Tag: Instagram

Facebook and Instagram Are Eliminating All Posts that Include the Phrase ‘Stop the Steal’

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Facebook announced on Monday that it is purging both Instagram and Facebook, two major social media platforms, of all content that includes the phrase “stop the steal.”

“We are now removing content containing the phrase ‘stop the steal’ under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram,” Facebook said. “We removed the original Stop the Steal group in November and have continued to remove Pages, groups and events that violate any of our policies, including calls for violence.”

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UVA Students Create Website for Easy Access to Virginia Colleges’ COVID-19 News

Jacob Taylor

Four University of Virginia (UVA) undergraduates have created a website called The Collegepedia that aims to make the process of finding the latest reliable, college-specific news about COVID-19 at universities throughout the Commonwealth easier.

“[Journalists] have been working tirelessly to keep communities informed about their health and safety, but there is no single media outlet or aggregator that compiles all of these stories, searchable by community, in an easy to read and straight to the point format. So, we wanted to fill that void.” UVA senior Nik Popli, one of the website’s creators, told The Virginia Star.

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Pro-Life Group Claims Instagram Is Shadow Banning It, Suspects Pro-Choice Activists Played a Role

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by Chris White   A pro-life group believes pro-choice activists likely pressured Instagram into suppressing and removing the group’s content and hashtags from the platform’s most popular feature. Let Them Live’s Instagram’s posts stopped appearing on numerous hashtags starting on April 18, the group claimed in a May 15 press statement posted to its Instagram page. The group, which has 15,000 Instagram followers, brought its case directly to the company on April 25 as the group’s engagement rate sagged. Instagram never responded, according to the group’s executive director, Nathan Berning. The group’s content was removed from hashtags and Instagram’s Explore, a feature on the platform displaying the most-liked content at the time of a person’s visit. Content on the feature is different for each Instagram user and comprises posts liked by people, posts from accounts similar to those a person follows,and posts with high engagement. Groups often use Explore to help their content go viral. Berning speculates that pro-choice activists played a role. “We really do believe that that is what is happening,” Berning told The Daily Caller News Foundation, referring to what he believes is an activist-led attempt to suppress Let Them Live’s content. Berning claims his group leveraged…

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Instagram Stories Have the Potential to Sway 2020 Voters

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  Three years counts as several lifetimes on social media. Twitter may have been the dominant platform mastered by then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016 but it likely will not be the way most voters learn about the crowded field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Instead, Instagram – a photo platform focused more on storytelling through images– has become the place for Senator Elizabeth Warren to crack open a beer, for Beto O’Rourke to turn a trip to the dentist into a policy discussion and for Senator Kamala Harris to dance to Beyonce. Experts say candidates can dominate the social media game during the 2020 election by mastering tone, not platform. “Instagram Stories has become a place where people can really weave together a lot of different types of content and engage with people that aren’t necessarily watching the day to day Twitter wars,” Alex Wall, the director of digital strategy for the Obama White House and for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, tells VOA. Wall – who is now a vice president of digital engagement at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank – says candidates are seeking to imitate the way voters use these platforms in their…

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