Social

Internet giants, including social media apps Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, joined several world leaders to issue a global call to better protect children online at a Paris summit on Thursday. The call, initiated by France and the UN child protection agency UNICEF, acknowledges that “in the digital environment, children can come across harmful and

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen on Wednesday said she was “extremely concerned” about the company’s plans to build a “metaverse” — a virtual reality version of the internet — because of privacy problems. Faced with a barrage of bad publicity due to Haugen’s revelations, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans late last month to create a

WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out “My Contacts Except…” privacy feature, allowing users to control who can see their information on WhatsApp. The instant messaging app is also releasing a new interface for Contact Info and Group Info for specific Android beta testers, as per a separate report. This interface was previously only available when viewing

Twitter Blue is now rolling out to users in the United States and New Zealand, the company announced on Tuesday. The subscription service offered by the microblogging platform brings in a host of features such as the ability to undo tweets and reading some news articles without advertisements, among others. With Twitter Blue subscriptions, the

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the US House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would require internet platforms like Meta’s Facebook and Alphabet’s Google to allow users to see content not chosen by algorithms. The legislation, introduced by Representatives Ken Buck, a Republican, and David Cicilline, a Democrat, and others, would require big

Britain’s Prince Harry said he warned the chief executive of Twitter ahead of the January 6 Capitol riots that the social media site was being used to stage political unrest in the US capital. Prince Harry made the comments Tuesday while he was taking part in an online panel on misinformation in California. He said

Meta said on Tuesday it plans to remove detailed ad-targeting options that refer to “sensitive” topics, such as ads based on interactions with content around race, health, religious practices, political beliefs or sexual orientation. The company, which recently changed its name to Meta and which makes the vast majority of its revenue through digital advertising,

WhatsApp has been spotted integrating digital wallet Novi that would allow users to make payments and transfer money globally via the instant messaging app through a bank or card. Some recent WhatsApp for Android beta releases have suggested the update. The platform may also require users to submit their identity documents for verification. Although WhatsApp

Instagram is planning to add a subscriptions feature through which creators can earn money on the social media platform. With the rollout of creator subscriptions, users may have to pay to see Stories or access other content or media from creators on the Meta-owned (formerly known as Facebook) app. Instagram’s Apple App Store listing in

Telegram is rolling out a new update that includes multiple features to make using the app easier. These include a fresh date bar and calendar view for the Shared Media page on the iOS app. The newly launched date bar on the side of the Shared Media page will allow users to jump between days

WhatsApp is reportedly developing a new Communities feature. This new feature was spotted under development by WABetaInfo and is said to be an expansion of Groups. According to the features tracker, WhatsApp Communities is likely to be a new place where group admins may have more control over groups on WhatsApp, mainly to group other

Tesla shares fell 7.5 percent in premarket trading on Monday as investors prepared for its chief Elon Musk’s proposed sale of about a tenth of his holdings in the electric-car maker following his Twitter poll. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer and the world’s richest person, tweeted on Saturday that he would offload 10 percent of

WhatsApp has started rolling out its anticipated multi-device support for a large number of users on both Android and iOS to let them use their account on secondary devices, without requiring their phones to be connected to the Internet. Users can leverage the new feature to connect WhatsApp on up to four devices simultaneously to

Twitter temporarily disabled the Trends feature in Ethiopia to make sure that the platform cannot be used to instigate violence in the conflict-torn country, the social media said on Saturday. On Thursday, the Ethiopian parliament declared a six-month state of emergency throughout the country to protect the population from the rebels of the Popular Front

Palestinian activists contended Facebook and other social media platforms have censored criticism of Israel in response to government pressure and launched a campaign seeking to halt the activity. Palestinians have complained that political posts were removed or demoted especially by Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook owns. The 7amleh digital rights organisation launched a website called

Twitter is rolling out a new feature for iOS app users, enabling users to search through a specific profile’s tweets. The new search button is showing up for individual profile pages, enabling users to search for tweets of a specific account only. This feature has been spotted on the latest version of iOS. The site,

Twitter Spaces is getting a new feature that allows everybody to listen to Spaces audio via direct links. With the latest feature, users can share direct links to their Spaces with others, and the invitees can attend the audio session via the Web without being logged into the platform. With the new update, people without

Facebook is testing ways for creators to make money through Facebook Groups, such as users paying fees for exclusive access to content or conversations within subgroups, the company said on Thursday. Facebook, which recently changed its name to Meta, said the test was part of its broader paid subscription effort. The social media company is

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen welcomed Facebook’s announcement that it would scrap facial recognition, but urged close government oversight of the move to ensure the social network lived up to its pledge. Facebook made the announcement on Tuesday, partly in response to growing scrutiny from regulators and legislators over user safety and abuses on its platforms.

KuCoin, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, has decided to explore the budding Metaverse technology as a first from that sector. The platform has “merged” reality with virtual reality (VR) to introduce its new “metaverse office” in a stunning virtual reality-based building called “Bloktopia”. This office is located on the 21st storey of a virtual skyscraper. In this

WhatsApp has introduced a new ‘Happy Diwali’ sticker pack to help users send greetings during the festival season. This sticker pack is available for both Android and iOS users and can be downloaded for free from the default sticker tray. It has been a while since WhatsApp introduced stickers on its platform and the instant

Clubhouse has added support for 13 new languages to its Android app, including five Indian languages. Starting November 3, the app will support French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, Tamil, and Telugu. The support for new languages will be currently be limited to Android users. Clubhouse said that it

On November 1, social networking mammoth Facebook announced a fresh rebranding under a new name, Meta. Speaking about the goals of Meta, its Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg revealed that the company is building itself for the metaverse. Powered by augmented reality (AR), the metaverse can be described as the future of the

WhatsApp has banned a total of 2.209 million accounts in the month of September in India, reveals the latest monthly transparency report published to comply with the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. WhatsApp says the accounts were banned in the interest of preventing online abuse and keeping the

WhatsApp is reportedly working on extending the time limit for the ‘delete for everyone’ feature. Another report suggests that the instant messaging service from Facebook (now Meta) is rolling out a new video playback interface for iOS devices for videos shared from Instagram, YouTube, and more such platforms. The message delete feature for WhatsApp was

NASA has shared a stunning image of a giant eye-shaped nebula that is among the brightest and closest to Earth. The image, captured by the agency’s Spitzer Space Telescope, showed a deep vacuum surrounded by a sparkling cloud of dust and gas. The dust and gas are spread over a two-light-year diameter around a central

In her first public address since she leaked a trove of damaging documents about Facebook’s inner workings, whistleblower Frances Haugen urged her former boss, Mark Zuckerberg, to step down and allow change rather than devoting resources to a rebrand. “I think it is unlikely the company will change if [Mark Zuckerberg] remains the CEO,” Haugen

WhatsApp is rolling out a cashback feature for users who often use Payments. This feature, as the name suggests, offers cashback to users on UPI transactions via WhatsApp Payments. This feature is said to be rolling out to Android and iOS beta users both. Tracker WABetaInfo reports that the cashback feature may be rolling out

Early adopters of the virtual worlds known as the metaverse criticised Facebook’s rebranding as an attempt to capitalise on growing buzz over a concept that it did not create. The term metaverse has become a tech buzzword this year, with companies and investors keen to be a part of the next big thing. But users

Facebook has decided to move forward in the ever-growing world of Internet with ‘metaverse’ that is aimed to take virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to new levels. As a major step in the new direction, the social media giant on Thursday changed its name to Meta. The company also teased to be working