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"The company behind Whisper, the social media app that promises users anonymity and claims to be "the safest place on the internet", is tracking the location of its users, including some who have specifically asked not to be followed. The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users - including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services - will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives."

"Exposure to false and inflammatory content is remarkably low, with just 1% of Twitter users accounting for 80% of exposure to dubious websites during the 2016 U.S. election. This is heavily concentrated among a small fringe of users actively seeking it out. Examples: 6.3% of YouTube users were responsible for 79.8% of exposure to extremist channels from July to December 2020, 85% of vaccine-sceptical content was consumed by less than 1% of US citizens in the 2016-2019 period. Conventional wisdom blames platform algorithms for spreading misinformation. However, evidence suggests user preferences play an outsized role. For instance, a mere 0.04% of YouTube's algorithmic recommendations directed users to extremist content. It's tempting to draw a straight line between social media usage and societal ills. But studies rigorously designed to untangle cause and effect often come up short. "

60% of TikTok users and 46% of Instagram users say they feel worse off because of these platforms. 57% and 58% of college students (users and non-users) prefer to live in a world without TikTok and Instagram, respectively. Users would even pay money to see them disappear-$24 on average to eliminate TikTok and $6 to eliminate Instagram.

"Some time in the next few months, iPhone users will be greeted by a message - not from Facebook, but from Apple - asking them if they will allow the Facebook app to collect their data. If users refuse, Apple will prevent Facebook from doing so. Facebook's attempt to vilify Apple looks like sour grapes Read more A similar message from Apple will pop up, related to any app that collects data on users for advertising purposes. Facebook says it will preempt the change by rolling out a pop-up screen over the coming weeks and months, making a plea to users to stay opted in. "Agreeing to these prompts doesn't result in Facebook collecting new types of data; it just means that Facebook can continue to give people better experiences," a Facebook spokeswoman said."

"Lizzo's comments came just a week after Instagram unveiled a new feature that allows users to limit comments and DM requests during "spikes of increased attention". The feature, which users can opt in or out of, automatically hides comments from accounts that don't follow the user or only recently followed the user."

"Meta has apologised after inserting the word "terrorist" into the profile bios of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was a bug in auto-translation. The issue, which was first reported by 404media, affected users with the word "Palestinian" written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji and the word "alhamdulillah" written in Arabic. When auto-translated to English the phrase read: "Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom." TikTok user YtKingKhan posted earlier this week about the issue, noting that different combinations still translated to "terrorist"."

" Meta apologises over flood of gore, violence and dead bodies on Instagram Users of Reels report feeds dominated by violent and graphic footage after apparent algorithm malfunction Dan Milmo Global technology editor Fri 28 Feb 2025 15.01 GMT Share Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has apologised after Instagram users were subjected to a flood of violence, gore, animal abuse and dead bodies on their Reels feeds. Users reported the footage after an apparent malfunction in Instagram's algorithm, which curates what people see on the app. Reels is a feature on the social media platform that allows users to share short videos, similar to TikTok."

"If you were doubting how important recommender systems are to social media companies, a lawsuit filed last week against Meta makes it crystal clear. At the heart of this legal battle is a fundamental question: Shouldn't users have the power to decide what they do and don't see online? The lawsuit filed by Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of Professor Ethan Zuckerman directly challenges how social media feeds are curated. Professor Zuckerman's proposed browser extension, 'Unfollow Everything 2.0,' would enable Facebook users to disengage from the algorithmically driven content that dominates their feeds, by allowing them to unfollow friends, pages and groups en masse, thus resetting their digital interactions on their terms."

"Sophisticated scams fueled by artificial intelligence are threatening the security of billions of Gmail users. security warning issued As AI-powered phone calls mimicking human voices have become incredibly realistic, a new report from Forbes warned that the email service's 2.5 billion users could be targeted by "malicious" actors that are employing AI to dupe customers into handing over credentials."

"Last month, Parsley presented Depict, a crowd-sourced image description tool that could change the experience of the browsing the web for the blind and visually impaired. The tool works in two parts-a browser extension for blind users that provides user-created descriptions of images around the Internet, and a website for sighted users to provide those requested descriptions."

