Controversies

Company response

• Clarification — Instagram

  Instagram is to update its nudity policy after accusations it censored a plus-size model.

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• Instagram is to update its nudity policy after accusations it censored a plus-size model.

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• The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said it launched the probes in September after receiving complaints about the company that phone numbers and email addresses of under-18s were being accessed by all users on the site.

• Ireland’s data protection agency is investigating Instagram following concerns over how the image-sharing social platform handles children’s personal data, a spokesman said Monday.

• Facebook, which owns the Instagram app, said it is in "close contact'' with the commission and is "cooperating with their inquiries".

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• Facebook filed a lawsuit Thursday against two companies that it accused of data scraping from Facebook and Instagram, as well as Amazon, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

• Romero explained, “Scraping is a form of data collection that relies on unauthorized automation for the purpose of extracting data from a website or app.

• When people installed the extensions and visited our websites, the browser extensions used automated programs to scrape their name, user ID, gender, date of birth, relationship status, location information and other information related to their accounts.

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• Facebook alleged the defendant domain names “have been registered, trafficked in and/or used with a bad faith intent to profit from Plaintiffs’ trademarks in violation of the [Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA)].”

• Instagram, LLC, and WhatsApp, LLC are also named as plaintiffs.

• On June 8, Facebook Inc. filed an in rem trademark complaint against several domain names, including facebook-verify-inc.com.

Company response

• Apology — Instagram

  It said that its “processes fell down here” and has apologised to its users for the same.

• Investigation — Instagram

  Upon being aware of the fault, the team started investigating its cause.

• Remediation — Instagram

  Since then, the team now claims to have unblocked the hashtag on both the platforms.

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• It said that its “processes fell down here” and has apologised to its users for the same.

• Instagram’s PR Team has now admitted that the hashtag was being blocked because of a mistake in their processes and that the team has now unblocked it.

• The hashtag #sikh had been blocked on Facebook as well as Instagram since March 7

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• The company is updating its ad library to make it more transparent, and rolling out a US presidential candidate ad spend tracker.

• The company also introduced Facebook Protect, a feature meant to secure and protect the accounts of candidates, elected officials and their teams from hackers and foreign adversaries.

• Facebook today (21 October) introduced steps to safeguard its site against misinformation and check political advertisers, without committing to taking down political ads with such false claims.

Company response

• Clarification — Facebook

  “People count on us to protect the integrity of our apps and services,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We don’t tolerate people creating web addresses that pretend to be associated with our family of apps. Today’s lawsuit shows we will take action against those behind this abuse.”

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• The two companies have been hosting websites like “HackingFacebook.net,” which offers tools for phishing and hacking Facebook accounts, according to the lawsuit.

• The company filed its lawsuit on Monday in the US District Court of the Northern District of California. It accuses web hosts OnlineNIC and ID Shield of trademark infringement and cybersquatting.

• Facebook filed a lawsuit against two web hosting companies with the aim of removing sites that offer tools for phishing and hacking accounts on the social network and Instagram.