Articles about Social Media

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has told a court that Donald Trump's blocking of users who criticize him on Twitter is a violation of their First Amendment rights. The digital rights group says that people have a "constitutional right to receive government messages transmitted through social media and participate in the forums created by them."

The EFF argues that Trump's use of Twitter has become a hallmark of his presidency, and by blocking individuals he is denying them access to the policy details and other information he frequently disseminates through tweets.

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Twitter faced criticism over the weekend after it was discovered that the search term "bisexual" appeared to have been blocked. Users noticed that searching for the word returned no news or photo results, leading to claims of censorship and discrimination.

The company refers to the issue as "an error with search results for certain terms" and is "working quickly to resolve" it.

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Twitter seems to be fighting something of a losing battle against abuse on its platform, as well as failing to successfully clamp down on all manner of content that supposedly violates its terms of use. In its latest attempt to get things sorted, the company has -- once again -- updated its rules.

The company's latest changes specifically take in the issues of abusive behavior, self-harm, spam, graphic violence and adult content. The announcement is in keeping with Twitter's recently announced timetable for tackling abuse, as is the promise that further changes will be revealed on November 22.

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Ads on Facebook have been something of a controversial subject for some time now -- particularly with suggestions of Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the US presidential election. In its latest attempt to have a more transparent ad platform, the social network has announced a series of measures that will help people understand more about advertising.

All ads -- not just political ones -- are to be subject to extra transparency, with a new View Ads link making it possible to view all the ads a particular advertiser has placed. Political advertiser will face more stringent requirement. They must not only verify their identity, but also publicly disclose the source of funding for their ads.

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It's something that has been rumored for years -- that Facebook is using the microphones on smartphones and computers around the world to listen in on conversations. Is it that the social network is particularly interested in hearing what everyone has to say? Sort of -- rumor has it that the company wants to know what you're talking about so it can deliver carefully targeted ads.

A surprising number of Facebook users believe that Facebook is listening to them. They say that following conversations about a topic, they then see ads related to it. But is this really because of Facebook?

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Facebook Marketplace has been with us for a little while now, giving users of the social network a handy place to buy and sell goods in the same place they chat with friends and post holiday photos. The company today announced a series of changes designed to make it easier to buy cars through Marketplace.

A year after the launch of the platform, used cars now have their own dedicated Marketplace section. More than this, it is possible -- in the US at least -- to filter vehicles in a variety of ways to home in on the perfect car, as well as seeing valuations from Kelley Blue Book.

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It is now widely accepted that Russia -- at least to some degree -- tried to influence the outcome of the US presidential election through the use of ads placed on Facebook.

Attention now turns to Europe, where the UK's digital, culture, media and sport committee is asking Mark Zuckerberg to investigate potential interference in the UK general election, as well as the EU referendum that led to Brexit.

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Changes to the Facebook newsfeed are generally somewhat controversial, not least because many people wish Facebook would just stop buggering around and leave things as they are for a while. But the latest change that's being tested has some people -- page owners and publishers in particular -- worried.

Facebook is testing splitting the newsfeed in two: one half for posts from friends, and the other half from pages. There is an exception, however: promoted posts from pages can appear in the personal newsfeed. This has caused concern because smaller publishers and business fear their posts will disappear and not be seen, while those with big budgets remain visible. But Facebook is trying to calm anxieties.

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With promises made by Jack Dorsey and a leaked email indicating that Twitter was ready to do more to start tackling abuse on the site, it should come as little surprise that the company has now published a timetable for what it intends to do over the coming months.

Entitled the "Calendar of Our Safety Work," the document details the changes that Twitter is going to make between now and the middle of January. The timetable covers subjects such as non-consensual nudity, hateful imagery, violent groups and hateful display names. There's an unprecedented level of transparency that Twitter will hope convinces people that it is taking matters seriously.

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Twitter has made endless promises about clamping down on abuse, constantly tweaking existing rules and introducing new ones in an attempt to protect users. Following last week's #WomenBoycottTwitter protest, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey promised to start taking a more aggressive approach.

A leaked internal email gives details of just what this new stance will involve. The definition of "nonconsensual nudity" is to be expanded to include upskirt photos and so-called "creep shots," and symbols of hate -- a term that Twitter does not actually define -- will be hidden behind a "sensitive image" warning.

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Facebook has confirmed that it is currently testing a feature that enables its users to setup a self-destructing status. It's something that's in a similar vein to the temporary profile image option that's already available.

There's something of a nostalgic feel to the feature as it harks back to the earlier days of Facebook when users were invited to share their status rather than being asked "what's on your mind?"

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We Heart It -- the image sharing service used by at least 40 million teenagers -- suffered a "possible security breach" several years ago. The breach affects more than 8 million accounts that were created between 2008 and November 2013.

Although this is a historic data breach, in which information from the user account database was leaked, We Heart It was only notified about it on October 11. The company says that email addresses, usernames, and encrypted passwords were accessed, and it recommends that users now change their passwords as they are not secure.

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Facebook's desperation to appeal to the teenage market is well known, and its latest attempt to tap into it sees the social network acquiring tbh. The anonymous feedback app has proved to be a huge hit on iOS since its launch in August. An Android version is still in the pipeline.

With tbh, despite the anonymity, there's a strong focus on positive polls -- questions like "who has the best smile?" crop up, for instance -- and over a billion pieces of feedback have been given in a matter of weeks. It's not clear whether Facebook will keep the service truly anonymous, or will make use of the data it could undoubtedly gather through the app.

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Jack Dorsey has promised that Twitter will take a more aggressive stance in applying its rules. The announcement came after the #WomenBoycottTwitter protest was used to draw attention to women being silenced.

The Twitter CEO also said that new rules will be introduced to try to counter "unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence."

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Looking for new ways to make money out of its professional social network LinkedIn, Microsoft is testing video advertisements. Currently in closed beta testing, video advertising is available to "a limited number of advertisers" and it may well prove unpopular with LinkedIn users.

Following a well-worn path set out by the likes of Google, Facebook and others, the video ads will autoplay. The one saving grace is that videos will play without sound, but this is unlikely to be enough to prevent them from quickly becoming an irritant.

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