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ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar on Friday highlighted concerns about social media , indicating plans for regulations to curb its alleged misuse. In an interview with a private TV channel, the premier said that the previous governments worked to control negative aspects of social media and in future , a “national firewall” through the use of Technology would be created to subdue the negative tendencies of social media . Reflecting on the May 9 events, Kakar criticised the elements involved, clarifying that his government did not target any specific political party. He stressed the importance of maintaining social order as a foundation for political stability. “May 9 [incident] was an attack on the concept of the state of Pakistan and from the very start I was very critical of the elements involved in the incidents,” he said. However, he added that the entire Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) could not be kept away from Pakistani Pol...

Meta Platforms' Threads is starting a test where posts from accounts on the microblogging platform will be available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. Meta had announced plans to make Threads compatible with open, interoperable social networks when the app was launched in July. "Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people," Zuckerberg said. Mastodon, which prides itself on its decentralised, user-driven structure, is like Threads, an alternative to Elon Musk's social media platform "X", formerly Twitter. Mastodon runs on a framework called ActivityPub that allows users to build independent social media experiences. "Our plan is to work with ActivityPub to provide you the option to stop using Threads and transfer your content to another service," the compan...

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI will be integrated into his social media platform X and also be available as a standalone app, he said on Sunday in a post. The billionaire also said xAI released its first AI model, a bot named Grok, after making it available to all X Premium+ subscribers on Friday. The startup aims to create AI tools that 'assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge' and that Grok has been designed to answer questions with a bit of wit. Musk who has criticized Big Tech's AI efforts as ridden with censorship, in July launched xAI, calling it a "maximum truth-seeking AI" that tries to understand the nature of the universe to rival Google's Bard and Microsoft's Bing AI. "Grok has real-time access to info via the X platform , which is a massive advantage over other models," Musk added. X, the social media firm formerly known as Twitter which Musk owns, is separ...

US prosecutors on Wednesday said they have charged eight individuals in a securities fraud scheme, alleging they reaped about $114 million from by using Twitter and Discord to manipulate stocks. The eight men allegedly purported to be successful traders on the social media platforms and then engaged in a so-called "pump and dump" scheme by hyping particular stocks to their followers with the intent to dump them once prices had risen, according to prosecutors in the Southern District of Texas. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it has filed related civil charges against the defendants in the scheme , claiming that seven of the defendants used Twitter and Discord to boost stocks. It said the eighth was charged with aiding and abetting the scheme with his podcast. "Securities fraud victimizes innocent investors and undermines the integrity of our public markets,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite of the Justic...

The US Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide the legality of Republican-backed state laws in Texas and Florida that constrain the ability of social media companies to curb content on their platforms that these businesses deem objectionable. The justices took up two cases involving challenges by technology industry groups who argued that these 2021 laws restricting the content-moderation practices of large social media platforms violate the US Constitution's First Amendment protections for freedom of speech. Lower courts split on the issue, striking down key provisions of Florida's law while upholding the Texas measure. The industry challengers to the laws are NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), industry groups whose members include Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google, which owns YouTube, as well as TikTok and X, formerly called Twitter. CCIA President Matt Schruers called the court's decision...

Seattle's public school district filed a lawsuit against Big Tech claiming that the companies were responsible for a worsening mental health crisis among students and directly affected the schools' ability to carry out their educational mission. The complaint, filed on Friday against Alphabet Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Snap Inc and TikTok-owner ByteDance with the U.S. District Court, claimed they purposefully designed their products to hook young people to their platforms and were creating a mental health crisis. Advertisement · Scroll to continue In emailed statements to Reuters, Google said it has invested heavily in creating safe experiences for children across its platforms and has introduced "strong protections and dedicated features to prioritize their well being," while Snap said it works closely with many mental health organizations to provide in-app tools and resources for users and that the well-being of its community is its top priority. Meta...

Twitter announced Sunday it would no longer allow users to promote their accounts on several rival social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram, but the site's mercurial owner Elon Musk appeared to backtrack on the new policy just hours later. The sudden shift in the rules was the latest in a series of controversial changes made by Musk since he took over the company in October -- upheaval that has led a growing number of users to encourage followers to view their posts on other sites. The unpredictable billionaire even put his future as Twitter's CEO to a vote. "Should I step down as head of Twitter?" he tweeted, asking the site's users to click yes or no.  "I will abide by the results of this poll," he added, with the vote open until the early hours of Monday. Twitter had announced that the company would "no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms ." "At both the Tweet level and the account l...