Twitter

Twitter -- like many social media platforms -- has its fair share of problems, including trolling, spam, abuse and fake accounts. The company has fought something of a losing battle in trying to regain control of things, but it is confident it has started to make progress.

In a blog post in which it shares details of this progress, Twitter also reveals plans to crack down on people who "try to take advantage of our openness". In a bid to cut down on the number of spam accounts that crop up, Twitter is going to require anyone signing up for a new account to confirm their email address or phone number.

The separating of children from parents at the US southern border has created international outrage -- and lots of rhetoric from President Trump on Twitter. When Microsoft removed from its website a reference to working with ICE, the company found itself pulled into the political debate.

A blog post from January this year saw Microsoft stating it was "proud" to be working with ICE. When this was spotted, people took to social media to call out Microsoft, making references to the child separation policy; shortly afterwards, the ICE reference was deleted. Now it is back, and Microsoft has issued a statement clarifying its position about border policy.

Donald Trump's use of Twitter has long been controversial, and he has developed something of a penchant for blocking people who dare to question or criticize him. Earlier this year a judge suggested that he should make use of the mute option instead of blocking Twitter users, and now another judge has ruled that blocking critics is unconstitutional.

Judge Naomi Buchwald said that Trump's use of the block feature is a violation of people's right to free speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The Department of Justice has indicated that it disagrees and is considering what to do next.

Twitter's troll problem has not improved, despite various measures taken by the company. The latest attempt to get things under control finds Twitter changing its algorithms to take into account "behavioral signals" and help bury content from trolls.

The algorithm tweaks do not mean that tweets will be deleted, but those that are found to "distort and detract from the public conversation" will be pushed further down conversations and search results to reduce their visibility.

It is now over a year since Vine closed down, and fans have been holding out for a follow-up to the video service. Co-founder Dom Hofmann previously said that work was underway on a successor called V2, but this has now been put on hold.

Blaming "financial and legal hurdles", Hoffmann now says that the project has been postponed "for an indefinite amount of time". He says that he had hoped to bring V2 to life as a personal project, but the realization that more money will be needed means that investors need to be brought onboard.

Twitter has issued a warning to its 330 million users, urging them to change their passwords. The security announcement comes after the company discovered a bug that left passwords stored in unencrypted form in internal logs.

While Twitter says that the bug has been fixed and that the plaintext logs have been deleted, it is encouraging the password change out of "an abundance of caution".

Its software is already banned from US government computers, and now Kaspersky Lab's advertisements have been banned from Twitter. The Russian security firm has been hit with an ad ban for "using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices".

Eugene Kaspersky has responded angrily in an open letter in which the company CEO says that even if Twitter reverses its decision, his company will not advertise on the platform, opting instead to donate the money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to fund the fight against online censorship.

Following a huge backlash over the weekend, Weibo -- the Chinese equivalent of Twitter -- has announced a reversal of a policy that would have seen gay content banned from the platform.

Originally announced on Friday, the "clean-up" operation was due to last three months, and covered violence and pornography as well as homosexual content. Now, however, Weibo has felt the pressure of public outcry and backed down saying: "We're no longer targeting gay content".

Just a few days ago, it was revealed that Google plans to ban ads for cryptocurrencies and related products and services later this year. Now it seems as though Twitter could be following suit.

The plans could see the social network implementing a ban on ads for ICOs and almost all cryptocurrencies. It is reported that Twitter's ban could come into force within a couple of weeks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 2016, I bought my very first Mac -- a beautiful MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Since then, the laptop and I have been inseparable. The computer comes with me when I go to, say, a coffee shop, but it also serves as my desktop when I am home by connecting to a large monitor, keyboard, and mouse. In other words, I love the computer, but also, I really admire macOS.

When I first began using the Mac, I downloaded a bunch of software I thought I would enjoy. As a big Twitter user, I obviously installed the official app for that social network. You know what? It sucked. I tried to make it work, but ultimately, using a web browser was just a much better experience. On any desktop operating system, users are wise to use a browser. Let's be honest -- Twitter apps are best saved for smartphones and tablets. Twitter the company apparently agrees, as today, it officially kills the Mac app.

In the run-up to the 2016 US election, Russian bots shared Donald Trump's tweets 470,000 times -- nearly ten times those of Hillary Clinton.

The figures come courtesy of Twitter, who shared the data with Congress for a review into Russian influence on the election. In the period September 1 to November 15, 2016, Russian bots accounted for more than four percent of Trump's retweets.