Articles about Facebook

Leading social networking service Facebook has agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on charges that its privacy settings were deceptive to customers, and that it made privacy promises that it didn't keep.

The FTC's original complaint (.pdf here) against Facebook cites eight different cases where Facebook "made promises it didn't keep." These were: deceptive privacy settings, unfair and deceptive privacy changes in 2009, misleading scope of platform applications' access to user information, disclosure of user information to advertisers, deceptive verified apps program, contrary or improper disclosures about retention of user photos and videos, and improper compliance with the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework.

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Rumors persist over the mythical "Facebook Phone". This time it's Ina Fried and Liz Gannes of All Things Digital, claiming sources say the social network is working with HTC on an Android powered device -- codenamed "Buffy" -- to launch in about 12 to 18 months. It deeply integrates Facebook services into the experience, and relies on HTML5 as a platform for applications.

But Fried's and Gannes' report may not be accurate. In a "He Said, She Said" response, Inside Facebook followed up saying its own sources call Buffy a "trainwreck". Reporter Kim-Mai Cutler says that the phone would have a host of issues, including always being one step behind the latest version of Android due to the deep customization that Buffy would require.

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Facebook says that it identified those responsible for an attack earlier this week that spammed Facebook users with pornography and violent imagery, and will investigate its options to prosecute those responsible. The attack is believed to have been exploited through a browser vulnerability, BetaNews is told.

"During this spam attack users were tricked into pasting and executing malicious JavaScript in their browser URL bar causing them to unknowingly share this offensive content", spokesperson Andrew Noyes explained. "Our engineers have been working diligently on this self-XSS [cross-site scripting] vulnerability in the browser".

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Facebook users report seeing large amounts of image spam in their news feeds, depicting acts of violence, pornography, mutilation and bestiality. The site says it is investigating the issue, but did not give any possible cause for the problem.

BetaNews has received reports of spam messages typically sent with the word "YUKKY" and including a shortened link, although it is not immediately clear whether this has anything to do with the graphic imagery. The images show up in victims profiles as being "liked".

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When Facebook rolled out its new layout late Tuesday, like past redesigns it was met with a good deal of acrimony from users.

However, for some like Regina Shade, a self-described "Facebook challenged" mother of two, they had been dealing with the reworked popular social networking site for at least three months if not longer.

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Facebook's new Timeline profiles go live on Thursday, September 29, 2011, but you can convert yours now. You just have to pretend you're an app developer (or continue being one if you already are.)

It's a simple four-step process that can be done in a couple of minutes. Here's how you do it:

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At f8, the Facebook developer conference in San Francisco today, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new Facebook "Timeline" layout, and the deeper, realtime integration of third party apps it will bring. This deeper integration is a part of Facebook's new "Open Graph."

One of the premier Open Graph partners is Sweden-based streaming music service Spotify, which launched in the United States just two months ago. Using the new open graph, the music that Spotify users are listening to is posted live to their Facebook feed, and their friends can click that post and join into the listening session live.

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If the population of Facebook users was outraged at the site's new layout unveiled yesterday, they're going to completely lose it over Timeline, the new Facebook experience that turns a user's profile into a literal life history timeline. In short, Facebook combined its social feed with the plugin-supported self-publishing of WordPress and magazine-style readability of Flipboard.

Instead of simply piling new Facebook information on top of the page, and hiding all the previous information, everything you do becomes a historical item that can be curated and published as your own personal story.

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On the same day that Google+ opened itself up to the masses, Facebook launched its latest redesign. The change seems almost ironic considering the opposite trajectories these two social networks are on: Google+ on the way up, Facebook on the way down.

Forget the hit piece that journalism professor Dan Reimold wrote earlier this week for PBS calling Google+ a "ghost town." Even if Reimold's premise was even remotely correct (he needs to remember that up until now, Google was invite-only so of course usage is sparse), that's about to be blown out of the water.

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Want evidence that Facebook is feeling the heat of Google+’s success? The company is announcing changes that give users more control over how content is shared. Facebook’s efforts seem to be a response to the most popular features of Google’s social network, praised for its tighter privacy controls.

Tagging has become a popular feature on Facebook, but many of us find ourselves tagged in posts, checkins, or photos that we’d rather not have been. The site now will give users the option to approve all tags before they appear on a user’s profile.

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