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Kanye West aka Ye is not online but is back outside. His Instagram account has been deactivated but he pulled up to the Fear Of God fashion show this week.
As spotted on Digital Music News, Kanye West is officially off Instagram. His last post on April 18 alluded to him contemplating leaving the social media platform as the visual was a screenshot of the app’s settings page where you can manually deactivate the account immediately. Later that afternoon, his page was gone for good. While his departure from Instagram was abrupt it seems this was inevitable.
Within the last couple of months the rapper’s account had been suspended for violating the terms of use; specifically when he posted some content that was deemed “hate speech”.
Additionally, his energy toward his rival Pete Davidson was largely viewed as harassment and bullying. While he has fallen back from social media, High Snobiety reports he did take the time to attend the Fear Of God runway show on Thursday, April 19.
Held at Hollywood Bowl, the invite-only event was packed with high-profile tastemakers and celebrities but Kanye West and his new wife turned the most heads. Wearing his signature all-black roomy attire with a mask, Yeezy seemed to be in good spirits. His better half on the other hand wore a skin-tight latex body suit that left very little to the imagination.
You can see a video of the couple at the fashion show below.
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Photo: Getty
Kanye West has bid farewell to Instagram.
The rapper took to the social media platform on Tuesday (April 18) to share a screenshot of the Instagram deactivation page, with the confirmation on temporarily removing his account ready to be submitted. Shortly after his announcement, the account was deactivated.
Ye has had ups and downs with Instagram over the past few years. In March 2022, he was suspended from Instagram for 24 hours, after some of his posts violated the platform’s policies on hate speech, bullying and harassment. Leading up to the suspension, Ye posted repeated racial slurs underneath a screenshot of Daily Show host Trevor Noah’s Google page.
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Additionally, he had countless posts dedicated to targeting Pete Davidson, who was dating West’s estranged wife Kim Kardashian at the time. He wrote that the Saturday Night Live comedian, whom he refers to as “Skete,” “will get my kids mom hooked on drugs He’s in rehab every 2 months.”
Ye was suspended again in October 2022 following a string of antisemitic remarks, before returning in March 2023 to declare that he “likes Jewish people again” after watching Jonah Hill’s performance in 21 Jump Street.
Selena Gomez is expressing her gratitude after becoming the first woman on Instagram to surpass 400 million followers.
The Only Murders in the Building star, who is now the most-followed woman in Instagram, took to the social media platform on Sunday (March 19) to show her appreciation to her millions of supporters around the world.
“Wishing I could hug all 400 million of you,” Gomez captioned a photo gallery on Instagram of herself excitedly posing with fans.
As of Sunday morning, the 30-year-old actress and singer had 401 million Instagram followers. Less than a month ago, when Gomez reached 381 million followers, she surpassed Kylie Jenner as the most-followed women on the social media platform.
While Gomez is the most-followed woman on Instagram, soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo is the most-followed person in general with 563 million followers. Another soccer star, recent World Cup winner Lionel Messi, follows with 443 million.
Prior to her celebratory post on Sunday, Gomez shared a stunning makeup-free selfie on March 13 with the simple caption, “Violet Chemistry,” which is a song from Miley Cyrus’ new album, Endless Summer Vacation.
The “Lose You to Love Me” singer returned to personally posting on her Instagram page in January, more than four years after she deleted the app from her phone and gave posting rights to a a member of her team due to her unhealthy relationship with the platform.
“At one point Instagram became my whole world, and it was really dangerous. In my early 20s, I felt like I wasn’t pretty enough. There was a whole period in my life when I thought I needed makeup and never wanted to be seen without it,” she previously told InStyle.
See Gomez’s post celebrating her 400 million Instagram followers below.
Selena Gomez officially became the first woman on Instagram to surpass 400 million followers on Friday (March 17).
Less than a month ago, when she reached 381 million followers, the Only Murders in the Building star passed Kylie Jenner as the most-followed women on Instagram
While Gomez is the most-followed woman on the platform, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is the most-followed person in general with 562 million followers. Another soccer superstar, Lionel Messi, follows with 442 million.
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Gomez’s most recent post was a stunning makeup-free selfie with the simple caption, “Violet Chemistry,” which is a track title from Cyrus’ freshly dropped eighth studio album, Endless Summer Vacation.
The “Lose You to Love Me” singer returned to personally posting on her Instagram page in January, more than four years after she deleted the app from her phone and gave posting rights to a a member of her team due to her unhealthy relationship with the platform. “At one point Instagram became my whole world, and it was really dangerous. In my early 20s, I felt like I wasn’t pretty enough. There was a whole period in my life when I thought I needed makeup and never wanted to be seen without it,” she previously told InStyle.
