Articles about Facebook

The shootings and suicide bombings in France this week grabbed the attention of the global media. To help those caught up in the aftermath to let loved ones know that they were OK -- and to enable others to check on friends and relatives in France -- Facebook enabled its Safety Check feature for the disaster.

While this was welcomed, it also raised questions. Why had this not been done for other such disasters? Why were shootings in other countries treated differently? What was so special about France that it warranted extra attention from Facebook? Were the lives lost in other atrocities seen as less important? Facebook's Alex Schultz has stepped up to the plate to answer these concerns.

Continue reading →

The time has rolled around once again for Facebook to release its twice-yearly report about government data requests. It will perhaps come as little surprise that in the current atmosphere of surveillance and privacy concerns that in the first half of 2015 Facebook received more government data requests than ever before.

The latest figures show that the number of data requests has jumped by 18 percent to 41,214. There was also a massive increase in the number of pieces of content that were taken down or 'restricted' for violating local laws -- a rise of 112 percent. Facebook reiterated previous assertions that it does not provide backdoor access to governments, and reveals that the US is by far the leading requester of data.

Continue reading →

Anyone who tries to post links to Tsu.co on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, or Instagram will find that they are unable to do so. If you've not heard of Tsu.co, it's another social network, and your initial thought may be that Facebook is trying to censor people from talking about rivals.

Facebook blocks any messages containing the URL from being posted, warning that the site is 'unsafe'. Tsu.co different from other social networks in that it is invite-only and promises to share ad-revenue with users. This has resulted in huge levels of Tsu.co-related spam appearing on Facebook and the susequent ban.

Continue reading →

Artificial intelligence researchers at Facebook are set to unveil a new system that can identify objects in photographs. While this is not an entirely new idea, Facebook's AI Research (FAIR) team says that it has reached a new milestone, meaning that recognition is now much faster and requires less training.

Any AI-driven recognition system is built on sample data which can be used as a reference point. FAIR's new system needs just a tenth of the amount of training data than other systems, and operates 30 percent faster. But the team's progress doesn’t end there -- great strides have also been made in natural language understanding and predictive learning.

Continue reading →

The idea of 'liking' something is synonymous with Facebook. Or at least it was. Now Twitter is trying to get in on the action, renaming Favorites to Likes. As well as a name change, there's also a new icon. Gone is the Favorite Star, replaced with the Like heart.

The move comes just as Facebook is talking about introducing reaction emoji, with a view to giving users of the social network new ways to express how they feel about the content they see. Twitter, however, is moving in the other direction. While 'favoriting' a tweet was fairly non-partisan, 'liking' is an action that is loaded with meaning.

Continue reading →

Unlike many other social networks, Facebook has long required its users to display their real names. Over the last couple of years there have been many vocal complaints from various types of user who feel victimized by this: drag queens, transgender and LGBT communities, and Native American users, for instance.

As well as users directly affected by the policy, privacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have campaigned for Facebook to have a rethink. And it seems that the social network has listened. Facebook's Alex Schultz has written an open letter which, while not announcing the end of the real names policy, introduces a couple of key changes that will please many people.

Continue reading →

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg took part in a Q&A session at the Indian Institute of Technology in Dehli, responding to queries ranging from the Internet.org project to Candy Crush notifications. Not for the first time, he found himself jumping to the defence of the program which aims to connect millions of people to the internet. He denied that the walled-garden of Internet.org went against the idea of net neutrality, but conceded that people had to "follow the basic rules of what Internet.org is".

He pointed out that existing net neutrality laws made exceptions for free services, but these loopholes have been described by critics as 'fatal'. In a wide-ranging talk, Zuckerberg also announced plans to kill one of the biggest irritants of the social network -- game invites for the likes of FarmVille and Candy Crush.

Continue reading →

Facebook is pretty much all about communication, so the existence of the Other Inbox has always seemed a bit weird. Receive a message from someone you don't know, and it will disappear to this message dungeon, most likely never to be seen again. The lack of notifications meant that such messages would tend to go unnoticed for months.

Now Facebook is addressing the problem. The Other Inbox is now dead, replaced by Message Requests. Now if you are contacted by someone you are not already friends with, rather than vanishing into the void, the message will generate an alert on the Messages tab on the web, and in Messenger on mobile devices.

Continue reading →

Facebook at Work, the social network’s business version, has signed an agreement with the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), bringing the service to 100,000 of its staff.

The deal, dubbed "ground breaking partnership" by RBS will "allow employees to communicate faster and more efficiently", the bank said.

Continue reading →

Android and iOS users are about to find that Facebook is much more useful. A new update that is rolling out across the US brings personalized notifications to the app that extend far beyond details of status updates and birthdays.

To help you keep on top of your schedule, Facebook now also displays information about friends' life events, reminders about TV shows, details about events you've joined, and sports scores. There are also a number of optional components that are tailored to where you are.

Continue reading →

Facebook and privacy are not words you tend to find together in the same sentence -- at least not in a positive sense. Just a few days ago, the social network announced that all public posts were to be made searchable -- although it wasn't really billed as such.

You might not be entirely happy with this. While you may now be careful that you only share posts with your friends, a huge number of historic posts have now been made searchable. If you'd prefer to keep your content private, now is the time to act.

Continue reading →

Many iPhone users were upset to find that battery life was rather shorter than expected. Fingers of suspicion started to point to the iOS Facebook app, and now the social network has released a fix as well as revealing that poor coding was to blame.

The latest version of the Facebook app goes some way to putting things right, but it is unlikely to be a complete fix. Facebook says it "found a few key issues and have identified additional improvements" in the app, but only "some of which" made it into the latest update. Something the company is keen to stress is that the Location History feature is not responsible, and provides details about two other factors contributing to battery drain.

Continue reading →

Facebook is much more than just a social network; for many people it is the internet. For others, it is a source of news, and this is something that Facebook is quite happy to play upon. But what a lot of people are now looking for is not just news, but the reaction to news.

This is something that Facebook is well-positioned to provide a conduit for, and now the social network is looking to take on Google by giving more accurate and personal search results -- including tailoring search results according to what is currently happening in the world.

Continue reading →

It's one thing to have your Facebook account attacked, it's quite another to have it targeted by government-sponsored attackers. It seems as though attacks of this kind are on the increase, and Facebook has implemented a warning system for anyone whose account comes under such an attack.

But this is about more than just letting you know if someone has tried to log into your account without permission. Facebook believes that the problem is serious enough to suggest that anyone who receives such a warning should consider either formatting their computer, or buying a new one.

Continue reading →

Facebook has become much more than just a social network; indeed, networking is fairly low down on the list of priorities for many users. The site is increasingly used for gaming, news gathering, and video consumption. Today Facebook announces a batch of new video features in recognition of the fact that videos are what people are looking for.

A small-scale test with iPhone users to try out a video suggestion feature is set to extend worldwide, ultimately spreading to the web and Android. Facebook is also borrowing some ideas from the likes of YouTube, including the ability to build up video playlists.

Continue reading →