Social

The US Senate Judiciary Committee said on Friday the chief executives of Twitter and Facebook will testify before the panel on November 17 over their decision to block stories that made claims about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son. The Judiciary committee voted on Thursday to subpoena the two CEOs. The executives will testify on allegations of

A US judge in San Francisco on Friday rejected a Justice Department request to reverse a decision that allowed Apple and Alphabet’s Google to continue to offer Chinese-owned WeChat for download in US app stores. US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said the government’s new evidence did not change her opinion about the Tencent app. As it has with

Facebook on Thursday said its WhatsApp messaging app would start to offer in-app purchases and hosting services, as it moves to boost revenue from the app while knitting together e-commerce infrastructure across the company. The world’s biggest social media company has been trying to boost sales from higher-growth units such as Instagram and WhatsApp, which

WhatsApp is testing ‘Join Missed Calls’ and ‘Biometric lock’ features as they have been reportedly spotted in beta version 2.20.203.3 update. The ‘Join Missed Calls’ feature will allow users to join an ongoing call mid-way if they failed to answer the phone initially. The ‘Biometric lock’ feature is being improved to include more ways of

WhatsApp now allows you to mute a chat forever with the new ‘Always’ option in chat settings. WhatsApp had been testing this feature in the beta version and now it is widely rolling out to the stable version. The developers took to Twitter and shared the development with an image of an iPhone with this

Facebook is building a feature for users of its social network to connect with their neighbours, a push toward more intimate interactions that treads on the idea behind rival Nextdoor, which is considering a public offering.Screenshots of Facebook’s new feature, which is currently being tested, were shared on Twitter Tuesday by Matt Navarra, a social media

Facebook said on Wednesday it is launching its dating service in 32 European countries after the rollout was delayed earlier this year due to regulatory concerns. The social media company had postponed the rollout of Facebook Dating in Europe in February after concerns were raised by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the main regulator in

Fraudsters from Albania to Vietnam are posting about US politics and the upcoming presidential election to build fake audiences, maximise clicks and make money online, Facebook said on Wednesday. In a new report about so-called “inauthentic behaviour” on its platform, Facebook said the November 3 election had become a common lure to trick users into visiting

Snap Inc on Wednesday revealed that Snapchat’s daily active users in India had increased nearly 150 percent in the past one year since the third quarter of last year. The Santa Monica, California-headquartered company also announced a Hindi makeover of its original series Phone Swap and the launch of new shows featuring Indian celebrities. Additionally,

Facebook moderators were reportedly pressured by their employer Genpact to return to office despite safety concerns over the ongoing coronavirus-induced pandemic. Genpact, a third-party contracting firm that handles Facebook’s moderation operations, has reportedly been asking its employees to return to its offices in Hyderabad as early as July. Genpact claimed that most parts of Facebook’s

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has launched two inquiries into Facebook after concerns were raised about the social network giant’s handling of children’s personal data on Instagram. The DPC, the main data privacy regulator in the European Union, received complaints from individuals and had identified “potential concerns” in relation to the processing of children’s personal

Facebook on Monday unveiled software based on machine learning which the company said was the first to be able to translate from any of 100 languages without relying on English. The open-source artificial intelligence software was created to help the massive social network deliver content better in 160 languages to its more than two billion

WhatsApp seems to be working on bringing voice and video calls on its web version, according to a new report. The feature was allegedly found in a recent update to the web client that comes with version 2.2043.7. The feature is currently in beta, which suggests that the company is testing it out before it

Microsoft Teams will soon be getting an AI-based noise suppression feature that will automatically remove unwanted background noise during meetings. This will be an update to the existing noise suppression feature – users will now have control over how much noise suppression they want. There will be a new ‘high’ setting users can opt for

Japan will join forces with the United States and Europe to take on any market abuses by the four Big Tech companies, the new head of its antitrust watchdog said on Monday, a sign Tokyo will join global efforts to regulate digital platform operators. Kazuyuki Furuya, chairman of Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC), also said

