Facebook announced that it has taken down three networks of pages and groups that demonstrated “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” including one from Russia that was aimed at recruiting journalists to write for news pages that looked left-leaning, according to the Washington Post.
In total, Facebook said it took down 521 Facebook accounts, 147 pages, and 78 groups associated with these networks, but the Russian network was actually the smallest of the three rings that were busted. The three groups generated fake views and engagements that intentionally sought to mislead people, according to Facebook.
Of the pages removed, only 13 were traced to the notorious Russian Internet Research Association, the Kremlin-backed group accused of using Facebook to spread misinformation across all of social media, not just Facebook, during and after the 2016 presidential election. According to the Washington Post, Facebook removed the pages after a tip from the FBI.
Facebook’s efforts to combat the spread of disinformation have been an ongoing struggle for years, and have reached a peak recently in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. The social media company has been criticized for failing to remove false, racist, and otherwise harmful statements from white supremacists and other violent groups.
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted the platform made an “operational mistake” by allowing posts that advocated for violence against protesters to remain on the site.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?