Skip to main content

Social Feed: Zuckerberg unfazed by #deletefacebook, Boomerang moves to FB

Social media is a fluid technology — nearly every day, the major social media networks are announcing a big change, coming under fire for the latest controversy or moving forward in smaller ways. Social Feed is a collection of those smaller changes that you may have missed with this week’s biggest news — like another app misusing Facebook data, Instagram’s new portrait mode, and Mark Zuckerberg dodging questions from Congress. Find Social Feed every weekend for the latest social news tidbits.

Facebook is unfazed by #DeleteFacebook

Despite a call to #deletefacebook amid privacy concerns, users are apparently unfazed by the movement. While Zuckerberg already confirmed that the network had not seen a major impact in user count, another Facebook representative has expanded on that data, suggesting that the network hasn’t even seen a big shift in privacy permissions. Carolyn Everson, a vice president for global marketing at the company, says advertisers aren’t leaving the platform and that users haven’t had any “wild changes in behavior.” 

Boomerang is bouncing over to Facebook Camera, too

Instagram’s parent company Facebook is bringing the popular Boomerang effect to the Facebook Camera, along with adding 3D drawing tools. Facebook confirmed that both features are rolling out over the next few weeks. The 3D text creates an augmented reality effect by freezing the type in one location inside the camera. Even if the camera moves, the text stays put.

The tool is rolling out inside Facebook Camera alongside Boomerang. As in Instagram, Boomerang creates a looping GIF but plays the motion in reverse before starting over. The effect has long been a part of Instagram, and now the platform’s parent company is migrating that feature over to Facebook, too.

Even LinkedIn is jumping on the GIF bandwagon

Apparently, even professional-focused social network LinkedIn isn’t immune to the popularity of the all-powerful GIF. LinkedIn is adding a GIF search tool into the network’s messaging tools. The tool, which has already begun rolling out to some users, is powered by Tenor. Users can find popular GIFs, the GIFs chosen most in their network or search for a GIF. 

Fake Facebook Black Lives Matter Page takes $100,000 in “donations”

Mark another entry in the list of ways Facebook tools can be abused, According to CNN, the most popular Black Lives Matter Facebook page was actually a scam. The Page allegedly ran fundraisers but some of those donations reportedly wound up in a bank in Australia. The Page has since been suspended. The kicker? The fake page managed to get more than double the number of followers as the official page for the movement, according to CNN, with nearly 700,000 users following the fake.

Editors' Recommendations

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
You’re probably seeing more social media propaganda, but don’t blame the bots
social media propaganda global disinformation study 2019 kayla velasquez 6xjl5 xq4g4 unsplash

Bots commonly shoulder the blame for social media propaganda, but a recent study out of the U.K. suggests not only that organized political misinformation campaigns have more than doubled in the last two years, but that bots take second place to human-run manipulation.

The Global Disinformation Order study, conducted by the University of Oxford, found evidence of social media manipulation by a government agency or political party in 70 countries, an increase from 48 in 2018 and 28 in 2017. The study has been collecting data annually since 2017, but suggests political propaganda has leveraged social media for the last decade.

Read more
The real reason fake social media accounts will haunt us for years to come
facebook ftc settlement two factor phone numbers leaked header

Over the past week, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all disclosed that they've removed legions of fake accounts from their platforms. Phony accounts on social media are nothing new, but the problem seems to continue even though platforms say they're working to stop it.

After Facebook and Twitter announced on August 20 that they had removed hundreds of accounts from their platforms that were focused on discrediting the current protests in Hong Kong, LinkedIn revealed that it had blocked or deleted millions of fraudulent accounts.

Read more
Facebook toys with mixing Stories and News Feed into one swipeable carousel
top tech stories facebook

Aimlessly scrolling through Facebook could soon become a game of tapping as Facebook tests a new format that mixes Stories with the traditional News Feed posts. After reverse engineering of the app showed off the potential feature, Facebook confirmed that it’s in the early stages of prototyping a News Feed that is more like Stories than the current scroll-through feed.

The prototype navigation, spotted by some finagling of the app code by reverse engineering guru Jane Machon Wong, is activated when a user taps on a post to view in full-screen mode. After tapping on a single post, the feed takes on a full-screen format where users navigate by swiping left, much like the current format for watching Stories. Alternately, if the user doesn’t swipe, the app automatically moves to the next post after six seconds, according to Wong.

Read more