Category: Social

New reports are demonstrating that some of the biggest iOS app makers are bypassing Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy settings. Apple introduced ATT in an effort to provide users more control over their data, forcing companies to ask for permission before tracking their activity across websites and services. Theoretically, if a user asks an app not to track them, the app is supposed to respect the user’s wishes. Unfortunately, it appears some of the biggest platforms are ignoring users’ wishes and tracking them anyway. Facebook (no real surprise there),…

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The test is currently limited to a handful of retailers in the U.S., but the ads, which are already showing domestically, will be rolling out globally to users in the coming months. Instagram is now testing ads in the Shop tab, TechCrunch first reported on Monday. The ads can include a single image or a carousel of images, and the test is currently only open to a handful of retailers. The ads are rolling out now to mobile users in the U.S. Why we care Ads in Instagram Shops may provide retailers…

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The third quarter transparency reports give us more insight into the platform, but it’s unclear whether the company’s wide-ranging efforts to restore its reputation will have the desired effect. On Tuesday, Facebook published its Q3 2021 transparency reports, including reports on its most widely viewed content and community standards enforcement. The Widely Viewed Content Report shows a clear pattern in the top 20 most viewed posts and the Community Standards Enforcement Report shows that the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook has decreased for the fourth consecutive quarter. The top 20 most widely viewed…

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After several weeks of rumors, Yahoo has officially announced it has agreed to purchase the MyBlogLog service.  You’ll find some discussion of the sale via Techmeme here and here. After several weeks of rumors, Yahoo has officially announced it has agreed to purchase the MyBlogLog service.  You’ll find some discussion of the sale via Techmeme here and here.

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Facebook has started rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) across Messenger, continuing its efforts to bring E2EE across its platforms. E2EE is the gold standard in secure communications, encrypting data so that only the sender and recipient can read the messages. WhatsApp already included E2EE for messaging, and recently rolled it out for chat backups. The company is now implementing E2EE across Messenger. CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement in a Facebook post. End-to-end encrypted voice and video calls are now rolling out on Messenger, and we’re introducing opt-in end-to-end encryption for group chats…

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If your business has a following on Instagram, make sure to incorporate it as part of your social strategy this holiday shopping season. Instagram has made the link sticker available to all users this week. The feature lets you link out to third-party sites, stories, products, and more via the Stories option in the app. Source: Instagram blog Previously only available to select accounts. Instagram began testing the sticker option as a replacement to “Swipe Up” linking in Instagram Stories around August. Plus, the features were only available to verified accounts or those…

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Facebook has said it will pay for news in France, a departure from the company’s previous stance. Facebook and Google have both received criticism for benefiting from the news industry, benefit they gain without paying. News organizations and legislators have started taking a harder stance against the practice in an effort to force Big Tech to pay for the content it uses. Despite previously being opposed to paying, Facebook has reached an agreement with the APIG, an alliance of French newspapers, according to International Business Times. The agreement “means that people on Facebook…

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Twitter is tweaking its algorithm and adding new features as it works to bolster its performance advertising business. Performance advertising is Twitter’s solution to continued growth. With an emphasis on rapid and quantifiable sales generation, the company hopes performance ads will help it double its revenue by 2023. In order to prove its value to companies looking to sell via its platform, the company needs its algorithm to properly target potential buyers. The company told Reuters it is tweaking the algorithm that determines what ads users see as part of its new…

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Facebook has disclosed the cause of its outage Monday, one of the worst in its history, and misconfigured routers were to blame. Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp services went down late Monday morning, and remained down most of the day. The company has revealed the problem in a blog post. Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers…

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Facebook announced it is building a Yellow Pages feature into WhatsApp, allowing users to look up local business information. Once a staple of everyday life, the Yellow Pages directory have fallen out of favor, replaced by digital alternatives. In Facebook’s quest to monetize WhatsApp, and make it a critical business tool, the company is looking to provide a digital Yellow Pages feature that will help users find local business information. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature in a Facebook post: We’re building a modern-day Yellow Pages into WhatsApp where you…

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