Social Networks

There were many accusations on LinkedIn about the data hack of its users. During the first quarter of 2021, that personal scrapped information of approximately 500 million users of LinkedIn has been leaked online on many hacking forums. Two months ago the platform was alleged again that the personal data of its 700 million users have been posted online for auction. Many security experts said that that was the result of a violation of the security but the platform refused all the allegations about the breach and justified that it was the result of data scrapping. The platform has further tried to explain the operation of data scrapping so that it can gain the trust of users again and it has also highlighted some measures for users to defend themselves in the future.After many reports about the hacking of data, the platform investigated the issue and stated that there was no occurrence of data breach and no private info of users has been leaked on the internet. However, the accessible info is scrapped from many websites including LinkedIn and it has already been published this similar information during the past year in its scrapping update report. Even though the platform…

White House to push Facebook to censor posts regarding COVID-19 misinformation A tense exchange happened between FOX News Peter Doocy and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the White House mission to work with Facebook to censor some COVID-19 related posts. Facebook is responding to President Joe Biden’s claim that the social media network is not doing enough to censor posts that contain misinformation about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  "At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies," the company said in a statement on Saturday. "While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a whole of society approach to end this pandemic." The company further added that more and more of its U.S. users are getting the COVID-19 vaccine and the total number has increased from 70% to about 80-85%. RELATED: White House says Facebook needs to work harder to censor COVID-19 misinformation Facebook said it has even stepped up its efforts to decrease vaccination hesitancy.   » Read More

WeekendUpdated on : Sunday, July 18, 2021, 7:00 AM IST In almost two years of coping amidst the pandemic, most of us have become video-fatigued. Voice has become the new normal. A flurry of audio social platforms are cropping up where users of different ages, backgrounds, interests, geographies, and even languages come together to discuss anything and everything under the sun and round the clockOn World Environment Day 2021, Twitter Spaces, a live audio conversation feature, hosted the poet’s collective Kavishala's Kavi Sammelan, where people shared poems on nature and the environment.Senior journalist Faridoon Shahryar hosted the poetry session held in partnership with Twitter India and had popular names such as Priya Malik, Anup Soni, Rajesh Tailang, and Gajraj Rao.In another Space, Indian Forest Service officers Saket Badola and Parveen Kaswan hosted a discussion on forests, wildlife, conservation efforts and challenges.On June 16, Spotify relaunched the Locker Room app, which it acquired in March, as Spotify Greenroom. The new social audio platform lets creators and fans connect in new ways,  » Read More

A little-watched civil rights case that threatens Silicon Valley’s Section 230 immunity took a huge step forward on July 16, as an appeals court that rarely does so agreed to review a lower court’s decision. The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit in New York agreed to review a lower court’s ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) protects Big Tech companies such as Vimeo from civil rights liability in censorship cases. Big Tech censorship became a hot button issue during the 2020 presidential campaign when then-President Donald Trump was selectively censored by Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. The controversy became especially heated late in the campaign when a New York Post series of news articles regarding the allegedly corrupt business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was banned by the Big Tech giants. Trump has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the firms that censored him. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has also been the most vocal of multiple congressional conservative Republican critics of Section 230 immunity. The case of Domen v. Vimeo came about after Vimeo, an Internet video-hosting company, terminated Church United’s video streaming activities after it featured videos of five men…

A little-watched civil rights case that threatens Silicon Valley’s Section 230 immunity took a huge step forward on July 16, as an appeals court that rarely does so agreed to review a lower court’s decision. The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit in New York agreed to review a lower court’s ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) protects Big Tech companies such as Vimeo from civil rights liability in censorship cases. Big Tech censorship became a hot button issue during the 2020 presidential campaign when then-President Donald Trump was selectively censored by Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. The controversy became especially heated late in the campaign when a New York Post series of news articles regarding the allegedly corrupt business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was banned by the Big Tech giants. Trump has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the firms that censored him. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has also been the most vocal of multiple congressional conservative Republican critics of Section 230 immunity. The case of Domen v. Vimeo came about after Vimeo, an Internet video-hosting company, terminated Church United’s video streaming activities after it featured videos of five men…

