The US judge who stopped a ban on TikTok downloads from kicking in on Monday said that President Donald Trump likely overstepped the law with the attempted move. TikTok had showed that the actions against it “likely exceed the lawful bounds” of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) that was cited to support the
Social
A federal judge on Sunday postponed a Trump administration order that would have banned the popular video sharing app TikTok from US smartphone app stores around midnight. A more comprehensive ban remains scheduled for November, about a week after the presidential election. The judge, Carl Nichols of the US District Court for the District of
A judge was set to rule Sunday on whether to allow a Trump administration ban on downloads of popular video-sharing app TikTok, which is seeking an injunction to prevent what it said could be a devastating blow. US District Judge Carl Nichols has promised to consider on an expedited basis the TikTok request to block
British television naturalist David Attenborough joined Instagram on Thursday at the age of 94, quickly racking up more than one million followers in his first few hours – in record time in fact. The veteran broadcaster, who has enjoyed a stellar 60-year career chronicling the natural world for audiences, used his inaugural post on the
The US Justice Department asked a federal judge in San Francisco early on Friday to allow the government to bar Apple and Alphabet’s Google from offering WeChat for download in US app stores pending an appeal. The filing asked US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler to put on hold her preliminary injunction issued Saturday. That injunction
Can authorities access your WhatsApp account? This question might come to your mind after seeing the news stories that the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) summoned Deepika Padukone and other actors in the drug probe related to the Sushant Singh Rajput death investigation based on WhatsApp chats. The chats were sourced from the mobile phone of talent manager
Reposting a story on Instagram lets you share other peoples’ posts as your own. You can do this for photos and videos in which you’ve been mentioned or not, and in this article we are going to give you two methods that let you do so. Besides telling you how to repost an Instagram story,
Twitter and Zoom were over the weekend spotted to have a racial bias in their visual algorithms. It all started when someone noted how Zoom appeared to be removing the head of people with a darker skin pigmentation when they use a virtual background, while it does not make this move on people having a
Facebook is launching a new initiative this week to encourage Americans to vote in the upcoming presidential election, the latest effort by the social network to prove it is a responsible player on the Internet. The tech titan will kick off Monday a massive campaign encouraging people to visit its virtual voting information centers where
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported a deal in principle that would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States, even as it appeared to conflict with his earlier order for China’s ByteDance to divest the video app. ByteDance was racing to avoid a crackdown on TikTok after the US
Look who is not freaking out. Since July, TikTok users have braced for a threatened ban of the ultra-popular short-form video app in the United States, with some opening accounts on rival platforms and encouraging friends to do the same. Then early on Friday Reuters broke the news that the US government was preparing to block
The US Commerce Department plans to issue an order Friday that will bar people in the United States from downloading Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok starting on September 20, three officials told Reuters. The officials said the ban on new US downloads of TikTok could be still rescinded by President Donald Trump
Facebook is about five to 10 years away from being able to bring to market “true” augmented reality glasses, its chief scientist told Reuters, as the company released plans to launch a first generation product next year. The world’s biggest social media company announced on Wednesday that it was partnering with Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica for
Twitter has removed a tweet by BJP politician T Raja Singh that was posted in September 2017. In the tweet carrying a video, the BJP Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Telangana urged Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and citizens of the country to deport Rohingya Muslim immigrants. The 42-year-old politician also used a hashtag
A sophisticated network of more than a thousand actors attempted to influence the Delhi elections in February by using fake likes to increase engagement on posts, a former Facebook employee said in a memo shared with other employees before leaving the company. Facebook did not disclose this publicly, but the former employee, who wrote a
Facebook said on Monday that its users will now be able to watch videos with their friends online using the social media company’s Messenger app, enabling them to see reactions in real time. The “Watch Together” feature will allow a user to add up to eight people through a video call and up to 50
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he does not plan to extend a deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US business, with the process still mired in uncertainty. Trump has repeatedly said the deadline for the sale of the short video app is September 15, although that was not the date stipulated in either of
A Delhi Assembly panel has issued a notice to Facebook India Vice President and Managing Director Ajit Mohan asking him to appear before it on September 15 in connection with complaints about the social media platform’s alleged deliberate and intentional inaction to contain hateful content in the country. “Summon was issued on the basis of
Facebook is launching a college student-only online space called Facebook Campus that aims to help students connect with fellow classmates. While this feature is being pushed out because most campuses are shifting to partial or full-time remote learning, it also marks the return of Facebook to its roots, as it was initially a colleges-only network.
Facebook may be forced to stop sending data about its European users to the US, in the first major fallout from a recent court ruling that found some trans-Atlantic data transfers don’t protect users from American government snooping. The social network said Wednesday that Ireland’s Data Protection Commission has started an inquiry into how Facebook
Indonesia on Tuesday added 12 more companies, including social media firm Twitter and video-conferencing site Zoom, to a list of internet-based businesses that must pay a 10 percent value-added tax on sales. In July Indonesia had already announced that Alphabet’s Google Asia Pacific, Netflix and Facebook among other tech companies would be liable to VAT. Governments
Chinese video app TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, will be joining the European Union’s voluntary code of conduct to combat illegal hate speech online, the European Commission said on Tuesday. Social media platforms have come under increasing pressure from politicians and governments to do more to tackle online hate speech and disinformation, which have
Facebook on Saturday blocked live broadcasts from a chronically ill bed-ridden man who appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron for a medically-assisted death and who wanted to show what he expects will be a painful end to his life after he announced that he was stopping all food and drink. Prostrate on his bed, Alain
WhatsApp has revealed six new vulnerabilities that were previously undisclosed and have now been fixed. The Facebook-owned company reported the vulnerabilities on its newly created security advisory webpage that will serve as a single destination to highlight all the security issues spotted and fixed on WhatsApp and reveal associated Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE). The
Instagram has launched a dedicated Reels tab for users in India that will replace the Explore tab after testing it in August. The latest change will make it easier for people to discover new Reels creators and their videos in the app. India is the first market to get the dedicated tab, and according to
Facebook’s final policy changes in the lead-up to US elections in November are unlikely to stem a flood of disinformation around the vote, which could suppress turnout and sow confusion about results, election experts said on Friday. Restrictions on paid messaging were a net positive, experts said, but warned such moves did little to address
Facebook Messenger has added a forwarding limit to let users forward messages only to five people or groups at a time. The new development is aimed to reduce the spread of viral misinformation and curb the circulation of fake news through the messaging platform. In 2018, Facebook brought a similar forwarding limit to WhatsApp in
Sale talks for TikTok’s US operations have been complicated by the key question of whether the app’s core algorithms can be included as part of a deal, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal that cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. Those algorithms decide what videos users see without first requiring them
Facebook said it will block news sharing on its platforms in Australia if the government goes ahead with a law to force it, and Alphabet’s Google, to pay local media outlets for featuring their content on its platforms. The matter is being watched closely around the world as it represents the biggest challenge so far
WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new Wallpaper feature that will allow users to choose different backgrounds for different chats, based on the theme used in the app. This new feature was spotted in a previous iOS beta version, and now it is said to be under development for Android users as well. Its development