social networking

There is no stopping WhatsApp's, really Facebook's, changes to its privacy policy despite the immense backlash from its own users as well as privacy advocates. The bottom line remains that if you want to keep using WhatsApp, you'll have to agree to share some of your data with Facebook, despite WhatsApp bragging about its privacy-focused operations. You won't, however, immediately lose access to your account after the May 15th deadline if you don't agree to that policy but you will slowly see yourself pushed out of the service until you do.

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By now, you're probably tired of hearing how this or that new social network or feature is designed to take on Clubhouse. Although the audio-only platform has become so popular, its reach is actually extremely limited compared to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. In fact, it's only now that it's opening up its doors to Android users but even then it comes with a lot of caveats. Despite that, the startup isn't changing its pace and explains why it's adopting a measured approach to growth instead.

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Facebook may have hoped someone else would take the tricky - and politically-nightmarish - decision about whether Donald Trump should be permanently suspended, but with its Oversight Board refusing to play ball it's keeping the former US President on ice until it can figure the new rules out itself. The social media behemoth had referred Trump's suspension to its Oversight Board shortly after President Biden's inauguration, hoping for two main things.

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The Facebook Oversight Board has found the social network was right to restrict former President Trump's account in early January 2021, though has insisted on a review of the indefinite suspension the then-President faced on Facebook. The results of the hotly-anticipated - and undoubtedly divisive - Oversight Board investigation centered on Facebook's reaction to incendiary posts by Trump during the DC Capitol Building riot on January 6.

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This week the folks at Instagram released a system in which users can place a "sticker" in their video that auto-captions audio. This captions sticker was released to Stories for Instagram this week, and it may only be available for a limited set of users at first. If you've seen this same sort of functionality in Instagram before now, chances are you were using said feature with IGTV and the Threads app.

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It seems that Clubhouse's time in the limelight is coming to a close. Although its name still has some weight in the social media space, its user base may have started to plateau. After raking in millions of downloads earlier this year, the Clubhouse app has reportedly been downloaded less than a million times last month, hinting that its growth spurt might finally be over, giving the social networking giants the chance to take over.

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The onslaught against Clubhouse's probably short-lived dominance continues as more and more social networks start rolling out their own take on social audio spaces. This time it's Twitter's turn to join the fray by making Spaces available for all. That, however, does come with a caveat that does still limit who can use the audio-only feature to those that have hundreds of followers that would supposedly justify having a Space in the first place.

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Just like TikTok a while back, Clubhouse's popularity is forcing many competitors in the social networking space to come up with their own killer audio-only service. The fact that Clubhouse has ruffled bigger players' feathers while still being limited in reach is nothing short of a miracle but its lead isn't going to last long. Android users are starting to clamor for their chance and the young social network has finally started the road towards its expansion, at least for a chosen few.

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Although there were many developers, publishers, and advertisers that raised disgruntled voices when Apple announced its new App Tracking Transparency policy for iOS, Facebook was the one that shouted the loudest. It used rhetoric and other strategies to besmirch Apple's privacy efforts, even going as far as ironically saying it will actually benefit the social networking giant in the long run. Now it's taking those efforts to a new level by warning users that Facebook and Instagram might become paid services if iOS users don't enable app tracking.

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Clubhouse has become social media's newest darling and, naturally, everyone's out to copy and kill it. Those rivals actually have a lot of opportunities to do that, considering Clubhouse still has limited reach in terms of invites and platforms. That said, not everyone wants to copy it feature for feature and some are trying to put a different spin on the audio-only social platform. That includes Facebook-owned Instagram that just silently rolled out an audio-only option to its shiny new Live Rooms.

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Although video conferencing has become almost a fact of life these days and "Zoom fatigue" has started to become a real problem, there are still companies and services that are trying to compete or even unseat the leaders in that space. And it's not just the usual culprits of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft either but other more focused services are also jumping on board. The latest that will be joining the bandwagon is Telegram who will be putting a different twist to the idea next month.

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Facebook continues its quest to have you never leave its software, with the addition of a new Spotify miniplayer baked into the social networking site's app. The new integration will allow Spotify users to access playlists and - depending on their subscription - other streaming music features directly within Facebook's iOS and Android apps.

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