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Weird Wide Web: A Facebook experiment, a Lindsay Lohan lawsuit and a dog weight loss app

All of your essential tech and social media news for the week in one byte-sized portion.

WELCOME TO THE Weird Wide Web – where we take a look at the week’s best offerings in tech and social media news.

Backfiring Facebook move of the week

It emerged this week that Facebook secretly manipulated the news feed of hundreds of thousands of users to study “emotional contagion”. People were furious about it and now the Irish data protection commissioner will investigate the experiment.

Doggie weight loss app of the week

Though this promo video is rather dramatic, it does point to a real problem a lot of pets in Ireland suffer from – canine obesity. The Kibblr app will tell you exactly how much to feed your pooch and even send you a reminder.

Daniel Schulof / YouTube

Google forgotten links trouble of the week

There was outrage this week when articles posted by the Guardian were removed from searches under the controversial forgotten links ruling. A number of them were later reinstated after criticisms and it has been claimed now that the company is letting all requests through in order to show its opposition to the ruling. Google’s head of communications told BBC that’s not the case, however.

Bill Gates blast from the past of the week

Buuzfeed fished out this stunning video of Bill Gates in 1995. At a tech event, he was inserted into blockbuster game Doom where he murders a monster with a shotgun. Epic.

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Lidsay Lohan gaming lawsuit of the week

When it emerged last December that Lindsay Lohan was suing the makers of Grand Theft Auto V for stealing her likeness, everyone thought she was talking about this character:

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As Business Insider reported this week, her real problem is actually with a character called Lacey Jones – a self-obsessed anorexic actress who’s constantly being chased by the paparazzi. We’re not sure we see the resemblance…

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Michelle Hennessy
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