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Snapchat’s redesign separates friends' posts from media content
Snapchat's major redesign is here and it's all about separating your relationships from content. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wrote on Axios today that Snapchat has always been primarily geared towards conversing with friends and with the new layout, Snapchat will make that even easier. "With the upcoming redesign of Snapchat, we are separating the social from the media, and taking an important step forward towards strengthening our relationships with our friends and our relationships with the media," he wrote.
Snapchat CEO blames rival social networks for fake news
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has decried rival social media firms for propagating fake news and damaging the media industry, saying that the "smart" alternative is, you guessed it, Snapchat. "The personalized newsfeed revolutionized the way people share and consume content," he wrote on Axios. "But let's be honest: this came at a huge cost to facts, our minds and the entire media industry."
Twitter tries to fix verification of people 'we in no way endorse'
Sure, being verified on social media isn't always as good as people think, but after a recent blowup, Twitter says it's addressing the "perception" of endorsement a blue checkmark confers. While the network has notably verified the accounts of self-proclaimed white supremacists and Nazis, it appears to be reversing that policy. One item on the new list of reasons an account can lose verification cites promoting hate against certain races/nationality or supporting groups that do. Loss of verified status Twitter reserves the right to remove verification at any time without notice. Reasons for removal may reflect behaviors on and off Twitter that include: Intentionally misleading people on Twitter by changing one's display name or bio. Promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Supporting organizations or individuals that promote the above. Inciting or engaging in harassment of others. Violence and dangerous behavior Directly or indirectly threatening or encouraging any form of physical violence against an individual or any group of people, including threatening or promoting terrorism Violent, gruesome, shocking, or disturbing imagery Self-harm, suicide Engaging in activity on Twitter that violates the Twitter Rules.
30 governments are interfering with democracy online
Political mudslinging is a concept as old as politics itself, but in recent years it's found its way off the podium and onto the internet, and a new report now shows the extent of the problem. According to findings from Freedom House, governments in no less than 30 countries are now "mass producing their own content to distort the digital landscape in their favor". Furthermore, these manipulation efforts may have affected elections taking place in 18 countries.
Chinese firm nabs social video app Musical.ly for as much as $1 billion
The popular teen lip-syncing app Musical.ly has been purchased by Chinese firm Bytedance -- the company behind China's major news aggregating service Jinri Toutiao. The details of the deal haven't been disclosed but sources told the Wall Street Journal that the app sold for somewhere between $800 million and $1 billion.
Twitter expands display name length to 50 characters
If you've always wanted to use all your names, aliases, titles and suffixes on Twitter, now's your time to shine. The social network now supports display names up to 50 characters in length. It would've been better if the feature came out last Halloween so you could've used that awesome but lengthy spooky name you wanted to use. However, rolling out support for 280-character tweets seemed to be more important to Twitter, so we got that first instead.
Facebook explains bizarre revenge porn prevention program
When Facebook revealed its experimental porn prevention program in Australia, it raised a lot of eyebrows. After all, you'll first need to upload your sensitive images if you don't want them to get posted by anybody else. Now, Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis has defended the test feature in a post that also explains how it will work in detail. She clarified that it's "completely voluntary" and that Facebook will still remove any intimate images you report, hash them and prevent them from being uploaded again. This method is merely an "emergency option" for people who want to proactively prevent their photos from being shared.
Sean Parker says Facebook ‘exploits’ human psychology
Napster cofounder Sean Parker appears to have some regrets about the role he played in bringing social media to the world. Before speaking at an Axios event yesterday, he told reporters that he was now "something of a conscientious objector" on social media, according to Axios, and he shared a few thoughts on how he and others designed sites like Facebook to suck people in.
Twitter launches $99 subscription tool to promote tweets
Twitter is making it easier for small businesses and power users to give their tweets a boost. The social network has officially launched its first ad subscription tool called "Promote Mode" as a public beta. Twitter started testing the always-on mode as an invite-only feature in July, giving users access to a feature that can automatically blast their tweets and profiles into strangers' (aka non-followers') timelines. Now that it's available to the public, more people who don't have the means, the know-how or the time to launch ad campaigns of their own can pay $99 per month for the service.
Instagram's latest Stories feature is all about flashbacks
While Snapchat struggles to nab more users, Instagram is steaming ahead the only way it knows how: By copying Snapchat. The Facebook-owned service is adding a feature to its (vastly more popular) take on Stories that's all about throwbacks. The update essentially allows you to add pics and videos to your Story that are more than 24 hours old -- a function that was oddly amiss in the past. That way, the entire camera roll is available for your disappearing #FlashbackFridays posts.
