Social Media

Jason Miller, a spokesman of Donald Trump, has told Fox News's Howard Kurtz that the former president will return to social media "in probably about two or three months here with his own platform."

“And this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, it’s going to completely redefine the game, and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform,” Miller said.

Asked for details, Miller said he couldn't go further into detail but "that it will be big once he [Trump] starts" and that there have been "lot of high-power meetings" at Mar-a-Lago with "numerous companies".

“But I think the president does know what direction he wants to head here and this new platform is going to be big and everyone wants him, he’s gonna bring millions and millions, tens of millions of people to this new platform,” so Miller.

Facebook is building a version of the photo-sharing tool Instagram specifically for children under the age of 13, an effort to get its popular products into the hands of the next generation of internet users. Instagram, bought by Facebook almost a decade ago for $1 billion, has become one of its most popular products at a time when its main social networking property has failed to resonate with some younger users.

The new project will be overseen by the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri and led by Vice President Pavni Diwanji. BuzzFeed notes that Instagram had just this week published a blog post addressing bullying among its younger teenage users. "To address this challenge, we're developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features."

The up-and-coming audio app Clubhouse is getting competition: Twitter is expanding the test run of its Spaces service. And Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also commissioned the development of a competing Clubhouse product, writes the New York Times, citing anonymous sources. Facebook is known for mimicking popular features of other social media services in its apps. However, the project is still in the early stages, the newspaper writes.

After the star of "The Mandalorian" and former mixed martial arts fighter received backlash online Wednesday for sharing a series of incendiary social media posts and memes mentioning Jeffrey Epstein and comparing conservatives in the U.S. to Holocaust victims, Lucasfilm confirmed that Gina Carano is no longer a part of the popular Disney+ show.

The news comes on the heels of the hashtag #FireGinaCarano trending on Twitter Wednesday as fans screen-grabbed the star's deleted posts, including an anti-Semitic Instagram story that she shared from another user that equivocated the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust to a disagreement over beliefs: "How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"

Carano was a frequent guest star on "The Mandalorian" since the first season, often helping the title character on his mission to keep Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, safe from Imperial forces hunting the tiny alien creature.

While trying to film a 'prank' robbery video in the hopes to create a viral hit on YouTube, a 20-year-old man was shot and killed in Nashville, Tennessee on Friday night. According to a report by local NBC News affiliate WSMV, Timothy Wilks was shot by 23-year-old David Starnes Jr., who is claiming self-defense.

Police say that Wilks and a friend approached a group of people, both of them wielding butcher knives. Starnes was among those people and, not realizing that Wilks was filming a prank, shot him. Starnes told detectives he was protecting himself and others from a perceived threat.

Twitter has blocked the user account of the Chinese embassy in the US because of a tweet about the treatment of the Uyghur minority. The account @ChineseEmbinUS had published a tweet saying that Uyghur women were no longer "baby-making machines". The original English-language tweet referred to "baby making machines." The statement referred to a study reported by China Daily, a pro-government newspaper.

Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack has stated in a series of tweets that Twitter is working on a future of social media and doing their "part by funding an initiative around an open decentralized standard for social media." The technology called Bluesky will be blockchain-based and Twitter intends to "ultimately be a client of this standard."

Twitter has on Sunday temporarily blocked the account of Republican Congresswoman and "QAnon" supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene had violated company rules on multiple occasions, the online platform said. The congresswoman had written on Twitter that voter fraud had occurred in the Senate elections in Georgia. According to U.S. broadcaster CNN, Greene had spread several conspiracy myths and false reports at once in a lengthy thread.

The congresswoman's Twitter messages were then flagged with a notice that their content was controversial. A few hours later, the online network decided to suspend Greene's account for twelve hours.

German government criticizes the permanent blocking of Trump's social media accounts. Merkel pointed out that freedom of expression as a fundamental right should only be restricted by legislation and not by companies.

In principle, the German government condemns statements inciting hatred and violence and is in favor of regulating social networks.

