Social

In the age of a pandemic, digital platforms and social media are fast growing phenomena. The Internet connects over 2.5 billion users worldwide, offering opportunities to young people to connect, communicate, educate, and ultimately expand their horizons. In India, however, several socio-economic disparities along with other divisions, based on gender or race, affect equal access

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that an invitation from Tesla boss Elon Musk for President Vladimir Putin to join him for a chat on social network Clubhouse had come to nothing and that Moscow had not received a response after seeking further details. Musk last month invited Putin to join him for a chat on

India’s conglomerate Reliance Industries has partnered with Facebook, Google, and fintech player Infibeam to set up a national digital payment network, said a report that came out on Saturday, citing unnamed sources. Last year, India’s central bank invited companies to forge new umbrella entities (NUEs) to create a payments network that would rival the system operated

Internet freedom advocates on Friday warned new Indian social media regulations could pose a threat to freedom of expression, after New Delhi announced plans for tough new rules that could force platforms to remove content it deems objectionable. Under the new regulations — unveiled on Thursday and due to come into force in three months

A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million (roughly Rs. 4,780 crores) settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users. US District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6

 TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance has agreed to pay $92 million (roughly Rs. 670 crore) in a settlement to US users who are part of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the video-sharing app failed to get their consent to collect data in violation of a strict Illinois privacy law. The federal lawsuit alleged that TikTok

TikTok received over 100 legal requests for information from Indian law enforcement in the second half of 2020, despite being banned in India since June 30, 2020. In fact, it was the second highest number of requests TikTok got from any country, after only the US, despite not being accessible in the country during this

Twitter seems to have started labelling tweets with its “hacked materials” warning that contain links to news stories based on hacked or leaked documents. The update isn’t brand new as the microblogging network briefly blocked links to a New York Post story in October last year that was allegedly based on the material obtained from

Gab instead of Twitter, MeWe over Facebook, Telegram for messaging and Discord for insiders – banned from mainstream platforms, US conspiracy and supremacist movements, many of which support Donald Trump, have shifted to networks that are more confidential, and harder to regulate. “The most extreme Trump supporters were already on alternative platforms,” said Nick Backovic,

WhatsApp is updating its privacy policy, and that change has landed the world’s leading instant messaging app in controversy. The update – earlier planned for February 8 and was later delayed to May 15 – has already brought enough criticism for WhatsApp as it is changing the way it shares user data through its platform.

WhatsApp is perhaps the most popular app in India, but there’s one useful feature that’s a little hard to find – the ability to make notes to yourself. Other messaging apps like Signal come with this feature, which is helpful for making lists, saving links, and more. WhatsApp is used to share text messages, photos, videos,

Facebook has started blocking sensitive health information that third-party apps had been sharing with the social network in violation of its own rules, said New York officials who investigated the situation. Data fed into a Facebook analytics tool by app makers included medical diagnoses and whether users were pregnant, according to a report shared by

Elon Musk called cash “dumb” when compared to Bitcoin. The Tesla CEO, who’s known for not holding back when it comes to his posts on social media, tweeted on Friday that Bitcoin “is simply a less dumb form of liquidity than cash.” He also suggested that fiat currency (government-issued currency) has “negative real interest” and

Thailand warned users of Clubhouse on Wednesday not to break the law after the audio social media app emerged almost overnight as a platform for discussion of the monarchy, the latest example of the fast-growing app drawing the ire of governments in Asia. Digital minister Puttipong Punnakanta said the Thai authorities were watching Clubhouse users,

Facebook was fined EUR 7 million (roughly Rs. 61 crore) by an Italian watchdog for not complying with a request by the regulator to correct improper commercial practices in the group’s treatment of user data. Facebook was not immediately available for comment. In November 2018, the antitrust body ruled that Facebook had not informed users

Accused by the Trump administration of being a front for the Chinese government, TikTok’s advertisement business looked bleak last July. Big brands backed off on spending even as TikTok executives offered refunds to advertisers in the event the hot social media platform were to be banned from operating in the United States. But after it

The Bank of Italy said on Monday a set of experimental indicators it created from the content of millions of tweets accurately tracked consumer mood on price, offering scope for a powerful new monetary policy tool. The effort comes as economists and policy-makers around the world increasingly turn to social media and other unconventional sources

One of the most popular features of WhatsApp is the ability to send stickers. If you have migrated to Signal have after WhatsApp’s privacy policy changes, you might have been taken aback by the sparsity of default sticker packs. So here’s a quick guide to downloading some extra stickers and even creating some of your

The US audio-only social media app Clubhouse said it is reviewing its data protection practices after a report by the Stanford Internet Observatory said it contained security flaws that left users’ data vulnerable to access by the Chinese government. The app said in a response to the study, published by the research group at Stanford

Leher, the social media app that launched in 2018, has started gaining attention among Indian users. It has been considered as an Indian alternative to audio-only chat app Clubhouse that recently gained popularity in the tech industry globally — thanks to its usage by eminent personalities including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Facebook co-founder Mark

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said social-media services like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube need clearer laws and rules to govern whether controversial accounts, like former US President Donald Trump’s, have a place on their services, rather than being asked to make free-speech decisions themselves. “Unilateral action by individual companies in democracies like ours is

Canadian e-commerce company Shopify said on Tuesday it would expand its payment option, “Shop Pay,” to all users choosing to sell on Facebook and Instagram. The move marks the first time the feature will be available outside Shopify’s platform and will help the company tap into the rise of shopping through social media platforms during

Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday tweeted about joining homegrown Twitter alternative Koo. The new development comes in the midst of a tussle between the government and Twitter over content censorship during the ongoing farmers’ protest in India. Launched in March last year, Koo is a Twitter-like microblogging experience in Indian languages. The app won

WhatsApp is reportedly testing a feature that will allow users to mute a video before sending it to a contact. Simply dubbed as Mute videos, this feature is being rolled out to WhatsApp beta users who will likely need to be on the latest version of the beta – 2.21.3.13. Releasing a feature to the

Moving from one instant messenger to another is like shifting houses. It’s a total pain, a lot of times you lose things and you also have to start afresh. If you feel the same way, Telegram has a new feature — the ability to import chats from WhatsApp. The steps are very simple and here’s

Myanmar’s junta extended a social media blockade to Twitter and Instagram on Saturday in the face of a growing protest movement against the coup that ousted elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and halted a transition to democracy. Days after a temporary blockade on Facebook, authorities ordered internet providers to enforce the latest ban “until

Cryptocurrency Dogecoin surged more than 50 percent on Thursday after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted his support for it, two days after he said he was to take a break from Twitter “for a while”. Dogecoin jumped to $0.05798 (roughly Rs. 4) according to data on blockchain and cryptocurrency website Coindesk. Musk first tweeted “Doge”

Facebook turns 17 today, February 4, and is celebrating its annual milestone “Friends Day” with a custom animation wordmark that speaks of friendship and inclusion. The animation shows a woman wearing a headscarf and a young boy connecting via Facebook and exchanging messages, loaded with friendly emoji, to show the length and breadth of the

Facebook Messenger is coming to Oculus Quest headsets this week, the company has announced. Users who have logged into Oculus Quest and Quest 2 using their Facebook accounts can use Messenger to chat with their friends even if the person on the other side does not have a Virtual Reality (VR) headset. You can type

Offline messaging app Bridgefy said it was downloaded more than 600,000 times in a few hours in Myanmar, after the country’s military seized power on Monday and temporarily disrupted Internet traffic. The Mexico-based startup, which gained popularity during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests in 2020, tweeted that it hoped people in Myanmar would find its app