Little less than 24 hours after Mark Zuckerberg went viral for looking at Jeff Bezos’ fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, during Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, eagle-eyed social media users have revealed interesting details about Meta CEO’s digital footprint. The tech billionaire has reportedly been caught liking a sultry snap of Ms Sanchez on the Meta-owned social media platform Instagram, prompting droves of internet users to troll him online.

Soon after the inauguration ceremony, Ms Sanchez attended the Starlight Ball — one of the three post-inauguration events, dressed in a peach-coloured Dolce & Gabbana gown. Afterwards, she posted a couple of photographs from the event, highlighting her outfit to over 840,000 followers.

While the post received thousands of likes and comments in no time, it was Mr Zuckerberg’s name in the likes column that caught everyone’s eye.

“Zuck making likes private next,” said one user, while another wrote: “That’s why he never enabled community notes on Facebook and Insta.”

A third commented: “Nah, he’s reminding y’all that he invented the like button as a way to be ‘friendly’ with people, not to ‘flirt’ with them. But some of you insecure folks just can’t seem to get that through your heads.”

ZUUUUCKKK NOOOOO LIKES ARE PUBLIC ON INSTAGRAMMMM pic.twitter.com/X5h4bNKtay

— Daniel (@growing_daniel) January 21, 2025

Nah, he’s reminding y’all that he invented the like button as a way to be ‘friendly’ with people, not to ‘flirt’ with them. But some of you insecure folks just can’t seem to get that through your heads. https://t.co/hdomEb83kh

— DeeClark (@GuessTheMaga) January 21, 2025

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Zuckerberg and Sanchez controversy

Ms Sanchez was the talk of the town after he made an appearance at the 47th president’s inauguration, clad in a revealing, lingerie-inspired bustier under a form-fitting white blazer. While some questioned her dressing choice for a formal and historic event, it was Mr Zuckerberg who grabbed the headlines after an ill-timed photograph and later a video of him looking at Ms Sanchez went viral.

The Meta boss was seated next to Ms Sanchez when he is alleged to peeked a view of her cleavage, which led to a series of memes and humorous posts on social media.

Despite the online trolling, both Mr Zuckerberg and Ms Sanchez have been doing fine in their personal lives. While the former is married to Priscilla Chan, his college sweetheart, the latter got engaged to Mr Bezos in 2023 after starting dating in 2018.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced big changes in how the company addresses misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Instead of relying on independent third-party factcheckers, Meta will now emulate Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) in using “community notes”. These crowdsourced contributions allow users to flag content they believe is questionable.

Zuckerberg claimed these changes promote “free expression”. But some experts worry he’s bowing to right-wing political pressure, and will effectively allow a deluge of hate speech and lies to spread on Meta platforms.

Research on the group dynamics of social media suggests those experts have a point.

At first glance, community notes might seem democratic, reflecting values of free speech and collective decisions. Crowdsourced systems such as Wikipedia, Metaculus and PredictIt, though imperfect, often succeed at harnessing the wisdom of crowds — where the collective judgement of many can sometimes outperform even experts.

Research shows that diverse groups that pool independent judgements and estimates can be surprisingly effective at discerning the truth. However, wise crowds seldom have to contend with social media algorithms.

Many people rely on platforms such as Facebook for their news, risking exposure to misinformation and biased sources. Relying on social media users to police information accuracy could further polarise platforms and amplify extreme voices.

Two group-based tendencies — our psychological need to sort ourselves and others into groups — are of particular concern: in-group/out-group bias and acrophily (love of extremes).

INGROUP / OUTGROUP BIAS

Humans are biased in how they evaluate information. People are more likely to trust and remember information from their in-group — those who share their identities — while distrusting information from perceived out-groups. This bias leads to echo chambers, where like-minded people reinforce shared beliefs, regardless of accuracy.

It may feel rational to trust family, friends or colleagues over strangers. But in-group sources often hold similar perspectives and experiences, offering little new information. Out-group members, on the other hand, are more likely to provide diverse viewpoints. This diversity is critical to the wisdom of crowds.

