Articles about Meta

WhatsApp has long been one of the more secure messaging apps with mass appeal, largely thanks to end-to-end encryption. This has been boosted further by features such as disappearing messages, and now Meta has added Chat Lock.

The company says that the feature "lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security"; what this means in practice is that message can be password or fingerprint protected. But there is more to Chat Lock than this.

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WhatsApp is not alone in offering a disappearing message feature. It is an idea that's fairly self-explanatory: messages can be configured to automatically delete after a certain period of time -- something that's ideal for certain sensitive information.

But in a slightly confusing move, WhatsApp is introducing the option to stop disappearing messages from disappearing. The option is called Keep In Chat, and it is being described as "your new sender superpower".

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There's probably no one who hasn't heard of ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot that can generate human-like responses to text prompts. While it's not without its flaws, ChatGPT is scarily good at being a jack-of-all-trades: it can write software, a film script and everything in between. ChatGPT was built on top of GPT-3.5, OpenAI’s large language model, which was the most advanced at the time of the chatbot's release last November.

Fast forward to March, and OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, an upgrade to GPT-3.5. The new language model is larger and more versatile than its predecessor. Although its capabilities have yet to be fully explored, it is already showing great promise. For example, GPT-4 can suggest new compounds, potentially aiding drug discovery, and create a working website from just a notebook sketch.

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While WhatsApp is most commonly used on mobile devices, growing numbers of users are adopting the desktop version of the app. Meta has just announced the release of a significantly improved version of the Windows app.

Speed is a key upgrade here, with load times being reduced, but there are also feature improvements. The latest version of WhatsApp for Windows now supports larger group video and audio calls.

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While social media sites like Facebook remain popular, many people have worries about how their data is is being collected and used by the companies behind them.

Bret Cox is founder and CEO of True, a social network which doesn't monetize user information and focuses on people you really know. We talked him to find out more.

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The recent big tech layoffs have profoundly impacted industries outside of technology because the sector has long been seen as a driving force for innovation and economic growth. The layoff announcements by companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon have raised concerns about the tech industry's future and the ripple effects throughout the economy.

Below are several major tech companies that have laid off employees as they navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing industry:

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It is quite some time since Facebook was hit with the "free the nipple" campaign that demanded the company stop censoring or removing images of breastfeeding women. But now Meta is facing new recommendations from its independent Oversight Board to update the Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity Community Standard that it applies to Facebook and Instagram content to ensure it is "governed by clear criteria that respect international human rights standards".

The recommendation comes as the Oversight Board overturned Meta's decisions in 2021 and 2022 to remove content posted by a couple -- one of whom is transgender, the other non-binary -- for violating Sexual Solicitation Community Standards. Meta is criticized for taking a simplistic view of gender, with the Board saying that it is "unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people, and requires reviewers to make rapid and subjective assessments of sex and gender, which is not practical when moderating content at scale".

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For the last decade the Downdetector site has been providing data on the real-time status and outages of online services.

Ookla, the company behind Downdetector, has released information on the largest outages seen in 2022. While nothing surpassed the biggest outage ever seen, experienced by Meta on October 4, 2021, there have been some significant ones this year.

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Some of the biggest names in tech are joining forces to create the Overture Maps Foundation and develop interoperable open map data, and help build a rival to Google Maps.

The group is headed by the Linux Foundation and also included Microsoft, Amazon Web Service, TomTom and Facebook-owner Meta. The aim is to allow companies to contribute their own data to help compile up-to-date map data that "is complete, accurate, and refreshed as the physical world changes".

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For anyone invested in social media, copyright infringement is a big deal. Users must be able to protect their intellectual property from imposters and opportunists trying to ride their coattails. As such, most platforms invite content owners to report infringement, but this useful function has joined the long list of communication channels cybercriminals exploit.

Trustwave researchers have found criminal gangs are impersonating Instagram’s copyright report emails in phishing campaigns, angling to trick users into sharing their details.

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In the world of social media, most of the attention is -- understandably -- focused on what's happening at Twitter, but there are changes afoot at Facebook too.

Starting at the beginning of December, some information fields are being removed from user profiles. The fields in question are Religious Views, Political Views, Address, and Interested In, with the latter being the field used to indicate sexual orientation.

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We’ve known for a while that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and champion of the metaverse, was planning to significantly reduce the size of its workforce and today Mark Zuckerberg sent out an email confirming this to all Meta employees.

In the message he details the layoffs, explaining how the company got to this point, how it will work, other changes Meta will be making, and how the company will move forward. You can read the full email below:

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When the likes of Meta and Microsoft spend billions to kick-start what they see as the next big tech gold rush, it’s worth taking notice. We are, of course, talking about the Metaverse, a prospect so compelling that it prompted Facebook’s corporate rebrand alongside an investment in the region of $10 billion per year.

According to their launch content, the money is going towards the creation of a "hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together."

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Like all messaging apps and services, WhatsApp has its fair share of advantages and disadvantages. For many people, the end-to-end encryption the app offers is a major draw, although being owned by Meta requires some users to hold their noses while they use it.

But among the great things about WhatsApp are the speed at which its developers work, and their willingness to listen to -- and act upon -- user feedback. And it is user demand for greater privacy options that has driven the addition of online status control for beta users.

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WhatsApp is a great messaging tool, and one that I use daily, both for individual and group chats. Meta has added new features to it over time, with yet more welcome additions on the way, but it’s long overdue a full redesign.

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of makeover the service could benefit from, we have the answer for you right here.

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