"There are three big challenges in the Internet space that all countries must face in the near future. China's approach to the challenges will impact not only Chinese Internet users, but potentially all Internet users. What interface follows the smart hone, whether it be AR-enabled glasses, foldable screens, or wearable projectors, will not only be influenced by China's substantial Internet-using population, but also by their manufacturing. Privacy, as it relates to online information collecting and sale, has consequences for broader community standards, and there is no one-size fits all approach to this issue. China must engage their own ethicists, community, government and technologists to develop a solution that works for China. Finally, globalization. Most of China's internet success has been within China, but as China begins to consider how it might attract users from outside its borders, it will need to consider dialing back the protections that have held foreign Internet companies at bay."

"Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the accidental death of a 10-year-old girl who allegedly took part in a "blackout challenge" on the video-sharing network TikTok. The probe came as Italy announced it had temporarily blocked access to TikTok for users whose age could not be proved definitively. According to TikTok's terms and conditions, users must be at least 13 years old."

"Facebook has blocked and in some cases banned users who tried to share a Guardian article about the site incorrectly blocking an image of Aboriginal men in chains. On Saturday, Guardian Australia reported that Facebook had apologised for incorrectly preventing an Australian user from sharing the photo from the 1890s."

"Service providers, including many ORG members, will be required to do this through the imposition of a "duty of care" - a concept awkwardly borrowed from health & safety - which will require them to monitor the integrity of their services not by objective technical standards, but by subjective "codes of practice" on both illegal and legal content. Although the framework has been drawn up with large American social media platforms in mind, it would apply to any site or service with UK users which hosts user-generated content. A blog with comments will be fair game. An app with user reviews will be fair game. "

"According to a report by Sophos, malware and spam are on the rise on social networks such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. In the last year, 57% of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites, an increase of 70.6% compared to last year. Furthermore, 36% of users claim they've been sent malware via social networking sites, which is a rise of 69.8% from last year. On the other hand, CEOs of companies are concerned that their employees' usage of social networks is posing a security risk for their company. Sophos has surveyed more than 500 organizations, discovering that 72% of them think social networks are a danger for their companys, with 60% of them tagging Facebook as the biggest security risk, followed by MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, says that Facebook is the biggest threat because it's the biggest social network out there, but he also places some of the blame on Facebook's own privacy rules. "When Facebook rolled-out its new recommended privacy settings late last year, it was a backwards step, encouraging many users to share their information with everybody on the internet," he says. Interestingly enough (and contrasted to some of the reports we've seen lately), Cluley thinks that simply barring access to Facebook is not the solution. "Social networks can be an essential part of the business mix today," he says, "and the answer is not to bar staff from participating in them but to apply some 'social security' instead.""

"Some Facebook users who recently watched a Daily Mail video depicting Black men reported seeing a label from Facebook asking if they were interested in watching more videos about "primates." The label appeared in bold text under the video, stating "Keep seeing videos about Primates?" next to "Yes" and "Dismiss" buttons that users could click to answer the prompt. It's part of an AI-powered Facebook process that attempts to gather information on users' personal interests in order to deliver relevant content into their News Feed"

"A third of social media users aged between eight and 17 have the online age of an adult because they sign up with a false date of birth, according to new research. The fake age issue means that young users in the UK are at greater risk of being exposed to harmful or adult content, as platforms presume they are older than they in fact are."

"The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew - but never disclosed - it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an "open secret" at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents. In one example, the lawsuit cites an internal email thread in which employees discuss why a 12-year-old girl's four accounts were not deleted following complaints from the girl's mother stating her daughter was 12 years old and requesting the accounts to be taken down. The employees concluded that "the accounts were ignored" in part because representatives of Meta "couldn't tell for sure the user was underage"."

"But do these options make Bluesky a more prosocial experience? Prosocial design is a "set of design patterns, features and processes which foster healthy interactions between individuals and which create the conditions for those interactions to thrive by ensuring individuals' safety, wellbeing and dignity," according to the Prosocial Design Network. Giving users control over their feeds is a step in this direction, but it's not a new concept. The Panotpykon Foundation's Safe by Default briefing advocates for human-centric recommender systems that prioritize conscious user choice and empowerment. They propose features like: Sliders for content preferences (e.g., informative vs. entertaining content), A "hard stop" button to suppress unwanted content, and Prompts for users to define their interests or preferences."

"Three software flaws in Facebook's systems allowed hackers to break into user accounts, including those of the top executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, according to two people familiar with the investigation but not allowed to discuss it publicly. Once in, the attackers could have gained access to apps like Spotify, Instagram and hundreds of others that give users a way to log into their systems through Facebook."