Russian authorities have announced partial restrictions on calls in messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp.

WhatsApp has taken down 6.8 million accounts linked to criminal scam centers worldwide, according to its parent company, Meta.

Going online in Russia can be frustrating, complicated and even dangerous.

WhatsApp says that users will start seeing ads in parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is emphasizing that he bought Instagram and WhatsApp because he liked the companies — not to cut competition as the Federal Trade Commission alleges in a historic antitrust trial.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered separating Instagram from its parent company due to worries about antitrust litigation.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced questions about his intentions in acquiring Instagram on the first day of a historic antitrust trial.

Pakistan's lower house of parliament has passed a bill with sweeping controls on social media that includes blocking platforms and sending users to prison for spreading disinformation.

Having issues with social media today? You’re not alone.

Meta says it has laid off some employees, including staff at WhatsApp And Instagram, to realign its resources with its “strategic goals.”.

The same Iranian hacking group believed to have targeted both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns have tried to go after the WhatsApp accounts of staffers in the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Experts expect a surge of misinformation targeting Spanish-speaking voters with a high-stakes presidential election in the fall as candidates vie for support from the rapidly growing number of Latino voters.

News4JAX is learning more details about the sex crime investigation involving a 17-year-old girl that led to the arrest of a 34-year-old now former officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

A technical issue had caused widespread login issues for more than an hour across Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger platforms on Tuesday.

Users reported being locked out of their Facebook accounts and feeds on the platform as well as Threads and Instagram were not refreshing. WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, appeared unaffected.

A bill designed to crack down on illegal street racing in Florida is one step closer to a vote on the Senate floor.

Ahead of national elections next week, some people in Zimbabwe's rural areas say they are facing intimidation from supporters of the long-ruling ZANU-PF party and a biased state-run media that restricts their options.

Social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok serve as a vehicle for deception, misinformation and scams aimed at migrants seeking a better life for them and their families in the United States.

The British government is resisting an order to hand over a sheaf of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s personal messages to the country’s COVID-19 pandemic inquiry.

WhatsApp is allowing users to edit the messages they've sent.

An independent investigative group has accused Croatian officials and police of using a clandestine WhatsApp group to share sensitive information about migrants trying to enter the country.

Ireland has fined WhatsApp for breaching strict European Union privacy rules by forcing users to consent to allow their personal data to be used to provide “service improvements and security.”.

The Supreme Court has rejected an Israeli spyware maker’s bid to derail a high-profile lawsuit filed by the WhatsApp messaging service.

WhatsApp said service on the popular chat app has been restored following a brief outage that left people around the world complaining that they couldn’t send or receive messages.

A Nigerian advertising regulator has sued Meta, accusing the owner of Facebook and WhatsApp of publishing unauthorized ads.

A Russian court has fined TikTok for failing to delete LGBT material in what is the country’s latest crackdown on Big Tech companies.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it will start publicly providing more details about how advertisers target people with political ads.

WhatsApp parent Meta is moving forward with its push to attract businesses to its popular chat app.

The Israeli spyware maker NSO Group has turned to the U.S. Supreme Court as it seeks to head off a high-profile lawsuit filed by the WhatsApp messaging service.

A new study published in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health suggests social media harms girls more than boys, leading to cyberbullying, sleep problems and less exercise.

Facebook blamed a error during routine maintenance for causing a massive global outage that took down its services for hours.

The six-hour outage of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp on Monday was a headache for many casual users.

Facebook and Instagram users faced problems on Monday.

A confluence of factors caused the sudden arrival of thousands of mostly Haitian migrants on the Texas border this month.

Ireland’s privacy watchdog has fined WhatsApp 225 million euros ($267 million) for breaching stringent European Union data protection rules.

Facebook’s WhatsApp faces a complaint from European Union consumer groups who say the chat service has been unfairly pressuring users to accept a new privacy update, in a breach of the bloc’s regulations.

The messaging app WhatsApp has sued the Indian government seeking to stop new rules that would require it to make messages “traceable” for external parties.

A number of Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip say they are being blocked from accessing WhatsApp messenger.

Misinformation about the coronavirus is surging in India as the death toll from COVID-19 rises.

A German privacy regulator banned Facebook on Tuesday from gathering data on WhatsApp users, citing an update to its privacy policy that breaches stringent European data protection rules by allowing access to a lot more information on the chat app’s users.

FILE - This Friday, March 10, 2017, file photo shows the WhatsApp communications app on a smartphone, in New York. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)OAKLAND, Calif. – Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram are seeing huge upticks in downloads from Apple and Google’s app stores. Mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower said Wednesday that Signal saw 17.8 million app downloads on Apple and Google during the week of Jan. 5 to Jan. 12. WhatsApp, meanwhile, saw downloads shrink to 10.6 million, down from 12.7 million the week before. In that same period Telegram has seen about 755.2 million installations and WhatsApp a whopping 5.6 billion — almost eight times as many as Telegram.

