Page 7 - Social Media Apps

Meta to cut 5% of staff, focusing on performance-based terminations

Altogether, Meta expects its headcount to be down 10 per cent by the end of the current performance cycle. That total includes an additional 5 per cent attrition from last year

Users flock to Chinese apps like Xiaohongshu amid TikTok ban risk

Familiar to Chinese who use the service not just as a repository for travel and pet videos but also a live online marketplace, its rise in the US took many in the industry by surprise

Zuckerberg reveals US govt made Facebook censor content on Covid vaccine

Referring to the investigation and committee set up to look into the government censorship, Mark Zuckerberg said, 'We produced all these documents and it's all in the public domain'

Brazil issues 72-hr deadline to Meta over content fact-checking practices

Attorney General's Office in Brazil gave Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, 72 hours to explain its decision to discontinue its data verification program earlier this week

Social media opened avenues to verify info, strengthened democracy: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said social media has strengthened democracy by opening up ways to verify information which earlier was available from a handful of sources with little alternatives. In an interaction with Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath, Modi said earlier there were very few persons who used to report on events and their version was considered as the truth. "You were trapped as there was no opportunity to seek verification. But, today you have an alternative to verify information on different platforms. Everything is available on your mobile phone," Modi said. "If you pay little attention, you can find out the truth. This is the reason that social media can strengthen democracy," he said. The prime minister said youngsters have the tendency to verify information on social media before believing anything as the truth. Modi said he was amazed to see the amount of interest the youngsters have shown in developments in the space sector. "Chandrayaan's success has created a

Meta to let some FB users view eBay listings as way to resolve EU charges

Meta said Wednesday that it will allow some Facebook users to view eBay listings on its Marketplace service, as it tries out a possible way to resolve European Union charges of anticompetitive behaviour that the bloc levelled last year. The social media company said it's launching a test that will let Facebook users in Germany, France and the US browse eBay listings directly on its Marketplace online classifieds service but complete the transaction on eBay. Meta is carrying out the trial after Brussels slapped the company in November with a penalty of nearly 800 million euros ($824 million) for what it called abusive practices involving Marketplace. European Union antitrust enforcers accused Meta of illegally shutting out competition by tying Marketplace to its social network and automatically exposing Facebook users to Marketplace whether or not they wanted it. They also accused Meta of gaining an unfair advantage through ad-related data. While we disagree with and continue to app

Meta's fact-checking reversal lets Mark Zuckerberg drop the charade

Zuckerberg said he would now work on issues of free speech with Trump, who, just four years ago, was considered too dangerous even to be a Meta user

'Digital timepass' is India's 'lying flat': How boredom became a business?

In smaller Indian cities and towns, where opportunities for advancement are few and dwindling, the nounis emerging as something of a social and cultural phenomenon

Cyber frauds: WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram are top targets of scammers

In the first three months of 2024, there were a total of 43,797 complaints of cyber fraud related to WhatsApp, 22,680 against Telegram, and 19,800 regarding Instagram

Telegram turns profitable for first time after paying down $2 billion debt

White-supremacist groups escalated efforts in the run-up to the US election to recruit new members over Telegram, where they've amplified racist conspiracies while posing as men-only fight clubs

Elon Musk owned X increases price of premium-plus plan to pay creators

X offers premium-plus subscribers ad-free browsing and features such as expanded access to the Grok AI chatbot and Radar, which offers real-time analytics on emerging trends through keyword tracking

Albania to shut down TikTok for a year over violence among children

Albania's prime minister said on Saturday the government will shut down the video service TikTok for one year, blaming it for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children. Albanian authorities held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents following the stabbing death of a teenager in mid-November by another teen after a quarrel that started on TikTok. Prime Minister Edi Rama, speaking at a meeting with teachers and parents, said TikTok "would be fully closed for all.... There will be no TikTok in the Republic of Albania". Rama said the shutdown would begin sometime next year. It was not immediately clear if TikTok has a contact in Albania. TikTok, in an email response on Saturday to a request for comment, asked for "urgent clarity from the Albanian government" on the case of the stabbed teenager. The company said it had "found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident w

Apple hits out at Meta platforms' numerous interoperability requests

Under the European Union's landmark Digital Markets Act that took effect last year, Apple must allow rivals and app developers to inter-operate with its own services

Facebook, Instagram down for thousands of users, Downdetector shows

WhatsApp, Meta's messaging application, was also down for more than 12,000 users, according to Downdetector.com

Meta donates $1 mn to Trump's inaugural fund to build positive relation

Meta owns Facebook and Instagram, platforms that Trump used heavily during his first term until his accounts were suspended following the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol

Here's why older people are among the biggest users of social media

Facebook remains the most popular among this demographic, serving as a gateway to reconnect with family and long-lost friends

Instagram introduces 'trial reels' feature: What it is, how it works, more

Trial reels allow creators to experiment with content by sharing reels with non-followers first, said Instagram

TikTok's Canada unit seeks judicial review of govt's shutdown orders

Chinese-owned social media app requested the court set aside a government order requiring TikTok to wind-up its business in Canada, a filing dated Dec 5 showed

President-elect Trump wants Truth Social deal lawsuit to be put on hold

Trump has sought to have criminal cases against him thrown out in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in July that former presidents are immune for some official actions taken while in office

Federal appeals court upholds law requiring sale or ban of TikTok in US

A federal appeals court panel on Friday unanimously upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the US. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied TikTok's petition to overturn the law which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January and rebuffed the company's challenge of the statute, which it argued had ran afoul of the First Amendment. The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States, said the court's opinion, which was written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg. Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States. TikTok and ByteDance another plaintiff in the lawsuit are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, though its unclear whethe