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Instagram urged to crack down on eating disorder images

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Images promoting potentially life-threatening eating disorders are thriving on Instagram and need to be cracked down on in the same way as graphic self-harm images, leading charities and experts have said.

The social media giant’s focus on removing graphic images of self-harm did not go far enough, they said, and young people also faced being confronted with pro-anorexia images due to little policing on the site.

The Guardian has discovered thousands of hashtags and accounts promoting anorexia, including diaries of weight loss, alarming pictures and comments on goal weights.

These accounts often include a comment saying: “Please don’t report, just block,” to circumvent the website’s approach, which requires people to report content that they find worrying.

The director of external affairs for the eating disorder charity Beat said content promoting anorexia and bulimia was prevalent online. “So-called pro-ana and pro-mia content is widespread on social media and can be very harmful for people suffering from an eating disorder,” Tom Quinn said. “People will not develop an eating disorder by being exposed to images that glamorise eating disorders, but research shows that such content helps perpetuate the illnesses for people who are already suffering.

By Sarah Marsh

See Full Story at www.theguardian.com

Delete your account: leaving Facebook can make you happier, study finds

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Despite all the scandals of the past year, here we are, still on Facebook, a couple of billion of us spending about an hour a day in its iron grip. Now a new study suggests it’s making us feel bad.

That’s in part because we may be addicted. Want to feel better? Delete Facebook. As some experts have said, the system of rewards set up by Facebook and other social media platforms is akin to gambling or substance abuse cravings. Sean Parker, an early Facebook executive, explained that the thought process behind driving user engagement is akin to delivering “a little dopamine hit”.

As with any habitual behaviour, you might reasonably expect that abstaining would lead to an improved mood and an overall sense of wellbeing. A new study goes a long way toward suggesting the benefits of cutting Facebook out of our lives altogether.

The study, titled The Welfare Effects of Social Media, from researchers at Stanford and NYU, is being praised as one of the most rigorous to look at what happens to people when they log off. Logging off seems to be as positive as you probably expect it would be, leading to increased subjective wellbeing, less political drama and attention span agitation, and increased time spent with friends and family. On the other hand, it also led to a decrease in awareness of the news. Although, to be honest, that sounds pretty nice too.

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See full Story at www.theguardian.com

Twitter bug makes it look like random retweets are appearing in your timeline

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A number of Twitter users have been complaining that tweets that were retweeted by people they don’t follow are now showing in their timeline. The issue, thankfully, is not related to a new Twitter algorithm or recommendation system, as some had feared. Instead, the company confirmed that a bug affecting Android users was mislabeling the “social proof” tag on Retweets.

This is the part of the Retweet that tells you who, among the people you already dofollow, had retweeted the post in question.

The company says that the social proof label is wrong, so the Android users were seeing tweets that looked like they had been retweeted by someone they don’t know.

Twitter says the Retweets that showed up were actually tweeted by someone the people did knew, but their social proof label was wrong, which made them seem out of place. Its engineers are aware of the problem and are working to fix this now. The bug has been live for a few days, Twitter also confirmed.

By Sarah Perez

See Full Story at techcrunch.com

Three ways to live with Facebook

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A recent viral thread also noted that Facebook can be an efficient, less emotionally taxing way to share bad news with a lot of people. Others may rely on Facebook for jobs. The site can connect people into networks of support. A decision that can be liberating for some is devastating for others.

So, if you’re tethered to Facebook, how do you live with it? Here are a few ideas.

1) Quarantine Facebook

If you can’t delete Facebook, one thing you can do is work to make it harder for Facebook to track you on the internet. Mozilla, for instance, has a browser extension that essentially separates your Facebook habits from the rest of your online life, making it more difficult for Facebook to track you beyond their platform.

The extension will require you to log into Facebook each time you navigate to the website — and in a separate “container” tab, which takes a little getting used to. But, if used properly, it could help automate some of the things you can do to minimise how much information Facebook is able to see about what you do outside of its platform.

You can also go into your privacy settings on Facebook to turn off some of the ways in which third parties access your data. For instance, on the app settings page on Facebook you can see and revoke third-party access. This access encompasses, basically, any time you’ve decided to “log on with Facebook” to another service (which, by the way, you shouldn’t do).

Also on the app settings page consider turning off Facebook’s ability to interact with apps, websites and games. But keep in mind that turning off this setting won’t completely nuke Facebook’s ability to track you across the Web.

