Articles about Facebook

In the US, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Facebook is using this to raise awareness of the tools it offers for those in need of help. The social network says that it wants to help people connect with the help they need to promote good mental health and well-being.

The company is also expanding its suicide prevention tools -- something it has offered for a decade now -- by working with new partners. The latest addition to the fold is The Trevor Project to help offer support to LGBTQ youth, and Facebook also says that its overall arsenal of tools has been improved by advancements in technology.

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Facebook is set for a potentially explosive legal case after the company was accused of stealing proprietary technology.

In a California district court, a judge has laid out a detailed timeline regarding the upcoming legal battle between Facebook and UK data center company BladeRoom over allegations that the social network stole the latter's server and rack technology for use in its own Open Compute Project.

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Just a few days ago, the BBC revealed that it was planning to introduce password checks for iPlayer users so it could ensure that a valid TV license is in place. Following on from this, the corporation has updated its Privacy and Cookies Policy.

The changes mean that personal information is shared with TV Licensing to check whether individuals have paid for a license. The BBC also says that it will use the personal data it collects to deliver "relevant advertising" on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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When it's not being accused of being used for propaganda or peddling fake news, Facebook is often criticized for being home to meaningless clickbait that exists only to generate ad revenue. As part of an on-going drive to make people's News Feeds more useful and pleasant to use, the social network is clamping down on what it refers to as "links to low-quality web page experiences."

Facebook wants to cut back on content that is "misleading, sensational and spammy" and links to web pages that contain "little substantive content and that is covered in disruptive, shocking or malicious ads." Starting right now, you should start to see fewer of these links.

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Just yesterday we wrote about the repeated closure of an atheist Facebook group by the social network. Now, in a similar act that has more than a slight whiff of censorship to it, Facebook has "unpublished" the page of Women On Web, a group that puts women who live in places that have abortion restrictions in contact with doctors.

The doctors that women are connected with can provide them with abortion pills, and it seems that because of this the group, Women On Web, has been found by Facebook to be engaged in the "promotion or encouragement of drug use". The group describes itself as "a place for the pro-abortion rights, pro-choice, and reproductive justice communities to engage in discussion and share news."

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An atheist Facebook page with more than 1.6 million fans is being repeatedly deleted by the social network, claims the group behind it. Atheist Republic says that a coordinated campaign has resulted in the page being removed at least three times.

It is thought that Facebook’s automated removal process may be to blame, with algorithms taking the page offline after a series of reports. The page is used to actively criticize religion, and it is believed that an orchestrated fightback from religious groups is leading to its repeated automatic removal.

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Facebook's fight against fake news has been taken to the printed press. The social networking giant has taken out a series of ads in UK newspapers giving tips about how to spot fake news. The ad campaign comes as Brits prepare to go to the polls and vote in the snap General Election in a month's time.

The issue of fake news really came to prominence in the run up to the US election, and research has shown that Facebook has become a tool that is used as part of campaigning to spread propaganda. In addition to the print ads, Facebook has also closed down thousands of UK accounts and is also expanding its automated system for spotting fake news to the UK.

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There's been a lot of disturbing content on Facebook in recent weeks and months -- murders, rapes, assaults, shootings and more. After a fatal shooting was shared on the site, Facebook vowed to do more to combat this sort of material.

As the social network announced that it now has 1.9 billion users, it also announced that it is to employ an extra 3,000 people to help moderate content. This brings the company's total number of moderators to 7,500. Can this possibly be enough to manage the posts of nearly 2 billion people, and who on earth would want to be tasked with viewing some of the most gruesome content to determine whether or not it should be removed?

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Social media is powerful, so it's really little wonder that the likes of Facebook are used for propaganda. We already know that advertising can be very carefully targeted for maximum impact, and this can prove important when it comes to getting across a political message.

With the UK on the verge of an early general election -- one that will be fought with Brexit and Scottish Independence looming large -- political campaigns are getting underway, including on Facebook. To help educate voters about how they are being besieged by political parties, a free Chrome extension called Who Targets Me? has been launched. It reveals just how personal information made available on the social network is used.

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Facebook has been introducing games to its Messenger chat app for a while. It started with simple hidden gems like Chess, Basketball, and Soccer, and then added arcade games to the mix.

Today, the social networking giant begins to roll out Instant Games on Messenger globally, and for all users on both iOS and Android. But that’s not all.

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A leaked internal document shows that Facebook is capable of identifying people according to their emotional state. The document, seen by The Australian, shows how the social network can monitor users' posts and determine when they are feeling "stressed, defeated, overwhelmed, anxious, nervous, stupid, silly, useless, or a failure."

The leak pertains to Facebook's Australian office and suggests that algorithms can be used to detect "moments when young people need a confidence boost." It raises serious ethical questions about Facebook's capabilities, but the company denies it is doing anything wrong.

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Like Google, Facebook places great importance on advertising. The social network not only earns money from ads itself, but also allows companies and individuals to do so by displaying ads in videos. Pirates were quick to spot an easy way to earn money -- steal someone else's popular video and watch the ad revenue roll in.

Now Facebook is fighting back in a way that has already been used to some extent by YouTube. There is a new "claim ad earnings" option in the Rights Manager tool which enables the owner of a particular video to bag the ad revenue when their material is pirated. But the update to Rights Manager are more far-reaching than this.

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It's something that many people have expected for some time, and now we know that it's true. Facebook has admitted that governments around the world have used the social network to spread propaganda and try to influence the outcome of elections.

In the run-up to the US election, there was speculation that powerful groups had been making use of Facebook to influence voters by spreading fake news. Now, in a white paper, Facebook reveals that through the use of fake accounts, targeted data collection and false information, governments and organizations have indeed been using the social network to control the news, shape the political landscape, and create different narratives and outcomes.

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Today Facebook publishes its Global Government Requests Report, revealing just how many data requests the social network has received from governments around the world. This time around, the report covers the second half of 2016, and it shows a mixed-bag of figures.

While the number of items that had to be restricted due to contravention of local laws dropped, the number of government data requests increased by 9 percent compared to the previous six months. Facebook is well-aware that it faces scrutiny and criticism for its willingness to comply with data requests, and the company tries to allay fears by saying: "We do not provide governments with "back doors" or direct access to people's information."

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The "related articles" feature of Facebook's News Feed is nothing new -- in fact it has been with us for more than three years. But now the social network is trialling a new way of displaying related content; rather than waiting until you have clicked on a story to suggest related stories you might be interested in, Facebook will instead be offering these suggestions before you read an article.

As well as giving users the chance to read more about a topic from different source, Facebook says that it will help people to discover articles which have been fact-checked. It is -- almost by accident, it seems -- another way for Facebook to tackle fake news.

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