Both Signal and Telegram offer encryption services. The idea behind using an app with encryption capabilities is to keep prying eyes and ears from seeing and hearing your conversations. “If you don’t properly vet the people you’re sending your message to, then you’re defeating the point of encryption,” Hamer said. A Sensor Tower representative told Business Insider that “Signal saw approximately 7.5 million installs globally from across the App Store and Google Play” from Wednesday to Sunday. CNBC reports that “Telegram saw 5.6 million downloads globally” during the same time frame, according to Apptopia.

Whatever happens, experts expect a long-drawn out battle that Facebook is prepared to defend vigorously — and with enormous resources. Facebook insists that its services provide useful benefits for users and that complaints about its power are misguided. Justice Department prosecutors are pursuing a separate antitrust case against Google, one that mirrors its case against Microsoft 20 years ago. Facebook doesn't operate the three companies as separate businesses and has been integrating functions of Instagram and WhatsApp with its main platform. While some original Instagram users deride the additions, others have come to appreciate them — and might miss them if they were to disappear.

The antitrust lawsuits were announced by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Regulators filed landmark antitrust lawsuits Wednesday against Facebook, the second major government offensive this year against once seemingly untouchable tech behemoths. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have come under scrutiny from Congress, federal regulators, state attorneys general and European authorities. “The government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final,” Facebook general counsel Jennifer Newstead said in a statement. Antitrust skeptics point to newer social media services such as TikTok and Snapchat as rivals that could “overtake” older platforms like Facebook.

Federal regulators and a group of states launched a landmark antitrust offensive against Facebook, accusing the social network of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors. Amazon and Apple also have been under investigation in Congress and by federal authorities for alleged anticompetitive conduct. Facebook called the government actions “revisionist history” that punishes successful businesses and noted that the FTC cleared the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions years ago. James alleged Facebook had a practice of opening its site to third-party app developers, then abruptly cutting off developers that it saw as a threat. Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, bolstering the social network's business a month before its stock went public.

The company said Tuesday that it is consolidating its payment processing for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp into one brand called Facebook Pay. Consolidating payment processing for all Facebook's major platforms into one unit may only make it even more complicated to unravel the company's various properties. Facebook Pay will handle payments across all Facebook's properties and will start rolling out this week on Facebook and Messenger in the US. Facebook has been processing payments since 2007, but doing it via a single brand is new. The logo alternates between blue for Facebook, green for WhatsApp and purple, red and orange for Instagram.

"Dear God, everybody Pray!," one family member in Mexico at the time, Kendra Lee Miller, said in a group chat among cousins. "Guys, Aunt Dawna and Christina are dead," Kendra Lee Miller said in a group chat. Kendra Lee Miller urged in the audio messages. Some of the community, including Kendra Lee Miller, say they are baptized and active members of the mainstream LDS church. She declined to release the audio of family members for privacy reasons.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(CNN) - WhatsApp has fixed a security bug that allowed hackers to take over the messaging app with a malicious GIF. To update WhatsApp, iPhone users should open the App Store and select updates. Select "WhatsApp" and press update. Select "My apps & games" from the menu, then select WhatsApp and tap the Update button. In May, a vulnerability was discovered that let hackers call a person on WhatsApp and place malicious code on their phone in order to see their personal information.

Some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies announced Monday that they're revamping an organization they established to fight online extremism in order to allow it to work more extensively with outside parties. MENLO PARK, Calif. - Some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies announced Monday that they're revamping an organization they established to fight online extremism in order to allow it to work more extensively with outside parties. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, spoke alongside Arden. Asked what Facebook could do about the spread of footage like that from the New Zealand attack on WhatsApp, Sandberg said it had used information from Facebook and Instagram to take action against some WhatsApp users. Amazon, LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, and WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, will join the consortium of companies supporting the organization, GIFCT said Monday.

"If anyone has direct contact with the persons in Hope Town please message me," read a recent comment on one Facebook group, Dorian People Search Bahamas. Eventually, frustrated with authorities and a slow trickle of information, Bootle, her sister and cousin started a WhatsApp chat group. At first, there were about 40 people in the group, Bootle said. Bootle and others would then share that information in the WhatsApp group, sending it out to an even wider audience. She wanted to provide a 'human connection'Pritchard-Ansell, who lives on the island of New Providence with her husband and 10-month-old daughter, has expanded her efforts beyond the Facebook group Bahamas People Search.

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter had all experienced various issues. But a Facebook spokesperson said Wednesday evening that its problems were fixed. Facebook-owned Instagram said its issues were also fixed. Twitter, meanwhile, tweeted via its support account that it was "almost at 100% resolved. Issues on Facebook and Twitter were happening in pockets worldwide, according to Down Detector, which tracks issues and outages on a variety of sites.