Instagram chief Adam Mosseri agrees to testify before Congress

https://www.ciobulletin.com/legal/instagrams-mosseri-agrees-to-testify-before-congress

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri will testify before the U.S. Senate for the first time as a part of a series of hearings about online safety for teens and children.

Mosseri’s upcoming testimony comes after Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote a letter to Meta (formerly Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, requesting that he or Adam Mosseri participate in a Senate hearing.

Mosseri’s December testimony results from months of scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers concerned over how Facebook can harm the mental health of its young users. Ever since Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal Facebook reports to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, U.S. senators have held a series of hearings on how applications like Instagram can inspire self-injurious behaviors in teens, especially in young women.

The hearing will mark the first time Mosseri has testified before Congress. Blumenthal plans to ask Mosseri to commit to making Instagram’s recommendation and ranking algorithms transparent, partly so experts can peer into if and how the platform promotes potentially harmful content. Senator Blumenthal noted that TikTok, Snap, and YouTube leaders made similar commitments after testifying at a previous hearing. Senator Blumenthal also said he will enquire with Mosseri about Instagram’s recommendation systems and how they may lead children ‘into dangerous rabbit holes.

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Instagram CEO speaks on the non-availability of an iPad app

Most of the mobile apps have rolled out on iOS. Over time, the growing popularity of the iPad has made most of the app manufacturers to adopt the large-screen format. But Instagram has remained one of those mobile apps that have not yet made its entry into the iPad.

With developments in software and hardware, there has been a recent upsurge in the split-screen windows, dual-screen phones, and foldable tablets. Despite the transformation of normal smartphones to highly advanced devices, Instagram has restricted itself to just smartphones – with no proper app available for iPad users.

Instagram seems to be not interested in making a move to create an iPad dedicated app especially after serving the majority of its users through a handheld mobile device for quite a long time.

On being continuously questioned about the unavailability of a proper Instagram app for iPad, CEO Adam Mosseri said: “We’d like to build an iPad app, but we only have so many people and lots to do, and it hasn’t bubbled up as the next best thing to do yet.”

According to Mosseri, the reason for not developing an app for iPad is the lack of enough resources for both the platforms. He explained that Instagram has “lots to do” and, as of now, an iPad app is not on that list.

Facebook’s Twitter and Instagram handles hacked

A hacker group called ‘OurMine hacker collective’ had temporarily hacked and vandalized Facebook’s Twitter main page and Messenger. Earlier last month, the organization had also hacked several sports-related Twitter accounts.

The infamous hacking group later posted on Facebook’s Twitter and Instagram handles that “even Facebook is hackable”. According to ‘OurMine’, the attack is but an attempt to showcase the vulnerabilities of the cyber world. Similarly, the group had also attacked several Twitter accounts of the US National Football League in January.

The Group also managed to post the photo of OurMine’s logo on the hijacked Facebook and Messenger accounts. Twitter later confirmed the hacking and said that it occurred through a third-party and the accounts were locked at once. As of now, the accounts are restored.

The attack on Facebook’s Twitter handle follows a similar modus-operandi as that of the National Football league as both these accounts have been accessed through a third-party platform Khoros. According to security experts, Khoros is a marketing platform through which businesses can manage their social media pages, and platforms like these usually have access to the passwords and login details of the customer.

In the past, the Dubai-based hacker group OurMine has attacked several accounts of corporations and high ranking individuals. Some of the major accounts they have hacked include the social media account of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and accounts of Netflix and ESPN.

Facebook’s Twitter and Instagram accounts hacked by ‘OurMine’

A group called “OurMine” has recently hijacked several of Facebook’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. The same group is reported to have hacked social media accounts of NFL and ESPN last week.

The hackers’ group calling itself  “OurMine” had flooded Facebook’s Twitter account with the same post posted multiple times. And when each time the same post was repeatedly posted by the group, it was quickly deleted by Facebook. Apart from Facebook’s Twitter account, the same messages were posted in the official Messenger handle on Twitter, too.

In the past too, the group ‘OurMine’ claimed to have hacked social media accounts of Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, and HBO.

But after the posts were closely looked upon, it was discovered that the accounts were not hijacked by the group ‘OurMine’. It appears to be done by a third party called ‘Khoros’ that sells software to enable companies to use social media for interacting with customers.

On this incident, Twitter made a statement saying it happened through a third party: “Confirming the account was hacked through a third-party platform. As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised account and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them”.

 

Instagram lets IGTV creators monetize with advertisements

IGTV video makers get a green signal from Instagram to earn money 18 months after launching the longer-form content hub. Instagram said that they designed the Instagram Partner Program that facilitates creators to generate income through advertisements and their videos, which helps in bringing high-quality content.

This program is somewhat identical to Facebook Watch, wherein video producers generate a 55 percent cut of revenue from “Ad Breaks” which will be displayed in the middle of their content.

It is believed that IGTV could not produce great content due to lack of monetization and just 7 million Instagram users have downloaded the IGTV app. Instagram said, “We continue to explore ways to help creators monetize with IGTV. We don’t have more details to share now, but we will as they develop further.”

