social media - CybAI news

20 Jan

Bluesky’s 2024 moderation report shows how quickly harmful content grew as new users flocked in

stp2y0 CommentsNewsBluesky, gear, news, social media

Bluesky experienced explosive growth last year, , necessitating that the platform ramp up its moderation efforts. In its recently released moderation report for 2024, Bluesky said it grew by about 23 million users, jumping from 2.9 million users to nearly 26 million. And, its moderators received 17 times the number of user reports they got in 2023 — 6.48 million in 2024 compared to 358,000 the previous year.The bulk of these reports were related to “harassment, trolling or intolerance,” spam and misleading content (including impersonation and misinformation). The presence of accounts posing as other people in the wake of Bluesky’s…

19 Jan

It’s Not Just TikTok: These Other ByteDance Apps Are Gone Too

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsByteDance, china, content moderation, social media, tiktok

TikTok is no longer available in the United States—at least for now. But it’s not the only ByteDance-owned app that’s currently blocked for US-based users.Shortly before the federally mandated January 19 deadline, TikTok cut off access to anyone attempting to access the app from the US. "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can't use the TikTok app for now,” reads a block-screen confronting US users when they attempt to load the app. “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok…

19 Jan

TikTok is no longer available in the US

stp2y0 CommentsNewsgear, news, social media, tiktok, tiktok ban, Trump administration

The switch has flipped on the TikTok ban. TikTok's app stoped working and was removed from the App Store and Google Play on Saturday night, just hours before the January 19, ban was set to take effect.People who have previously installed the app are instead greeted with a pop-up. "Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now," it says. "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that president Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.…

18 Jan

Instagram swoops in with 3-minute Reels and rectangular profile grids as the TikTok ban gets real

stp2y0 CommentsNewsgear, instagram, news, social media

Instagram is rolling out a bunch of changes this weekend that will conveniently make it look a lot more like TikTok, which now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the law banning the app if parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell it. Those changes include extending Reels to three minutes long and changing the longstanding square grid on your profile to a rectangular layout, as Adam Mosseri announced in an and on his Story, respectively. Considering how some users have crafted a specific look for their pages around the square grid, the latter isn’t likely to go over…

17 Jan

The EU wants to know just how X’s recommendation algorithm works

stp2y0 CommentsNewsbig tech, eu, gear, news, social media, X, X Corp

As part of an ongoing investigation into X, the European Commission has from the company related to how its work. The European Union's regulatory arm is particularly interested in any recent changes to the algorithm. The EC said it asked X to provide the information by February 15 as it steps up the Digital Services Act (DSA) probe.On top of that, regulators asked for access to certain APIs that X provides so it can conduct “direct fact-finding on content moderation and virality of accounts.” The Commission has also slapped X with a retention order. This requires the company to retain…

17 Jan

Mark Zuckerberg Turns His Back on the Media

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelscontent moderation, donald trump, elon musk, facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, meta, plaintext, social media, X

There was a time when Mark Zuckerberg didn’t regard mainstream media as the enemy. He even allowed me, a card-carrying legacy media person, into his home. In April 2018, I ventured there to hear his plans to do the right thing. It was part of my years-long embed into Facebook to write a book. For the past two years, Zuckerberg’s company had been roundly criticized for its failure to rein in disinformation and hate speech. Now the young founder had a plan to address this.Part of the solution, he told me, was more content moderation. He was going to hire…

17 Jan

Xiaohongshu Scrambles to Hire Content Moderators Who Can Speak English

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsapps, china, content moderation, policy, social media, tiktok

The Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu—better known internationally as RedNote—is scrambling to boost its ability to moderate English-language content after hundreds of thousands of American users suddenly joined the platform in anticipation of TikTok potentially being banned in the United States on Sunday.WIRED identified a handful of job listings posted to recruitment platforms by tech outsourcing companies in China this week looking for content moderators who can help manage the unexpected influx of English videos and posts being uploaded to Xiaohongshu. There were also several new recruitment notices posted urgently looking for content moderators who can work in Chinese, the…

16 Jan

How Much Are Donald Trump’s Truth Social Shares Worth?

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsdonald trump, money, platforms, social media, truth social

Over the decades, Donald Trump’s literal fortunes have ebbed and flowed. (Six of his hotels and companies, remember, have filed for bankruptcy protection over the years.) But as he prepares to enter the White House for a second time, Trump has never been richer. His net worth, Forbes estimates, hit $7 billion this week, a meteoric increase fueled primarily by an unlikely source: Truth Social.Specifically, the majority of Trump’s net worth currently derives from shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the conservative Truth Social platform that launched in 2022. As the majority owner of TMTG,…

15 Jan

Not Many Meta Employees Will Have to Move to Texas After All

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelscontent moderation, facebook, instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, meta, social media, Texas

Whether shifting teams to Texas will be anything more than symbolic is unclear. Common sense suggests if a person in California exhibits some sort of political preference, moving them to Texas isn’t likely to reshape their viewpoints immediately.In the same town hall call, company leadership described the Texas relocation as an attempt to address the perception problem with California. That reasoning frustrated employees, who believe Meta is harming its workforce to appease Trump, the three staffers told WIRED. Meta and Trump remain in litigation in a northern California federal court over the temporary suspension of his account following the January…

14 Jan

Pixelfed, Instagram’s decentralized competitor, is now on iOS and Android

stp2y0 CommentsNewsentertainment, fediverse, news, social media

Pixelfed is now available as a mobile apps for both iOS and Android. The open source, decentralized platform offers image sharing similar to Instagram. However, Pixelfed has no advertisements and does not share user data with third parties. The platform launched in 2018, but was only available on the web or through third-party app clients. The Android app debuted on January 9 and the iOS app released today.Creator Daniel Supernault on Mastodon Monday evening that the platform had 11,000 users join over the preceding 24 hours and that more than 78,000 posts have been shared to Pixelfed to date. The…