Facebook has pulled back the curtain on its Internal Enforcement Guidelines, the long-mysterious rules by which its community standards team decides what's appropriate for the social network. Controversy around those rules has circulated for many years, with Facebook accused of giving little insight into the ways it decides which photos, videos, and posts should be removed, and which are "safe" to stay online.
This morning Twitter experienced some problems at its source. The servers that keep Twitter in business appeared to be having some issues at around 9AM Central Time, and the problem did not appear to be localized to any one country or region. Reports poured in from California to Poland, Utah to Romania. Hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, because there's no Twitter right now, and that's an issue.
Don't quit Facebook - just turn the right parts off. There's a switch in Facebook that'll turn down all the noise. There's a switch in Facebook that'll turn OFF your need to share all your private info. That switch is called "Unfollow" - and it's been there for a long, long time. It's just a little bit hidden - because Facebook doesn't really want you to use it.
A new leak on how Facebook uses AI to predict users most susceptible to advertising has thrown trust in the social network back into the spotlight. The company has not been shy in discussing its work on artificial intelligence, which it uses in numerous ways to filter what it believes its users will be most interested in - and will keep them coming back for more.
Facebook may be under scrutiny from privacy regulators, and its CEO in the hot seat in front of Congress, but the social network doesn't expect any of this outrage to affect its bottom line. The site has been repeatedly struck with negative headlines over the past month, beginning with revelations about how it provided third-party apps with user data and allegations that such data was used to manipulate the 2016 US presidential election.
Today Mark Zuckerberg publicly denied knowledge of the term "Shadow Profile" at a congressional hearing. Zuckerberg did not deny knowledge of the definition of Facebook's shadow profiles, but he did attempt to cut ties between the definition and the commonly-known name for the subject. Today we've got a quick primer on the Facebook-made Shadow Profile.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to several congressional boards this week on privacy and public use of Facebook. Today we're running down the many questions which seemed to make Zuckerberg nervous or otherwise ended up with an answer by Zuckerberg that could've been called "dodging the question." The judgements I and we make here are subjective - keep that in mind whilst perusing the list.
Instagram updated their apps this morning with a new sort of Focus Camera. This camera uses some smart calculations to figure out what part of the photo is the person, and what's background. With this new mode, "Focus" will allow the user to take photos and video in what's commonly known as a sort of "portrait" mode. This new mode aims to be "giving the photo that polished look."
Facebook has quietly revealed that its huge data sharing snafu with Cambridge Analytica might have seen users personal messages shared with the firm, an unpleasant side-effect of its old third-party app settings. The social network finds itself under siege, with Mark Zuckerberg appearing in front of the US Congress today to explain exactly what went wrong and allowed data on millions of users to be so widely shared.
Facebook is updating its Ads and Pages rules to make them more transparent, in the aftermath of Russian adverts designed to manipulate the 2016 US election. The social network has faced considerable criticism from several quarters over how easily foreign bad actors were able to buy targeted advertising and attempt to use it in order to shape political opinion.
Facebook plans to roll out an "unsend" feature to its messaging service, after the social network was caught retracting messages sent by Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Reports last night raised claims from users who had received messages from Zuckerberg through Facebook, but who since discovered that the site had no record of those conversations.
If you deleted every one of your phone's apps, what would be left of your life? Would you still have a job? Would your friends still speak with you? How about your family - would you still be able to communicate? Could you find a way to show everyone what you're doing every day - or would you even want to?