Articles about Social Media

Today marks the 29th anniversary of the world wide web, and as has become traditional, its inventor has penned a letter for the occasion. In it, Sir Tim Berners-Lee calls for regulation of the web to prevent it from being "weaponized".

His letter suggests that "the web is under threat," and highlights a number of problems that exist, including the digital divide, privacy, fake news and the dominance of social media. He suggests that a regulatory framework could be needed to prevent a handful of companies from "weapon[zing] the web at scale."

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In the latest attempts to clean up its platform, Twitter has suspended a number of accounts for trying to game the system. A number of well-known accounts were hit for stealing tweets without giving credit, and mass retweeting each other's content to force virality -- a practice sometimes known as tweetdecking.

As is customary, Twitter is not willing to comment on individual cases, but it is thought that the company was unhappy with repeated violations of its policies against spam.

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Snapchat and Instagram have both temporarily removed GIPHY integration from their products following the appearance of a racist GIF. A statement put out by Snapchat says: "We have removed GIPHY from our application until we can be assured that this will never happen again."

Instagram made a similar move, and it's not clear when GIPHY will rectify the issue. (Warning: a tweet containing the GIF in question is featured in the article below).

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Donald Trump's use of Twitter is well known, and it's also been the source of some controversy for one reason or another. As well as his seemingly ill-thought out ramblings causing delight, amazement, disbelief and horror in just about equal measure, it has been suggested that the president's decision to block people who criticize him is unconstitutional.

Now a district judge may have come up with a solution, avoiding concerns about potential violation of the First Amendment. She suggests that rather than blocking people, Trump should just mute their accounts.

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For a large number of Twitter users, there is one question that crops up time and time again -- "How do I get verified on Twitter?". Once dominated by celebrities and politicians, Twitter eventually allowed anyone to ask for a coveted tick -- but then closed down open applications after problems with white supremacists.

A lot of users were stripped of their verified status, but gaining the tick still remains a goal for many. Now Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has some good news. The plan is to open up verification to everyone -- and Twitter will not be acting as judge and jury.

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Facebook frequently uses surveys to gauge user opinion about features, changes and ideas. One recent such survey raised more than a few eyebrows as the social network asked whether it was OK for a man to ask a child for sexual pictures.

That any company should, essentially, ask whether pedophilia is acceptable is more than a little strange, but for such a question to come from such a big name as Facebook almost defies belief. The survey appeared over the weekend, surprising those who saw the questions.

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Facebook is far from immune to tinkering with its News Feed, but its recent experiment has been deemed a complete failure. Last year, the Explore Feed received a limited public launch following a period of beta testing, effectively separating news from friends and posts from pages.

Several months later, Facebook has realized what we probably could have told it from the offset: "People don't want two separate feeds." The company was heavily criticized by those living in the countries where the experiment ran, as they said it was harder to find important information.

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Several years in the making, Twitter has finally gained a Bookmarks option. While it has long been possible to like/heart a tweet to make it easier to access in the future, this method essentially advertised your activity to everyone -- and it might well be that you didn't "like" the tweet in question anyway. Privacy FTW!

On top of this, Twitter has also introduced sharing options which can be accessed through a new icon.

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Just last week Facebook was hit with the news that its privacy settings -- as well as the way the company uses personal data -- are illegal in Germany. Now the social network has been threatened with fines for tracking people through third-party websites.

The tracking affects even people who do not have a Facebook account, and this is something that a Belgian court took exception to. Belgium's privacy watchdog also told Facebook to delete data that had been illegally collected about Belgian citizens.

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Facebook and privacy are not words that really belong in the same sentence, so the idea that the social network is offering a VPN tool might well raise your suspicions. Back in 2013, Facebook acquired Onavo, the company behind the VPN tool Protect.

Recently, users of the Facebook iOS app noticed a link to something labelled Protect within settings. While this appears to be a built-in setting, it is in fact just a link to the Onavo Protect VPN app -- and the idea of a Facebook-owned VPN tool being promoted from within the Facebook app has people concerned. Take a look at the app description, and you may well understand why.

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Continuing its drive to take control of the internet, the UK government has unveiled a new tool that it says can block extremist content "on any platform" with astonishing accuracy. The system -- as yet unnamed -- was unveiled by Home Secretary Amber Rudd and cost £600,000, paid for with public funds, and has been designed to detect jihadist content.

The government says that the algorithms can automatically detect "94 percent of Daesh propaganda with 99.995 percent accuracy." Speaking to reporters in London, Rudd said that "we're not going to rule out taking legislative action if we need to do it," opening up the possibility that the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google could be forced to use the system.

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Facebook is no stranger to privacy-related controversy, and now a German court has ruled that the social networks' use of personal data is illegal. The court in Berlin also said that Facebook's default privacy settings violate German consumer law.

The case was brought by the federation of German consumer organisations (VZBV) which said Facebook failed to provide its users with sufficient information, and also that people were automatically opted into features.

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Change is great, but it is not always well-received. Take the latest redesign of Snapchat, for instance -- the outpouring of hatred for the new look has been incredible.

Users are pleading Snapchat to revert to the old design, complaining that the algorithm-powered interface makes things impossible to find. Of course, the company is extremely unlikely to change back to the old look, but if you're an iPhone user, there are steps you can take to get the old app back. Wondering how to get old Snapchat back? Read on!

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Facebook has confirmed that it is currently testing what it describes as a "downvote" button. But the social network is at pains to stress that this is absolutely not the "dislike" button people have been asking for.

The idea behind the feature is to give users the chance to downvote comments -- it does not appear to give the same option to posts. In currents tests, downvoting only appears on public Pages, and it's something that’s unlikely to spread to profiles.

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The election authority in Seattle says that Facebook has violated city finance laws. Regulations are in place that require the company to reveal who paid for campaign ads on the social network.

The Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission is seeking information about advertising spending for city elections that took place last year. Facebook risks a fine of up to $5,000 per ad if this information is not provided.

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