Facebook borrows from Twitter this time with Polls feature
Polls check a lot of social media manager boxes like "engagement," "feedback" and "traffic lift." With all those buzzwords, it's truly a wonder that Facebook hadn't yet pilfered, I mean borrowed, the idea from poll-crazy rival Twitter. Expect to see them everywhere in your feeds from now on, however, as Facebook has launched Polls globally on iOS, Android and the web. Starting today, you'll be add surveys on any silly topic you like and add GIFs and photos to make them pop.
Social media's biggest stars are launching a streaming service
Three of the biggest social media stars (with a combined 70 million followers across platforms) are launching their own video streaming service, reports Variety. Dubbed "Zeus," the upcoming VOD outlet is the brainchild of Andrew "King Bach" Bachelor (who was Vine's most-followed personality, before the video-looping app went kaput), along with fellow digital celebs Amanda Cerny, and DeStorm Power.
Facebook pressured to notify users exposed to Russian propaganda
Facebook is facing pressure from lawmakers, tech analysts and even ordinary users to tell people if they were served Russian-linked propaganda during the 2016 US election period. According to Reuters, Democratic Senator Jack Reed asked during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing the social network attended: "Do you feel an obligation... to notify those people who have accessed [those deceptive foreign government posts]? And can you do that? And shouldn't you do that?" Time Well Spent, an organization critical of ad-supported social media, also pointed out that users who saw those posts might not believe they were manipulated unless Facebook itself tells them.
SEC warns celebs about legal dangers of bitcoin endorsements
When celebrities endorse things on social media, a lot of people tend to take their word for it. Now that some of them have also begun endorsing a controversial means of crowdfunding called "initial coin offering" or ICO, which was recently banned in China and South Korea, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has had to step in with a warning. Since ICOs are an unregulated means to raise money using cryptocurrencies, people could use them to sell products that don't exist or to entice investors to sink their money into projects that will never materialize. That's why SEC has decided to be on the lookout for celebrity ICO endorsements to protect potential investors.
Instagram now supports three right-to-left languages
You can post and comment in more than 24 different languages via Instagram already, but they've all been left-to-right languages like English. Instagram just announced that it has added Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi languages -- all of which read right to left. The three languages will be available on the Android version of Instagram first.
Twitter explains why it takes time to roll out new safety rules
Twitter has been trying to stamp out harassment, violence and abuse on its platform for years, but it's nowhere near achieving that goal. Since its administrators regularly get a lot of flak for not moving fast enough to make the website safer, Twitter has published a post explaining why it takes time to conjure up and roll out new policy changes. The company says creating new rules "requires in-depth research around trends in online behavior, developing language that sets expectations around what's allowed, and reviewer guidelines that can be enforced across millions of Tweets."
Does social media threaten the illusion of news neutrality?
For journalists, social media can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to share their opinion on a wide range of matters, from sports to politics. But at the same time, they have to remember to exercise caution, because whatever they say can be taken out of context and have major implications on the publications they work for. If a reader who follows your tweets or Facebook posts doesn't agree with you, that can motivate them to claim your entire newsroom is biased.
Now Twitter's quest to become a 'safer' place has a schedule
You no longer have to wonder when you'll see Twitter implement the new rules promised by its CEO and outlined in that leaked email. The social network has released a "Safety Calendar," which details when it will roll out a series of new rules to make the platform a safer place. As the internal email said, the company plans to crack down on hate and violence on its website: on November 3rd, it promises to start suspending accounts of "organizations that use violence to advance their cause."
Facebook and Google reportedly helped set up anti-Muslim election ads (updated)
It looks like Russia wasn't the only one buying ads online to help sway the election last year. Facebook and Google worked closely with conservative non-profit Secure America Now and advertising firm Harris Media on ad campaigns targeting swing state voters with anti-Muslim and anti-refugee messages, and linking Democratic candidates to terrorists, according to a report from Bloomberg. "Unlike Russian efforts to secretly influence the 2016 election via social media, this American-led campaign was aided by direct collaboration with employees of Facebook and Google," the publication says.
UK collected social media data as part of its mass surveillance
It's no secret that the UK has been engaging in mass surveillance over the past few years. Since Edward Snowden's leaks revealed the extent of their program, the UK's security and intelligence organization GCHQ has been under fire for possible violation of privacy laws, as well as the possibility that too much data had compromised the organization's ability to analyze it fully. Now, Privacy International, a privacy rights group, claims to have documents that show that GCHQ has been collecting social media information on millions of people.