Former U. S President Donald Trump launches new social media named TRUTH Social

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Former U. S President Trump launched a new social media app named TRUTH social after being de-platformed by most major social apps.

According to a press release from the Trump Media and Technology Group, former U. S President Trump will launch his social media app called TRUTH Social. The parent company of TRUTH social was formed through a merger of a special acquisition company (SPAC) with the Trump Media and Technology Group. 

Nine months after being expelled from all social media platforms for his role in inciting the January 6 Capitol Riots, Donald Trump said his new app would stand up to Big Tech. Donald Trump also said, “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable.” President Trump said that the company’s mission was to create a rival to the liberal media syndicate and fight back against the Big Tech companies. 

Trump’s TRUTH social network will launch a beta version in November, available through invitation only. The group expects a national rollout of the app in the first quarter of 2022.

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Facebook’s longtime Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer to step down

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Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer steps down from his role to transition to a new part-time position.

Chief Technology Officer at Facebook for the past 13 years, Mike Schroepfer, announced his decision to resign from his role in a post on his Facebook page. He will be transitioning to a new part-time position within the company and will become Facebook’s first senior fellow sometime in 2022.

The change in role is because he wants to dedicate more time to his family and his philanthropic efforts. Mike Schroepfer is a close friend of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He also said that his new role would allow him to stay deeply connected to the company while working on critical initiatives, including recruiting, developing technical talent, and fostering Facebook’s AI investments in critical technologies like PyTorch.

Another of Facebook’s long-serving executives, Andrew Bosworth, will become the new Chief Technology Officer. The elevation of Bosworth to CTO indicates the growing priority of hardware among Facebook’s plans. He has most recently been in charge of Facebook’s augmented reality and virtual reality efforts. He also leads the development of hardware products such as Oculus and Portal, Facebook’s video calling gadget.

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LinkedIn launches new features helping marketers reach new users

LinkedIn has launched a new feature that will help marketers reach new users easily. The newly launched feature called LinkedIn Marketing Solutions (LMS) with help boost the right content, amplify brand presence, and drive business. It will also provide marketers with deeper audience insights, making it easier to track how their promotional campaigns are performing on the site.

“Navigating through the present volatility and unpredictability has made ‘time’ an even more valuable asset for marketers today, who continue to juggle many responsibilities, said Sachin Sharma, Director, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions for India.

One of the features called ‘Boosting’ will allow marketers to boost an organic post performing well. The boost can be done with a simple click and few payment details. The new feature will enable marketers to boost posts in real-time from their LinkedIn page instead of putting money upfront.

Event ads is another great feature that will help any LinkedIn user to post details about an event and promote it by allowing members to know if their mutual connections have expressed interest in the event or attending it.

LinkedIn is also introducing ‘Custom Streaming,’ which will help markets broadcast their LinkedIn Live streams through streaming tools like Zoom, WebEx, or OBS. Apart from that, the Microsoft-owned company will also enable the option to go live with Microsoft Teams. This feature has been added as live streams have been very popular in the pandemic and witnessed over 400% year-over-year jump in the past year.

Social media companies come together to fight misinformation

In an exceptional move, major social media companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn have come up with a joint statement to fight against the misinformation spreading across the internet. To be more specific, there has been a lot of buzz regarding the coronavirus outbreak, while it is good to remain well-informed; several misinformed or anti-social elements have created chaos across the globe.

Social media has become a very powerful tool. Recently, YouTube took down several videos based on coronavirus to discourage people from making fake videos on coronavirus for monetary purposes. Google Play Store and Apple App Store have taken down several games based on coronavirus.

The World Health Organization’s director-general said last month that misinformation is as dangerous as COVID-19. During an address at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 15, TedrosAdhanomGhebreyesus said “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous.”

WHO has officially declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram have already included information cards on their websites that redirect to sources like the World Health Organization.

Twitter testing its version of stories called ‘Fleets’

With most of the social apps adopting the popular “Stories” culture, Twitter was the only big social media website left. Pioneered by Snapchat, almost every other platform embraced “Stories” including, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and few others still in the process of implementing it. Recently, LinkedIn too is testing the “stories” feature on their platform.

