posts

A Swiss man is being sued for defamation for "liking" Facebook posts. But the court case looks set to concentrate on the individuals involved, rather than the technological principle. "The Local," a English-language Swiss news site, reports that the ... man had clicked the "like" button beside eight different posts by a range of animal rights groups. Each of the posts accused another man involved in the animal rights movement of anti-Semitism and racism. (Source: thelocal.ch ) It's an intriguing legal point as technically the man being sued for libel has not ... (view more)

Twitter is cracking down on abusive and personal attacks. It's giving users extra controls while introducing automated checks to pick up on potential abuse. The new rules aren't specifically about what people can post in a normal tweet. Instead, ... they cover posts where the writer deliberately includes somebody else's user name, meaning that other person will see the post as part of their notifications. That helps deal with a loophole in the way Twitter works. For the most part, people only see posts from accounts they've chosen to follow, but the notifications tool includes ... (view more)

One in five people say social media posts have changed their minds on political issues this year. But many of those changes have been to a negative position. The statistic comes from the Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys Internet users on ... their online activities. It found that 20 percent of the social media users it questioned in its latest study said they have changed their minds about a social or political issue because of something they saw on a social media service, while 17 percent said they have changed their minds about a specific candidate. (Source: washingtonpost.com ) In ... (view more)

Facebook has blocked plans by a British insurance company to use customer posts on Facebook to help determine motor premiums. Admiral Insurance claims no customers would have lost out from the policy. The plan was for customers to give the insurer ... automated access to their Facebook posts (but not photographs) to help decide whether to offer discounts. It would have been aimed mainly at young drivers who had no insurance history to show if they were safe or dangerous drivers. Language Could Indicate Risk Factors The precise details of the algorithm to figure out risk are confidential, but it ... (view more)

A company accused of selling social media data to the police has been blocked from accessing some or all content from three major sites. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter made the move after complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU.) ... According to the ACLU, Geofeedia markets its social media monitoring product to police forces as a way to monitor people who may be involved in protests. In one marketing message, a company representative specifically cited the use of the service during the high-profile unrest that followed the shooting of a man by police officers in Ferguson, ... (view more)

Facebook says it will give more priority to posts from users' friends and families rather than content from businesses, news sites and other organizations. But the precise details of the changes remain unclear. The change is to the news feed, which ... is the default view when somebody logs into Facebook. Rather than show all the posts the user's friend have made in chronological order, Facebook attempts to rank them by how important and relevant the user will find them. Facebook says this is necessary because there's too much content for most users to read through in its entirety. It ... (view more)

Facebook is making yet another change to the way it shows content on a user's home page. The tweaks are designed to better reflect what people actually think of the content. The changes will affect the News Feed, which displays user posts in an ... order based on an 'importance', determined by Facebook's algorithm. Prior to the News Feed, posts were shown in chronological order. Facebook concluded that viewing posts in chronological order was simply unworkable, due to the sheer volume of content posted in a day. In some cases, users could potentially see 1,500 posts a day. (Source: techcrunch.com ... (view more)

Facebook is tweaking a feature which shows old posts on anniversary dates. The change is designed to let users filter out unwanted or uncomfortable memories. The feature concerned is known as "On This Day" and involves an entry appearing in the ... user's news feed. The entry won't appear for anyone else, unless the user actively decides to share it. It's also possible to access the page directly using a bookmark on the Facebook site or via a dedicated page at facebook.com/onthisday. Users can also sign up so that several such memories are guaranteed to show up in their news ... (view more)

Facebook is to tweak the way it selects and displays content in user news feeds. The idea is to make life easier for users on slow, inconsistent, or wireless Internet connections. Part of the changes affect how the content will be shown; for ... example, users on a slow connection will see more text-based content such as status updates, rather than showing more videos. There will also be a change affecting how media content is downloaded as a priority. Facebook has already switched to an image format known as Progressive JPEG that displays low quality images first, then gradually downloads into a ... (view more)

Facebook has clarified its rules on what can and cannot be posted on the site. The changes are designed to bring more common sense, but critics say the rules still have inconsistencies. The decision to remove posts, photos or videos is based on a ... set of rules known as Facebook's community guidelines. In the past, the guidelines have come under heavy criticism for being either too vague and broad, often seeming to outlaw content many people would consider acceptable, or allow content widely considered unacceptable. Three years ago, leaked documents showed the instructions for previous ... (view more)