Pakistan temporarily blocks social media
Pakistan has temporarily blocked several social media services in the South Asian nation, according to users and a government-issued notice reviewed by TechCrunch. In an order titled “Complete Blocking of…
Instagram’s new test lets you choose if you want to hide ‘Likes,’ Facebook test to follow
Instagram today will begin a new test around hiding Like counts on users’ posts, following its experiments in this area which first began in 2019. This time, however, Instagram is…
Facebook tests video speed dating events with ‘Sparked’
Facebook confirmed it’s testing a video speed-dating app called Sparked, after the app’s website was spotted by The Verge. Unlike dating app giants such as Tinder, Sparked users don’t swipe…
Facebook ran ads for a fake ‘Clubhouse for PC’ app planted with malware
Cybercriminals have taken out a number of Facebook ads masquerading as a Clubhouse app for PC users in order to target unsuspecting victims with malware, TechCrunch has learned. TechCrunch was alerted…
Facebook takes down 16,000 groups trading fake reviews after another poke by UK’s CMA
Facebook has removed 16,000 groups that were trading fake reviews on its platform after another intervention by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the regulator said today. The CMA…
Facebook Adding Context Labels to Pages Seen in News Feeds
Facebook announced it will begin adding labels to articles from Facebook Pages that show up in member news feeds as a way to provide more context for what kind of…
Facebook tests Hotline, a Q&A product that’s a mashup of Clubhouse and Instagram Live
Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today launched its latest experiment, Hotline, into public beta testing. The web-based application could be described as a mashup of Instagram Live and…
Daily Crunch: Facebook faces questions over data breach
European regulators have questions about a Facebook data breach, Clubhouse adds payments and a robotics company has SPAC plans. This is your Daily Crunch for April 6, 2021. The big…
Lawmakers press Instagram for details on its plans for kids
A group of Democratic lawmakers wrote to Mark Zuckerberg this week to press the CEO on his plans to curate a version of Instagram for children. In a hearing last…
UK’s antitrust watchdog takes a closer look at Facebook-Giphy
Potential threats to the free flow of GIFs continue to trouble the U.K.’s competition watchdog. Facebook’s $400 million purchase of Giphy, announced last year, is now facing an in-depth probe…