Instagram is expanding its livestreaming offerings with a new feature dubbed Live Rooms, which is just like Instagram Live but with up to three more people haphazardly broadcasting their thoughts into the world simultaneously.
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Instagram’s Live Rooms add to the increasingly crowded livestreaming space, which includes everything from Twitch to TikTok, to audio-only Clubhouse and Twitter’s Spaces. And because most of us have absolutely no business livestreaming for any reason, it also represents an increasing focus on social media geared towards professional creators, celebrities, and brands while creating new moderation challenges for the platforms themselves.
The functionality of Live Rooms is simple and straightforward. From the home screen on Instagram, swipe left and select the Live option. You can add a title and then tap on the users who you’d like to include. Live Rooms also lets the person who launches the stream to add “guests” to join them mid-broa
Twitter Launches Five-Strike System to Ban Users Who Spread Covid-19 Lies
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Austin Beutner, Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), receives the covid-19 vaccine on March 1, 2021 in Inglewood, California.
Photo: Patrick T. Fallon (Getty Images)
Twitter will ban users who spread misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic and covid-19 vaccines under a new five-strike system, according to a new blog post from the social media company. Twitter bans all medical information that’s “demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm.”
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“Through the use of the strike system, we hope to educate people on why certain content breaks our rules so they have the opportunity to further consider their behavior and their impact on the public conversation,” Twitter’s Safety Team wrote on Monday.
Read more about Twitter testing Clubhouse-like feature called Spaces on Android on Business Standard. The growing popularity of invite-only, audio-chat app Clubhouse has surprised many
Photo: Graeme Jennings-Pool (Getty Images)
Apple has bought out just short of 100 small businesses over the last six years as part of its corporate acquisition spree, CEO Tim Cook told shareholders at a virtual meeting on Tuesday.
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According to Bloomberg, Cook said that Apple has been buying small companies at a rate of about one every three to four weeks. Notable acquisitions for Apple in the last year alone included VR/AR startups NextVR and Spaces, a weather app called Dark Sky, mobile payments service Mobeewave, and others. Apple has always tried to keep details of its acquisitions in the dark, but prices in the hundreds of millions for some of the firms have been suggested. Apple reportedly bought 20-25 companies in the six months preceding May 2019 alone.
Facebook Accidentally Blocks Its Own Page in Australia Following News Ban
Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
Facebook blocked dozens of charity groups, nonprofit organizations, and even random big box retailers in Australia late Wednesday (early Thursday, local time), a move that appears to be collateral damage from Facebook’s ban on news in the country. Facebook even briefly blocked its own page in Australia, according to multiplereports and confirmation from a Facebook spokesperson.
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Facebook blocked all “news” content from being distributed on its platform in Australia on Wednesday over a decision by the federal government to potentially implement new rules that would force big tech companies to negotiate with news outlets and pay for news content. Facebook says the proposed rules are an attempt, “to penalize Facebook for content it didn’t take or ask for.”