Business & Tech Conspiracy Theories Fly as Meta Users Find Themselves Suddenly Following Trump and JD Vance Millions of Facebook and Instagram users were shocked to find that they were suddenly following Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Melania Trump, but the company insists it was just the normal switching of official accounts that happens for every presidential transition.
Business & Tech Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies In a shift akin to what Elon Musk has done with the platform we still call Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will soon be more of a free-for-all when it comes to misinformation, with "community notes" inserted when facts are questioned.
Business & Tech Yes, Instagram Is Down, and So Are Other Meta Apps The Luigi Mangione memes have officially broken the internet. Meta was experiencing some sort of major "disruptions" Wednesday morning, which were causing outages on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger.
Business & Tech Instagram Tightens Up Protections on Teen Accounts, Adds Major Restrictions for Users 16 and Under After years of criticism over online bullying, ads that stoke depression, and predators chasing teens on the platform, Menlo Park-based Instagram is tightening up the controls over what teens can see when they log in.
Business & Tech US Surgeon General Wants Warning Labels on Social Media Sites, Just Like the Ones We Put On Cigarettes Saying Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok are causing “significant mental health harms for adolescents,” US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling for public health warning labels on social media sites and apps, not unlike the warnings placed on packs of cigarettes.
Business & Tech A Clever Original Post on Threads That Goes Viral Could Now Earn Creators a $5,000 Bonus Meta has confirmed that it has launched a limited-time, invite-only bonus program for social media creators on Threads, in an apparent effort to boost engagement on the platform as it crosses the 150 million user mark.
Business & Tech Instagram and Threads Now Making You Opt In If You Want to See Political Content, or Anything Related to Anything Important It turns out that Meta's definition of "political content" is quite broad, as the company rolls out a new feature — or, some would say, involuntary content filter — that will scrub your feeds of most anything that isn't cat/dog videos.
Business & Tech Meta Hit With Possible Super Tuesday Cyber Attack? Instagram, Threads, Facebook All Go Down People who roll over in bed and start their Instagram scrolling may have found their feeds not loading today, after a major widespread outage appeared to have begun around 7 a.m. Pacific Time.
SF News Two Teens Have Died In Two Weeks by ‘Surfing’ on the Tops of BART Trains, Agency Considers Modifications What appears to be another social media-fueled “dare” trend has taken the lives of two Bay Area teens who engaged in BART-surfing on the tops of trains, and BART is now considering modifications to the trains’ rooftop access.
Business & Tech X and Other Platforms Restrict Searches for ‘Taylor Swift’ As Deepfake Pornography of Her Goes Viral Graphic AI-generated images of pop star Taylor Swift have snowballed on social media platforms from X to Meta to Reddit, exposing the limits of their content moderation and lack of legislation.
SF News Napa Considers Moving ‘Welcome’ Sign Because Too Many People Run Across Highway 29 to Instagram It A Napa County Instragam trap is causing worries that it could become a death trap, and the county is considering moving its picturesque “Welcome” sign because of unsafe behavior by motorists and pedestrians seeking pictures of it.
SF News New York Times Takes Deep Dive Into 2017 Albany High School Instagram Scandal Over a Racist Meme Account Back in 2017, the small East Bay town of Albany was roiled by the discovery of a wildly racist "finsta" account that posted memes as well as doctored photos of students of color at Albany High School. The aftermath was violent, lengthy, and litigious.
Business & Tech Threads Beats ChatGPT to 100 Million User Milestone; Twitter Traffic Allegedly 'Tanking' Meta's Threads app, which just went live last Wednesday evening, already reached 100 million users on Sunday, handily beating ChatGPT's recently set record for achieving that many users in a brief span of time.
Business & Tech Meta Is Abandoning Their COVID-19 Misinformation Policy on Facebook and Instagram Great news for your crazy uncle: Facebook and Instagram will no longer remove posts with COVID misinformation in countries that no longer have a COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, which is basically most of the world.
Business & Tech San Mateo County School Board Sues Social Platforms Over 'Monetizing Misery' of Kids — But Leaves Out Instagram The San Mateo County Board of Education has filed suit against the parent companies of YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok citing evidence that they were designed to be addictive and are harming the mental health of children. But where is San Mateo County resident corporation Meta in all this?
Arts & Entertainment Mayor of SoCal Town Near Wildflower Superbloom Says 'Nothing to See Here This Year,' Closes Roads Instagram has created many monsters. But this winter there's a California town that is broadcasting an emphatic 'Go away!' to all selfie-taking tourists who want to make pilgrimages there all for the 'gram.
Business & Tech Meta Looking to Offload All Of Its Office Space at 181 Fremont Adding to the already historic level of office vacancy in San Francisco, Meta is looking to dump 435,000 square feet of offices that it leased for Instagram employees five years ago in 181 Fremont.
Business & Tech Facebook and Instagram are Deleting Posts About Abortion Pills, Sometimes ‘Within Seconds’ Big Brother is declaring it’s a thoughtcrime to mention the availability of abortion pills on Meta’s Facebook or Instagram platforms. But the exact same posts are staying up if they substitute the words “guns” or “weed” for “abortion pills.”
Business & Tech Instagram and Facebook Experience Second Outage In a Week; Twitter Is Gleeful It may not be the worldwide meltdown of Monday, but Instagram and Facebook were not loading properly for some users on both coasts of the U.S. today, and the company has confirmed there's a problem.
Business & Tech Facebook Employee ID Badges Weren’t Working Today, So They Couldn’t Get In to Fix the Outage Facebook is coming back online, but new details from today's massive worldwide outage are emerging, including the fact that employees couldn’t fix server hardware because their ID badges wouldn’t even let them enter company buildings.
SF News Monday Morning Headlines: Facebook Pauses Development of 'Instagram Kids' Facebook is pausing development of its controversial 'Instagram Kids' app as it faces scrutiny in Washington, one Afghan family describes their harrowing journey to get back to the Bay Area, and the Grand Princess cruise ship is back at sea.
Business & Tech Mark Zuckerberg, American Hero on a Dork's Surfboard? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a strange but totally on-brand Instagram video on July 4th of himself holding a big American flag riding an electric foil surfboard on a lake, set to the tune of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads."
Arts & Entertainment Instagram Trap Off-Brand Lego 'Brick Bar' Pop-Up Coming to SF This Fall The Brick Bar, billed as "the most talked about pop-up bar," is heading to an undisclosed location in San Francisco this October.
SF News ‘Instagram Wine Influencer’ Accused of Throwing Pig’s Blood On Chauvin Witness’ Former Home In Santa Rosa First we learn there is such a thing as an “Instagram wine influencer.” Then we learn one of the Bay Area’s leading practitioners in this field was arrested for her alleged involvement in a pig's head vandalism incident related to the Derrick Chauvin trial.
Business & Tech 44 Attorneys General Are Kindly Asking Facebook Not to Launch Instagram For Kids 44 U.S. attorneys general are asking the company to please, kindly, not launch an Instagram for kids, because of all the significant legal, safety, welfare, and privacy concerns this will raise.
