Category Archives: Social media

TikTok battles to remove video of livestreamed suicide

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Graphic footage originally broadcast on Facebook has spread across social network

TikTok is battling to remove a graphic video of a livestreamed suicide, after the footage was uploaded to the service on Sunday night from Facebook, where it was initially broadcast.

Although the footage was rapidly taken down from TikTok, users spent much of Monday re-uploading it, initially unchanged, but later incorporated into so-called bait-and-switch videos, which are designed to shock and upset unsuspecting users.

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Facebook blocks livestream of assisted dying campaigner’s death

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Terminally ill French man is told his plan was blocked because it could promote self-harm

Facebook has blocked a terminally ill French campaigner for assisted dying from livestreaming his own death.

Alain Cocq, who has been suffering for 34 years from a rare and incurable degenerative disease, has stopped taking food, drink or medicine, and says he wants his death to be seen to help persuade French authorities to lift a ban on medically assisted suicide.

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BBC boss Tim Davie to crack down on staff airing views on social media

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New director general says he wants to focus on impartiality after accusations of bias

Tim Davie is to crack down on staff posting their views on social media in a move to restore the view of the BBC as impartial, and raised the question of slashing the corporation’s output by a fifth, cutting more jobs and potentially shutting TV channels.

The new director general said the BBC had to focus on impartiality to address accusations of bias from politicians on both sides of the political divide.

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TikTok US sale faces fresh hurdle after China tightens tech export rules

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Beijing says some exports will now need government approval in move believed to be linked to Trump sale order

New Chinese government restrictions could complicate ByteDance plans to sell TikTok to a US company and avoid a ban threatened by Donald Trump.

Late on Friday, Beijing issued new restrictions or bans on tech exports, requiring companies to seek government approval – a process that can take up to 30 days. In mid-August, Trump gave the company 90 days to sell up or face a shutdown.

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TikTok chief executive Kevin Mayer resigns after Trump call to sell US assets

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In a letter to staff Meyer cited a ‘sharply changed’ political environment, after Donald Trump ordered ByteDance to sell up within 90 days

Tik Tok’s chief executive, Kevin Mayer, has quit just months after his appointment, amid a “sharply changed” political environment after Donald Trump accused the platform of threatening national security.

The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the former Disney executive would be replaced in the interim by Vanessa Pappas, the general manager. In a letter to staff, parts of which have been seen by the Guardian, Mayer said he had decided to leave after Trump ordered TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its US assets to a US company within 90 days.

“In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for,” the letter said.

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Your data is not destined for China, assures TikTok’s UK boss

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The controversial app’s users are ignoring geopolitical battle over its digital security, says Richard Waterworth

TikTok’s UK chief has strenuously denied the video-sharing app, which Donald Trump has threatened to ban, shares data with China.

Richard Waterworth told the Observer that the UK and European arm of TikTok was growing quickly, despite the “turbulent” geopolitical battle in which the Chinese-born app has found itself.

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Microsoft’s TikTok deal: bargain of the decade or a $50bn blunder?

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Jury is out on whether video-sharing site could make Microsoft a social media giant

As the clock ticks on Microsoft’s fast-track talks to buy TikTok the jury is out on whether it marks a unique opportunity to become a global social media giant overnight, or a $50bn (£38bn) geopolitically fuelled business blunder.

Donald Trump’s trade war with China has forced ByteDance, the privately owned Beijing-based parent of the video-sharing site TikTok, to pursue a sale of its US business after the president signed an executive order last week that could shut it down on 15 September.

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Prince Harry hits out at social media for creating ‘crisis of hate’

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Duke of Sussex urges advertisers to demand companies do more to curb hate speech online

Prince Harry has hit out at social media companies for creating a “crisis of hate” and called for “meaningful digital reform” after an unprecedented advertiser boycott of Facebook.

In an opinion piece for the US business magazine Fast Company, the Duke of Sussex revealed that he and his wife, Meghan, had begun campaigning for change in social media “a little over four weeks ago”.

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Pompeo: US removing ‘untrusted’ Chinese apps to protect Covid vaccine work – video

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The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, says the Trump administration wants the removal of 'untrusted' Chinese apps from service in the country. Calling popular social media platforms TikTok and WeChat dangerous, Pompeo also raised concerns around data theft of intellectual property, including potential Covid-19 vaccines, through cloud-based services

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Facebook removes Trump post for spreading false information on Covid

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Post included video in which Trump wrongly said that children were ‘almost immune’ from illness

Facebook has removed a post from Donald Trump’s page for spreading false information about the coronavirus, a first for the social company that has been harshly criticized for repeatedly allowing the president to break its content rules.

The post included video of Trump falsely asserting that children were “almost immune from Covid-19” during an appearance on Fox News. There is evidence to suggest that children who contract Covid-19 generally experience milder symptoms than adults do. However, they are not immune, and some children have become severely ill or died from the disease.

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TikTok row: Microsoft pursues deal as Pompeo says Trump will take action soon

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Microsoft confirms acquisition plans, hours after US secretary of state says Chinese software companies are feeding data directly to Communist party

Donald Trump will take action in coming days to tackle an array of national security risks presented by TikTok and other Chinese software companies, Mike Pompeo has said, as Microsoft revealed it was pursuing a deal after speaking to the US president.