But too much disagreement between groups can prevent community fact-checking from even occurring. Many community notes on X (formerly Twitter), such as those related to COVID vaccines, were likely never shown publicly because users disagreed with one another. The benefit of third-party factchecking was to provide an objective outside source, rather than needing widespread agreement from users across a network.

Worse, such systems are vulnerable to manipulation by well organised groups with political agendas. For instance, Chinese nationalists reportedly mounted a campaign to edit Wikipedia entries related to China-Taiwan relations to be more favourable to China.

POLITICAL POLARISATION AND ACROPHILY

Indeed, politics intensifies these dynamics. In the US, political identity increasingly dominates how people define their social groups.

Political groups are motivated to define “the truth” in ways that advantage them and disadvantage their political opponents. It’s easy to see how organised efforts to spread politically motivated lies and discredit inconvenient truths could corrupt the wisdom of crowds in Meta’s community notes.

Social media accelerates this problem through a phenomenon called acrophily, or a preference for the extreme. Research shows that people tend to engage with posts slightly more extreme than their own views.

These increasingly extreme posts are more likely to be negative than positive. Psychologists have known for decades that bad is more engaging than good. We are hardwired to pay more attention to negative experiences and information than positive ones.

On social media, this means negative posts – about violence, disasters and crises – get more attention, often at the expense of more neutral or positive content.

Those who express these extreme, negative views gain status within their groups, attracting more followers and amplifying their influence. Over time, people come to think of these slightly more extreme negative views as normal, slowly moving their own views toward the poles.

A recent study of 2.7 million posts on Facebook and Twitter found that messages containing words such as “hate”, “attack” and “destroy” were shared and liked at higher rates than almost any other content. This suggests that social media isn’t just amplifying extreme views — it’s fostering a culture of out-group hate that undermines the collaboration and trust needed for a system like community notes to work.

THE PATH FORWARD

The combination of negativity bias, in-group/out-group bias and acrophily supercharges one of the greatest challenges of our time: polarisation. Through polarisation, extreme views become normalised, eroding the potential for shared understanding across group divides.

The best solutions, which I examine in my forthcoming book, The Collective Edge, start with diversifying our information sources. First, people need to engage with — and collaborate across — different groups to break down barriers of mistrust. Second, they must seek information from multiple, reliable news and information outlets, not just social media.

However, social media algorithms often work against these solutions, creating echo chambers and trapping people’s attention. For community notes to work, these algorithms would need to prioritise diverse, reliable sources of information.

While community notes could theoretically harness the wisdom of crowds, their success depends on overcoming these psychological vulnerabilities. Perhaps increased awareness of these biases can help us design better systems — or empower users to use community notes to promote dialogue across divides. Only then can platforms move closer to solving the misinformation problem.

(Author: Colin M. Fisher, Associate Professor of Organisations and Innovation and Author of “The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups”, UCL)

(Disclosure Statement: Colin M. Fisher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The law will make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The Australian Senate passed a social media ban for young children on Thursday (November 28, 2024) that will soon become a world-first law.

The law will make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts.

The Senate passed the bill 34 votes to 19. The House of Representatives on Wednesday (November 27, 2024) overwhelmingly approved the legislation, 102 votes to 13.

The House has yet to endorse Opposition amendments made in the Senate. But that is a formality since the government has already agreed they will pass.

The platforms will have one year to work out how they could implement the ban before penalties are enforced.

Perth:

As Australia and other countries debate the merits of banning kids under 14 from social media, Meta has announced a significant “reimagining” of teenagers’ experience of Instagram.

These new “Teen Accounts” will be set to private by default, have the maximum content and messaging restrictions possible, pause notifications at night, and add new ways for teens to indicate their content preferences.

Importantly, for kids under the age of 16, changing these default settings will now require parental permission.

