Hanna Kozlowska

The drama following the abrupt exit of Instagram’s founders from its parent company Facebook continues to heat up. Two days after Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they were leaving, reportedly over increasing meddling from Facebook leadership in the photo-sharing app, Forbes published an explosive profile of Brian Acton, one of the founders of WhatsApp, who also recently left Facebook. The story paints a somewhat unflattering picture of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, who reportedly aggressively pushed to monetize WhatsApp, putting business concerns over the messaging app’s founding values of user privacy and experience.

In a surprise move, the two founders of Instagram announced on Monday (Sept. 24) that they were stepping down, and leaving Facebook, which bought their photo sharing app in 2012. With Facebook’s aging user base and storm of controversies, Instagram has increasingly been seen as the future of the company. With its two visionaries gone, Instagram’s own future is thrown into question.

A former Facebook content moderator is suing the company for exposing her to countless distressing images that she claims have given her post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition frequently diagnosed in soldiers who participate in combat, for example. She also alleges that Facebook did not provide adequate mental health care to the moderators, who have to examine some of the internet’s worst content on a daily basis.

If you think your relationship with your siblings is bad, consider Republican representative Paul Gosar of Arizona. Six of his brothers and sisters star in political ads launched this week for David Brill, Gosar’s Democratic opponent in the midterm election.

Ebooks could be a blessing for prison inmates, with thousands of titles available with one click from one small device. But, as with most other technological innovations introduced in US prisons, they come with a dark side.

Americans have taken to social media to share why they didn’t report their sexual assaults with the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport, a harrowing follow-up to #MeToo. It all comes in the wake of a tweet from US president Donald Trump questioning the account of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, of attempting to sexually assault her while both were in high school.

What happens when internet users can’t go on Facebook? Some turn to other social media platforms to joke about it. A lot of them, it turns out, spend that time reading the news.

Facebook’s ad-targeting technology is once again getting the company in trouble. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint with the US government claiming that targeting on the platform has allowed employers to post advertisements that enable discrimination based on gender.

Facebook, facing increased scrutiny for its role in human-rights abuses around the world, is hiring a “product policy director” for human rights, according to a recent job posting.

Hurricane Florence has hit the southeastern coast of the US, and is expected to have a severe impact on several states. More than 1 million people have been asked to evacuate their homes, and leave the vulnerable areas. Facebook, as the massive public square that it is, can be useful to those affected by the chaos if used wisely.

To say that Facebook’s fact-checking efforts are going well would not pass the muster of any good fact-checker. Its external partners have said the system is inefficient. Some of them are getting brutally attacked online. Partisan bickering has also been an issue. And most importantly, sketchy news sources and fake stories continue to thrive on the platform.

Do you ❤️❤️❤️ wedding pics? 🤤 at homemade pasta?

Americans are using Facebook to get their news just as much as they did last year, despite Facebook’s own efforts to de-prioritize news content, and despite the intensifying conversation surrounding misinformation on the platform.

This week, Facebook’s top two executives have touted the company’s effort to fight fake news. But according to Facebook engagement data, sketchy sources and fake stories are doing quite well on the platform.

I have an unfortunate weakness for Instagram. It sucks me in like few other things, whether it’s scrolling through my haphazardly-curated feed, or clicking through Stories for half an hour. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m just looking at another person’s vacation or skincare routine; sometimes I find it oddly comforting. Still, I usually feel like it’s a waste of my time, and that I could be doing other things—like reading books.

There is one generation that dominates the most popular social network in the US: millennials. Their older siblings or parents, Generation X, follows, and their parents or grandparents, Baby Boomers, come in third. In fact, according to new data from research firm eMarketer, there are twice as many millennials on Facebook as there are Boomers. Teenagers, as we all know, are the least populous group on Facebook.

Instagram is reportedly testing a feature that lets college or university students join special groups designated just for their schools.

Facebook is removing more than 5,000 ad targeting options in order to prevent advertisers from posting discriminatory ads, the company said on Tuesday (Aug. 21).

In another effort to fight the spread of misinformation on its platform, Facebook will now start rating users on their trustworthiness, The Washington Post reported Tuesday (Aug. 21).

Instagram came into our lives nearly a decade ago. It didn’t barge in, it slowly crept, coloring our memories with its filters. But we soon realized it was taking over.

In a case in a California federal court, the US Department of Justice wants Facebook to break the encryption of its Messenger app, Reuters reported. The government and tech companies have for years been at odds over privacy considerations, which aim to protect users, but can impede law enforcement investigations.

Alexus has moved frequently from city to city and state to state in her 16 years. “My friends are in all those places,” she said in a text. “I use Facebook to keep in touch with old friends and family.”

Buying clothes for a fancy event, tucking in the tags, and returning them to the store the next day has for years been the strategy of thrifty shoppers. Today, people are doing it just for the ‘gram.

In 2015, at the height of the migrant crisis in Europe, smugglers were using Facebook as an illicit “travel agency” of sorts, advertising their services and connecting with “customers” on the platform. Three years, and countless deadly sea voyages later, the problem persists.