Social Media Saturday: Facebook Revamps News Feed (Again), Bans Illegal Gun Sales, While Vine Bans Porn
Most of the action in social media this week happened in Facebook's neck of the woods, but Vine and Pinterest had some interesting changes and announcements this week. It's time for Social Media Saturday!
Facebook: Banning Some Gun Sales, Buying Aerospace Company, and Fiddling with the News Feed... Again
Facebook decided on Wednesday that it would clamp down on the gun ads and sellers on the world's largest social media network. Announcing its policy change, Facebook said it would not allow sellers of firearms in the U.S. to specify "no background check required" or to sell guns across state lines without a licensed firearms dealer involved. It's taking a stand on illegal gun trade on the network, and will delete any posts from users that purport to be selling firearms outside the usual regulations.
"We will not permit people to post offers to sell regulated items that indicate a willingness to evade or help others evade the law," said Monika Bickert, Facebook's head of Global Policy Management, in the announcement. "We believe these collective efforts represent the right approach in balancing people's desire to express themselves while promoting a safe, responsible community." The same policy is now in effect for Facebook-owned Instagram as well.
The move is to keep Facebook from ending up like a chaotic, above-ground "Silk Road" -- a store on the deep web that was taken down by the FBI for selling all things illegal, including assassination contracts, last year.
At the same time that its cracking down on anti-social commerce on its network, Facbook is looking to buy an aerospace company known for making drones, called Titan Aerospace. According to Tech Crunch, the possible deal could be made for $60 million.
Facebook probably won't be using the drones it makes to bomb its rivals, but it will probably use them to take over the world, nevertheless. Tech Crunch reported it will be building 11,000 drones that can fly for five years without needing to land in order to reach parts of the world without internet access, as part of its Internet.org initiative to connect the "other 5 billion." Connect them through Facebook, of course (i.e., take over the world).
Finally, Facebook has messed with the News Feed design -- again. This time, its mainly the surface design. "Though in the new design all images are larger, both organic stories and ads will be the same size -- similar to the way images appear on mobile," said the company's announcement. This comes after people didn't appreciate the changes made in the last overhaul of the News Feed.
"People who tested it told us that they liked the bigger photos and images, but found it more difficult to navigate Facebook overall. The updated design has the best of both worlds: It keeps the layout and navigation people liked, but offers bigger images and photos, as well as a new font."
Vine Bans Porn
The same week Facebook banned its undesirable gun trade, Twitter-owned Vine decided to get rid of the 6-seconds of genitalia that would sometimes appear on the video social network.
"As we've watched the community and your creativity grow and evolve, we've found that there's a very small percentage of videos that are not a good fit for our community," the Vine team on its blog Thursday, according to Fox News. "So we're making an update to our Rules and Terms of Service to prohibit explicit sexual content."
Nudity in Vines will still be allowed, as long as it serves a purpose in a documentary context, but if you're showing sex acts, sexually charged nudity, or "aroused gentiles underneath clothing," that's a no go. However, clothed "sexually suggestive dancing" will be left untouched in its new terms of service -- obviously because 80 percent of Vine would disappear if they banned it.
Pinterest Goes Transparent
The social clip-sharing network Pinterest released its first transparency report on government requests for data -- just like the big boys, Twitter and Facebook. According to the Next Web, Pinterest isn't exactly a hotbed of useful user data for law enforcement, though. In the first half of 2013, Pinterest reported, it received a total of 12 data requests on a total of 13 accounts. Of those, 11 came from state or local agencies, including seven warrants and five subpoenas.
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