An executive for global entertainment company Live Nation has been identified as one of the victims in the June 24 Surfside condo collapse in Florida.Theresa Velasquez, 36, was listed as a victim of the collapse on Saturday in the Miami-Dade Police Department’s daily press release. The Miami-Dade PD noted that Velasquez’s body was recovered on July 8. According to the Miami Herald, Velasquez had arrived in Miami the night before the collapse to visit her parents, Julio and Angela Velasquez, who both also died in the collapse. They owned a condo on the third floor of Champlain Towers South, the Miami Herald states.More from VarietyEndeavor's Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro Resigned From Live Nation Board Over Antitrust Concerns, DOJ SaysLive Nation President: 'We're Just Seeing Massive, Pent-Up Demand for Concerts'Drake and Live Nation to Open History, a New Concert Venue in TorontoVelasquez was the senior vice president of strategic partners at Live Nation, working out of their Los Angeles office. According to her LinkedIn profile, Velasquez had been with the company for a little over six years.“Our hearts break for the loss of our beloved Theresa Velasquez, her parents Angela and Julio, and everyone taken far too soon in the…

Oped Published on July 19, 2021 Section 230 of America’s Communications Decency Act, from the 1990s, is under a new threat. That section is controversial because, while it protects tech companies that are “platforms” from being liable from what others post, it has been stretched in recent years so that those companies now claim immunity even though they essential act as publishers and control what appears. In recent weeks, the companies even have been shown to be working directly with Washington, and following its instructions on what to censor, essentially becoming an extension of the government. Now the issue of that immunity has been opened up wide, with a decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out a panel decision upholding a lower court decision that affirmed those protections. It came in a case by Church United and Pastor Jim Domen. They sued Vimeo, a video platform, in January 2019 after the company censored content by terminating the church’s account. The video platform unleashed charges that Church United was violating its terms of service by featuring “five videos of men and women who left the LGBT lifestyle to pursue their Christian faith,” according to a legal…

How has the social media platform reacted to pleas for information data from governments around the world? The story so far: On Wednesday, social media platform Twitter released its Transparency Report for the second half of last year (July 1 to December 31), in which it was revealed that India was the single largest source of government information requests. India also was one of the prominent sources of legal demands for removal of content, according to the report.What’s the transparency report all about?Twitter started publishing a biannual report — Twitter Transparency Report — in 2012. The original goal, it says in its blog, “was to provide the public with recurring insights into government pressures that impacted the public, whether through overt political censorship or by way of compelling account data through information requests”.It further says, “A lot has changed since 2012. It is now more important than ever that we also shine a light on our own practices, including enforcement of the Twitter Rules and our ongoing work to disrupt global state-backed information operations.”Over the years, the scope of the report has been expanded gradually. Additional categories such as non-government legal requests, trademark notices, coordinated manipulation, and so on, have…

Twitter is hard at work developing an edge to edge layout for photos on the timeline interface. In other news, the platform has also assured its users that improvements are coming to the Topics feature.Twitter and its devs are often hard at work, developing a new feature or the other for the short form message sharing platform. Twitter's microblogging sensibilities, as well the massive community its amassed, leave it open to a lot of potential changes. Developers have added in threaded replies, private DMs, groups, bookmarks, an entire premium service called Twitter Blue, and so much more. It's been quite a long drive to get here, but currently Twitter stands as a full fledged form of social media, as opposed to just the simple tweet-posting forum it was in its infancy. An important part of Twitter's development process is just how much feedback they take from the community. An example of this can be found in the platform's defunct threaded replies feature. Devs spent nearly a year beta testing with the community. The new replies interface went through months of tweaking, only for Twitter to eventually dispose of the whole system in its entirety because the community stated that it…

By Beth Milligan | July 17, 2021 A Kingsley Area Schools football player has been indefinitely suspended and an investigation opened after racist content encouraging violence against African-Americans was shared in a student Snapchat group. Football Coach Tim Wooer sent a letter to parents and also posted on Facebook this weekend responding to the incident. His letter, which explains what occurred and how the school is responding, is reposted here in its entirety: "Kingsley Football Family: Today I felt the need to address a significant and horrific error in judgement by at least one of our varsity players. Each year our varsity players create their own 'group chat,' which I believe for the most part to be an excellent way to communicate, motivate, and build leadership without the prodding of coaches. This past weekend, our team traveled to Muskegon to play various Muskegon area schools in a 7-on-7 pass scrimmage. Two of the teams in which we competed against had African-American athletes. We had zero issues with any of the African-American schools involved. Both schools were classy and well coached. Upon return, it was brought to my attention (Wednesday, July 14) via Facebook of an incredibly inappropriate post in the…