Facebook parent Meta is slashing 10,000 jobs, about as many as the social media company announced late last year in its first round of cuts, as uncertainly about the global economy hits the technology sector particularly hard.
The company announced 11,000 job cuts in November, about 13% of its workforce at the time. In addition to the layoffs, Meta said Tuesday that it would not fill 5,000 open positions.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta and other tech companies have been hiring aggressively for at least two years and in recent months have begun to let some of those workers go. Hiring in the U.S. is still strong, but layoffs have hit hard in some sectors.
Early last month, Meta posted falling profits and its third consecutive quarter of declining revenue. On the same day, the company said that it would buy back as much as $40 billion of its own stock.
The Menlo Park, company said Tuesday it will reduce the size of its recruiting team and make further cuts in its tech groups in late April, and then its business groups in late May.
Zuckerberg has invested tens of billions of dollars building out its metaverse, its virutal reality concept, and renamed the company Meta, signaling a new focus for Facebook.
“As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision,” said Zuckerberg.
The biggest tech companies in the U.S. are cutting costs elsewhere, too.
This month, Amazon paused construction on its second headquarters in Virginia following the biggest round of layoffs in the company’s history and its shifting plans around remote work.
Global inflation has remained stubborn and its made for more difficult decisions for both households and businesses in the U.S.
Fast growth companies, including many in the technology sector, are hunkering down for what may be an extended period of adverse economic conditions.
“At this point, I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years,” Zuckerberg said in a message to employees.
Meta shares rose nearly 7% Tuesday.
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / Meta
If you are a content creator caking off the Reels Play bonus program on Instagram and Facebook, you’re going to have to find another way to bring in coins. Meta is officially getting rid of the program.
If you’re wondering why you haven’t gotten that notification to start pumping out those Instagram Reels, there is a good reason for that. Meta is ending the program, as seen on The Verge, first reported by Business Insider.
According to Business Insider, Meta will not offer any “new or renewed” Reels Play bonus deals, but the company will honor existing commitments.
In a statement to The Verge via an email, Paige Cohen, a Meta spokesperson, said, “We are evolving the test of our Reels Play bonus on Instagram and Facebook as we focus on investing in a suite of monetization solutions to help creators earn steady streams of income. We will look into ways to run the program in a more targeted form, for example, in potential new markets.”
The rollout of the Reels Play bonus program has been far from perfect since its launch in 2021 as a direct response to the TikTok payout program.
Initially, content creators were cashing out, receiving payouts sometimes in the tens of thousands. Over time those payments have gotten smaller, and content creators are having a tough time achieving those large payouts again.
Meta initially had a $2 billion player pool that the company promised to content creators through 2022, so we guess the well has run dry.
You can still make money through subscriptions and badges, but those methods are not as reliable as making reels.
Instagram Is Not The Only Social Media Platform Pinching Pennies
According to The Verge, Snapchat, offering content creators $1 million a day in viral content on its TokTok-like feature Spotlight, gradually cut that amount over 2022, introducing other monetization methods like ad revenue.
YouTube was offering creators cash payouts to pump out YouTube Shorts, but that ended with the video-sharing platform moving to a revenue-sharing model last fall.
Welp.
We shall see if this decision impacts Instagram users’ decision to make reels going forward.
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Photos: NurPhoto / Getty
With 381 million followers, Selena Gomez has officially become the most-followed woman on Instagram. The “Lose You to Love Me” singer dethroned Kylie Jenner, who has 380 million followers.
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While Gomez is the most-followed woman on the platform, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is the most-followed person in general with 551 million followers. Another soccer superstar, Lionel Messi, follows with 432 million.
Gomez’s most recent post is a sultry snap posted on Wednesday (Feb. 22), in which the star is seen sipping on a cocktail at a restaurant. “I deleted this one time because I thought maybe it was too much but eh,” she captioned the photo.
The Only Murders in the Building actress returned to personally posting on her Instagram page in January, more than four years after she deleted the app from her phone and gave posting rights to a a member of her team due to her unhealthy relationship with the platform. “At one point Instagram became my whole world, and it was really dangerous. In my early 20s, I felt like I wasn’t pretty enough. There was a whole period in my life when I thought I needed makeup and never wanted to be seen without it,” she previously told InStyle.
