Social Media

Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for more than $40bn

The Tesla chief executive and world’s richest person revealed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that he had launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. He further confirmed the move in a public appearance at the TED conference in Vancouver later that day.

Morrison government asks Facebook, Twitter and Google to block Russian state media ‘disinformation’

The Australian government has asked Facebook, Twitter, Google and other digital platforms to block content generated by Russian state media to curb “disinformation in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine”.

Australian law could force social media firms to reveal users' identities

The laws would require social media companies to collect the details of all users, and allow courts to force companies to hand over the identities of users to aid defamation cases.

Social media companies would also be made legally liable for the content they publish from users, removing liability from individuals and companies that manage pages.

The legislation was to be released in draft form this week, and is expected to be introduced to Australia's parliament early next year.

Facebook announces name change to Meta in rebranding effort

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social media giant will change the name of its holding company to Meta, in a rebrand that comes as the company faces a series of public relations crises.

Zuckerberg revealed the new name at Facebook’s annual AR/VR conference on Thursday, where he outlined the company’s virtual-reality vision for the future.

ITN's Alastair Stewart steps down after social media 'errors of judgement'

In a statement, the veteran broadcaster, 67, said: "It was a misjudgement which I regret."

ITN said he had breached editorial guidelines, but did not elaborate on the reasons for his departure.

He added: "It's been a privilege to bring the news to households throughout the UK for the past 40 years."

Stewart joined ITV in 1980 and began fronting News at Ten nine years later.

The newsreader's Twitter account has now been deactivated.

Selena Gomez says social media is 'terrible' for young people

Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, where she is promoting her new film The Dead Don't Die, the 26-year-old said: "I think our world is going through a lot obviously.

"But for my generation specifically, social media has been terrible."

She claimed many young people were unaware of important news issues.

"It's a useful platform but it does scare me when you see young boys and girls not really aware of the news going on," she added.

"It's selfish - I don't wanna say selfish, that's rude - but it's dangerous for sure."

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp suffer outages

The website Down Detector reported that thousands of people globally had complained about the Facebook-owned trio being down from 11.30 BST onwards.

Facebook users were presented with the message: "Something went wrong."

At 14:50, the site said it had resolved the issue after some users "experienced trouble connecting" to the apps.

A spokesman for the company added: "We're sorry for any inconvenience."

Facebook did not comment on the cause of the problem, or say how many users had been affected.

Judge leaders through deeds, not social media posts: PM

He made this remark recently in Enga when signing the decentralisation of powers to the Enga Provincial Government.

O’Neill said Enga has quality leaders that will strengthen and embrace the work of autonomy in the province. 

“Work together and support the leaders rather than listening to petty politics on Facebook,” stated the PM.

He reiterated that for the last six years, the Government has been funding the districts and provinces through the DSIP and PSIP funds but people continue to complain.

Free facial recognition tool can track people across social media sites

Dubbed Social Mapper, the facial recognition tool automatically searches for targets across eight social media platforms, including—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, the Russian social networking site VKontakte, and China's Weibo and Douban—based on their names and pictures.

The tool's creators claim they developed Social Mapper intelligence-gathering tool predominantly to help pen testers and red teamers with social engineering attacks.

Human rights advocate says Israel Folau comments hurt

Folau replied to a comment on an Instagram post saying God's plan for gay people is "hell, unless they repent of their sins and turn to God".

Tuiloma Lina Samu says those comments are harmful for people who already deal with intolerance and rejection, based on their sexuality.

"Those words hurt and they hurt significantly especially vulnerable people who are already marginalised people, who are already rejected and ostracized by communities and families," she says.