While you’re still shaking off the sparkles from your New Year’s Eve parties, the social media savants are introducing some new etiquette rules for 2016. With these new revelations come some new resolutions for you to follow in 2016: thou shall not repost chain messages; thou shall not get snippy on social media; and thou shall not sour any future relationships with mean messages. Here’s a look at what you might’ve missed in social media news this week.
Million Dollar Hoax
If you thought you were going to strike it rich in the new year by copying and pasting a Facebook message – sorry, you were scammed. Thousands of users had their champagne wishes and caviar dreams dashed by this mischievous message:
“Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he is giving away $45 billion of Facebook stock. What you may not have heard is that he plans to give 10% of it away to people like YOU and ME! All you have to do is copy and paste this message into a post IMMEDIATELY…”
The ponzi post goes on to claim 1,000 people will each be awarded $4.5 million for sharing the message. Facebook officials have denied any validity to this story. Looks like you sweepstakes seekers are going to have to stick to scratchers and lotto tickets for now.
Twitter Tweaks the Rules
On Wednesday, Twitter announced some updates to their abusive language policy. In a blog post, the microblogging site explained:
“The updated language emphasizes that Twitter will not tolerate behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user’s voice. As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs –but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse.”
Last year, Twitter gave users the tools to block, mute, and report verbally violent behavior. So far, the penalties for abusive tweets include temporarily locked accounts, email and phone verification to ensure an account wasn’t hacked, deleted tweets, and shutdown accounts.
Pro Athlete Fired for Old Tweets
If this story doesn’t inspire you to go delete any unsavory old tweets, I don’t know what will. On Monday, an up and coming soccer star was hired and fired in the same day over tweets he allegedly posted in 2013. Sergi Guardiola, 24, signed on to start playing for a team that is renowned for cultivating athletes for the world’s most profitable sports team, Real Madrid. By Monday night, the midfielder’s contract was terminated for incriminating tweets from his account that insulted his new team and its star players. Guardiola has since denied writing the tweets but says he understands the team’s decision. If you get caught in a similar social media firestorm, use this guide for damage control.
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