BBC Trending

Trending investigates claims that innocent men were framed to try to discredit demonstrations against Sudan’s former leader Omar al-Bashir. After mass street protests, the military stepped in to end President Bashir’s 30-year rule earlier this month. But the BBC has uncovered evidence that the regime organised a fake news campaign to try to portray peaceful protesters as violent rebels. Students were allegedly tortured to make false confessions that were filmed and distributed online. However, social media played a critical role in exposing the attempted deception. Presenter: Anisa Subedar Reporter: Owen Pinnell Photo Caption: Demonstrators gather during a rally outside the army complex in the capital Khartoum. Photo Credit: Getty Images.

How did an ambitious musician fool thousands of people using social media? Jered Threatin successfully managed to fake an entire existence as a rock star. He persuaded people he was an award-winning musician who had played to sold-out venues. And as a result of his seemingly popular social media accounts and faked web pages, he orchestrated a European tour, got his eponymous band booked in venues across six countries. The BBC’s Jessica Lussenhop got an exclusive interview with Jered Threatin, and she helps tell the story of how he was able to dupe people, how he was uncovered and why his desire for global success has now made him famous – for all the wrong reasons. Presenter: Anisa Subedar Reporter: Jessica Lussenhop (Photo Caption: Jered Threatin / Photo Credit: BBC)

The video-sharing app TikTok has taken the teenage world by storm. But where there are kids, there are also predators. We found dozens of adults using TikTok to post sexual comments on videos uploaded by teenagers and children. TikTok, which has 500 million users worldwide, says it is working hard to protect its users from inappropriate approaches. But a BBC Trending investigation exposed some worrying shortcomings in the way it deals with the problem. Presenter: Mike Wendling Reporter: Marco Silva (Photo: TikTok logo. Credit: TikTok)

Roger McNamee was a Facebook fan and an advisor to Mark Zuckerberg. Now he says he’s sad about the way the company is being run and the impact that it’s having on the world. Zuckerberg first sought out his advice, McNamee says, in 2006, shortly after Yahoo was making a $1bn bid to buy the social media company. McNamee, a veteran Silicon Valley investor, says he saw Facebook’s potential and urged the young entrepreneur to stay independent. But a decade later, he saw hyper-partisan posts poisoning politics online, and during the late stages of the US presidential election in 2016 he turned from a Facebook booster to a Facebook critic. Roger McNamee recently stopped into a studio to talk to us about his new book, Zucked, and he told us that Facebook, Google and other tech companies have serious flaws which require drastic and swift action. Presenter: Mike Wendling Producer: Edward Main (Photo: Roger McNamee. Credit: Rick Smolan)

Where does the extremist culture that inspired the Christchurch killer come from? A graphic live-streamed video and a rambling document included clues as to how the Christchurch shooter was radicalised. He used the message board 8chan to announce his attacks, which killed 50 people in the New Zealand city. And throughout his online postings are clues to how connected he was with the online culture of 8chan and a related website, 4chan. We break down the online networks used by far-right extremists to disseminate their messages under layers of irony and double meaning. And ask questions about the big social media companies, who’ve been criticised for not taking quicker action – both against the live-streamed video of the attacks and more generally against white nationalist propaganda. Is there anything that can be done online to stop similar attacks in the future? Presenters: Anisa Subedar and Mike Wendling Guests: Robert Evans, investigative journalist, Bellingcat Hussein Kesvani, UK editor, MEL magazine Annie Kelly, digital culture researcher, University of East Anglia Issie Lapowsky, senior writer, Wired magazine Ali Soufan, former FBI agent and chief executive officer of The Soufan Group Abdirahim Saeed, BBC Monitoring’s Jihadist Media Team (Photo Caption: A police officer stands guard inside an Islamic centre in New Zealand during a silence for the victims of the Christchurch attacks / Photo Credit: Getty Images)