Tag Archives: Facebook

The Guardian reports: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he is considering crowd sourcing as a new model for Facebook’s third-party fact checking partnerships. “I think that the real thing that we want to try to get to over time is more of a crowdsourced model where people, it’s not that people are trusting some sort, some basic set …

CBS News reports: Senior managers at Facebook knew about a data breach associated with campaign consulting firm Cambridge Analytica before it was first reported in the media in 2015, according to a U.K. Parliament report that concludes the company “deliberately misled” a wide-ranging investigation into disinformation, “fake news” and election interference. “Some malicious forces use Facebook to threaten and harass …

TechCrunch reports: Starting February 28th, Facebook’s “Why am I seeing this?” button in the drop-down menu of feed posts will reveal more than the brand that paid for the ad, some biographical details they targeted and if they’d uploaded your contact info. Facebook will start to show when your contact info was uploaded, if it was by the brand or …

The Verge reports: Facebook today removed 22 pages associated with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as part of a previously announced update in which the company is tightening rules for administrators whose pages have been previously banned. The pages, which were among 89 removed by the social network, were created before Jones was banned in August for violations related to …

Mediaite reports: Facebook announced that it has removed hundreds of pages “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior” as part of a disinformation campaign being run by employees of Russian news outlet Sputnik. The stunning announcement, made early Thursday, revealed that Facebook has removed 364 pages — boasting 790,000 followers and $135,000 in ad buys between them — that were “part …

CNN reports: Facebook says it is making by far its biggest investment yet into struggling sectors of the news industry. On Tuesday the company is announcing a three-year commitment to invest $300 million in “news programs, partnerships and content.” Some of the funds will go directly to nonprofit organizations like the Pulitzer Center and Report for America. The cash infusion …

Hate group leader Tony Perkins appeared on Fox & Friends this morning where he attempted to downplay a Wall Street Journal report that Facebook has asked him for advice on their hate speech rules. Media Matters has the transcript: “I was in Egypt earlier this week. Read the story. I was a bit surprised that I was described as consulting …

Media Matters reports: In efforts to appease fits of manufactured conservative rage over the moderation of hateful content on social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter have relied on the advice of anti-LGBTQ extremists and far-right grifters “to help them figure out who should be banned and what’s considered unacceptable.” As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook sought out the …

The Charlotte Observer reports: Facebook is apologizing to evangelist Franklin Graham for banning him from posting on the site for 24 hours last week, a Facebook spokesperson told The Charlotte Observer on Saturday. It was a mistake to ban Graham over a 2016 post he made on the site, and a mistake to have taken down the post, the spokesperson …

CNBC reports: The Washington D.C. attorney general said Wednesday it will sue Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal on Wednesday. D.C. prosecutors said in the lawsuit that Facebook misled users in violation of the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act by allowing them to download an app produced by Cambridge Analytica which then improperly collected private information from the users without …

The New York Times reports: For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews. The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York …

CBS News reports: Facebook said Friday that a security glitch may have let third-party apps access the private photos of as many as 6.8 million users, the latest example of the social-media company failing to protect people’s online content. The incident, which took place during a 12-day period in September, included images never fully uploaded to the platform and those …

The New York Times reports: Sheryl Sandberg asked Facebook’s communications staff to research George Soros’s financial interests in the wake of his high-profile attacks on tech companies, according to three people with knowledge of her request, indicating that Facebook’s second in command was directly involved in the social network’s response to the liberal billionaire. Ms. Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, …

The BBC reports: Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions. The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the …

From the far-right LifeSiteNews: Over the weekend Facebook unpublished the page of a prominent social-conservative group for allegedly using unspecified “hate speech,” Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) president Peter LaBarbera revealed Monday. AFTAH is dedicated to “apply[ing] the same single-minded determination to opposing the radical homosexual agenda and standing for God-ordained sexuality and the natural family as countless homosexual …

Market Watch reports: Spending too much time on “social media” sites like Facebook is making people more than just miserable. It may also be making them depressed. A new study conducted by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania has shown — for the first time — a causal link between time spent on social media and depression and loneliness, the …

The Daily Beast reports: Facebook reportedly used a Republican opposition-research firm and its connections to a Jewish civil-rights group to link the anti-Facebook movement to prominent liberal donor George Soros and claim that some criticism against the tech giant was anti-Semitic, The New York Times reports. Facing negative press, Facebook reportedly expanded its use of Definers Public Affairs, a firm …

STAT News reports: For years, so-called influencers — celebrities, former reality television contestants and sometimes, former lawyers or other professionals — have hawked diet teas and hair products everywhere from Facebook to Snapchat. And now, pharma is catching on. An entire industry has cropped up to link drug makers with the industry’s own version of an influencer — people, usually …

The New York Post reports: The far-right extremist group Proud Boys has been removed from Facebook following a brawl in Manhattan that led to at least six arrests. The group and its founder Gavin McInnes were banned from the social media platform on Tuesday as part of the company’s effort to remove hate speech and hate organizations from their site. …

The Guardian reports: Facebook is promoting a new “war room” as a part of its solution to election interference, unveiling a team of specialists working to stop the spread of misinformation and propaganda. It’s unclear how well it’s working. The Silicon Valley company, which has faced intensifying scrutiny over its role in amplifying malicious political content, opened its doors to …