A misinformation war in Florida, and on Twitter

“The Kremlin, they don’t need to create a false narrative. It’s already there,” he said. “You’re just taking a narrative and elevating it.”

Some well-chronicled hoaxes reached large audiences. But Russian-controlled Twitter accounts, Albright said, were far more likely to share stories produced by widely read sources of American news and political commentary. The stories themselves were generally factually accurate, but the Russian accounts carefully curated the overall flow to highlight themes and developments that bolstered Republican Donald Trump and undermined his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

People are being served the same stale content from a friend for 12 days straight, just because it happens to have a lot of comments. No one wanted to see my post several times a day, but the algorithm had, once again, misjudged what people wanted. In fact, people really hated this video — they wanted it to go away. Facebook took their pleas for it to stop as a sign that they should be shown it more and more. It’s enough to almost make you nostalgic for those Russian chaos agents.

Instagram has blocked posts in Russia relating to corruption claims made by the country’s most prominent opposition leader.

It follows a demand by the country’s internet censor that the Facebook-owned service restrict access to posts on its platform connected to allegations made by Alexei Navalny.

“Even the frustrations we’re seeing really validate those changes. It’ll take time for people to adjust, but for me using it for a couple months I feel way more attached to the service.” 

Supporters see the Telegram ICO as the blockchain investment of the century and an opportunity to back a product that poses an existential threat to Facebook.

But skeptics believe the company is bilking investors out of billions of dollars based on marketing fluff and a heavy dose of FOMO — fear of missing out.

Facebook has been evolving its Safety Check feature over the last year, adding complementary capabilities to go alongside it and building it into a crisis hub. Last February, Facebook introduced Community Help, a feature that allowed users to find and provide help during a crisis and in September, it launched Crisis Response, a one-stop spot where people could access Safety Check, Community Help and media, like articles and videos, related to an ongoing crisis. Now, Facebook has announced some changes to Community Help that will allow organizations and businesses to post in the forum rather than just individuals.

Twitter is starting to show live, local news broadcasts in a live streaming window next to its timeline during major breaking news events.

Twitter’s initiative to air these videos is currently rolled out across the platform, a company spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News. The company will rely on a set of partnerships with local news stations to select the footage.

Amazon-owned streaming giant Twitch today announced the launch of a chat room feature that will exist outside the standard Twitch chat that lives on the righthand side of live streams. The company is calling the new product Rooms, and these chats will be both public and private chats streamers can set up for viewers and subscribers to interact with a streamer and each other around dedicated topics or themes. For instance, a streamer could set up a chat room specifically for subscribers only and leave it open 24 hours a day, even when that streamer is not live, so discussions can take place at around the clock and even when the channel is inactive.

Unsurprisingly considering Sinclair’s previous work, ‘sodes is a beautiful app. Perhaps my favorite designed area is the Now Playing view; after I first tried it, going back to another app’s Now Playing screen was painful. The app especially shines on the iPhone X’s full-width display. As was highlighted in Federico and John’s discussion on AppStories last year, an indie app’s little human touches can elicit such delight – and 'sodes is a great example of that.

Done right, Facebook Matchmaker would hardly exist for anyone who doesn’t want it. It wouldn’t generate tons of unrequited “Yes” swipes. And it’d only result in rare matches. But those matches would be meaningful, because they weren’t coerced, and they didn’t occur on an app designed for finding one-night hookups. They’d be people from whom you already accepted friend requests, in your network, with whom you might already have a lot in common.

In 150 matches, individually sorted and approved by two different people, only one actually transforms into a meeting. With Tinder and similar apps, I hardly ever actually meet anyone, given the number of people I reach mutual approval with. My theory about this is that Tinder is not actually for meeting anyone.

Certainly I would not make the argument that dating apps are pleasant all the time, or that a dating app has helped find everlasting love for every person who has ever sought it, but it’s time to stop throwing anecdotal evidence at a debate that has already been ended with numbers. You don’t care about my Tinder stories and I don’t care about yours. Love is possible and the data says so.

Thiel has been harsher in private, criticizing Silicon Valley as “mono-cultural” and “toxic” with a high cost of living and tendency for group think, according to people familiar with his thinking