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said, “IGTV has improved with time as more influencers and publishers get the hang of vertical mid-length video. However, there remains a fair amount of low-quality, unoriginal, overly captioned, meme-style videos promoted on its “Popular” page, at least for me.”

He added by saying, “We focused first on making sure the product had legs — else there would be little to monetize in the first place. IGTV is still in its early days, but it’s growing and so we’re exploring more ways to make it sustainable for creators.”

Facebook spotted testing a new feature called Popular Photos

Ever since Instagram and Snapchat became a trend among millennials, Facebook has been trying every trick in the book to bring back its users. In its latest feature, it has copied the main ingredient of Instagram and has launched it in the form of “Popular Photos” by Facebook that algorithmically presents you with a set of photos when you open a picture of any user in full-screen mode.

The latest feature will let the user endlessly scroll through an account’s most popular images without endless tapping and loading. This in-built feature in the Facebook app will reveal the date and time of the image when it was uploaded along with any other text that comes along with it. Users will, as usual, have the ability to like and comment on the picture.

Facebook’s News Feed requires a lot of tapping and loading to go through it and the company is adapting its features more like Instagram which allows easy scrolling and other features like press and hold to enlarge the image also.

The latest Popular Photos feature comes out to reinvent the method of browsing through images so that users can go through the content easily without having to go through the text content and the heavy News Feed of Facebook. It is unclear when Facebook will be releasing this feature but for now, the social media giant is busy testing the new feature for select mobile users.

Facebook gets a new logo

After 15 long years, Facebook has finally unveiled a new company logo. The company says that the rebranding is essential to help differentiate between the company and the Facebook app.

The latest logo just says ‘FACEBOOK’ but capitalized and in a generic font. A GIF displayed the FACEBOOK wordmark in different colors to represent the various brands under it – like blue for Facebook proper, green for WhatsApp and pinkish for Instagram, etc.

The logo will be spread across all Facebook products and marketing materials in the coming weeks. The IT services giant will also be adding the “from Facebook” into some of its apps and the company is planning to embed this logo for the process instead of the traditional blue Facebook wordmark.

Facebook said that the latest logo push is to make users are aware that the company has a larger presence in the apps they use daily like WhatsApp and Instagram.

“People should know which companies make the products they use,” stated Antonio Lucio, Chief Marketing Officer at Facebook. He also added that. “Our main services include the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Portal, and Calibra. These apps and technologies have shared infrastructure for years and the teams behind them frequently work together.”

Instagram announces a security feature to control third-party apps

Third-party apps are an important part of the digital experience today. But they often need access to important apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. As a result, it has become hard to keep track of the third-party apps accessing these social media portals which carry sensitive data.

To make a change, Instagram has announced brand new security features that will allow the users to stay on top of these third-party apps. The new features will allow users to control what they share with third-party services.

To check out the first feature, Instagram users can head to “Settings”, select “Security”, then tap on “Apps and Websites.” Users will then be able to remove any third-party apps they do not need.

Instagram’s other feature will allow its users to authorize access to third-party services. The authorization screen will list out the information that a third-party service is requesting access to. Hence, the users will be able to either authorize access or cancel it based on their comfort level.

Instagram has said that these features will be rolled out for everyone over the course of the next six months.

Instagram Introduces Dark Mode for iOS 13 and Android 10

The dark mode feature has been a popular trend in the tech world in recent times. It seems that Instagram is also following the trend. It has now launched dark mode for the iOS 13 and Android 10 users.

Adam Mosser, Head of Instagram revealed in a tweet that the latest dark mode is now available for both Android and iOS users. Currently, the app doesn’t let users toggle the feature within the app itself.

As of now, Instagram’s dark mode is responsive to system settings in Android and iOS. This means that if you have enabled dark mode on your device, the latest update from Instagram will automatically switch the app to a black background with white text.

In order to access the dark mode on your iPhone, Find ‘Settings’ then go to ‘Display’, select ‘Brightness’ and choose Dark. To enable it in your Android device, head over to Settings, then select Display, find ‘Advanced’ and then choose Dark from Device theme menu.

All the major social platforms have introduced dark mode including Gmail, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Instagram bids goodbye to its Following tab

Instagram is making a lot of changes these days. Now, it has gotten rid of its Following tab which was introduced in the mobile app in 2011 to help users find new people to follow.

The Following tab is an activity feed that reveals what posts your friends like, comment or follows. The company announced that it will be removing the tab permanently from this week.

And once this rolls out, the heart icon, which takes the users to the “Following” and “You” tab, will only feature users’ activity feed. But this decision by Instagram may not shock many as many still do not know about this feed. The company feels that it is unnecessary to hold on to a feature that is not recognized by the majority of its users.

“People didn’t always know that their activity is surfacing. So you have a case where it’s not serving the use case you built it for, but it’s also causing people to be surprised when their activity is showing up,” said Vishal Shah, Head of Product at Instagram.

Many users may be disappointed as now they cannot stalk their friends. But many will be relieved with their activity not being exposed anymore.