social media

Hey. This is Week-in-Review, where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged on TechCrunch this week to su

Twitter is testing a new way to filter unwanted messages from your Direct Message inbox. Today, Twitter allows users to set their Direct Message inbox as being open to receiving messages from anyone,

Dozens of Android adware apps disguised as photo-editing apps and games have been caught serving ads that would take over users’ screens as part of a fraudulent money-making scheme. Security fir

US legislator David Cicilline will be joining the next meeting of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and ‘Fake News’, it has been announced. The meeting will be held in Du

If you have ever worked at any sizable company, the word “IT” probably doesn’t conjure up many warm feelings. If you’re working for an old, traditional enterprise company, you

If you use Instagram and have noticed a bunch of strangers watching your Stories in recent months — accounts that don’t follow you and seem to be Russian — well, you’re not alo

“The future is private.” Clearly, Facebook still has a way to go. Facebook has become the latest tech giant to face scrutiny over its handling of users’ data, following a report that

Over the past 15 years, I’ve seen a pernicious disease infect a number of marketplace startups. I call it Marketplace Paralysis. The root cause of the disease is quite innocent and seemingly harmles

Facebook has denied contradicting itself in evidence presented to the U.K. parliament and a U.S. public prosecutor. Last month the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee wro

Tumblr has been a millstone around the neck of its owners, first Yahoo and later Oath and Verizon Media, pretty much since it was acquired in 2013. They never found an answer to the question that new

The White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would widen its attack on the operations of social media companies. The White House has prepared an executive order called “Prote

Sometimes it does seem the entire tech industry could use someone to talk to, like a good therapist or social worker. That might sound like an insult, but I mean it mostly earnestly: I am a chaplain w

Earbuds, a new startup from Austin founded by former Detroit Lions lineman Jason Fox, wants to bring the power of social media to your eardrums. The company is one of a growing number of startups tryi

Twitter has disclosed more bugs related to how it uses personal data for ad targeting that means it may have shared users data with advertising partners even when a user had expressly told it not to.

Facebook has failed to clean up the brisk trade in fake product reviews taking place on its platform, an investigation by the consumer association Which? has found. In June both Facebook and eBay were

The online campaigning activities of the UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, have already caught the eye of the country’s data protection watchdog. Responding to concerns about the sco

Users reported issues with Instagram and Facebook Sunday morning. [Update as of 12:45 p.m. pacific] Facebook says the outage affecting its apps has been resolved. “Earlier today some people may

For the first time in more than half a decade, Facebook wants to inform you that it owns Instagram, the hyper-popular rival social networking app it acquired for a $1BN steal back in 2012. Ditto messa

Grab popcorn. As internet fights go, this one deserves your full attention — because the fight is over your attention. Your eyeballs and the creepy ads that trade data on you to try to swivel &#

A group of sex tech startup founders, employees and supporters gathered outside of Facebook’s NY office in Manhattan to protest its advertising policies with respect to what it classifies as sex