Instagram Archives - The Connecticut Star

Meta Finally Lifts Lingering Restrictions on Trump Months Out from November

July 14, 2024 Connecticut Star Staff

Tech giant Meta announced Friday it will be lifting former President Donald Trump’s “heightened suspension penalties” on Facebook and Instagram as the 2024 elections grow closer.

President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, released an updated statement on the company’s site, announcing the change to the protocols from January 2023, specifically for Trump’s restrictions, in order for users to “hear from political candidates.” The company stated the previous restrictions on Trump had been placed in “response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances” following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Commentary: TikTok and Instagram Turned Me into a Leftist, but X Helped Me Escape

July 2, 2024 Connecticut Star Staff

Social media plays a significant role in shaping the opinions of those 35 and under — it’s the primary news source for most in that age group, one survey found.

Some stats report that daily screen time for 16- to 24-year-olds is nearly eight hours among females and seven hours among males. To put that in perspective — that’s equivalent to the average time in a school day.

Instagram Pushes Sexualized Content on 13-Year-Olds Within Minutes of Logging In, Studies Show

June 22, 2024 Connecticut Star Staff

Instagram recommends sexualized content to young teenagers within minutes of their first log in, according to studies from The Wall Street Journal and Northeastern computer-science professor Laura Edelson.

The studies, which consisted of scrolling through Instagram Reels using new test accounts with listed ages of 13, found that adult sex-content creators appeared in the test accounts’ feeds in as little as three minutes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, if a test account chose to skip other forms of content and watch sexually suggestive content to completion, its feed would be dominated by sexualized content in under 20 minutes.

Uvalde Victims’ Families Slap Meta with Lawsuit: Report

May 26, 2024 Connecticut Star Staff

Family members of the victims of a mass shooting in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, filed a lawsuit against Meta, the owner of Instagram, Friday, according to multiple reports.

Two teachers and 19 children died in the May 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde before Border Patrol agents stormed the classroom and fatally shot the perpetrator. The lawsuit also targets Activision, the maker of the Call of Duty video game franchise, and Daniel Defense, which made the rifle used in the shooting, CBS News reported.

Commentary: Big Tech Wants to Crush Your Entire World and Trap You in Virtual Hell

May 22, 2024 Connecticut Star Staff

Apple’s recent ad for a new, thinner iPad featured a hydraulic press smashing everything the new gadget could supposedly replace: paints, musical instruments, a clay bust, arcade cabinets, record players, books.

The new iPad promises a future in which humanity has forgotten the whisper of the brush over the canvas, the vibration of a guitar string, the joy of finding a note tucked into an old used book, and the easy camaraderie of children cheering each other on as they take turns at a challenging arcade game. The craftsmanship that went into these objects is now obsolete. You don’t have to go anywhere, touch anything.

Rubio, Consumer Advocate Want Chinese Online Retailers Investigated

May 21, 2024 The Center Square

Lawmakers and consumer advocates are calling for a federal investigation into online Chinese retailers Temu and Shein.

The companies have spent billions of dollars in online American advertising with social media companies such as Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, and Google. The probe is warranted, critics say, because of anti-competitive practices skirting U.S. trade and public safety regulations; alleged use of slave laborers to make products sold at cut-rate prices; and advertising targeting children, low-income families and older Americans.

Moms Inadvertently Expose Daughters to Predators on Instagram in Quest for Money and Fame, Investigation Reveals

February 24, 2024 Connecticut Star Staff

Mothers are inadvertently exposing their young daughters to male predators on Instagram in a quest to garner money and fame, an investigation published by The New York Times on Thursday found.

The accounts, numbering in the thousands, reveal how social media platforms are altering the definition of childhood and the increasing commodification of young girls, the NYT found. In some cases, mothers managing the accounts actively sell photographs, previously worn outfits and chat sessions with their underage daughters.

Zuckerberg Says Meta Has No Plans to Go Through with a Kids’ Version of Instagram

January 31, 2024 Just the News

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress on Wednesday said the tech firm has “no plans” to make a kids version of its Instagram platform.

He acknowledge “discussions internally” on the idea but also said Meta has not “actually moved forward with that, and we currently have no plans to do so.”

New Mexico Sues Facebook and Instagram for Hosting Child Sexual Abuse, Solicitation, and Trafficking Content

December 9, 2023 Connecticut Star Staff

New Mexico is suing Facebook and Instagram for creating “prime locations” for sexual predators to share child sexual abuse, solicitation, and trafficking content.

NM Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a civil suit filed against Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, alleging that “certain child exploitative content” is ten times “more prevalent” on Facebook and Instagram than on pornography site PornHub and the adult content platform OnlyFans.

China Ramps Up Crackdown on American Tech

October 2, 2023 Connecticut Star Staff

Over the past few months, China has escalated its efforts to exert control over American technology companies by implementing new requirements, bans and restrictions.

The Chinese government is clamping down on American technology companies by throttling their already limited access to the country’s massive economy, according to new requirements, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The country has also challenged American technology dominance by developing rivals to the latest smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as announcing export limits to key metals in July.

