Driven as it is by users, it is perhaps little surprise that Facebook is home to a lot of nonsense. Nothing wrong with this, but it becomes more of an issue when nonsense is disguised as something meaningful and is shared by people left, right, and center. Hoax copyright warnings spreading via statuses is a perennial problem, and there are a couple of prime examples doing the rounds at the moment.

You've probably seen at least one of them before, but the pair seem to be cropping up a great deal this time around. Should you see your friends posting 'helpful' advice about paying to make your Facebook profile private, or how to assert your copyright so Facebook can’t use your images, just remember that they are rubbish. Facebook seems to find it funny, though, and has responded in a slightly humorous fashion.

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The Internet.org project from Facebook has not been without controversy. Created with the aim of getting everyone in the world online, the program has been widely criticized and many partners pulled out. Now a rebranding has been unveiled for the mobile app and website.

With the launch of the Internet.org Platform, Facebook has taken the opportunity to rename the portal through which people can access a range of free services. Changing the name to Free Basics by Facebook is described as a way "to better distinguish the Internet.org initiative from the programs and services we’re providing", but it's hard not to think that it is also an attempt to move away from the controversy of Internet.org, and it comes ahead of serious push into India.

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Heard of Facebook Notes? No? It's something that has been around for a while, and provides away to write longer posts, but for some reason it has been largely ignored by Facebook users. The latest update could mean that's about to change.

Seemingly looking to take on the likes of Medium and Blogger, Facebook Notes has been treated to a facelift that makes posts more attractive and introduces new customization options. While Notes used to be (understandably, to some extent) all about the text, now graphics and formatting are given greater prominence.

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Facebook has joined YouTube and implemented a feature which allows users to view 360-degree videos.

As of Wednesday, September 23, users on PCs and smartphones can view 360-degree videos, and to mark the new feature, Facebook has released a couple of cool videos.

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Belgian Privacy Commission (BPC) said during a court hearing earlier this week that Facebook is spying on its users in Europe. The American social media company is allegedly violating privacy laws, monitors information of non-users and logged-out users, all for the purpose of placing ads, IB Times just wrote in a report.

This is a developing story which started in April this year, when the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT at the University of Leuven in Belgium claimed the social network’s privacy policy violates European Union laws.

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Government snooping into online activity is something that has long appalled privacy groups around the world. In something of a victory for those concerned about privacy and government meddling, the US Senate has killed plans that would have required social networks to tell the government about any users talking about terrorism-related topics.

The change of heart is a win not only for social network users, but also the social networks themselves who will no longer be required to police content more than they already do. The policy had been criticized for being vague, placing undue pressure on companies, and limiting freedom of speech.

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You've probably heard talk recently of Facebook adding a Dislike button or an 'empathize' button. While this is certainly something that has been in the news, it is not yet a reality -- and it has created a great opportunity for scammers to cash in on people's impatience.

We don’t get know exactly what form the Dislike button will take, or when it will appear, but there are now several scams in operation that lure in victims with the promise of instant access to the yet-to-be-released feature. A variety of techniques are employed by scammers to encourage victim to "Download the official DISLIKE button now". It is, of course, a fake, and there are a number of things to look out for.

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Facebook is rolling out its missing children feature to the United Kingdom, allowing people within a certain area to be notified when a child goes missing.

The social network uses geo-location to find people in the near area, and alert them to a child disappearance. Facebook users can learn more about the disappearance if they happen to know any information that might be of help, or share the post to friends and family.

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Facebook is ready to deliver one of the highly-requested features that millions of users have repeatedly asked for: a dislike button. The social juggernaut has started to work on it, Mark Zuckerberg told an internal corporate Town Hall, reports multiple publications.

"I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years," Zuckerberg reportedly said. "Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we’re working on it and shipping it".

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We all know that Facebook has a lot of information about us, but what exactly can it learn from all that data?

Aside from the most obvious -- the things you give it, such as gender, date of birth, place of living, education, work, your favorite sports clubs, music and movies -- it can also conclude a lot of things on its own.

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The Virginia shootings in which two journalists were killed on live TV by Vester Flanagan highlighted one of the problems of social media: it can be used for terrible things. If the news of two needless deaths was not enough, countless Facebook and Twitter users were upset by footage of the killings that quickly spread around the social networks, automatically playing for many people.

This is not the first time that autoplay videos have been in the news, and it certainly won’t be the last. Now politicians in the UK are calling for Facebook and Twitter to better police content that is uploaded by users to avoid a repeat incident in which people are unwitting viewers of horrific scenes.

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Diversity is the current weapon tech companies are using to bludgeon each other with -- Twitter has even gone as far as publishing its goals. Facebook fails in this department while Apple, ever the master of spin, is keen to present itself in the best possible light. For many on the outside looking in, diversity is little more than an exercise in PR, but that's not going to stop companies celebrating wins here and there.

The latest win is for Microsoft. For the second year running, the company has been voted the number one employer by readers of Workforce Diversity for Engineering & IT Professionals magazine. Clearly this is something of a niche publication, but given its specialization, it’s a crown that Microsoft is only too happy to wear.

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Workforce diversity is something that every company wants to be seen to be getting right. At the moment -- particularly in the world of technology -- they're failing spectacularly. As in so many walks of life, it's a world dominated by white, middleclass men, and it's a problem that gets worse the further up the hierarchy you look. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft. They all have one thing in common: a desire to be seen as the most welcoming, ethnically and sexually diverse, forward-thinking companies out there.

It's great PR, and now Twitter is trying to step up its game. News of a commitment to making the Twitter workforce more diverse sounds great, but sounding great isn’t the same as being great. I've mentioned that talk of diversity is good public relations, and that's exactly what we see here -- spiel, empty gestures, misguided proposals, and embarrassingly ham-fisted approaches. Now Twitter is taking things a step further.

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Think of video piracy, and talk of BitTorrent probably isn’t far away. While torrented movies and TV shows account for a large proportion of pirated material, it is far from being the end of the story. Even sites as seemingly innocuous as Facebook can be part of the problem.

The social network is not really used as a way to share the latest blockbuster movies, but it is home to a lot of 'recycled' content, the rights for which are not necessarily owned by the uploader. Responding to growing complaints from video publishers, Facebook is ramping up its fight against piracy, boosting the existing Audible Magic audio fingerprinting tool, introducing a video fingerprinting utility, and ensuring that repeat offenders are kept off the site.

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The aim of Mark Zuckerberg, through Facebook, has been to connect the world. On Monday this week, the social network saw one billion people logging on to send messages, post photos, write status updates, and generally be social. One billion people in a single day.

Or to put it another way -- as Zuckerberg does -- "1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family". There aren’t many companies or services that can claim to have such a wide reach, so the palpable pride is entirely understandable.

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