The move, touted as giving “peace of mind” for parents, is a welcome step – but parents and guardians should use it to talk to their kids about online spaces.

What’s different about Teen Accounts? Teen Accounts are a combination of new features and a repackaging of a number of tools that have already been in place, but haven’t had the visibility or uptake Meta would have preferred.

Bringing these incremental changes together under the umbrella of Teen Accounts should make these changes more visible to teens and caregivers.

Among the the main features: 1. under-18s will have accounts set to private by default, and under-16s will only be able to change that setting with parental permission 2. teens will only be able to receive messages from people they are already following or are connected to 3. content restrictions and the blocking of offensive words in comments and messages will be set to the maximum setting possible 4. notifications from Instagram will be turned off between 10pm and 7am 5. teens will be reminded to leave Instagram after 60 minutes of use on any given day.

Some of these tools are more useful than others. A reminder to leave Instagram after 60 minutes that teens can just click past sets a fairly low bar in terms of time management.

But default account settings matter. They can really shape a user’s experience of a platform. Teens having private accounts by default, with protections around content and messaging set to their strongest settings, will significantly shape their time on Instagram.

Stopping under-16s from changing these settings without parental or guardian consent is the biggest change, and really does differentiate the teen experience of Instagram from the adult one.

Most of these changes focus on safety and age-appropriate experiences. But it is a positive step for Meta to also include new ways for teens to indicate the content they actually prefer, instead of just relying on algorithms to infer these preferences.

Do parents and guardians have to do anything? In promoting Teen Accounts, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri emphasised the change is aimed at giving parents “peace of mind”. It doesn’t require explicit intervention from parents for these changes to occur.

“I’m a dad, and this is a significant change to Instagram and one that I’m personally very proud of,” noted Mosseri. This is part of a longer-term strategy of positioning Mosseri as a prominent parental voice to increase his perceived credibility in this domain.

Parents or guardians will need to use their own accounts for “supervision” if they want to know what teens are doing on Instagram, or have access to more granular controls. These include setting personalised time limits, seeing an overview of a teen’s activity, or allowing any of the default settings to change.

The real opportunity for parents here is to take these changes as a chance to discuss with their children how they’re using Instagram and other social media platforms.

No matter what safety measures are in place, it’s vital for parents to build and maintain a sense of openness and trust so young people can turn to them with questions, and share difficulties and challenges they encounter online.

Meta has said the shift to Teen Accounts will reduce the level of inappropriate content teens might encounter, but that can never be absolute.

These changes minimise the risks, but don’t remove them. Ensuring young people have someone to turn to if they see, hear, or experience something that’s inappropriate or makes them uncomfortable will always be incredibly important. That’s real peace of mind.

Can’t teens still lie about their age? Initially, Teen Accounts will apply to new teens who sign up. The changes will also roll out for existing teen users whose birth date Instagram already has on file.

Over time, Mosseri and Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, have both said Instagram is rolling out new tools that will identify teenagers using Instagram even if they didn’t enter an accurate birth date. These tools are not active yet, but are supposed to be coming next year.

This is a welcome change if it proves accurate. However, the effectiveness of inferring or estimating age is yet to be proven.

The bigger picture Teen Accounts are launching in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States this week, taking up to 60 days to reach all users in those countries. Users in the rest of the world are scheduled to get Teen Accounts in January 2025.

For a long time, Instagram hasn’t done enough to look after the interests of younger users. Child rights advocates have mostly endorsed Teen Accounts as a significant positive change in young people’s experiences and safety on Instagram.

Yet it is uncertain whether Meta has done enough to address the push in Australia and elsewhere to ban young people (whether under-14s or under-16s, depending on the proposal) from all social media.

Teen Accounts are clearly a meaningful step in the right direction, but it’s worth remembering it took Instagram 14 years to get to this point. That’s too long.

Ultimately, these changes should serve as a prompt for any platform open to kids or teens to ensure they provide age-appropriate experiences. Young users can gain a lot from being online, but we must minimise the risks.