Also, if you can, delete Facebook and its related apps from your phone (this includes Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp), and just use Facebook on your desktop. It’ll help limit what Facebook can track on your mobile device.

2) Log out

New York Mag’s Brian Feldman argued last week that logging off Facebook without actually deleting your account will achieve some of the things that would-be Facebook quitters are hoping for. Basically, the idea is that instead of keeping Facebook there, logged in and waiting for you on your browser and phone, Facebook becomes more like a store you have to make an active choice to visit.

Feldman wrote: “As pathetic as it sounds, it was surprising that I could go entire days without checking Facebook, revealing how much the service plays a truly unnecessary role in my life. If, on the rare chance, I did need to log in to find some information, I’d log back out immediately after getting what I needed. Sometimes I’d click the bookmark, be taken to a login screen, and just go back the way I came.”

And beyond the potential epiphany of realising that perhaps you don’t need Facebook as much as you think, deliberately logging in and out of each session can help stop Facebook’s ability to track you.

See Full Story at gulfnews.com

Science Says Facebook Can be Terrible for Your Mental Health: 6 Great Apps to Use Instead

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It makes sense that you might feel worse about yourself if you spend too much time looking at curated versions of other people’s seemingly perfect versions of their lives. Fine, but if you’re accustomed to scrolling through a social media feed whenever you’re bored or looking for a reason to procrastinate getting work done, what are your alternatives (other than chatting with others around you, or staying on task, ahem)? Here are a half dozen great apps to use instead.

Blinkist

If you’re the kind of person who’s bent on self-improvement, this app is for you. In offers 15-minute audio or written summaries of more than 2,500 popular non-fiction books. The only downside: it’s expensive. While a free version will give you one book of the app’s choosing a day, if you want to pick your own books and read as many as you want it will cost $12 a month or $70 a year.

Duolingo

More than 300 million people use this free app to learn a foreign language. It’s designed as a game in which you’re served a handful of questions in various formats but they’re grouped in small chunks so you can play a round in just a couple of minutes. The app instantly shows you if you get a question right and motivates you with a green progress bar which shows how far you are in a lesson.

ESPN

Even if sports aren’t your thing, knowing sports news and scores is a valuable tool if you want to be a better conversationalist. If you are a sports fan, keeping up-to-date necessitates a commitment of time, but this app makes doing so simple. In addition to the top headlines you should know, you can scroll through schedules, results, stories and videos relevant to the sports categories and teams you’re following.

Flipboard

Keeping up with the news is a habit successful people practice and certainly is time better spent than looking at photos of other people’s kids and vacations on Facebook. The magazine-style design of this news aggregator is visually appealling and flipping through stories according to your interests feels gratifying.

Google Keep

Instead of wasting time on Facebook, how about making a to-do list and keeping it updated every time you find yourself in line or waiting for an appointment? Google Keep is simple to use and lets you make lists, take photos of things you need to remember, make notes transcribed from your voice and color code notes for easy identification of categories. Find a recipe on your phone’s browser that you want to save? Just use the share button to capture the link within Google Keep.

By Christina DesMarais

See Full Story at www.inc.com

Twitter let someone promote an obvious PayPal phishing scam

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Phishing scams are nothing new, but it’s certainly unusual to see them show up in your Twitter timeline as a promoted tweet. Nevertheless, earlier this evening, I came across this promoted post from the (since deleted) account @PaypalChristm.

The account purported to be a legitimate PayPal account and promoted an end-of-year sweepstakes event. While it didn’t explicitly say what the prizes were, it dangled the prospect of a new car and an iPhone in-front of the potential marks. To be in with a chance of winning, all you must do is verify your details.

Yeah, anyway. There were several tell-tale clues that @PaypalChristm wasn’t exactly kosher. For starters, in the phishing URL, it misspelled “PayPal” as “Paypall.” Furthermore, the tweet came from an unverified account with fewer than 100 followers. And then there’s the fact that the image on the promoted tweet just wasn’t congruent with PayPal’s distinctive branding. It looked like something someone knocked up in MS Paint in less than ten minutes.

Clicking through on the phishing link, you get to a page that – at least, superficially – looks like the legitimate PayPal login site. The scammers had very clearly gone to great efforts to make it look like the real deal. The most obvious clues that it was a scam were in the lack of HTTPS and the URL.