YouTube bans Steve Bannon's podcast channel hours after Rudy Giuliani appeared on an episode and blamed the Capitol siege on Democrats.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have “no plans” to return to social media almost a year after Megxit.

A source close to the ex-royals told The Times of London that they’re “very unlikely” to have an online presence, mostly due to the “hate” they’ve received.

Earlier this week, Kering-owned luxury fashion brand Bottega Veneta closed down its Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts without warning and with no explanation. It is unclear whether this is a mere marketing stunt or whether Bottega Veneta's decision may be a bellwether for an emerging trend.

Social media doesn’t work to attract the right people to a luxury brand, according to an analysis of a luxury insiders’ survey among some 500 executives working in or supporting the luxury industry.

“We have not found any marketing tool that produces leads qualified for our luxury products and service,” was among the comments in that survey. And another said, “So far nothing is working. Social media is seeing no actual move to act.”

Two possible reasons are currently discussed publically:

• Social media is mass, not class. Luxury does not fit in the hodgepodge of divergent messages that is social media.
• People who can actually afford luxury brands are over-marketed to and not likely to pay attention to the brand's social media posts. Bombarding them with irrelevant posts on social media is not how to be respectful of them and personalize every interaction.

GQ’s Rachel Tashjain speculated: “Perhaps the Bottega deletion is the ultimate act of stealth luxury – it will now be a brand that travels strictly by word of mouth.”

Twitter took action against a pair of President Trump's close associates Friday, banning them from the platform as part of a broader effort to contain the QAnon conspiracy movement. In recent months, each figure has promoted QAnon, an elaborate constellation of conspiracy theories purporting that President Trump is waging a secret battle against a cabal of political enemies who engage in child sex trafficking, among other baseless claims. As part of Trump's post-election legal team, Powell became a heroic figure to the QAnon crowd, which believes that a master plan being orchestrated behind the scenes will give the president a second term.

Following the violent storming of the US Capitol by radical supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump, Google has removed the online service Parler from its app store.

In addition Apple threatened a removal and demanded that Parler must take measures to prevent users from planning illegal, violent activities together.

Twitter has stated that "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."

Twitter has stated that three tweets of the United States President Donald Trump have been removed because they were in "severe" violation of Twitters "Civic Integrity policy".

This means that Trump needs to remove the tweets and his account will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of the tweets.

Facebook published full-page newspaper ads in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post on Wednesday criticizing Apple’s upcoming iOS privacy changes.

"We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere," the headline read. "At Facebook, small business is at the core of our business," the ad continues and claims that Apple's changes will be "devastating to small businesses," and ends by writing that"small businesses deserve to be heard. We hear your concerns, and we stand with you."

Apple responded by saying it was "standing up" for people who use its devices and that user "should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites — and they should have the choice to allow that or not."

In an effort to avoid the EU's privacy laws, Facebook will move all of its users in the United Kingdom into user agreements with the corporate headquarters in California. Google has done a similar move in February. 

"Like other companies, Facebook has had to make changes to respond to Brexit and will be transferring legal responsibilities and obligations for UK users from Facebook Ireland to Facebook Inc. There will be no change to the privacy controls or the services Facebook offers to people in the UK," so Facebook's UK arm.

In future, services such as Facebook and YouTube will have to delete terrorist propaganda in the EU within one hour of being requested to do so by the respective authority of an EU state. Negotiators from the European Parliament and EU member states agreed on this on Thursday. For systematic violations, the operators of the sites face fines of four percent of their annual turnover.

Federal Judge Carl Nichols has decided that the U.S. Department of Commerce has no sufficient legal basis for prohibiting ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, from holding infrastructure and data for the operation of the social media application in the United States.

The Trump administration used as a basis for its action a 1977 law granting the U.S. president broad emergency powers in the event of extraordinary dangers from abroad. However, this provision expressly prohibits the president from restricting the import and export of information or information material or personal communications. TikTok clearly falls into this category, Judge Nichols now stressed.