Meta’s Oversight Board Rules That Company Stifled Speech by Removing Posts About Abortion

September 7, 2023 Connecticut Star Staff

Meta’s Oversight Board ruled Wednesday that Facebook and Instagram showed “patterns of censorship” by removing posts about abortion that the social media platforms claimed constituted death threats.

The board had been weighing a series of posts that were initially taken down by Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, for potential death threats against both pro-abortion and pro-life advocates before being reinstated after appeals from the users. The board took up the case in June and announced this week that Facebook had erred by removing the posts, according to the ruling.

Meta’s Epidemic of Chinese ‘Spamouflage’ Propaganda

September 4, 2023 Connecticut Star Staff

Meta recently took “what appears to be the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world,” off its platforms, according to the company’s quarterly Adversarial Threat Report released this week.’

The social media accounts that made up the covert influence operation — collectively dubbed “Spamouflage” — were active all over the world, including in America, major U.S. allies, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora.

New California Bill Would Make Social Media Platforms Liable for Harm Caused to Children

June 30, 2023June 29, 2023 The Center Square

Parents of children who are harmed by the use of social media platforms are one step closer to holding those platforms accountable, thanks to a new bill passed by the California Assembly Judiciary Committee.

The bill was authored by State Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) and is being sponsored by Attorney General Bonta.

Meta Launches Paid Verification Service

March 20, 2023 Just the News

Meta on Friday launched a paid verification service for Facebook and Instagram that offers a profile badge and identity monitoring services in exchange for subscription fee.

While the company will not charge fees to existing verified accounts, others seeking verification must pay $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 per month on mobile device, according to The Hill.

Social Media Use in Children Linked to Significant Brain Changes

January 6, 2023 Susan Berry, PhD

A new study from the University of North Carolina shows children and teens who frequently check social media may become more sensitive in the long term to “social feedback” in the form of “likes” and “dislikes” at a time when the brain is experiencing significant developmental changes.

In the study, published at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics, researchers Maria Maza, et al, investigated whether the frequency with which middle-school age children check their Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat social media accounts is associated with long-term changes in brain development as they mature further into adolescence.

Meta’s ‘Unequal’ Moderation Policy Protects Elites on Facebook and Instagram: Report

December 7, 2022December 6, 2022 Admin

Meta’s Oversight Board criticized the social media giant for unfairly favoring certain elite users of Facebook and Instagram, granting them amnesty from certain rules, and failing to publicly disclose the program’s extent.

Meta’s “cross-check” program is supposed to minimize the number of posts Facebook and Instagram incorrectly take down, by having a human review posts by certain “powerful” users when they are found to be violating the rules, according to the Oversight Board. The Board found that, in practice, cross-check protected these accounts, allowing their content to remain up even when it was in violation of the sites’ rules and helping favored accounts receive reduced punishments for infractions, all the while repeatedly failing to detail to the public and the Board which accounts and posts were subject to this policy.

Facebook, Instagram Parent Company Meta Cuts 11,000 Jobs

November 10, 2022November 9, 2022 Just the News

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, on Wednesday laid off 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce, amid lowered revenue.

The company, which had more than 87,000 employees in September, grew dramatically at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

European Country Fines Instagram $400 Million

September 7, 2022September 6, 2022 Admin

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Instagram €405 million ($403 million USD) Monday over child privacy violations, according to Business Insider.

The fine for failing to protect the privacy of minors stemmed from a variety of default settings for minor-operated accounts that the data watchdog considered improper, according to Business Insider. Children were allowed to operate business accounts, receive messages from adults and had their accounts set to “public” by default, according to Business Insider.

Big Tech Censored Dozens of Doctors, over 800 Accounts for COVID-19 ‘Misinformation,’ Study Shows

February 10, 2022 Admin

Major technology companies and social media platforms have removed, suppressed or flagged the accounts of over 800 prominent individuals and organizations, including medical doctors, for COVID-19 misinformation, according to a new study from the Media Research Center (MRC).

MRC’s Free Speech America CensorTrack, an initiative that monitors acts of censorship across online platforms, identified over 41 instances between March 2020 and February 2022 in which doctors, scientists and medical organizations were censored, according to the results of a study shared with Daily Caller News Foundation.

Amazon and Facebook Spent More Money Than Ever Lobbying in 2021

January 23, 2022January 23, 2022 Admin

Amazon and Facebook parent company Meta spent more money in 2021 lobbying lawmakers and officials than any year before, according to lobbying disclosure filings.

Amazon spent $20.3 million on lobbying while Meta spent $20.1 million in 2021, according to a review of lobbying disclosure filings by MarketWatch. The figures are record totals for both tech companies, who spent $18.9 million and $19.7 million on lobbying in 2020, respectively.

Google’s lobbying spend for 2021 clocked in at $11.5 million, while Microsoft spent $10.3 million and Apple spent $6.5 million, according to MarketWatch’s review.