Facebook

Facing scrutiny from Congress, Twitter today disclosed that more than 200 Russia-linked accounts had been used to spread propaganda and misinformation on the company's platform, reports TheVerge. 

Social network Facebook has erased tens of thousands of fake profiles few weeks before Sunday's parliamentary elections in Germany, said Richard Allen, spokeswoman for the company.

In his words, this was done in co-operation with the German authorities due to the information on possible Russian intervention in the US and French presidential elections.

Next year, the Facebook social network has to transfer its servers to the Russian Federation with Russian personal data. In 2018, it is entirely possible for Facebook to be blocked in Russia in accordance with the Personal Data Act, according to which all companies are required to store Russians' personal data on the territory of the Russian Federation, reports Kaldata. 

Facebook appears to be adding a new option that lets you temporarily "snooze" a friend's posts from appearing in your news feed.

Hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, probably run from Russia, spent about $100,000 on ads aimed at stirring up divisive issues such as gun control and race relations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the social network said on Sept. 6.

Ingrid Brodnig, Austria's digital champion and author of the book Lies on the Internet, argued that blatantly false news were just the tip of the ice-berg of a "new ecosystem", whose dimensions were for instance revealed at the Constitutional change referendum in Italy last year, where five of the ten most successful media stories in the campaign proved "completely made up".

Facebook's Instagram mobile photo and video publishing application announced that the bug that exposed publicly important personal information, including emails and phone numbers, has been repaired quickly. The announcement was made by Chief Technology Officer Mike Kriger, quoted by Bloomberg.

Make sure to scrutinise your Facebook messages VERY carefully — even if they are sent from one of your closest pals.
A scam is spreading across the social network, causing friends to inadvertently put their chum’s phones and gadgets in jeopardy.
Potential victims are met with an innocent-looking prompt to check out a video in a Messenger chat box.

Facebook is testing a new version of its News Feed, offering selected links to news and topics that fit the interests of individual users. All this happens while the company continues to look for ways to increase the time people spend using the largest social network in the world, Reuters reports.

Due to the fact that social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are inaccessible in China, there exists a whole ecosystem of social networking and messaging platforms that are immensely popular in and around China but hardly known anywhere else in the world.