Users may have to pay to post links on Facebook pages. Time to get a website

Showing all posts about social networks

Users may have to pay to post links on Facebook pages. Time to get a website

22 December 2025

Over the last week, several users have spotted Meta’s test, which impacts link posting. Social media strategist Matt Navarra noted that users part of the test can only post two links unless they pay for a Meta Verified subscription, which starts from $14.99 per month.

The proposed regime will apply to those who use professional mode on the social network.

Like many website owners, I can post as many links as I want to here, without the need to pay a cent to Meta, or be “verified” by them.

X moves to head-off claim on ‘abandoned’ Twitter branding

20 December 2025

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

Elon Musk’s X is updating its Terms of Service to indicate it still lays claim to the “Twitter” trademark. The move to add this detail to the company’s terms follows an announcement from a Virginia-based startup, which recently filed an application to trademark the term “Twitter.”

No surprises there. Anyone hoping to obtain the rights to the Twitter trademark must know they face an uphill struggle to do so.

X has abandoned the Twitter brand, Operation Bluebird wants to own it

13 December 2025

An American startup called Operation Bluebird is hoping to take ownership of the defunct Twitter name, the term “tweet”, and famous blue bird logo, and relaunch Twitter anew. Operation Bluebird’s backers believe the old micro-blogging service can be restored to its former glory, and revive the “town square” the old Twitter once, for a time, gave the web.

I like the idea, but how feasible is it? Just crazy enough that it might work?

While X no longer uses the Twitter branding, they would still own it, despite Operation Bluebird’s claims it has been “abandoned”. I somehow doubt the present owner, Elon Musk, of what was once Twitter, X, sees things that way though. He would expect to see a very generous offer, before even beginning to consider parting with the Twitter branding.

It will be a hard sell, or a hard buy. Twitter branding aside, Musk believed as the buyer of Twitter, he also owned the micro-blogging concept. When Threads launched in 2023, Musk threatened to sue Meta, claiming Threads was a copy of X. Little came of that, but it says a lot about Musk’s resolve.

Selling the Twitter branding to someone who wants to establish a direct competitor to X, doesn’t seem like the sort of thing anyone would do, let alone Musk. But Musk has given X its own, quite distinct, identity. Everyone knows who owns X, and what it is about. It almost seems there could be little confusion if a new version of Twitter were launched, so entrenched is X as a brand.

Musk bought Twitter three years ago, but it seems like a lifetime ago. X is X now. It is no longer the old Twitter. Still, Operation Bluebird must have some idea of what they’re up against. Yet they think there’s a chance of success, taking control of the Twitter branding, as fanciful as it might seem.

Still, I’ve requested my preferred username (you’ll never guess…), and would be keen to be involved in the new Twitter if it ever happened. Twitter, to me, seemed to be the ideal accompaniment to a blog. It was a great place to go and mingle with others with similar interests. Town square, indeed.

It was neither too much, nor too little.

To my mind, nothing else was needed. I once set up a Facebook page for disassociated, but could never get enthusiastic about it. Ditto the prospect of having presences on the likes of YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, Linkedin, and Pinterest. That was like five places too many to be spread across. Plus none of then were particularly relevant to a site like mine.

Despite having my fingers crossed for Operation Bluebird, I still can’t help feeling that the “Twitter moment” in general is gone, as exciting as bringing back the early Twitter is. It seems like the micro-blogging site was part of a web that no longer exists. While Mastodon and Bluesky are fine latter-day variants, they’re not what Twitter was.

So I wonder: could (new) Twitter, were it ever to eventuate, ever be what old Twitter was?

Verify the age of adult websites users via their device operating system

22 November 2025

A provider of adult video content — I’ll refrain from naming them, in the hope of stopping network content filters getting upset — is suggesting the age of their audience be verified through the operating system (OS) of their device. Note: the link is to a blog post by the provider, not to any NSFW content. I can’t speak for what happens if you start clicking other links on the page though.

More of these laws are coming, and the safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. However, the best and most effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to identify users at the source: by their device, or account on the device, and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. This means users would only get verified once, through their operating system, not on each age-restricted site. This dramatically reduces privacy risks and creates a very simple process for regulators to enforce.

The idea certainly makes sense, and would save having to go through a separate age verification process on every website, social network, and other online service that requires it.

To date though I don’t recall ever supplying any of the OS’s I use with my date of birth, let alone verifying that information. It seems to me to make age verification possible this way might require some OS suppliers to make changes to allow this.

Update: on checking, I see my date of birth details are entered into my smartphone’s OS, iOS. I expect those details were verified when I obtained my first iPhone, as I needed to present photo identification on signing up with my then phone company.

Assume then my age is verified as far as my smartphone goes. As for my computer OS, Linux Mint, I’m pretty sure I didn’t supply any such info. Couldn’t even be certain I entered my full name. This I will need to check on.

