Metawatch. (Formerly known as Facebookwatch.)

tenor (2)

4 Likes

Paint me like one of your French onions…

4 Likes

‘Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park,’ says social network – but don’t hold that against it

From the Department of Definitely Not Evil comes news that Facebook is donating £1m to Britain’s Bletchley Park computing landmark.

Heh. Heh heh heh heh heh. Hehe. Heh.

3 Likes
7 Likes
3 Likes

And now this:

FB is really F’d up.

7 Likes

Facebook is leaky, creepy, and trashy. Now it wants to host some of your customer data

Facebook wants to host some of your customer data, an offer that hurts its own partner community.

The antisocial giant says it will host data generated by WhatsApp, specifically when used alongside the messaging service’s Business API. That interface lets businesses manage messages to and from customers, and to integrate e-commerce and other apps into the messaging platform. Facebook lets partners implement the API and choose where data is stored.
[…]
But the Silicon Valley giant also says that using a third party – even Facebook – breaks end-to-end encryption.

1 Like

Oculus owners told not only to get Facebook accounts, purchases will be wiped if they ever leave social network

Oculus users, already fuming at Facebook chaining their VR headsets to their Facebook accounts, have been warned they could lose all their Oculus purchases and account information in future if they ever delete their profile on the social network.

The rule is a further binding of the gaming company that Facebook bought in 2014 to the mothership, and comes just two months after Facebook decided all new Oculus users require Facebook accounts to use their VR gizmos, and all current Oculus users will need a Facebook account by 2023. Failure to do so may cause apps installed on the headsets to no longer work as expected.

4 Likes

Facebook tells academics to stop monitoring its political ads for any rule-breaking… on privacy grounds

Facebook has ordered the end to an academic monitoring project that has repeatedly exposed failures by the internet giant to clearly label political advertising on its platform.

The social media goliath informed New York University (NYU) that research by its Tandon School of Engineering’s Online Transparency Project’s Ad Observatory violates Facebook’s terms of service on bulk data collection and demanded it end the program immediately.

5 Likes

BBC finds Facebook failed to remove child porn. Facebook reports BBC to authorities

8 Likes
3 Likes

Election ads on Facebook are more expensive for Biden than Trump

Machine learning algorithms have made the bidding price of political adverts on Facebook cost more when they support US Presidential candidate Joe Biden than his rival, current president Donald Trump.

The Markup estimated the Biden campaign has paid about $2.50 more per 1,000 impressions than Trump. That might not sound like much, but over the course of 1 July to 13 October it meant that Team Biden forked out over $8m more than Trump’s campaign.

It’s not clear how the social media giant’s algorithms determine the cost and there are a lot of factors at play. For example, ads are typically more expensive for both candidates when they target Facebook users living in swing states.

There is no regulation for the cost of political ads placed on social media platforms or websites, unlike on TV where they have to cost the same for both parties.

1 Like
6 Likes

Facebook’s Giphy slurp remains on hold after UK competition regulator demands more info

3 Likes

If they were really following policies, the VP in charge of enforcement would have given a staff presentation, rather than Zuck wagging his wand.

5 Likes

As long as the policy is “anything for a quick buck” it doesn’t make any difference.

1 Like