As Twitter announced that it will begin to trial a new sharing format called “Fleets,” starting in Brazil, there was a short-lived outrage over twitter itself, with “#riptwitter” trending at number one on twitter. Although the trend faded away later, it will be interesting to see how early Twitter releases its “Fleets” for the public globally.

Unlike Tweets, new Fleets can’t receive likes, replies or retweets. It will also disappear after 24-hours. The “Fleets” can only be replied to in DM(direct message). At this stage, anyone can visit someone’s profile and see their “Fleets” even if they aren’t following them.

This is to attract users who are not comfortable with the public nature of tweets, which can be replied to and retweeted by anyone on twitter. Although Twitter had earlier announced at CES that it will bring a much-awaited privacy feature for the tweets; giving users to choose the tweet privacy to public, followers and so on.

The testers in Brazil can see a “+” button to compose a Fleet just like Instagram and WhatsApp. The minimum formats supporting, for now, are Text, Image, Videos, and GIFs. Users can send videos ranging from 2 minutes up to 10 minutes depending upon their limits assigned by Twitter. Eventually, the editing features and limits to the “Fleets” will change accordingly with the global expansion.

Pinterest fights against coronavirus misinformation

As the deadly coronavirus is spreading rapidly, governments and companies across the globe are stepping up their efforts to tackle it.

This time it is a popular social media platform, Pinterest, which is doing its bit in this matter. The company has recently introduced a new feature “custom search experience” to curb the spread of coronavirus related misinformation.

In an interview with The Verge, the company revealed that its platform now features a “custom search experience” to help its users get reliable and accurate information about the epidemic. It also said that any misinformation, if found about the coronavirus, will be immediately removed.

With the new feature in place, now, if the users search for “coronavirus” and “COVID-19”, Pinterest will provide them with curated pins created by the World Health Organization.

About the new search feature, a Pinterest spokesperson told The Verge, “We’ve been working with the World Health Organization over the last year to connect Pinners to facts about critical health topics, from the new coronavirus to vaccines. We want to do our part to make sure people can find authoritative information when it really counts.”

This is not the first time Pinterest has actively made efforts about an ongoing health issue. Last year, the company partnered with WHO and several other reputable health organizations to tackle the spread of anti-vaxxer misinformation.

Facebook sued by IRS over unpaid taxes worth $9 billion

The social media giant Facebook has been recently sued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over unpaid taxes, which it owes to the US Government, worth nearly $9 billion. The case has gone to trial in a San Francisco court.

The case broke out as a result of a deal that took place between Facebook and an Irish subsidiary, to which Facebook had transferred its profits, in 2010. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook had undervalued the intellectual property which it sold to its Irish subsidiary.

According to Reuters’ reports, the case is expected to last for three to four weeks. And the appearance of the Facebook hardware chief Andrew Bosworth and Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer is expected in the court for testifying in the trial.

Many tech companies refrain from paying taxes by shifting their funds to Ireland due to the country’s relatively low tax rates. And this is the reason that many other large tech companies like Amazon, Google along with Facebook are facing strong criticism for not fairly paying their share of taxes.

About the case, Facebook told Reuters and Verge that the company stands behind the 2010 transaction, which happened when the company “had no mobile advertising revenue, its international business was nascent and its digital advertising products were unproven.”

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 took over Scape Technologies

According to TechCrunch’s regulatory filing, Facebook recently took over Scape Technologies, a startup using AI to track a location. Scape Technologies steps in at the point where the capabilities of GPS exhaust to track a location.

The filing further reveals that Scape’s previous venture capital representatives are replaced by two Facebook executives.

The startup was founded way back in 2017, and according to Crunchbase, it raised $8 million through venture capital funding. Before the acquisition, the startup was said to be working on the development of “Visual Positioning Service” based on computer vision. The feature that transforms images into 3D maps, which deliver a precise location across a particular city.

Presently, the feature is available only in London though the company had plans to make it available across different cities before its acquisition by Facebook.

An update reveals that Facebook has gained majority control of the startup company, which is nearly more than 75%. Although the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, it is reported by TechCrunch to be somewhere around $40 billion.

About the acquisition, the Facebook spokesperson said in a statement: “We acquire smaller tech companies from time to time. We don’t always discuss our plans.”

 

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”.