram is no different in this regard, but this could be about to change.

Some users have noticed a new down arrow button next to comments which has been confirmed by Instagram's trial of a new feature. The button enables users to dislike a comment under a post, but it does not work quite as you may expect.

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Just how AI models should be trained has been a subject of debate for some time now, with there being a lot of focus in whether publicly posted social media content is ripe for the picking or not. Now a new lawsuit suggests that Meta has been using pirated ebooks as a data source.

Emails that are serving as evidence in a copyright case against Meta appear to show that the Facebook owner has torrented scores of terabytes of data from a number of online resources. Among the places mentioned in newly released unredacted emails are Anna’s Archive, Z-Library and LibGen.

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When Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that Meta was ditching fact checking on Facebook and Instagram in favor of X-style community notes, the response was very mixed. While hardly a clean line between the two camps, those with conservative political leanings tended to see this as a good thing, while those of a more liberal bent voiced concerns about the potential for misinformation.

The recent announcement about moving away from fact checking was widely seen as Zuckerberg trying to curry favor with Donald Trump, now installed as the 47th president of the USA. Now a new pronouncement from the company makes it hard to shake the notion that stepping away from fact checking was a politically motivated move.

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Elon Musk -- or his company, X, at least -- has been given until mid-February to provide the European Commission with details of how its recommendation algorithm works.

The request is part of a wider investigation by the EC to ensure that X is complying with the Digital Services Act (DSA). Many would be interested to learn something about how the recommendation system of this and other social media platforms works, and the Commission has further demands as well.

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