Tag: instagram

LA Man Charged With Hacking Into Instagram Accounts to Obtain Money

LOS ANGELES—A downtown Los Angeles man was charged Feb. 23 in a federal grand jury indictment for allegedly defrauding female social media influencers by hijacking their Instagram accounts to obtain money and engage in sexually explicit video chats. Amir Hossein Golshan, 24, is charged with two counts of wire fraud and one count each of…


Use Facebook and Instagram For $11.99 Per Month as Zuckerberg Launches Paid ‘Verified’ Subscriptions

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is launching a paid subscription program called “Meta Verified” that allows for account verification with a blue badge—a move that models Twitter’s blue checkmark feature. Meta Verified is “a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection…


Meta Launches Paid ‘Verified’ Subscriptions for Facebook and Instagram

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is launching a paid subscription program called “Meta Verified” that allows for account verification with a blue badge—a move that models Twitter’s blue checkmark feature. Meta Verified is “a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection…


Facebook, Instagram Threaten to Restrict or Ban Project Veritas

Facebook and Instagram have threatened to restrict or ban Project Veritas from their platforms, both owned by Meta, after a journalist confronted a senior YouTube official about the removal of a video about Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines. On Friday, the nonprofit journalism organization Project Veritas published footage that appears to show one of its reporters confronting YouTube’s…


Democrats Criticize Meta for Reinstating Trump’s Facebook and Instagram Accounts

Some Democrats have criticized Meta after the social media giant announced that it would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts after a two-year ban. Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, said in a blog post on Jan. 25 that Trump’s accounts will be reinstated “in the coming weeks,” but added…


Social Media Negatively Affecting Young People’s Body Image: Study

Social media are driving youngsters to have a low sense of self-worth and be dissatisfied with their appearances, according to a study published by London-based mental health charity stem4 on Jan. 3. “Social media is definitely negatively affecting me. As young people, we constantly compare ourselves to good-looking people online. On sites like TikTok, the…


How an Occupied Twitter Ruined Countless Lives

Commentary From the beginning of the COVID panic, it felt that something was very wrong. Never had a pandemic, much less a seasonal pathogenic wave, been treated as a quasi-military emergency requiring the upending of all freedoms and rights. What made it more bizarre was how alone those of us who objected felt until very…


Messi’s World Cup Post Beats Egg to Become Most-Liked on Instagram

Lionel Messi set yet another record on Tuesday after his Instagram post celebrating Argentina’s World Cup win became the most-liked on the platform, breaking a nearly four-year-old record held by a photo of an egg. Having led Argentina to their first World Cup in 36 years with victory over France on Sunday, Messi proceeded to…


Instagram: A ‘Landmine’ of Unrealistic Images, Says Psychologist

Young female Instagram users tend to focus on body images of their peers more than their faces, concentrating on those with thinner figures and physical features that don’t mirror their own anatomical areas of dissatisfaction. That’s the main finding of a study entitled “Thinstagram,” published in August 2022 in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. The…


Tax Filing Websites Might Have Given Facebook Your Financial Information: Report

Several prominent online tax filing websites have reportedly been sending Americans’ private financial information to Facebook, even in cases where users did not have an account on the platform, according to a jointly published report by The Verge and nonprofit the Markup. The companies, which included H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer, utilized a code snippet…