In 2017, LinkedIn made several updates to its Terms of Service – comprised of its Privacy Policy and User Agreement – to provide for new LinkedIn features and give users some choices over how their information is used.
In general, the changes revolve around new features that are intended to increase profile visibility and make it easier for users to share and connect with each other. LinkedIn permits users to opt in or out of these features to accommodate individual privacy preferences.
As we have previously written, the Pew Research Center found in 2016 that 62% of American adults consumed news on social media to some extent.
In September of 2017, the Pew Center updated its research, finding that, in 2017, about 67% or two-thirds of American adults are reporting getting “at least some of their news on social media,” a 5% increase from last year.
According to the research, this 5% growth was driven by more substantial increases among certain demographic groups. The research shows that 55% of American adults over 50 now consume news on social media sites, up from 45% in 2016. The research also reports that 74% of non-white Americans get news on social media sites in 2017, up from 64% in 2016. Last, there was an increase among those with less than a bachelor’s degree getting news from social media, to 69%, compared to 60% previously.
Despite all the headlines and studies on social media’s role in spreading fake news and its influence on public opinion, the majority of the public does not seem to plan to stop reading news on social media any time soon. However, some optimistic leaders of the traditional news media see fake news as an opportunity to highlight the integrity of mainstream media.
At this point you are probably familiar with the world of social media influencers. You might follow several on Instagram, or maybe your company partners with them to promote its products. But have you realized that the most valuable influencers may not even be human? This post will focus on animal influencers – they are cute, they come in a variety of species, and they are being paid to advertise products via social media.
Aspiring animal influencers can rise from obscurity to fame in an instant – all it takes is one viral post. The demand for cute and funny animal content is certainly present. As the Brand Protection Blog has previously reported, an estimated fifteen percent of all web traffic is connected to cats.
In today’s world, intellectual property owners are well aware that social media users frequently post infringing content. Companies and brand owners have developed various strategies for enforcing their intellectual property rights on social media, utilizing methods such as demand letters and takedown requests. Often there are so many infringing uses that brand owners must be strategic with their enforcement efforts by developing guidelines for the types of infringement that are worth confronting. For example, an infringer that is impersonating a company or selling counterfeit goods on social media may be worth the time and cost of enforcement measures, while a user who posts a single copyrighted image may not justify such measures. In addition, a company may decide strategically to monitor only certain social media platforms that have a broad enough popularity or impact among the public.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) regulates the use of social media to disseminate information about prescription drugs and medical devices. Our blog previously covered the social media guidance released by the FDA in 2014, and a sampling of Warning and Untitled Letters that the FDA has issued to drug manufacturers advertising on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.
Our firm sister blog, Health Law Pulse, covered last year’s controversy surrounding Kim Kardashian’s Instagram post that endorsed the morning sickness drug Diclegis® without including relevant risk information in the text of her post. After the manufacturer of Diclegis® received an FDA Warning Letter, Kim posted a corrective ad stating the risk information associated with that drug.
Service of process on a foreign defendant can be a major headache for U.S. plaintiffs, but social media is proving to be a creative solution when traditional methods have been demonstrated to fail.
We previously covered a New York federal court’s ruling that permitted the Federal Trade Commission to serve the Indian defendants, operating under the name PCcare, by email and Facebook. We also discussed a Kansas federal court’s ruling that denied service via Facebook as the sole means of service.
Since our last update, a federal trial court in Virginia has ruled in favor of allowing service by social media, adding to a growing trend in the U.S. federal courts.