A new study shows that privacy on social media is like second-hand smoke. It's controlled by the people around you. Individual choice has long been considered a bedrock principle of online privacy. If you don't want to be on Facebook, you can leave or not sign up in the first place. Then your behavior will be your own private business, right?

PSA: This is a security and privacy nightmare that will get your Facebook account banned.

e’ve weaned ourselves off banner advertisements, with a fifth of us using ad blockers in our internet browsers, according to research firm eMarketer. So-called “native advertising” online, where advertising is presented in a similar way to editorial, has failed to take off. A US study last year from Stanford University found native advertising is no better at getting us to buy than standard online ads. “Consumers are very good at filtering out messages,” explains Lisa Du-Lieu, a senior lecturer in marketing at Huddersfield University. “If you don’t get their attention within the first couple of seconds, it just bounces off them.”

As innocuous as it may seem, the viral “10 Year Challenge” flooding social media feeds everywhere may have been created to collect large amounts of data for future facial recognition software, according to one prominent tech writer.

President Donald Trump’s social media accounts are filled with vile racism, idiotic xenophobia, and inaccurate statistics. And now we can add another category to the list: fake photos.

It was hailed as a progressive alternative to Twitter. But marginalized, queer users are being alienated by well-off tech bros.

After Facebook Watch, Lasso, and IGTV, the company has been quietly developing another product targeted at the kids. According to a new report, the company has spent months building LOL which is a special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch late Friday that it was experimenting with the “LOL” hub for kids. “We are running a small scale test and the concept is in the early stages right now,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The Federal Trade Commission is in the advanced stages of its investigation into whether Facebook violated privacy rules and is expected to seek large fines from the company, according to two people familiar with the inquiry. The five members of the commission met in mid-December to discuss the investigation, according to the people, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is not public. The meeting is a sign that the investigation is far along, the people said, because the commissioners rarely meet in the early stages of an inquiry.

I am really sad about Facebook. I got involved with the company more than a decade ago and have taken great pride and joy in the company’s success … until the past few months. Now I am disappointed. I am embarrassed. I am ashamed. With more than 1.7 billion members, Facebook is among the most influential businesses in the world. Whether they like it or not–whether Facebook is a technology company or a media company–the company has a huge impact on politics and social welfare.

A security flaw meant many private messages were readable for years said Twitter.

"Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" is such an anodyne way of describing weaponizing information to poison attitudes and democracies. That's the euphemism that Facebook is employing to talk about its latest purge of accounts and pages that may be part of a Russian disinformation campaign. More than 500 pages and accounts have recently been removed, according to a report by Facebook's cybersecurity policy chief.

Campbell Brown: "We are going to continue our work with head publishers. We’re not backing away from that, but it is a shift to local and an emphasis on local that is new for us."

A Q&A with Twitter's CEO on right-wing extremism, Candace Owens, and what he'd do if the president called on his followers to murder journalists. By Ashley Feinberg.

The science of how technology affects happiness needs a huge statistical upgrade. A new paper charts a path toward better research.

The video about toxic masculinity, bullying and men's behaviour sparks outrage online.

Are you searching for a Facebook alternative or an alternative to Google Plus? This MeWe Review will tell you why MeWe will solve your privacy concerns.

What is the correlation between screen time and adolescent well-being? It’s an important question for which we have limited and often contradictory answers. A story in Wired this week all but let our phones off the hook for any negative consequences — but I wonder if the study fully understands the way we live now. Much of the research to date on the potential effects of screen time on well-being relies on self-reported data from massive surveys, Wired reports.

Many thought the internet would bring democracy to China. Instead it empowered rampant government oppression, and now the censors are turning their attention to the rest of the world. Not the confluence the geniuses said it would be.

In a chaotic work day, it can be difficult to stay organized. Don’t worry, we have you covered with some of the best tips to help you become a master of organization.

Emailing has been a leading form of business communication for years, and it’s far from obsolete. Employers and coworkers still rely on the trustworthy system for sharing and storing important information. You need to stay sharp in order to stand out, so focus on these five email mistakes that you need to avoid.

Facebook is making yet another attempt to win back teens to its platform — this time, with memes, TechCrunch reported Friday. Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch it is privately testing a hub for memes on its platform, called LOL. Facebook said a small number of U.S. users are testing the app, which replaces its Watch section for videos in the app. Facebook told TechCrunch it does not have plans to roll out LOL in Watch and is still determining whether it will become a feature in Facebook's app or a separate app entirely.

‘What a time to be alive’

Spending too much time on “social media” sites like Facebook is making people more than just miserable. It may also be making them depressed. A new study looked at 504 millennials who actively use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or Snapchat, individuals who met the criteria for a major depressive disorder scored higher on the “Social Media Addiction” scale.

Rapper CupcakKe was hospitalised this week after worrying tweets, highlighting the increasing frequency of posts that need urgent responses.

Once again, Facebook is embroiled in a scandal where it was caught violating millions of people's privacy. By Trevor Timm.

Is your Instagram engagement down? Boost your Instagram engagement rate with this free Instagram Engagement Calculator. Get proof these hacks work.

Older Americans are disproportionately more likely to share fake news on Facebook, according to a new analysis by researchers at New York and Princeton Universities. Older users shared more fake news than younger ones regardless of education, sex, race, income, or how many links they shared. In fact, age predicted their behavior better than any other characteristic — including party affiliation.

Before the internet was consolidated into centralized information silos, RSS imagined a better way to let users control their online personas.

Facebook continues to be the number 1 social networking app on overall downloads, especially due to the first position in the Google Play store. However, on Apple Store, TikTok was the number 1 app installed worldwide, according to SensorTower data. Julia Chan, Market Analyst at SensorTower, says Facebook and TikTok accounted for 50 percent of the top 10 apps’ total installs.

Pitched internally as an answer to the competitive threat posed by Facebook, project “Emerald Sea” eventually became Google+. I remember Joseph Smarr and Chris Messina writing back in 2011 something to the effect that ‘sharing on the web was broken,’ which was what first gave me the sense that this team wasn’t only interested in building a Facebook killer. They wanted to use Google’s strengths in processing information to reinvent what it meant to share information on the web.

A doctor who tweeted that she would 'purposely give all the Jews the wrong meds' has been found to have been posting anti-Semitic messages on social media for years. Dr Lara Kollab, 27, a former resident at The Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, wrote in now-deleted posts that she hoped 'Allah will kill the Jews' and referred to Jewish people as 'dogs'.

So-called “fake news” has renewed concerns about the prevalence and effects of misinformation in political campaigns. Given the potential for widespread dissemination of this material, we examine the individual-level characteristics associated with sharing false articles during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. To do so, we uniquely link an original survey with respondents’ sharing activity as recorded in Facebook profile data.

Based partially on the strategies of expert Brian Dean, these 9 methods show you the blogger tips and tricks I used to get 2,271 page views in 1 day.

Since the birth of facebook in 2004, it has seen a lot of criticism a timeline of facebook controversies which is the largest social media .

Facebook has long said that it doesn’t use location data to make friend suggestions, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t thought about using it.