social media news
TikTok Set for Explosive Growth in South Africa, says Expert
Sourced from Cosmico South Africa’s largest annual study of social media trends has revealed that Facebook remains the social platform of choice for marketing – but TikTok is rising fast among both brands and consumers. According to the 2020 edition of the SA Social Media Landscape, released this week by World Wide Worx and Ornico, almost a third of major brands intend to become active on TikTok, which is also the fastest growing social media platform among consumers. Fewer than 20% of brands have used it in the past year, but none believe they are doing so very effectively. These numbers are likely to change significantly during 2020. It is estimated that around 6-million South Africans are already using the platform. Nine out of ten major brands – just more than 89% – indicated they were...
Sharing A Defamatory WhatsApp or Facebook Post Could Get You Sued or Fired in SA – Legal Experts
The social media sphere has quickly become a new stage to be navigated carefully in these modern times. Often filled with deepening negativity and debacles that are dreadfully embarrassing for those involved – like the fallout over a Miss South Africa candidate and her history of crude tweets. Now, lawyers at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr (CDH) have warned South Africans that sharing defamatory posts can mean serious trouble. “It is important to understand that South African law considers repeating or sharing defamatory content as sufficient to constitute ‘publication’ and, thus, defamation in its own right, even if the repeater or sharer was not the author of the original defamatory post,” Timothy Smit, director, and Elizabeth Sonnekus, an associate in the firm’s dispute resolution practice...
Apple Music Slashes Subscription Prices for Kenyan Users
Sourced from the South Africa. Apple Music has reduced its prices by almost half of the original price and increased its trial period by double the initial period in Kenya. The subscription-based music streaming service offers access to over 50-million songs. Initially, individual users would have to pay about KES 1,066 ($9.99), however, this is about to change. According to Apple, the new prices will be as follows: Individuals will now pay KES 319.17 ($2.99) Family package, with up to six members, will cost KES 532.66 ($4.99) University Students in Kenya will now pay KES 159.05 ($1.49) What isn’t clear from the price reduction is whether or not the library of content has also been slashed. It is yet not known whether or not users will have the amount of music available to them also ...
YouTube’s ‘Chapters’ Roll out on Desktop and Mobile
Sourced from Speechling. YouTube has released its new video chapters feature to all users on desktop, smartphones and tablets. Chapters, the new feature that soft-launched in April, will make it easier to skip to precisely where you want to go in a video, similar to the chapters in a book, or scenes in a movie. Though not to the most ground-breaking or exciting new feature to land on YouTube, they are a welcome, if not overdue quality-of-life feature that will no doubt make the experience easier for many users. On desktop, a video with chapters won’t look different from how videos have always looked. The biggest change is barely noticeable: the red bar used to show video progress will have breaks within it, showing the different chapters, the breaks indicate when the chapters begin and end...
Donald Trump Signs Executive Order Targetting Social Media Companies
Sourced from Deadline. United States President Donald Trump has signed a controversial executive order that could allow federal officials in the US to go after technology giants like Twitter, Facebook and Google over how those companies treat content that appears on their websites. The president, whom The Independent claims, has uttered “thousands of false or misleading statements” since taking office, complained as he signed the missive that social media firms have, what he called, “unchecked power,” adding: “Imagine if your phone company edited or silenced your conversations.” Trump signed the order two days after Twitter, for the first time, placed a link on a pair of Trump’s tweets that guided users to news articles that fact-checked his statements about mail-in-ballots. The Independen...
Trump Threatens Twitter and Other Social Media Platforms After Being Fact-Checked
Sourced from Politico. US President Donald Trump has threatened to regulate or even “close down” social media platforms in a series of tweets over the last day on Twitter. This comes after Twitter added a fact-check label to some of his posts. The labels entail that particular tweets contained misleading information. The president (ironically) tweeted that republicans feel that social media platforms such as Twitter are trying to censor their political views. ….happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020 He then warned, “Big action [is]...
Twitter Labels President Trump’s “Potentially Misleading” Tweets
Image sourced from Al Jazeera Twitter said Tuesday that it added a label to the United States (US) President Donald Trump’s tweets for containing “potentially misleading information about voting processes,” a rare move that shows the social media company is taking a tougher stance against misinformation. Twitter reserves these labels for tweets that contain information flagged by the website as false. It’s the first time that Twitter has displayed such a label on one of Trump’s tweets. That same Tuesday, Trump tweeted “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-in-Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” a claim that has been debunked by fact-checkers and news organizations. He continues his remarks in another tweet, stating that it will be a “rigged election.” Mail-in-Ballots ...
South Africans Ready to Disclose Their Online Activity to the Government
Sourced from Fintech News. Thirty-eight per cent (38%) of South African consumers say they are happy for the government to monitor their social media activity to keep its citizens safe – this is according to Kaspersky’s latest report, Social credits and security: Embracing the world of ratings. At the same time, 67% of local respondents were ready to reveal their private data in exchange for a unique offer in an online shop. However, for many consumers, it still remains unclear how these automated systems of data-driven services work: 55% of all the users participating in the poll admitted they still can’t figure it out. The growing popularity of social media networks and online services has led to a growth in social scoring systems – automated algorithms based on users’ behaviour and infl...
