Digital world

  Meta is  changing  the way Instagram and Threads show political content. The company wants to avoid making Threads like Twitter, where political debates can get very heated. Now, Instagram and Threads won't "proactively" show users political posts. This is similar to what Meta already does on Facebook. It has cut down on political content in different places like the News Feed and video suggestions. Image: Digital Information World Meta plans to bring these changes to Instagram and Threads as the 2024 U.S. elections get closer. This means less political content in Instagram Reels and the Explore section, as well as in the main feed of both Instagram and Threads. Threads is trying to be different from Twitter, avoiding news and political debates. Even though Threads delayed adding a trends feature, Meta doesn't want to push news content there. Meta's new rules affect how Instagram suggests posts to users. But, if someone follows an account that shares political c...

  Seeing scammers and imposters arise on social media is now a norm in the online world. But you’d expect tech giants like Meta to do more to help safeguard its users online by getting rid of fake profiles. However, the reality seems to be far from that as many noticed the number of fake profiles surging across the Instagram app. In the past year, we’ve seen the issue go from bad to worse and the app’s parent firm is really falling behind in terms of finding a solution to the matter, despite there being many signs that a certain profile is making use of another’s identity or image. An investigation was also carried out by tech media outlet  Bleeping Computer  on this front and they noticed how a large number of reports were filed against such scam accounts featuring fake IDs and they were impersonating internet personalities or other public figures but ended up getting dismissed by the admin. Clearly, it’s a huge issue and no appeal made a difference, not to mention how t...

  Surfshark  recently did a deep dive into the top 100 most popular apps on the App Store, and they found that 20% of the data they are collecting is for tracking purposes with all things having been considered and taken into account. These apps were ranked based on 32 data points that they are currently in the process of collecting, all of which are defined by Apple’s privacy policy. Facebook and Instagram were found to be the least privacy conscious apps of all. They collect all 32 data points, all of which are tied to the identity of the user in question, and 7 of which are used specifically for tracking purposes. These include data points such as names, home addresses as well as phone numbers, which seems to suggest that these apps offer far less privacy than users would ideally prefer. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that X, formerly known as Twitter, was also a major offender in this regard. It collected fewer data points...

  It’s no surprise that tech giant Meta has been scrutinized in the past and continues to face major criticism for its apps in terms of the safety they offer to minors. Plenty of research and bombshell documents have called out Facebook’s parent firm and how it needs to be doing more than rolling out a limited set of tools to combat the issue. Keeping this in mind, Meta has just unveiled a new feature for Instagram users that prevents teens from using the app excessively at late-night timings. The rollout comprises a feature called nudges where teens would be prompted to log off when they hit curfew hours. And what better source of reminder or alert than this, right? The alert will be displayed whenever a minor uses the app for more than ten minutes in a particular area like Instagram Reels or Instagram DMs during odd times at night. The company mentioned through  a newsroom post  how the goal was to generate a tool because nothing is more important than sleep, especially...

  The holiday season is upon us all and Instagram is making sure it doesn’t lose out on any chance coming soon. The platform has recently spoken about a series of innovative ad options that are designed keeping in mind maximal revenue generation. This is also said to give more brands an array of opportunities. However, we don’t feel it can be a very popular addition in terms of users. After all, who loves ads in the first place? For starters, the app says it is adding some new features to its Explore Tab. This page now has its own unit for ads that may be seen across content feeds. The example of the ad put forward by the company is quite big and we’ve got zero confirmation if all the advertisements will be just as mighty as this. Whatever the case may be, it’s a huge opportunity to reach out to the audience on the app during the early stage of their discovery, especially in terms of content that they love. We do see this as a great consideration to have some businesses’ products g...

  For a while now, Instagram spoke about how keen it was on competing with its fellow archrival TikTok. And they planned on doing just that through the introduction of short video content such as Reels. But a new internal report that has been critiqued by  WSJ  says Reels isn't standing where the tech giant had envisioned it to be. To put it simply, it’s just lagging far behind all forms of competition. The document went on to detail how most Reels' users on the app are failing to get any engagement. Seeing the news of the platform falling flat on the ground is generally concerning for Meta and the experts feel it’s got a long way to go if it plans on affecting TikTok’s share of the competitive market. On average, the document went on to prove how out of 11 million content creators that use the app, only 21% are involved in putting up Reels on a monthly basis. And out of those, there has been zero to no engagement at all. The report that is titled Creators x Reels State o...