You can now give Facebook’s Oversight Board feedback on the decision to suspend Trump

Facebook’s “Supreme Court” is now accepting comments on one of its earliest and likely most consequential cases. The Facebook Oversight Board announced Friday that it would begin accepting public feedback on Facebook’s suspension of former President Trump. Mark Zuckerberg announced Trump’s suspension on January 7, after the then-president of the United States incited his followers to riot at the nation’s Capitol, an event that resulted in a number...

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Chefclub raises $17 million to expand its food media brand beyond social networks

French startup Chefclub announced earlier this week that it has raised a $17 million funding round led by First Bridge Ventures. SEB Alliance, the venture arm of kitchen appliance maker Groupe SEB, Korelya Capital and Algaé Ventures are also participating. Chefclub has been building a major media brand on social media platforms. It has attracted a huge audience that doesn’t look bad next to well-funded media brands Tastemade and Tasty. I already...

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Early Snapchat employee debuts Yoni Circle, a social storytelling app for womxn

An early Snapchat employee who once architected the “Our Stories” product, Chloë Drimal, has now launched her own social app, Yoni Circle. Described as a membership-based community, the app aims to connect womxn using storytelling — including through both live video chat sessions as well as with pre-recorded stories that are available at any time. The company has been quietly operating in beta since April 2020, but is now making its public launch. Drimal...

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Webull, M1 and Public remove restrictions on ‘meme stocks’ after citing trade settlement firm as the cause

Three of the popular retail stock market trading apps that have hosted much of the activity related to the Wall Street Bets subreddit-spurred run on stocks including GameStop (GME) and AMC, among others, have removed all restrictions on their exchange by their users. M1, Webull and Public had restricted transactions for the affected stocks earlier in the day, along with Robinhood. M1, Webull and Public all attributed the restrictions placed on these...

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Twitter is already working on integrating newsletters on its site, following Revue acquisition

Twitter only announced its acquisition of newsletter platform Revue two days ago, but the company has already begun to integrate the product into the Twitter.com website. It appears “Newsletters” will soon be the newest addition to Twitter’s sidebar navigation, alongside Bookmarks, Moments, Twitter Ads, and other options. The company is also readying a way to promote the new product to Twitter users, promising them another way to reach their audience...

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Facebook’s ‘oversight’ body overturns four takedowns and issues a slew of policy suggestions

Facebook’s self-regulatory ‘Oversight Board’ (FOB) has delivered its first batch of decisions on contested content moderation decisions almost two months after picking its first cases. A long time in the making, the FOB is part of Facebook’s crisis PR push to distance its business from the impact of controversial content moderation decisions — by creating a review body to handle a tiny fraction of the complaints its content takedowns attract. It...

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WhatsApp is adding opt-in biometrics to its web and desktop versions

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app with more than 2 billion users, has been getting a lot of heat and losing users in recent weeks after announcing (and then delaying) changes to how it shares data with its owner Facebook. And it’s not done with how it’s tweaking privacy and security. Now, it’s adding a new biometric feature to the service to bring in a new authentication layer for those using its web and desktop versions. The company said...

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TikTok is being used by vape sellers marketing to teens

TikTok has a vaping problem. Although a 2019 U.S. law made it illegal to sell or market e-cigarettes to anyone under the age of 21, TikTok videos featuring top brands of disposable e-cigarettes and vapes for sale have been relatively easy to find on the app. These videos, set to popular and upbeat music, clearly target a teenage customer base with offers of now-unauthorized cartridge flavors like fruit and mint in the form of a disposable vape. Some...

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Facebook’s secret settlement on Cambridge Analytica gags UK data watchdog

Remember the app audit Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promised to carry out a little under three years ago at the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Actually the tech giant is very keen that you don’t. The UK’s information commissioner just told a parliamentary subcommittee on online harms and disinformation that a secret arrangement between her office and Facebook prevents her from publicly answering whether or not Facebook contacted the...

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Twitter acquires newsletter platform Revue

Twitter is getting into the newsletter business. The social media company is announcing that it has acquired Revue, a Dutch startup that allows users to publish and monetize email newsletters. While Revue hasn’t driven the same wave of “is this the future of media?” think pieces as Substack, it counts major publishers like Vox Media and The Markup as customers. Newsletters aren’t the most obvious fit for Twitter’s platform, but in a blog post, Product...

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Debunk, don’t ‘prebunk,’ and other psychology lessons for social media moderation

If social networks and other platforms are to get a handle on disinformation, it’s not enough to know what it is — you have to know how people react to it. Researchers at MIT and Cornell have some surprising but subtle findings that may affect how Twitter and Facebook should go about treating this problematic content. MIT’s contribution is a counterintuitive one. When someone encounters a misleading headline in their timeline, the logical thing to...

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Daily Crunch: Twitter unveils Birdwatch

Twitter pilots a new tool to fight disinformation, Apple brings celebrity-guided walks to the Apple Watch and Clubhouses raises funding. This is your Daily Crunch for January 25, 2021. The big story: Twitter unveils Birdwatch Twitter launched a new product today that it says will offer “a community-based approach to misinformation.” With Birdwatch, users will be able to flag tweets that they find misleading, write notes to add context to those tweets...

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Twitter’s Birdwatch fights misinformation with community notes

Twitter is launching what it calls “a community-based approach to misinformation.” The Birdwatch project first came to light last fall thanks to product sleuth Jane Manchun Wong. Now Twitter has launched a pilot version via the Birdwatch website. The goal, as explained in a blog post by Twitter’s Vice President of Product Keith Coleman, is to expand beyond the labels that the company already applies to controversial or potentially misleading tweets,...

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