She added, “Taking a break from social media was the best decision that I’ve ever made for my mental health. I created a system where I still don’t have my passwords. And the unnecessary hate and comparisons went away once I put my phone down. I’ll have moments where that weird feeling will come back, but now I have a much better relationship with myself.”
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Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty / Meta Verified
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Mark Zuckerberg has been catching nothing but Ls since he announced he was changing the name of Facebook to Meta and was going all in on the VR market. Now he’s taking a page out of Elon Musk’s book with his latest move.
Rumors began circulating on Elon Musk’s Twitter and Beyoncé’s internet that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta would unveil its own Twitter Blue clone to give Facebook and Instagram users verification badges for a price.
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That rumor was accurate, and the new subscription service is called Meta Verified Engadget reports. Mark Zuckerberg announced his new broadcast channel (Instagram’s latest feature) that Meta Verified is coming whether we care for it or not.
According to Zuckerberg, those who cough up the money will get a verification badge, increased profile visibility, additional impersonation protection, and direct access to customer support.
“This feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuck said in his post. He also revealed that Meta Verified would be tested in Australia and New Zealand before the company rolls it out to other countries.
The service will also cost iOS and Android users $15 and $12 on the web minus the app store commission fees.
Unlike Twitter Blue’s sloppy rollout, Meta hopes to curb people from making fake accounts for notable companies. Potential Meta Verified users must be 18 or older and present a valid government-issued ID matching their name and profile photo on their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Once you get verified, you can’t change your profile name, username, date of birth, or photo and must repeat the verification process.
Already verified accounts before the announcement will keep their status due to their notability.
Some Other Ridiculous Meta Verified Perks
Engadget also reports subscribers will receive 100 free stars, a digital currency we have never heard of, to tip content creators on Facebook.
Meta Verified subscribers could access exclusive stickers and reels for their Instagram Stories and Reels.
Will you sign up? Or is this a hard pass?
It sounds like another bad idea from the mind of Mark Zuckerberg.
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Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty
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Source: Lester Cohen / Getty
It looks like one of the most high-profile celebrity couples may be broken up. The Internets have deduced that Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly are no longer dating.
As spotted on High Snobiety the Think Like A Dog star has scrubbed the rapper from all her social media channels. On Sunday, February 12 fans noticed that she stopped following MGK on Instagram. While that is probably the biggest red flag with confirming true love in this era of digital sharing; her followers also noticed she also removed any photos where he was featured. Additionally, she started using cryptic quotes from Beyoncé’s “Pray You Catch Me” (“You can taste the dishonesty/it’s all over your breath”) throughout her Instagram stories. A day later she deactivated her Instagram entirely.
Back in January 2022, the two got engaged after months of a very public relationship. Since then breakup rumors have followed them along with ongoing criticism for their at times bizarre behavior. In April Megan confirmed with Glamour that they drank each other’s blood in pint-sized portions.
“Yeah. So, I guess to drink each other’s blood might mislead people or people are imagining us with goblets and we’re like Game of Thrones, drinking each other’s blood. It’s just a few drops, but yes, we do consume each other’s blood on occasion for ritual purposes only” she explained.
Machine Gun Kelly has yet to comment on Megan’s social media scrubbing but it should be noted that photos of her still live on his feed. So in theory; there still is hope.
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Photo: Getty
He’s back! Ed Sheeran returned to social media with a candid Instagram video on Tuesday (Jan. 31).
“Hi guys, so I realize I haven’t been that engaged in my social media or my fan base online over the last couple of years,” Sheeran confessed in the selfie video directly to camera before breaking into a charming whisper. “And the things that have been posted on this account might have got a bit boring. And I’m sorry, it’s my fault.
He continued back at full volume: “Umm, the reason I’m making this video is, just being totally honest, I’ve had some turbulent things been happening in my personal life, so I just didn’t really feel like being online and pretending to be something I’m not when I wasn’t feeling like that.”
After revealing that “things are looking up,” the British pop sensation promised his fans that he’s now “back online” and that “weird sh– is gonna start being posted” on his Instagram feed. “I’ve made this video like 50 f—in’ times, I’m not making another one,” he then quipped before signing off.
Indeed, Sheeran has been one of several high-profile artists who’ve opted not to use Twitter either, instead leaving his account on that app — which is branded “Ed Sheeran HQ” — in the hands of his management team
Late last year, the singer hopped briefly back on Instagram to commemorate his hit “Shivers” reaching the billion-stream mark on Spotify, and in the process revealed he was on the windy, outdoor set of a yet-unnamed music video for his follow-up to 2021’s = (Equals) that’s set to be released sometime this year.
Watch Sheeran’s social media confession below.