Social Media

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

X and Bluesky rival Mastodon has announced plans to transition into a non-profit organization. The decentralized social network is looking to further differentiate it from the competition, and the latest move “affirm[s] the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual”.

Precise details of how the change will work are yet to be finalized, but there will be a new, dedicated European not-for-profit entity.

There are so many classic scenes from shows and movies and, just like music fans like to share amazing drum solos, guitar riffs and lyrics with friends, there is something joyous about connecting over a shared video clip.

YouTube has long made it possible to share snippets of a videos, and earlier this year, Netflix introduced a feature called Moments to iOS. This provides a way to share a meaningful, impactful, funny or beautiful scene from a Netflix show or movie, and now the same feature is available globally on Android.

Finding the right platform through which to make meaningful and valuable connections can be difficult, and this is certainly true for LGBTQIA+ professionals and business owners. LinkedIn may be the go-to platform for establishing business connections, but it is very broad and almost too big.

Stepping in to fill a significant gap in the market is Famm Connect, which is billed as “the first mobile app for LGBTQ+ professionals” and the “queer LinkedIn”. The aim is to create a safe environment to establish connections and relationships.

After a period of intense public and political debate, Australia has approved laws that will ban anyone under the age of 16 from using social media.

While the laws were passed yesterday, it may well be a year until they come into effect -- and they will be the strictest in the world. Once in force, tech companies such as Meta could be hit with fines of up to AUS$50 million (US $32.5 million) for failing to comply.