Facebook is finally pulling back the curtain on how its algorithms decide what to show in your News Feed. The tech giant is launching a new button called “Why am I seeing this post?” that will show users what factors went into displaying specific posts on their News Feed. This transparency about ranking marks a […]
Facebook Pays Teens to Install VPN That Spies on Them…
Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and […]
Facebook’s Massive, Secret Rulebook for Policing Speech Reveals Inconsistencies, Gaps and Biases…
Facebook is attempting to tackle misinformation and hate that its platform has enabled with a massive, byzantine and secret document of rules packed with spreadsheets and power point slides that gets updated regularly for its global content moderators. According to the blockbuster New York Times report, the rules show the social network to be “a […]
Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis…
Sheryl Sandberg was seething. Inside Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, top executives gathered in the glass-walled conference room of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. It was September 2017, more than a year after Facebook engineers discovered suspicious Russia-linked activity on its site, an early warning of the Kremlin campaign to disrupt the 2016 American election. Congressional […]
Class Sues Over Possible Exposure of Google Plus User Data…
In the latest fallout over yet another Silicon Valley privacy scandal, computer users hit Google and its parent company Alphabet with a federal class action Monday night for potentially exposing the data of up to 500,000 users of Google Plus to outside parties. Google announced in a blog post Monday morning that it would discontinue […]
Zuckerberg Set Up Fraudulent Scheme to ‘Weaponize’ Data, Court Case Alleges…
Mark Zuckerberg faces allegations that he developed a “malicious and fraudulent scheme” to exploit vast amounts of private data to earn Facebook billions and force rivals out of business. A company suing Facebook in a California court claims the social network’s chief executive “weaponised” the ability to access data from any user’s network of friends […]
Belgian Court Orders Facebook to Stop Collecting Data on Citizens, Threatens Fines of up to $125M…
A Belgian court has ordered Facebook to stop collecting data about the country’s citizens, and to delete information previously gathered. It threatened to fine the social network €250,000 a day if it fails to comply. In its ruling, the court determined that Facebook does not adequately inform users that it is collecting information. “Facebook informs […]
Facebook Goes Virtual…Developing a ‘Mind Reading’ Brain Interface…
Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled Facebook’s augmented reality system – and confirmed rumours the firm is developing a ‘mind control’ brain interface. The social network’s founder took to the stage at the firm’s annual F8 developer conference at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center to introduce what he called the ‘second act’ in Facebook’s camera strategy […]
Twitter Begins to Ban Users Advocating Violence…
Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it had stepped up efforts to rid its social network of posts from users advocating political or religious violence, and was increasingly using software to find them rather than relying on reports from users or governments. U.S. and European governments have been pressuring social media companies including Twitter, Facebook Inc […]
Facebook Misreported Engagement Numbers for Links and Live Videos…
For the third time since September, Facebook is disclosing new measurement errors. The two new errors affected the reaction counts Facebook reports on Pages’ Live videos, as well as the engagement figures Facebook reports for off-Facebook links; the latter link engagement metrics were recently used in investigations by BuzzFeed and The New York Times into […]