Articles about Facebook

Facebook has issued a statement denying mounting rumors that the company uses smartphone microphones to listen in on private conversations. The allegations have circled for some time, but have most recently been voiced by Kelli Burns, a mass communication professor at the University of South Florida.

In her own testing, Professor Burns said that after discussing certain topics within earshot of her phone, she would then see ads relating to those topics on Facebook. Just like the OK, Google feature of Android, the Facebook app does have a feature that listens out for user input, but the company says this data is not stored and certainly not used for ads.

Continue reading →

Tech companies are falling over themselves to embrace diversity both in the workplace, and in products. The latest example of this comes courtesy of Facebook which today releases an update to Messenger complete with hundreds of diversity-friendly emoji.

As well as bringing in the full (well, fuller) gamut of skin tones, the new emoji also nod to gender equality, as well as including redheads for the first time. On top of all this, Facebook is also standardizing its emoji set so the same selection is available to everyone, regardless of the platform they might be using.

Continue reading →

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft are working in conjunction with the European Commission to try to tackle the problem of illegal online hate speech. This is something that the companies have taken steps to fight individually, but now there is a concerted effort to combat hate speech and terrorist propaganda in Europe.

New EU regulations require the companies to review notifications they receive about hate speech within 24 hours. The four tech giants have agreed to the new code of conduct, saying the 'majority' of reported content will be examined within a day.

Continue reading →

Privacy concerns have been voiced after Iran announced plans to force messaging apps and social media services to store all data about Iranian users on Iranian soil. It is common practice for user data to be stored in other counties, but the government in Iran continues to exert its authority over the internet.

Any company who wants to operate a message service in Iran has a year to comply with the data relocation requirement. With Iran already blocking access to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, privacy and security advocates have expressed worries about the implications of the new rules.

Continue reading →

When you hit Facebook today, you may well notice a new Cookies Policy warning at the top of the page. It states: "To help personalize content, tailor and measure ads, and provide a safer experience, we use cookies. By clicking or navigating the site, you agree to allow our collection of information on and off Facebook through cookies. Learn more, including about available controls: Cookies Policy". But what is it all about?

Facebook hasn’t made a great deal of fuss about it, but the social network has introduced not only a new cookies policy, but also made changes to ads. It is now possible to opt out of seeing tailored ads on non-Facebook sites. Facebook says it is all part of creating "a better online advertising experience for everyone".

Continue reading →

As the world's need for high-speed internet grows, there will be an increasing strain on existing infrastructure. While both the internet and the web can create a border-free exchange of data, something still needs to connect continents so that it can be shared. While you will likely never see it with your own eyes, there are actually data cables under the sea which connect large masses of land.

Today, Microsoft and Facebook announce a partnership to build a transatlantic subsea data cable. Called 'MAREA', it will connect the United States to Europe. More specifically, it will connect the State of Virginia to the country of Spain. The project will begin this August, with a targeted completion date of October 2017.

Continue reading →

After an investigation into Trending Topics, Facebook has concluded that there is no evidence of a liberal bias to the news that appears. Mark Zuckerberg met with key conservatives following accusations that the social network was censoring right wing news.

Despite finding 'virtually identical' numbers of conservative and liberal news, Facebook says that it will still make changes to the way Trending Topics work. It says that it is difficult to exclude the possibility of 'unintentional bias' but hopes to improve things by retraining its reviewers and ditching the current reliance on a list of news outlets as sources.

Continue reading →

Police in Belgium are warning people not to use Facebook Reactions because of the risk they pose to privacy. Introduced recently to supplement the iconic Like option, Reactions give Facebook users the chance to respond to content with Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry emoji.

But Belgian police have issued a 'Safe Browsing' warning advising that Facebook is using Reactions to gather information about social network users. Specifically, the police warn that in using Reactions to express emotions, users are giving Facebook the opportunity to build up a more detailed personal profile about them and use that information to deliver closely targeted advertising.

Continue reading →

After a delay of a few days, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has jumped to the defence of this social network and its handling of news. Following accusations that trending stories are manipulated to bury right wing news, Facebook has scrambled to play down suggestions of political bias -- something that will be increasingly important as the Trump and Clinton battle comes to a conclusion later in the year.

Zuckerberg felt compelled to respond to the accusations in a post on Facebook, reiterating the previous statement that there are "rigorous guidelines" in place that "do not permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or the suppression of political perspectives". He announced that a full investigation is to be carried out to ensure the integrity of Trending Topics, and says he'll be inviting "leading conservatives" to talk about the issue.

Continue reading →

Facebook has faced accusations of interfering with the headlines that appear in Trending Topics, censoring conservative stories. While admitting to a left wing bias in Silicon Valley, the social network has denied supressing the appearance of right wing news.

However, leaked internal documents show that there is a very structured and controlled process in place that sees employees -- rather than algorithms -- influencing the news that Facebook users see. The documents reveal that there is an editorial team in place, with stories being ranked and promoted by hand. Perhaps just as worrying is the revelation that a very small number of news sources are used by Facebook.

Continue reading →

When a medical student is learning how to do surgery, he or she can't walk up to somebody on the street and start cutting into them. Instead, they will initially practice on cadavers and computer simulators. The same can be said for hacking. If a person wants to learn how to discover or test vulnerabilities, hacking the Pentagon or University, for instance, is not a wise idea.

Luckily, like a medical surgeon with a cadaver, Facebook offers its Capture The Flag platform -- hacking challenges in a test environment. Today, it is making that gamified security training platform open source in an effort to encourage wannabe hackers and security enthusiasts.

Continue reading →

Facebook has rolled out its photo-sharing app Moments around the world, and users in Europe have been treated to a modified version. Specifically, the European version of the app lacks the facial recognition feature that allows for automatic tagging of people.

In many ways, Facebook has been forced to release a degraded version of Moments to its EU audience because of the varying privacy laws that exist in different countries. The hobbled app will not attempt to identify individuals in photos, but will group together images that "appear to include the same face".

Continue reading →

Back in the day, I remember AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ being all the rage for messaging. For a while, MSN and Yahoo! Messenger were popular with the young folks too. Nowadays it seems to be Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, which is a bit weird, because Facebook owns the latter -- hopefully they merge eventually.

One of the frustrating things about WhatsApp, however, is that it does not have a desktop client, instead being web and mobile only. Well, now this changes. Today, the messaging solution gets an official client for both Windows and OS X -- sorry Linux desktop users. At least that aforementioned web version is available.

Continue reading →

Facebook may be insisting that its news curators are not suppressing right-wing stories, but a senior executive is willing to admit that Silicon Valley as a whole is rather left-leaning.

Alex Schultz, vice president of growth at the social network, says: "There is definitely a left-wing bias to any company based in San Francisco". He made the comments at an LGBT discrimination conference, joking that "a Republican may be the most at-risk diversity at Facebook".

Continue reading →

Having been hit with allegations of censoring news from conservative outlets, Facebook has issued a strenuous denial. Gizmodo reported claims from former Facebook "news curators" that they were directed to not only suppress news from right wing sources, but also to "inject" stories into Trending Topics regardless of their actual popularity.

Suggestions that its Trending Topics are driven by a liberal agenda have been denied by Facebook. The social network says it "found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true", going on to say that while there is a review team in place, its guidelines "do [not] permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another".

Continue reading →