Pakistan has decided to lift a ban on popular social media app TikTok after the company vowed to block all accounts involved in spreading “obscenity and immorality,” the country’s telecom authority said on Monday. The move comes some 10 days after Pakistan blocked TikTok for failing to block “immoral and indecent” content. “TikTok has agreed to

Facebook is facing its toughest challenge yet: an election complicated by a pandemic, a deeply divided nation lured by conspiracy theories and alternate versions of reality. Is it ready? Here are some of the biggest steps and missteps it’s taken in the fight against misinformation since 2016. November 10, 2016: Days after the election of the

Twitter said on Thursday its social networking site was down for many users due to an inadvertent change it had made to its internal systems but the platform seemed to be returning to normal after about an hour and half of outage. The company said that the site should be working for everyone within the

YouTube said Thursday it was tightening rules for propagation of conspiracy theories, notably targeting the QAnon movement already limited on Twitter and Facebook. The Google-owned video-sharing service said it was expanding its policies on hate and harassment “to prohibit content that targets an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify

A US judge in San Francisco on Thursday said she was “not inclined” to reverse her decision blocking the government from barring Apple and Alphabet’s Google from offering WeChat for download in US app stores. US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said at a hearing that she did not think a new filing by the Justice

The Centre Thursday told the Supreme Court that proceedings of the Delhi Assembly’s Peace and Harmony committee, which has summoned Facebook India VP and MD Ajit Mohan to appear as a witness in connection with the north-east Delhi riots, is “without jurisdiction” as the issue pertained to law and order. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted

Facebook’s Instagram has agreed measures to crack down on hidden advertising by so-called influencers on its photo and video platform, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Friday. Influencers with thousands of followers can earn large fees from companies to promotes a product on Instagram. In what the CMA described as an important behaviour

Twitter on Friday confirmed it reversed its decision to block links to a New York Post article about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, despite reaffirming the ban late on Thursday. Republicans who had decried Twitter’s earlier actions posted the story freely on the site. “You can now share the bombshell story Big Tech didn’t

Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday the agency will move forward to set new rules to clarify the meaning of a key legal protection for social media companies. The announcement came as Republicans expressed anger over Twitter decision to bar sharing a New York Post story about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son. US President

OnePlus phones will no longer come with pre-installed Facebook-owned apps and services, as per a report. OnePlus had received criticism when it started pre-installing Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other Facebook services on its phones a few months ago. A spokesperson for the company confirmed that starting from the recently launched OnePlus 8T, the phones will

US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign’s Twitter account was briefly restricted on Thursday, causing an outcry from Republican lawmakers who accused social media companies of acting like “speech police” and vowing to hold Twitter responsible. Twitter temporarily blocked the @TeamTrump account from sending tweets after it posted a video about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s

US President Donald Trump rebuked Facebook and Twitter Wednesday for blocking links to a New York Post article purporting to expose corrupt dealings by election rival Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine. The newspaper said it had obtained a computer abandoned by Hunter Biden that implicated his father in his Ukraine business affairs.  The

Twitter suffered from cybersecurity shortfalls that enabled a “simple” hack attributed to a Florida teenager to take over the accounts of several of the world’s most famous people in July, according to a report released on Wednesday. The report by New York’s Department of Financial Services recommended that the largest social media companies be deemed

A US appeals court on Wednesday agreed to fast-track a Justice Department appeal of a ruling blocking the government from banning new TikTok downloads from US app stores. US District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington issued a preliminary injunction on September 27 that barred the US Commerce Department from ordering Apple and Alphabet’s Google app stores

Mozilla has released Firefox version 81.0.2 for various platforms. This release fixes an incompatibility issue with Twitter that led to the micro-blogging site not loading for several Firefox users. Loading Twitter on Firefox let to a blank or error page for users. Calling this a ‘known temporary issue,’ Mozilla said that it has been fixed