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Company places limits on phrase behind false election claims as Sheryl Sandberg says she’s ‘glad’ president was blockedFacebook is cracking down on content using the phrase “stop the steal”, the rallying cry of Donald Trump supporters who claim without evidence that there was voter fraud in the 2020 elections. Continue reading...

Allies of president claim company restricted free speechOpponents say suspension was long overdueWoman killed in Capitol riot was devoted conspiracy theoristTwitter’s decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the storming of Capitol Hill on Wednesday continues to stoke fierce debate, supporters and critics split on partisan lines as they contest what the suspension means for a cherished American tradition: freedom...

Trump’s banishment is likely to further enrage an already volatile president, but many hailed the move as a long overdue milestoneFrom his first executive tweet on the morning of inauguration day 2017 to his final tweet on Friday, announcing that he would not attend his successor’s inauguration, Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account has served as the president’s official platform.For four years, the @realDonaldTrump Twitter...

Messaging app to pay users for most viral ‘snaps’ as it seeks to head off exodus to TikTokThe promise of viral fame has always been a lure for online content creators, but Snapchat hopes it has found a more immediate way of encouraging people to post pictures and videos: a share of a daily $1m (£747,000) prize.The messaging app is to begin paying its...

The controversial messaging app has moved huge crowds on the streets of Belarus. But who is its secretive puppet master? One Sunday in August, two weeks after Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko declared an implausibly decisive victory in presidential elections, I joined a crowd of around 100,000 people as it moved through central Minsk. Protest in Belarus was no longer the domain of a...

Site will still allow ads focused on vaccine policy as it launches campaign to provide flu vaccine information Facebook will ban ads that discourage people from getting vaccinated, the social media company announced on Tuesday, as it launches a new public health campaign aimed at spreading flu vaccine information.The changes are a departure from Facebook’s previous policy, which prohibited ads with vaccine misinformation but...

San Francisco judge cites free speech concernsTrump backs TikTok Oracle deal which may include WalmartA US judge has blocked the Trump administration from requiring Apple and Google to remove Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat for downloads by late on Sunday.US magistrate judge Laurel Beeler in San Francisco said in an order that WeChat users who filed a lawsuit “have shown serious questions going to the...

President says he will allow Chinese-owned app in US Walmart could acquire stake and seat on global boardDonald Trump has said he “approves a deal in concept” that will allow TikTok to continue to operate in the US, after threatening to ban the Chinese-owned app. Related: China attacks US 'bullying' over ban on Tiktok and WeChat Continue reading...

Graphic footage originally broadcast on Facebook has spread across social network TikTok is battling to remove a graphic video of a livestreamed suicide, after the footage was uploaded to the service on Sunday night from Facebook, where it was initially broadcast.Although the footage was rapidly taken down from TikTok, users spent much of Monday re-uploading it, initially unchanged, but later incorporated into so-called bait-and-switch...

Research findings undermine firm’s claims it is cracking down on inaccurate newsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageWebsites spreading misinformation about health attracted nearly half a billion views on Facebook in April alone, as the coronavirus pandemic escalated worldwide, a report has found.Facebook had promised to crack down on conspiracy theories and inaccurate news early in the pandemic. But as its executives promised...

Duke of Sussex urges advertisers to demand companies do more to curb hate speech onlinePrince Harry has hit out at social media companies for creating a “crisis of hate” and called for “meaningful digital reform” after an unprecedented advertiser boycott of Facebook.In an opinion piece for the US business magazine Fast Company, the Duke of Sussex revealed that he and his wife, Meghan, had...

Trump has threatened to ban the app amid privacy concerns. But young people say they’re used to being trackedMauren Sparrow downloaded TikTok in March to pass the time during lockdown. Since then she’s posted tutorials on crafting and videos of her two cats, Calcifer and Jiji, some of which have accrued millions of views and likes. But with the Chinese-owned app now under fire...

Post included video in which Trump wrongly said that children were ‘almost immune’ from illnessFacebook has removed a post from Donald Trump’s page for spreading false information about the coronavirus, a first for the social company that has been harshly criticized for repeatedly allowing the president to break its content rules.The post included video of Trump falsely asserting that children were “almost immune from...

The former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard has faced a belated backlash from social media companiesIn 1999, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke predicted that the Internet would help give birth to a “coming white revolution”.The news media did not give him friendly coverage, he wrote on his website, but on the internet, he could reach supporters directly, starting a “chain...

Court sentences Haneen Hossam, Mowada al-Adham and three others for ‘violating public morals’An Egyptian court has sentenced five female social media influencers to two years in jail each on charges of violating public morals, a judicial source said.The verdict against Haneen Hossam, Mowada al-Adham and three others came after they had posted footage on the video-sharing app TikTok. The ruling, which can be appealed,...

The company’s restrictions, which will affect about 150,000 accounts, will include blocking URLs and not recommending contentTwitter announced a broad crackdown on accounts and content related to the QAnon conspiracy theory on Tuesday, citing its policies against “behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm”.The company said it would block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on the platform, and would...

Video-sharing app suspends building plans, with British ban on Huawei 5G kit seen as factorThe Chinese social media firm TikTok has pulled back from talks to site the headquarters for its non-China business in the UK, threatening the creation of 3,000 jobs, as fears grow of a tit-for-tat trade war between London and Beijing.Its parent company, ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, had spent...

Six channels with supremacist content ‘repeatedly violated’ the site’s policy on hate speechYouTube has banned some of the video site’s most notorious far-right users, including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, “alt-right” figurehead Richard Spencer and libertarian “race realist” Stefan Molyneux, joining a wave of social media sites taking action against hate speech.The company says the bans were handed down due to the...