See Full Story at thenextweb.com

Minimize Facebook? One geek’s attempt to create a healthier relationship with the social network

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Concerned about the social network’s privacy problems, Vrignaud tried quitting Facebook entirely for the past month. It was an illuminating experience.

  • He writes that he missed the updates from his friends, the serendipitous memories, Facebook Groups and event notifications.
  • He did not miss the “shallow moments” of social engagement or the “creepily targeted” ads.
  • And he discovered just how difficult it is to actually quit Facebook. Quitting entirely “involves unwinding many, deep, and irritating tendrils,” he writes, given the social network’s vast reach across the online experience.

“A purist view might be to completely delete Facebook, and throw out the good with the bad,” he writes. “As of the beginning of 2019, I’m not quite there yet. I can squint and still see some value in what Facebook offers, not to mention the fact that I still have many friends on the network. So… what’s the pragmatic path forward? Is there a way to enjoy the benefits — while minimizing the risks — of using Facebook?”

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See Full Story at www.geekwire.com

After a Tumultuous Year, Facebook Needs to Do Some Deep Self-Reflection and Evolving in 2019

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To say the least, Facebook has experienced a punishing year in just about every respect. Its stock price has plummeted, its executive team has come under fire, and the company’s reputation has taken several hits. But Facebook isn’t going away. It’s still capable of innovating and growing, especially as it continues to fulfill the 10-year roadmap that Mark Zuckerberg unveiled in 2016.

Here are three ways Facebook evolving in 2019.

Growing into a family of brands

In the aftermath of a harshly critical New York Times expose, cries to #DeleteFacebook resurfaced after flaring up and dying down earlier this year. And #DeleteFacebook will wither away once again in 2019. Facebook continues to grow its monthly active users even amid controversies over political ad manipulation and a failure to respect users’ personal data.

Facebook remains a connector of far-flung people from around the world, and even if users don’t always like Facebook the brand, they want to remain connected with each other. As The Guardian recently noted, Facebook “is huge, it’s monstrous, it’s addictive.”

In 2019, Facebook is going to work harder to build a family of interconnected brands across Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger as Facebook looks to leverage its size even more. Frankly, the more Facebook can find ways to connect to each other, the harder it is for anyone to quit Facebook.
See Full Story at www.adweek.com

‘Happier without Facebook’: Users who deleted the social network say they’re not looking back

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We heard from many of you: You are not only ready to delete Facebook, but you’ve already done it, and are very happy you did.

Despite all the hack attacks, issues with personal data getting shared with companies and other entities, and all the apologies, I’m not quitting Facebook and I didn’t think most of you would either. The positives of the social network outweigh the negative, at least for me – and many of you.

But sporting the hashtag “FacebookFreeJanuary,” Jeff Johnson of New Jersey says he just quit, and he won’t come back until February, encouraging others to join him as a way to lobby Facebook into changing its ways.

“There has to be some consequence that Facebook actually takes notice of,” he says. Advertisers and the markets care about daily active users and monthly active users, so if Facebook’s usage base takes a dip, perhaps there will be real changes, he says.

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See Full Story at www.usatoday.com

3 Ways Twitter Is Driving Ad Revenue Growth

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Twitter‘s ad revenue growth has accelerated through each of the first three quarters of 2018, rising from 21% in the first quarter to 29% in the third quarter. This year’s growth came after the company’s operations overhaul over the last couple years, which eventually resulted in negative revenue growth last year. The question investors have is whether the growth is sustainable into the next year or the next decade.

In order to answer that question, it’s important to understand the underlying drivers of Twitter’s revenue growth. During a recent investors conference, CFO Ned Segal provided some insight into three of Twitter’s biggest ad revenue drivers.

Ad load

Segal has used the term “demand constrained” for several years now. That’s a fancy way of saying Twitter has room to increase the number of ads it serves to its users, but it doesn’t have enough advertisers on the platform to make it worth showing more ads.

“We definitely continue to feel demand constrained more than supply constrained when we look across geographies, when we look across times of year, when we look across different surface areas,” Segal said.

Not only does Twitter have room to increase the number of ads users see in their timelines, it can also put ads on relatively unmonetized parts of the app. Areas like search or the entertainment tab have much lower monetization levels than the core timeline. At the same time, they can present an opportunity for more timely and relevant ads for users.

In order to increase ad load, however, Twitter first needs to increase demand for its advertising products.

By Adam Levy

See Full Story at www.fool.com