In the meantime, if these changes open the door for parents and guardians to talk to young people about their experiences online, that’s a win. (The Conversation)

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Ankara, Turkey:

Turkey on Friday blocked access to the Instagram social media network, the national communications authority said without explanation, following censorship accusations against the US company by a high-ranking Turkish official.

The BTK communications authority said in a post on its website that “instagram.com has been blocked by a decision on the date of 02/08/2024”, without adding further details.

Many users living in Turkey complained on the X platform that they could not refresh their Instagram feed, an issue verified by AFP journalists.

The Turkish presidency’s communications director Fahrettin Altun on Wednesday hit out at Meta-owned Instagram, accusing the platform of “impeding people from publishing messages of condolence for the martyr Haniyeh”.

Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of the armed Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was killed in Tehran on Wednesday in an attack blamed on Israel.

“This is a very clear and obvious attempt at censure,” Altun said on X.

According to Turkish media, there are more than 50 million users signed up to Instagram in Turkey, out of a population of 85 million.

The decision sparked mockery on other social media networks such as X.

A meme showing a congested metro station with the tagline: “X when Turks wake up to find that Instagram is blocked”, began trending on the platform.

“Instagram is blocked in Turkey, life is over”, wrote user “CringeOfMaster” alongside a picture of a grieving man.

Others mockingly asked Instagram users where they could see their doctored images now.

This is not the first time that Turkish authorities have blocked access to social media sites.

Wikipedia was blocked between April 2017 and January 2020 over two articles that alleged a link between the presidency and extremism.

That caused shock in a country where Erdogan’s government is often accused of attacking civil freedoms due to the amount of online information that became inaccessible.

In April, Facebook owner Meta suspended its Threads social network in Turkey following a decision by authorities there to prevent it from sharing information with Instagram.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Ronald Roland, a Brazilian drug lord, was apprehended by police after successfully evading capture for two years. Shockingly, the breakthrough in the case came from the social media activities of his wife, Andrezza De Lima, whose Instagram posts inadvertently revealed their location, Metro reported. 

Notably, authorities had been monitoring De Lima’s social media accounts for some time, waiting for a slip that would lead them to her husband. De Lima’s posts, which included geo-tagged locations and identifiable landmarks, allowed law enforcement to track their whereabouts. Her posts showcased their lavish trips to various exotic destinations like Paris, Dubai, Maldives and Colombia and provided valuable information for the authorities.

Last week, De Lima posted a photo that included a distinct landmark, enabling police to pinpoint their exact location. 

He was finally captured last Tuesday at his condominium in the coastal town of Guaruja on suspicion of running a sprawling money laundering scheme and supplying drug cartels in Mexico. According to local police, the drug lord made a fortune of 860.2 million pounds in five years which he shuffled through more than 100 shell companies and businesses.

His wife, who was also involved in his criminal activities, used her bikini shop in Guaruja to launder money, sometimes receiving deposits that surpassed 30,000 dollars in a single day.

Following his capture, Roland faces multiple charges related to drug trafficking, organized crime, and evading arrest.

Interestingly, he was also arrested in 2019 after his ex-wife similarly revealed their location on social media. His ex-wife had tagged the location where the couple was in a post on social media, leading to his arrest.

Reports said that police began tailing Roland in 2012 when he worked as an airline pilot. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sent a letter to Brazil’s Federal Police, warning them about an investigation into a group of Brazilian pilots involved in “cocaine smuggling.” Since receiving the DEA’s letter, Roland became a person of interest in several Brazilian police operations targeting drug trafficking networks.

San Francisco:

Meta said Friday it was lifting restrictions on US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, ending measures put in place after his supporters violently stormed the US Capitol in 2021.

It said that “former President Trump, as the nominee of the Republican Party, will no longer be subject to the heightened suspension penalties.”

Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended indefinitely a day after his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and it was determined he had praised people engaged in violence on social media.

