Social

The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan poses a new challenge for big US tech companies on handling content created by a group considered to be terrorists by some world governments. Social media giant Facebook confirmed on Monday that it designates the Taliban a terrorist group and bans it and content supporting it from its platforms. But

American micro-blogging and social networking service Twitter has halted its account verification programme, saying that it needs to work on the application and review process that lets people into the blue check mark club. As per The Verge, this change, where Twitter will not be letting new people apply for verification, is coming after the

After Twitter, apex child rights body NCPCR on Friday asked Facebook to take action against the Instagram profile of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for posting a photo of the family of the nine-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered in southwest Delhi, saying it violated the law. On August 4, the National Commission for

Google Meet is getting a bunch of new features for its free and Workspace users that are designed to make it easier to control meetings. The search giant mentioned that the new features are some of the highly requested features by its users. They include the ability to add up to 25 co-hosts per meeting,

Instagram is announcing a set of new features that are aimed to help protect people from abuse on its platform. The Facebook-owned social media platform will give its users the ability to limit comments and direct messages (DM) during spikes of increased attention. It will also give stronger warnings when people try to post offensive

TikTok surpassed Facebook to become the most downloaded app in the world in 2020, according to business journal Nikkei Asia, citing a global survey of app downloads. The journal said that the Chinese short-video app topped the list of social media providers for the first time since the study was first conducted in 2018. TikTok

Facebook already asks for your thoughts. Now it wants your prayers. The social media giant has rolled out a new prayer request feature, a tool embraced by some religious leaders as a cutting-edge way to engage the faithful online. Others are eyeing it warily as they weigh its usefulness against the privacy and security concerns

Beijing prosecutors initiated a civil public-interest lawsuit against a Tencent subsidiary on Friday, saying the “youth mode” on the company’s popular social messaging app WeChat does not comply with laws protecting minors. The lawsuit was initiated by Beijing’s Haidian District People’s Procuratorate against Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems, according to a filing posted on JCRB.com, a

Elaine Thompson-Herah — the Jamaican sprinter who created history by winning gold in both 100m and 200m event at two consecutive Summer Olympics (2016 Rio de Janeiro and 2020 Tokyo) — was temporarily blocked from posting anything on Instagram on Tuesday afternoon. The ‘fastest woman alive’ had shared a video of her Olympic races after

The US Federal Trade Commission criticised Facebook on Thursday for making “misleading claims” to explain why it had disabled the accounts of researchers studying political advertisements on the social media platform. Facebook said on Tuesday it had cut off the personal accounts and access of the New York University researchers because of concerns about other users’

Facebook has started rolling out a streamlined settings page for mobile users that essentially removes some clutter and reduces the number of categories available. The purpose of the latest update is to make it easier for users to find the settings they need. As a result of the changes being implemented at the server side,

WhatsApp for iPhone now lets you send photos and videos that can only be viewed once by recipients. The new change is currently rolling out to the iPhone users through a new WhatsApp version that is available for download through the App Store. The update also changes the style of in-app message notifications. WhatsApp has

WhatsApp is working on enabling end-to-end encryption for local backups, according to a report. The new development is said to first arrive in a beta build of WhatsApp for Android. However, the feature has not yet been confirmed by the messaging app maker itself. Alongside enhancing security of its local backups, WhatsApp is reportedly working

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is likely to meet representatives of social media firms this month, sources said on Monday. This comes amid social media giant Twitter’s involvement in a stand-off with the Indian government for the past several months over the new amendments in the country’s new Information Technology laws with the micro-blogging platform

Russia on Friday launched administrative proceedings against Facebook’s WhatsApp for what it said was a failure to localise data of Russian users on Russian territory, the Interfax news agency reported. There was no immediate comment from Facebook. A day earlier, a Russian court fined Alphabet’s Google 3 million roubles for violating personal data legislation and

Snapchat has introduced a set of new lenses or filters to celebrate Friendship Day 2021. The exciting new lenses will allow users to share virtual hugs, fun moments, and other expressions with their friends on the platform. The lenses are designed for friends to express themselves with ease and create memorable moments together. Snapchatters can

Twitter is rolling out another update to make Twitter Spaces easier to discover and share. The update will allow users to directly tweet from a Live Space on Android and iOS devices. While users could earlier publish a tweet while listening to a conversation on Spaces, the new tweet composer directly in the Space makes

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the next hardware product from the company will be smart glasses being developed in collaboration with Ray-Ban owner Essilor Luxottica. The glasses are said to have the iconic frames that Ray-Ban is famous for, integrated with AR features. Zuckerberg announced this during the company’s Q2 2021 earnings call.