Meta to phase out Share to, Like on, Facebook social plugins

12 November 2025

Anna Washenko, writing for Engadget:

The company’s official line is that the plugins “reflect an earlier era of web development, and their usage has naturally declined as the digital landscape has evolved.” But Facebook also plays a much smaller role in the broader Meta business operation than it once did, and anecdotally, it’s less common to see sites running only integrations with a single social network.

Share to social media buttons were a feature on disassociated for a while, back in the day. It wasn’t easy to gauge exactly how many people used them, but I could see they didn’t go untouched.

I only deployed the Share option, rather than Like, as I thought the sharing of posts was of more value. I wasn’t a fan of the buttons that shipped with the plugin — way too much branding for my liking — and preferred to integrate icons I crafted myself, or, for a time, text only share links. I also had a share to (then) Twitter option.

While remnants of the early web continue to whittle away, the demise of the Facebook social plugins could hardly be seen as contributing to this “evolution” of the digital landscape. Thankfully.

Australian social media age verification laws: you might need to prove your age

20 September 2025

The Australian government has issued guidelines regarding proposed age verification regulations that come into effect this December.

While social networks will be required to “detect and deactivate or remove” the accounts of members under the age of sixteen, they will not need to verify the age of every last user. This would no doubt apply to instances where someone has been a long-time user of a social media channel, or it is apparent they are over the age of sixteen.

It sounds reassuring, at least on the surface, but the devil will be in the detail. It will be down to individual platforms to decide how they go about ascertaining a member’s age, rather than there being a standard, universal, process they must adhere to. Expect to see some under-sixteens fall through cracks, while a few over-sixteens get caught in the net.

The last days of social media, or wishful thinking?

19 September 2025

James O’Sullivan, writing for Noema:

While content proliferates, engagement is evaporating. Average interaction rates across major platforms are declining fast: Facebook and X posts now scrape an average 0.15% engagement, while Instagram has dropped 24% year-on-year. Even TikTok has begun to plateau. People aren’t connecting or conversing on social media like they used to; they’re just wading through slop, that is, low-effort, low-quality content produced at scale, often with AI, for engagement.

When social media is used to be social, it is useful. When deployed (in an attempt) to garner influence, especially through re-posting slop, not so much.

Despite the low quality content, and apparent lack of engagement, I don’t see social media, as we presently know it, going anywhere. Maybe the argument could be made that social media is dead, and presently exists in a zombie like state instead, dead but undead.

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Mark Zuckerberg and why personal websites trump social networks

8 September 2025

Mark Zuckerberg, a lawyer based in the US state of Indiana, has been banned from Facebook (FB) numerous times because the social network thinks he’s impersonating co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Someone has the same name as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and therefore they are up to no good. You would think a social network the size of FB would understand people do share the same first and last names. It’s hardly a rare occurrence either.

Soon after I signed up for FB, back in the days when I used to be active on the platform, I had a friend request from someone with the same name as mine. Looking at the person’s FB page, I could see he had connected with a number of other people with the same name.

It didn’t seem much unusual in the early days, there was a bit of people-sharing-the-same-names friending each other going on. A bit of harmless fun, back in the days when FB used to be fun.

Having the same name as the Meta CEO is sometimes far from fun though, as Zuckerberg the lawyer can attest to. He often receives massages from people who believe he is the FB co-founder, some of which are threatening. But Zuckerberg the lawyer now has his own website.

This is a smart move as anyone in the Indie/Small/Open web space can tell you. While a social media company can delete an account more or less because they feel like it, doing away with an independently hosted personal website is a little more difficult.

Mastodon might struggle to comply with social media age verification laws

1 September 2025

Sarah Perez, writing for Techcrunch:

The Mastodon 4.4 release in July 2025 added the ability to specify a minimum age for sign-up and other legal features for handling terms of service, partly in response to increased regulation around these areas. The new feature allows server administrators to check users’ ages during sign-up, but the age-check data is not stored. That means individual server owners have to decide for themselves if they believe an age verification component is a necessary addition.

Mastodon is a decentralised social network that allows anyone with the inclination, and access to a reasonably robust server, to establish their own instance, or chapter.

Mastodon is the sum of its many parts, and is not structured like X or Threads, whose operations are run from a single, centralised, point. I have no idea how many Mastodon instances there are, but the number would not be insignificant.

Compliance with age verification laws will be down to individual instance administrators. It’s not something the Mastodon head office could do, because there isn’t one, as such.

This doesn’t mean members of Mastodon instances operating in jurisdictions where age verification laws apply, will be able to forgo confirming their age. Indeed, age verification will be a necessity if the instance they belong to is to continue operating.

Young Australians not banned from social media, just delayed using it

26 August 2025

Australians under the age of sixteen will not be banned from having social media accounts, when laws change later this year. Instead, as the Australian eSafety commission points out, they’ll merely have to wait until their sixteenth birthday before being able to sign up for social media access:

It’s not a ban, it’s a delay to having accounts.

The incoming social media age-restriction laws will make students of semantics out of us all.

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