Microsoft said late on Sunday that - after a conversation between Trump and its CEO, Satya Nadella – it would move quickly on acquisition talks with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, completing talks no later than 15 September. It pledged to ensure that all private data of American users was transferred to, and remained in, the US.

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TikTok: China’s ByteDance agrees to divest US operations after Trump threat

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Proposed deal would see Microsoft take over TikTok in US, insiders say, after president said he would ban video app

China’s ByteDance has agreed to divest the US operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, after Donald Trump said on Friday he had decided to ban the popular short-video app, two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

US officials have said TikTok under its Chinese parent poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles. ByteDance’s concession will test whether Trump’s threat to ban TikTok is a negotiating tactic or whether he is intent on cracking down on a social media app that has up to 80 million daily active users in the US.

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TikTok: Trump suggests US may ban Chinese-owned app

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The US is reportedly preparing to take action against the popular short video app over concerns for the security of personal data

Donald Trump on Friday again suggested the US may take action against the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, floating a potential ban.

“We’re looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House on a trip to Florida.

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Madonna leads celebrity vogue for Covid-19 conspiracy theories

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Singer’s claim vaccine is being concealed is latest example of stars spreading falsehoods during pandemic

Dancer, singer, songwriter, actor, director – Madonna has had quite the career.

But the queen of pop’s latest reinvention came this week in the form of a video posted on Instagram that shared a coronavirus conspiracy theory with her 15 million followers.

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Monica Lewinsky ‘wins the internet’ with joke about internship

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Lewinsky made light of affair with Bill Clinton in ‘I have a joke’ tweet that quickly went viral

Monica Lewinsky has made light of her affair with Bill Clinton with a tweet that quickly went viral.

“I have a joke” was trending on Twitter on Friday, prompting users to offer up one-line witticisms. When one user tweeted “I have a Charles Manson joke and it kills”, Lewinsky offered her own take: “I have an intern joke and it … nevermind.”

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‘I cannot be silent’: exposing the racial pay gap among influencers

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The disparity between the fees paid to black influencers and their white counterparts has come under scrutiny after a group of campaigners spoke out

At the start of the pandemic, Vanity Fair asked whether the influencer era was over because people were tired of glossy, edited lives on social media and wanted something more “real”. Instead, it seems the world of influencers is adapting to reflect changes in the rest of the world. In recent weeks, the focus has been the shocking pay disparity between white influencers and influencers of colour.

In June, a group of influencers of colour shared an open letter on Instagram that called out Fohr, a marketing agency that work as a middleman between brands and influencers. Women including Valerie Eguavoen spoke out. “I cannot be silent when I see clear evidence of pay disparities between Black women and other creatives who work with you,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I cannot be silent when you refuse to address racism form [sic] individuals on your team adequately. Enough is enough.” (Fohr replied on Instagram, apologising for its conduct, writing: “We HAVE to do a better job listening to, promoting and working with black influencers.”)

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TikTok halts talks on London HQ amid UK-China tensions

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Video-sharing app suspends building plans, with British ban on Huawei 5G kit seen as factor

The Chinese social media firm TikTok has pulled back from talks to site the headquarters for its non-China business in the UK, threatening the creation of 3,000 jobs, as fears grow of a tit-for-tat trade war between London and Beijing.

Its parent company, ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, had spent months in negotiations with the Department for International Trade and No 10 officials to expand operations in addition to the near 800 employed by TikTok.

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‘Too big to fail’: why even a historic ad boycott won’t change Facebook

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The company has survived previous seemingly existential crises with little damage to its monarchical structure

On the evening of 13 July 2013, a few hours after George Zimmerman was acquitted over the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Alicia Garza logged on to her Facebook account and typed a phrase that would change the world: “#blacklivesmatter”. A few minutes later, she posted again: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.”

That Facebook played a small role in the inception of a movement that may have become the largest in US history is the kind of story that the embattled company likes to point to when it makes its case that it does more good than harm. CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted of the hashtag’s origin on Facebook in October 2019, when he delivered a speech about his view of free expression at Georgetown University.

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Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

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Harper’s letter asserts way to ‘defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion’, but critics accuse authors of censorious mentality

JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among the signatories to a controversial open letter warning that the spread of “censoriousness” is leading to “an intolerance of opposing views” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”.

Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her, said she was “proud to sign this letter in defence of a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech”.

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‘Disappointing’ Zuckerberg meeting fails to yield results, say Facebook boycott organizers

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Civil rights groups say company did not commit to concrete plan to address hate speech and misinformation

The organizers behind a major advertiser boycott of Facebook have called a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg and other executives “disappointing”, saying the company failed to commit to concrete solutions for addressing hate speech and misinformation on the platform.

Officials at Facebook, including Zuckerberg, the CEO, and Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, met with members of the coalition of civil rights groups over video chat for an hour on Tuesday to discuss the largest boycott in Facebook history, which has gained the support of more than 1,000 of its advertisers, including Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks.

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