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Instagram is a social media service owned by Facebook for sharing photos and videos. Instagram launched in 2010 exclusively as an iOS app and didn’t come to Android and the web until 2012.

Facebook acquired Instagram in April of 2012 for $1 billion. Facebook also offered to buy Instagram’s closest competitor Snapchat back in 2013 for $3 billion.

In June of 2017 Instagram shared that it reached 250M daily users, surpassing its rival Snapchat by almost 100M. It also has over 700M total users.

Instagram has been criticized for taking popular features from Snapchat such as face filters, stories, and stickers. The company also has plans moving forward to introduce more business focused features.

Meta ignored reports of parents exploiting children | Young girl covering her face

Zuckerberg has no personal liability in child addiction lawsuit [U]

Update: A court has ruled that Mark Zuckerberg cannot be held personally liable for claims that Meta sought to make its apps addictive to children. Lawyers will be able to re-file, this time claiming against Meta rather than Zuckerberg.

Two separate reports today accuse Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta of ignoring reports of parents sexually exploiting their own children for financial gain using paid subscription tools …

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Meta protecting teens by blurring nude photos in Instagram DMs, with warnings [U]

Blurring nude photos in Instagram DMs | Screengrabs of the feature in use

Instagram is rolling out a new safety feature, designed to protect teens from being exposed to unwanted nude photos in Instagram direct messages. The system will blur nude photos in Instagram DMs when the recipient is believed to be a teenager.

The safety measure is designed to protect against three problems, including the growing problem of ‘sextortion’ on the platform …

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Global meta outage: What do we know, and what was the likely cause?

Global meta outage cause | Plug removed from socket

Yesterday’s global meta outage seemingly took out the company’s entire network, with users unable to access Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Threads, and Quest headsets.

The outage lasted between one and two hours for most users, and while everything now appears back to normal, questions are naturally being asked about what went wrong …

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Zuckerberg’s AI announcement raises privacy and toxicity red flags

Meta AI | apps Instagram Facebook WhatsApp

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s AI announcement has raised major concerns, after he said that the company had more user data than was used to train ChatGPT – and would soon be using it to train its own AI systems.

The company’s plan to use Facebook and Instagram posts and comments to train a competing chatbot raises concerns about both privacy and toxicity …

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Social media CEOs testifying to congress on teen safety

Social media CEOs quizzed | Apps shown on iPhone

The timing of Meta’s announcement of new teen safety measures earlier this week likely wasn’t coincidental: Mark Zuckerberg and other social media CEOs are set to testify to Congress on the topic.

Facebook’s founder will be joined by the chief execs of TikTok, Snap, Discord and X as Congress seeks to determine whether the companies are doing enough to protect teens from harm …

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Adopting a sane approach to social media, and apps generally

A sane approach to social media | Sunrise reflecting on waves

The start of a new year is a time many of us use to take stock – of our goals, our habits, the ways in which we spend our time. For me, one significant change has been adopting a more sane approach to social media, and apps in general.

I’m a huge fan of technology, of course, but I also fully acknowledge that tech also has its downsides – and social media in particular has been a very mixed blessing …

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Unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – but only in Europe

Unlink your Instagram | Screenshot on smartphone resting on MacBook

Meta has announced a radical new move to comply with European antitrust requirements taking effect in March. The company will let you unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – as well as those for Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming.

This means you’ll have the option of setting each up as a completely separate account, with no shared data between them …

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Threads launched in EU countries; no Instagram account needed to browse

Threads launched in EU countries | App shown on smartphone next to laptop

Social network Threads has now launched in EU countries, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noting that this now opens it up to an additional 448M people. The company first teased this last week.

EU citizens will also be able to browse Threads without having to create an Instagram account – a move likely intended to placate antitrust regulators …

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