Social

Facebook moderators temporarily removed a post by the Anne Frank Center which was seeking to raise awareness about the Holocaust, after the company was unable to distinguish between historical genocide and child nudity. The post included an archive photograph of Jewish children who had been stripped and starved by Nazi Germany. Between 1941 and 1945

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg will testify in an open hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee next week, the committee’s chairman has confirmed. Larry Page, chief executive of Google parent company Alphabet, was also invited but has not confirmed his attendance, a committee spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. Sen.

A British cave diving expert who helped save the young Thai football team that got trapped in caves this summer is preparing a legal action against Elon Musk for making “false and defamatory statements”, TechCrunch has confirmed. BuzzFeed reported the development earlier, after obtaining a letter sent to Musk’s home on August 6 by a

Facebook says it has corrected the issue of users’ deleted posts, which had affected those who had previously cross-posted their Tweets to their Facebook profile – a feature that’s no longer supported. Earlier this month, Facebook locked down its API to prevent third-party apps from being able to post to profiles as the logged-in user,

Facebook Watch, the social network’s home to original video content and answer to YouTube, is now becoming available worldwide. The Watch tab had first launched last August, only in the U.S., and now touts over 50 million monthly viewers who watch at least a minute of video within Watch. Since the beginning of the year,

Facebook users are complaining the company has removed the cross-posted Tweets they had published to their profiles as Facebook updates. The posts’ removal took place following the recent API change that prevented Twitter users from continuing to automatically publish their Tweets to Facebook. According to the affected parties, both the Facebook posts themselves, as well

Instagram is at last quenching the thirst of its thirsty, thirsty unverified users. The company just introduced a trio of new features designed to make Instagram a generally safer and more authentic place to hang out (third-party 2FA — enable it!) and for the first time the platform now offers users a straightforward way to

In Facebook’s latest high profile departure, corporate communications lead Rachel Whetstone will leave for a top PR role at Netflix. Whetstone joined Facebook about a year ago after leaving a similar position running communications at Uber during some of the company’s most fraught days. Prior to Uber, Whetstone worked for Google as its SVP of

Google today is expanding YouTube’s set of “digital wellbeing” tools, with an added feature that will calculate how much you’re watching videos. The idea is that this will allow users to take better control over their viewing behavior and place limits on their time spent on YouTube by way of other app features that remind

So much for summer Fridays. Yesterday, BuzzFeed reported that a dozen tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Snapchat, would meet at Twitter headquarters on Friday to discuss election security. For two of them, that wasn’t the only meeting in the books. In what appears to be a separate event on Friday, Facebook and Microsoft

Here is a strange little online community to puzzle at. Amazon has developed an unnerving, Stepford-like presence on Twitter in the form of several accounts of definitely real on-the-floor workers who regurgitate talking points and assure the world that all is right in the company’s infamously punishing warehouse jobs. After Flamboyant Shoes Guy called out

Amidst Facebook’s biggest branding crisis, it’s just hired a veteran CMO formerly of Pepsi and Visa to boost the social network’s external image and cross-promote features inside its apps. Antonio Lucio today announced he’ll be leaving his role as HP’s CMO after three years to take that post at Facebook starting September 4th. He’s replacing

Ron Wyden Contributor Ron Wyden (D-OR) has served in the United States Senate since 1996. He previously served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1996. I wrote the law that allows sites to be unfettered free speech marketplaces. I wrote that same law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to

Facebook announced today that it had banned the app myPersonality for improper data controls and suspended hundreds more. So far this is only the second app to be banned as a result of the company’s large-scale audit begun in March; but as myPersonality hasn’t been active since 2012, and was to all appearances a legitimate

Facebook’s vice president of partnerships Dan Rose will leave the company early next year. Rose announced the move on his public Facebook page, indicating that he would stay on through Mobile World Congress in February. During his long tenure at the company, Rose oversaw Facebook’s transformation into a media giant, steering it toward partnerships with

