Tag Archives: Facebook

The Associated Press reports: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is shutting down his Facebook account as the social media giant struggles to cope with the worst privacy crisis in its history. In an email to USA Today, Wozniak says Facebook makes a lot of advertising money from personal details provided by users. He says the “profits are all based on the …

Axios reports: Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee who sounded the alarm on the firm illicitly obtaining user data from Facebook, told Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd that Steve Bannon “absolutely wanted to use [the data] for Republican candidates … [and] alt-right candidates in the United States.” Wylie also said he’s been contacted by American authorities — both from …

The Washington Post reports: Facebook’s disclosure this week that its search tools were used to collect data on most of its 2.2 billion users could potentially trigger record fines and create new legal vulnerability for not having prevented risks to user data, said three former federal officials. The three former officials, all of whom were at the Federal Trade Commission …

Ars Technica reports: Maryland Governor Larry Hogan allegedly had a habit of blocking Facebook users and deleting comments when people criticized him, but a lawsuit has forced him to adopt a more open social media policy. Four Maryland residents sued the Republican governor in a US District Court in August 2017, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) …

CNBC reports: Facebook has asked several major U.S. hospitals to share anonymized data about their patients, such as illnesses and prescription info, for a proposed research project. Facebook was intending to match it up with user data it had collected, and help the hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment. The proposal never went past the …

Reuters reports: The Kremlin on Thursday said Facebook’s removal of accounts controlled by various Russian media was a hostile move that smacked of censorship. Facebook said on Tuesday it had deleted hundreds of Russian accounts and pages associated with a “troll factory” indicted by U.S. prosecutors for fake activist and political posts in the 2016 U.S. election campaign. When asked …

The Associated Press reports: Facebook revealed Wednesday that tens of millions more people might have been exposed in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal than previously thought and said it will restrict the user data that outsiders can access. Those developments came as congressional officials said CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify next week, while Facebook unveiled a new privacy policy that …

Digital Chew reports: On Wednesday, Facebook announced they will be updating their terms of service to clarify what it does with user’s social media information. The changes to the TOS are in response to major business shakeups to Facebook’s business since the last time the company implemented major changes in 2015. This news comes after the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal. However, …

Business Insider reports: Mark Zuckerberg fired back at Tim Cook after the Apple CEO criticized Facebook amid a burgeoning scandal around the company’s data practicies and its role in political campaigns. Cook said that “privacy to us is a human right” and a “civil liberty,” and ultimately, because Facebook is a free service, the users become the products that are …

Gizmodo reports: Facebook has started fact-checking photos and videos, as a part of a larger plan to prevent foreign agents from using the platform to spread propaganda and influence elections. Executives on Thursday explained Facebook’s plans in a blog post and on a conference call with journalists. Some of the plans had already been announced—for instance, verifying election ad buyers …

Axios reports: Capitol Hill wants Facebook’s blood, but President Trump isn’t interested. Instead, the tech behemoth Trump wants to go after is Amazon, according to five sources who’ve discussed it with him. “He’s obsessed with Amazon,” a source said. “Obsessed.” What we’re hearing: Trump has talked about changing Amazon’s tax treatment because he’s worried about mom-and-pop retailers being put out …

The New York Times reports: As a start-up called Cambridge Analytica sought to harvest the Facebook data of tens of millions of Americans in summer 2014, the company received help from at least one employee at Palantir Technologies, a top Silicon Valley contractor to American spy agencies and the Pentagon. It was a Palantir employee in London, working closely with …

The Associated Press reports: To get an idea of the data Facebook collects about you, just ask for it. You’ll get a file with every photo and comment you’ve posted, all the ads you’ve clicked on, stuff you’ve liked and searched for and everyone you’ve friended – and unfriended – over the years. But activity isn’t limited to pages or …

USA Today reports: The Federal Federal Trade Commission says it’s officially investigating the potential misuse of the personal information of as many as 50 million Facebook users by Trump-connected data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica. The agency’s action comes after it began a probe last week into the social network’s admission that it had suspended Cambridge Analytica, which had worked for …

NBC News reports: Facebook’s mounting image problems hit a whole other orbit on Friday. Tech icon Elon Musk appeared to delete the official Facebook pages for two of his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, Inc. Musk’s moves come days after a whistleblower revealed that a data analysis firm tied to President Donald Trump’s campaign had harvested data off Facebook, resulting in …

USA Today reports: Facing growing criticism of his leadership of the social media giant he co-founded, CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence on the escalating crisis over how Facebook handles people’s private information. Zuckerberg took responsibility for what he called “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to …

The Hill reports: Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) is calling for Mark Zuckerberg to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on reports that a political research firm connected to President Trump’s 2016 campaign improperly accessed data for 50 million Facebook users. Cicilline, the top Democrat on the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, sent a letter to Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) asking that he …

Politico reports: Breitbart, the alt-right news site whose executive chairman Steve Bannon was pushed out in January after feuding with President Donald Trump, has lost about half its readership according to comScore, raising questions about its future. The site dropped from 15 million unique visitors in October, per comScore, to 13.7 million in November, 9.9 million in December, 8.5 million …

The Guardian reports: Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower. Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers …

Law & Crime reports: An Arizona congresswoman was called out for posting fake compliments to her own Facebook page on Monday. On Sunday afternoon, Republican Representative Martha McSally posted an uncontroversial and innocuous status update regarding Arizonans’ service during the Vietnam War. Quite a bit more controversially, however, McSally – or her social media director–immediately moved to post the first …