His accounts were reinstated in February 2023 but with a threat of penalties for future breaches — an additional restriction that Meta lifted on Friday.

“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Meta wrote in a blog post.

It added that US presidential candidates “remain subject to the same Community Standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including those policies designed to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence.”

Trump, the first former president to be convicted of a crime, was also banned from Twitter and YouTube.

While those restrictions were later lifted last year, Trump now mainly communicates on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

His Facebook profile, which has 34 million users, includes messages originally published on Truth Social as well as invitations to rallies and videos from his campaign.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Meta-owned Instagram on Saturday suffered a major outage globally, including in India, as thousands of users were unable to load Reels and access other options.

As per website outage tracking website Downdetector, over 6,500 users reported issues with accessing the platform in India at the peak of an outage at around 12.02 p.m.

About 58 per cent reported problems with the feed, 32 per cent with the app, and 10 per cent with server connection.

Users from Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and others faced issues with the app.

Users took to X to vent their frustration as they were unable to log in to the app, load Reels, and others.

“Everyone going towards Twitter to check if Instagram is down,” a user wrote.

“I thought my Instagram got hacked cuz there’s no way my fyp looks like this. It’s all brain rot usually #instagramdown,” another user said.

One more user stated, “Me going to Twitter to check if it’s only my Instagram that’s down, or we all are suffering #instagramdown”.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Meta said that it took down over 11.6 million pieces of bad content across 13 policies for Facebook and more than 5.4 million pieces of objectionable content across 12 policies for Instagram in India in April.

In April, Facebook received 17,124 reports through the Indian grievance mechanism and said that it provided tools for users to resolve their issues in 9,977 cases.

These include pre-established channels to report content for specific violations, self-remediation flows where they can download their data, avenues to address account hacked issues, etc, Meta said in its monthly report in compliance with the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

“Of the other 7,147 reports where specialised review was needed, we analysed content as per our policies and took action on 4,303 complaints in total. The remaining 2,844 grievances were reviewed but may not have been actioned,” Meta added.

On Instagram, the company received 12,924 reports through the Indian grievance mechanism.

“Of these, we provided tools for users to resolve their issues in 5,941 cases,” it said.

Of the other 6,983 reports where specialised review was needed, Meta analysed content and took action on 3,206 complaints in total.

The remaining 3,777 reports were reviewed but may not have been actioned.

Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.

“We measure the number of pieces of content (such as posts, photos, videos or comments) we take action for going against our standards. Taking action could include removing a piece of content from Facebook or Instagram or covering photos or videos that may be disturbing to some audiences with a warning,” said Meta.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Ecuadorian influencer, Landy Parraga Goyburo, was shot dead after her Instagram post gave away her location to the attackers, reports say. Just before her death, Goyburo had posted a picture of her having ‘octopus ceviche’ for lunch at a restaurant, which is where she was targetted by two armed men.

The incident was captured by surveillance cameras, revealing how two unidentified gunmen stormed into the eatery where Landy Parraga Goyburo was seated. As she conversed with a companion, the gunmen barged in. In a matter of seconds, the tranquility of the restaurant shattered as gunshots rang out, sending patrons diving for cover and leaving Goyburo and another person defenseless.

Despite the chaos, the 23-year-old’s attempt to seek refuge proved futile as one of the gunmen mercilessly fired at her. The attackers then made their escape, leaving behind a scene of horror and disbelief. Images captured in the aftermath depict Goyburo, a former beauty queen, lying in a pool of blood.

Just before the attack, the influencer had shared a picture of her lunch with her 173,000 followers on Instagram. Investigators believe that the gunmen learned of her location from the post.

The motive behind the heinous crime is still not known. Speculations abound, with theories ranging from Goyburo’s alleged involvement with a notorious gang boss to her entanglement in a corruption inquiry linking judicial officials to organized crime. Rumors swirl that the killing may have been orchestrated by the widow of a drug lord, whom Goyburo allegedly had an affair with.