Facebook has removed hundreds of accounts and pages for what it calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” generally networks of ostensibly independent outlets that were in fact controlled centrally by Russia and Iran. Some of these accounts were identified as much as a year ago. In a post by the company’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher,

Facebook has been a bit slow to adopt the voice computing revolution. It has no voice assistant, its smart speaker is still in development, and some apps like Instagram aren’t full equipped for audio communication. But much of that is set to change judging by experiments discovered in Facebook’s code, plus new patent filings. Developing

Jack Dorsey is hedging his bets. In an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter, the beard-rocking CEO said Twitter is reluctant to commit to a timetable for enacting policies aimed at curbing heated political rhetoric on the site. The executive’s lukewarm comments reflect an embattled social network that has been the brunt of criticism from both

Facebook’s role in the opioid crisis could become another scandal following yesterday’s release of harrowing new statistics from the Center for Disease Control. It estimated there were nearly 30,000 synthetic opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2017, up from roughly 20,000 the year before. When recreational drugs like Xanax and OxyContin are adulterated with

Analytics company Crimson Hexagon says Facebook has reinstated its data access to Facebook and Instagram. That access was suspended last month, with Facebook saying it was investigating whether the company had violated any of its data use policies. (The social network, of course, has been dealing with the fallout from a separate controversy over user

It’s hard to be a fan of Twitter right now. The company is sticking up for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, when nearly all other platforms have given him the boot, it’s overrun with bots, and now it’s breaking users’ favorite third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Twitterific by shutting off APIs these apps relied on.

Coinbase wants to be Facebook Connect for crypto. The blockchain giant plans to develop ‘Login with Coinbase’ or a similar identity platform for decentralized app developers to make it much easier for users to sign up and connect their crypto wallets. To fuel that platform, today Coinbase announced it has acquired Distributed Systems, a startup

Twitter has finally taken action against Infowars creator Alex Jones, but it isn’t what you might think. While Apple, Facebook, Google/YouTube, Spotify and many others have removed Jones and his conspiracy-peddling organization Infowars from their platforms, Twitter has remained unmoved with its claim that Jones hasn’t violated rules on its platform. That was helped in

Twitter announced this afternoon it will begin booting accounts off its service from those who have tried to evade their account suspension. The company says that the accounts in question are users who have been previously suspended on Twitter for their abusive behavior, or for trying to evade a prior suspension. These bad actors have

Zombie-like passive consumption of static video is both unhealthy for viewers and undifferentiated for the tech giants that power it. That’s set Facebook on a mission to make video interactive, full of conversation with broadcasters and fellow viewers. It’s racing against Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat to become where people watch together and don’t feel

In recent years, Airbnb has been working to expand its business beyond accommodations, by becoming a more robust travel companion with features like guidebooks, suggested experiences, and full-service hospitality for high-end travelers with its still invite-only Airbnb Beyond, for example. Now the company is preparing even more trip-planning features, including support for adding co-travelers to

Twitter announced today its Twitter Lite app is expanding to 21 more countries, which makes the data-saving app available to more than 45 countries in total. The app was introduced last year with the goal of bringing in more users from emerging markets to Twitter. Similar to other data-saving apps, like Facebook Lite or YouTube

Facebook is making it easier for kids to add their friends on its under-13 chat app, Messenger Kids. Starting today, the company is rolling out a new feature that will allow kids to request parents’ approval of new contacts. To use the feature, parents will turn on a setting that creates a four-word passphrase that’s

Twitter may have suspended the Proud Boys and their controversial leader Gavin McInnes, but it was never their platform of choice. The Proud Boys, a self described “Western chauvinist” organization that often flirts with more hard-line groups of the far right, runs an elaborate network of recruiting pages on Facebook to attract and initiate members.

Facebook today announced it’s implementing a new measure to secure Facebook Pages with large U.S. followings in order to make it harder for people to administer a Page using a “fake or compromised account.” Beginning with those that have large U.S. followings, some Facebook Pages will now have to go through a “Page Publishing Authorization”