Instagram

Instagram sorry for adding 'terrorist' to some Palestinian user bios

Meta said it fixed a problem "that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations" in some of its products.

"We sincerely apologise that this happened," it told the BBC.

The platform has also faced accusations of suppressing content voicing support for Palestinians during the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Some users say they have been "shadow banned" on Instagram over pro-Palestinian posts. This is when a platform intervenes to make sure posts do not appear in other people's feeds.

Facebook and Instagram to restrict news access in Canada

The bill forces big platforms to compensate news publishers for content posted on their sites.

Meta and Google have both already been testing limiting access to news to some Canadians.

In 2021, Australian users were blocked from sharing or viewing news on Facebook in response to a similar law.

Canada's Online News Act, which cleared the senate on Thursday, lays out rules requiring platforms like Meta and Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news organisations for their content.

Instagram and Facebook to get paid-for verification

Meta Verified will cost $11.99 (£9.96) a month on web, or $14.99 for iPhone users.

It will be available in Australia and New Zealand this week.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta chief executive, said the move will improve security and authenticity on the social media apps.

The move comes after Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, implemented the premium Twitter Blue subscription in November 2022.

Meta's paid subscription service is not yet available for businesses, but any individual can pay for verification.

Instagram launches new parental controls in UK

They include the option of setting daily time limits of between 15 minutes and 2 hours, after which a black screen appears on the app.

Parents can also schedule break times and see any accounts their child reports, and why they did so.

In addition, the tech giant is rolling out a parent dashboard on all Quest virtual reality headsets worldwide.

Parents can now invite their children to activate the supervision tools - previously these could only be initiated by the young person.

Instagram announces changes ahead of political grilling

Parents will be able to see how much time their children spend on Instagram and set time limits, while teens will get reminders to take a break.

It comes a day before Instagram chief Adam Mosseri is due to appear before US Senators investigating online safety.

Instagram has been under increasing pressure over teens' use of the platform in recent months.

Its internal research suggesting that teens blamed Instagram for increased anxiety was the first in a series of revelations in France Haugen's leaked documents from inside Facebook.

Facebook and Instagram encryption plans delayed by Meta until 2023

Meta - as Facebook's parent company is now called - said messaging encryption on the apps would now come in 2023.

The process means only the sender and receiver can read messages, but law enforcement or Meta cannot.

However, child protection groups and politicians have warned that it could hamper police investigating child abuse.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), has claimed that private messaging "is the front line of child sexual abuse".

Instagram post previews to return on Twitter

Now, when users share an Instagram link on Twitter, a small preview of the post will be displayed.

Instagram controversially removed the feature shortly after being acquired by Facebook in 2012.

Twitter card previews started for some users on Wednesday and will eventually be available to everyone. Instagram and Twitter are both promoting the change.

Facebook apologises as services including Instagram hit again

The company said that a "configuration change" had impacted users globally.

It added that the incident was not related to the outage that saw its products taken offline for over six hours earlier this week.

Its Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Workplace products had been affected, it said.

"We're so sorry if you weren't able to access our products during the last couple of hours," the company said it a statement on Friday evening. "We know how much you depend on us to communicate with one another. We fixed the issue - thanks again for your patience this week."

Gone in Minutes, Out for Hours: Outage Shakes Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, were inaccessible for hours on Monday, taking out a vital communications platform used by billions and showcasing just how dependent the world has become on a company that is under intense scrutiny.

Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram suffer outage

All three services are owned by Facebook and could not be accessed over the web or smartphone apps.

Downdetector, which tracks outages, logged tens of thousands of outage reports for all three platforms from around the world.

Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer has tweeted his "sincere apologies" to those affected.

"We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible," he wrote.