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A ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST NEWS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
WHATSAPP HAS GONE LESS VIRAL
GOOD news from Facebook this week – it says that misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic spread using its WhatsApp messaging app has fallen by 70%.
WhatsApp had become a place where messages about fake cures and conspiracy theories were being spread far and wide by people who passed them on to their groups of friends.
A couple of weeks ago WhatsApp began to limit the ways in which users could forward messages – so that false information could not go ‘viral’.
However, there is some evidence that the dip in fake information spreading may be in part due to the fact that people are settling into a ‘new normal’, and a rise may come as the situation begins to develop and countries begin to ease their lockdowns.
Facebook says it’s monitoring all channels and will act further if it feels a need.
END OF A TWITTER ERA
TWITTER last week turned off a feature that allowed users to be notified about tweets using the SMS text service, marking the end of an era for the service.
Twitter was founded as an SMS-based service around a year or so before Apple began the smartphone revolution with the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Most people stopped using it via text messaging a long time ago when the app took precedence.
There are still some countries where the SMS service remains active on Twitter, but these are largely places where ubiquitous mobile data is unavailable.