As part of its efforts to be more transparent and accountable for its political influence, Facebook has announced changes to the verification process for Pages with a large following. The social network will require additional measures from Page administrators to prove their identity, in part to make it harder for Pages to be run by fake or compromised accounts.
Facebook today began removing Friends Lists Feeds from their main app and web browser site. This feature is one of a collection that'll be removed from the mix this year due to a culling of the weak of sorts. As a Facebook representative suggested, "We're shutting down this lesser-used feature to focus our efforts on improving the main News Feed experience."
![Now Facebook wants to see your bank account [Update]](https://c.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/facebook-zuckerberg-share-anything-1.jpg)
Facebook is trying to persuade banks to share your financial information with the social network, a further escalation of its personal data aggregation efforts. The company, still stinging from criticism around how it handled the Cambridge Analytica privacy disaster, has nonetheless faced renewed pressure from investors to increase engagement across its services.
Social media titan Facebook is known for "borrowing" from — or flat-out acquiring — it's largest rivals, including Snapchat and Twitter, and now it appears to be entering the territory of Tinder and OKCupid. Following its first announcement back in May, Facebook's dating service feature has entered an internal testing phase among employees, and a sneak peek has been revealed this weekend.
To make WhatsApp a better place for users - and for the company to actually make a profit - there'll be some money involved, soon. The WhatsApp Business announcement released this week suggested that the WhatApp Business app will soon cost cash to use - for businesses, but not all businesses. The company suggested that sone businesses will have to pay to send "certain messages" - but not all.
This week the folks at Nokia decided to bring their classic game "Snake" back to the public via Facebook Camera. Using the new augmented reality features of the Facebook Camera platform, Nokia delivered Snake to all users starting this morning. To attain said Snake, one needed only to open the Facebook app and click a button in the Facebook Camera. Now, if only they'd bring Tony Hawk Pro Skater there too...
Today Reddit announced a security incident that occurred in the middle of June. The incident was discovered on June 19th, 2018, and the full extent of the data shared and/or compromised was revealed this afternoon. The incident is particularly important right this minute because of the rise of understanding in the weaknesses in sms-verified authentication.
Job-focused social network LinkedIn has just announced an odd new feature for its mobile apps: the ability to send voice messages. As in make a recording of yourself talking and sending it to someone. In other words, it's just like voicemail, one of the most hated things among mobile users. Other than the few people who really like using LinkedIn, it's a safe bet almost no one is looking forward to this.
This week the folks at Snapchat responsible for advertisement monetization are pushing "Storytellers" for social media influencers. It's a program which unites advertisers with the social media titans who would sell their products for them for a fee, in a creative way. In other words - sarcastic hooray! It's time for more advertisements that come to Snapchat users in the form of videos they won't realize are advertisements until it's too late!
Today the Steam Chat system went live for the whole entire world, all at once. This system wasn't necessarily built specifically to destroy any other system for chat - like Discord, for example - but it might well put a dent in their usership. For Steam games anyway. This system was in play in Beta mode for quite a while and just went fully live just today.
If it can't make you share more photos, Instagram instead plans to coax you into chatting, with a new feature underscoring the app's direct messaging. Although direct messaged have long been offered on Instagram, they're now getting status indicators which show whether someone is currently active.
A fix is in the mix for Snapchat, an app whose servers had issues over the past 24 hours. Those users with Snapchat on either Android or iOS (assuming you're not using the app with some 3rd-party off-the-wall system), can try the following to save their Snap Streaks. The first step requires that you hold your breath, because you're about to turn off the internet!