They don't really want to debate you, those randoms who crawl into the comments of your Facebook posts and your tweets and your blog posts (hi!) asking to "debate" you over crap we should all agree on by now. You can't debate them in any meaningful way, because they are mouths without ears. You can block them or take your account private, but maybe that leaves you feeling frustrated and powerless. How do you leave this situation feeling any type of satisfaction?

Last month Facebook revealed that its engineering team had discovered an issue where hackers were able to exploit a vulnerability in the site’s “View As” feature. The feature allows users to see what their profile looks like to someone else, but hackers were able to use it to steal Facebook access tokens and take over people’s accounts.

My wife and I have about the same number of Twitter followers — 16k and 14k respectively — but her tweets consistently outperform mine. In fact, according to the SparkScore tool from the Twitter marketing service SparkToro, an average tweet from her gets three times as many retweets and 10 times as many faves.

Google's attempt to take over the world of social networking, Google+ never really gained the traction the company hoped. And any hope of it catching up to Facebook were scotched last week when a massive hack was revealed resulting in the search giant announcing they would be shutting the service down next year. But in order to protect yourself now, here's how to delete your Google+ profile.

Google has announced the closure of its ailing social media network Google+ in response to a data leak that exposed up to 500,000 users. If you were one of the few people still using the platform - or created an account and forgot about it - here's what you need to know.

I saw it for the first time late last week: an acquaintance from college posted something about how she had received a message about a friend receiving a friend request from her from a bogus account that the friend in question supposedly ignored, but she should “check her account.” It also recommends forwarding the message to everyone you know and provides instructions on how to do so.

Ding! This needs your attention right now, notifications seem to say. Boing! It might be an emergency. Or, just as often: Boop! Somebody you love might want to talk to you. We get hundreds of notifications every day, and they are almost all lies.

Let’s talk about that elephant in the room: Facebook’s recent disclosure that attackers got their hands on access tokens for an unknown number of Facebook accounts is a big deal, since it’s the kind of hack that you, a happy Facebook user, could not prevent.

This week a TechCrunch article revealed that Facebook is using phone numbers users have provided as a security measure for two-factor authentication as a way to send targeted ads to those users.

If you use Snapchat every day, there’s a decent chance you have at least one or two people that you snap regularly, maybe even every day. People who snap each other every day can rack up a Snapstreak; a little number with a flame next to it that tracks how long you’ve been snapping each other. Some people (see: Teens) get super-invested in that number, going to intense lengths to keep the streak alive.

You might be familiar with Facebook regularly throwing heartwarming (or heartbreaking) memories in your face every once in a while, but if you want to take a serious dive into your digital past, you need to do it manually. Here’s a guide to dredging into your your digital past on some of the most popular apps and services out there.

Call me old-fashioned, but most of my Twitter interactions are done via desktop PCs, with the Twitter website serving as my primary interface. And it's terrible. Use it for even a short period and it'll start to chug, forcing one to close and reopen the tab (in Chrome at least) to get normal performance back. Only recently did I stumble upon a fix — the mobile site.

Ah, Facebook. There's something to be said for having all your social media needs in one place, but the problems with Facebook are as numerous as its users. Here we've collated some of our most useful, interesting and amusing Facebook tips and tricks so you can take your take back your News Feed, Timeline and Profile.

Either we’ve entered an alternate reality where Twitter cares about its users or something good has actually happened online for a change: The social networking site is bringing back the option to view your timeline in reverse chronological order.

Are you sick of your Twitter feed filling up with 'In Case You Missed It' interruptions, or unfunny tweets from people you straight up don't follow? There's a way to see nothing but the tweets from people you actually follow - and you can do it right in your vanilla Twitter browser.

The blue check mark we all crave on social media platforms is often mysteriously difficult to achieve. How do people get it? Twitter allowed people to submit themselves for a time, but that system is currently suspended. However, Instagram is giving it a whirl.

One of the most popular topics on Twitter right now seems to be whether or not to leave Twitter. Abuse runs rampant on the "microblogging" platform, and every day I see complaints that its moderators aren't keeping harassment and bad behaviour in check. As someone who's spent years writing primarily about video games, I have seen many of my peers overtaken by oppressive mobs of misguided gamers, with little recourse to protect themselves. I also see (or at least read about) conservative users who believe their posts are being suppressed by the platform.

The social media network known as Mastodon is sort of an anti-Twitter: quiet, calm, and pretty much free of Nazis. People have been flocking to it lately, only to get confused by the way it's set up — which is a shame, because it's not that hard to get started. Here's how.

Video: Comedian, author and Last Week Tonight writer Josh Gondelman knows how to be funny in any context. Like any comedian, Josh’s second (or third or fourth) job is being good at Twitter. In 2012 he co-created the novelty account Modern Seinfeld, and he tweets regularly on his own account. In this video he explains how — or how not — to tweet.