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Social Media
Be it trends or any other relevant conversations, we regularly deliver, in relatable context, news and insights on how social media affects our community of everyday readers.
Top stories
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has rolled out enhanced safety features for users under 18 on its Messenger platform.
Instagram is testing a ‘locked posts’ feature to help creators monetise exclusive content, boost user engagement, and explore the culture of digital gatekeeping.
Minister Malatsi has urged TikTok to include South African creators in its Creator Fund, spotlighting the country’s 17 million users and growing cultural influence online.
Teenagers have become trapped in the world of social media. They can go from one notification to spending several hours online. Explore how this affects them socially and mentally, as well as what these platforms are doing about it.
X (formerly Twitter) suffered a major cyberattack on March 10, 2025, disrupting services for over 40,000 users worldwide. Elon Musk blamed Ukraine for the attack, but cybersecurity experts point to The Dark Storm Team, a pro-Palestinian hacker group.
Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings report shows robust growth, financial strength as the tech giant rakes in $165 billion in 2024.
Led by Elon Musk, X (formerly Twitter) ventures into live streaming as part of its evolution into an “everything app”. This move could reshape social media and boost African content creation.
TikTok has removed over 360,000 videos in Kenya for violating community guidelines, highlighting the platform’s ongoing efforts to address content moderation challenges in the region.
In a significant move aimed at combating misinformation, Zimbabwe has announced that all administrators of WhatsApp groups will soon be required to obtain a licence to enhance accountability and prevent the spread of harmful content across social media platforms.
TikTok removed 11,887,516 videos that violated guidelines in nine African countries in Q2 2024, with Egypt and Nigeria at the top to improve user safety.
Meta is testing facial recognition to detect scam ads using celebrity images on Facebook and Instagram, enhancing fraud prevention. The tool will also help users recover hacked accounts through video selfies.
WhatsApp is rolling out new features this month, including an image verification tool to combat misinformation, improved chat widgets for iOS users, more chat theme colours, and an easier way to create call links in chats.
Meta has launched teen accounts with built-in protections on Instagram, with a global rollout scheduled for January and expansion to other platforms in 2025.
Nigerian telegram groups with over 250,000 members share illegally gotten nude content to the highest bidder. However, a new Telegram moderation policy could crack down on such groups.
Meta Platforms has introduced two new tools, allowing content creators to earn from in-stream and Facebook ads on reels a few months after it rolled out the same features in Nigeria and Ghana.
Meta removes approximately 63,000 Nigerian Facebook accounts linked to Yahoo Boys in a crackdown on financial sextortion scams. The tech giant also takes down 7,200 other resources, including 1,300 accounts, 200 pages, and 5,700 groups.
Content creators in Nigeria and Ghana can now earn ad revenue on Meta platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. Before this move, they were ineligible for monetisation unless their page was managed from an eligible country.
X (formerly Twitter) plans to charge new users for basic functions, including posting and replying, to combat the increase in spam bots on the platform.
Ahead of the May election in South Africa, Meta has rolled out an anti-hate speech and disinformation campaign that will be broadcast on local and national radio stations in addition to its platforms.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has shut down LetsChat, an instant messaging app launched in 2021, due to its inability to engage users and provide an alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram.