Category: facebook

Meta Announces Removal Of Targeted Advertising Tools

On By emmaspaethIn ads, Data, facebook, Marketing, Social MediaLeave a comment
Photo Via The New York Times

Facebook, now known as Meta, announced its plans to remove advertisers’ ability to create targeted ads and promotions based on data including race, religion, sexual orientation, geographical location, gender, and political affiliation. These changes will also be implemented in Meta’s apps including Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. 

The removal of data based advertising is planned to take effect on January 19th. Meta explained the changes to its targeting tools are to limit targeted advertisement abuse. In the past, there has been huge controversy surrounding abuse of data by advertisers. 

In one case, advertisers were using Facebook’s ad targeting tools to market body armor, gun accessories and rile enhancements to far-right militia groups on the platform. 

In another instance, Department of Housing and Urban Development sued Facebook in 2019 for permitting landlords and property sellers to restrict certain demographics from viewing their property postings based on users’ data like race, religion and ethnicity. 

Meta vowed to involve outside parties who took part in the legal settlement, including the American Civil Liberties Union, to test its ad systems to ensure the removal of ad based housing discrimination. They have also agreed to meet with groups and experts every six months over the next three years to continue testing. 

In response to complaints surrounding its ad targeting tools back in 2018, Facebook removed 5,000 ad targeting classifications to prevent advertisers from excluding certain demographics. 

Graham Mudd, a vice president of product marketing for Meta, announced, “We’ve heard concerns from experts that targeting options like these could be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups.”

This is a drastic change to Meta’s business model as advertising accounts for $86 billion in annual revenue. This change is widely controversial as millions of businesses use the social network’s marketing and advertising tools to promote their businesses and expand their audience reach. Meta’s advertising technologies have proven more effective and affordable than traditional television commercials. 

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Meta: The New Name of Facebook and Why

On By Kendra FranklinIn facebook, Technology, Virtual RealityLeave a comment
Source: CNBC

Facebook announced that the company changed its name to Meta on Thursday at the Facebook Connect virtual reality conference, according to CNBC. The sudden rebrand came about in the midst of legal turmoil that the company has been combatting.

The name “Meta” refers to the “metaverse,” a virtual world where users can interact with each other no matter where they are located in the real world.

“The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build,” wrote CEO and Founder of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, in a founder’s letter.

The social media app that the company is known for will remain as Facebook, but the company no longer wants the app to be the face of the company.

It is highly spectated that the name change was created as a distraction from ex-employee whistleblower Frances Haugen, who, according to the Washington Post, “sent tens of thousands of internal company documents to Congress and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.” This garnered a negative reputation for Facebook, along with a multitude of legal issues that arose after the documents were exposed.

It was revealed that the company has been well aware of issues its platforms have been causing but decided to ignore it.

Despite all of this, the company claims this name change comes from a shift in focus of energy. Meta aims to move towards being known as a metaverse company, rather than a social media company. The company has been forming a team whose goal is to create the metaverse.

Zuckerberg gave a demonstration of what the company wants the metaverse to look like at the Facebook Connect conference. CNBC described this as a “Pixar-like animation of software the company hopes to build some day.” The demo showed how users will be able to interact with each other using cartoon-like avatars within virtual spaces.

Though the plan for the metaverse has been revealed now, with $10 billion being designated for its development in the next year, it will be over 5 years before the metaverse technology is ready for the public, Zuckerberg said.

Of course, users of Facebook (now Meta) and its other platforms have many opinions about this sudden change. Some are excited about the approaching metaverse technology, while others fear what may become of society with technology like this.

Companies have already begun preparation for this new technology. For example, Nike has created several trademarks to sell products within the metaverse.

Facebook has opened up a new chapter in social technology. Now, it is just a waiting game until the technology is ready for the public.

Facebook announces plans for how to ‘nudge’ teens away from harmful content

On By Marlene TurreyIn facebook, Instagram, Social MediaLeave a comment
Image via The Verge

Facebook is planning to introduce new features to protect teenagers’ mental health, including measures prompting teens to take a break from Instagram, as well as features to nudge young people away from harmful content. In CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday, Facebook vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg commented: “We’re going to introduce something which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that a teenager is looking at the same content over and over again, and it’s content which may not be conducive to their well being, we will nudge them to look at other content”. Moreover, he added Facebook is pausing its plans for an Instagram Kids platform, which was also strongly criticized.

“We cannot, with a wave of the wand, make everyone’s life perfect. What we can do is improve our products, so that our products are as safe and as enjoyable to use.”

Nick Clegg, Facebook vice president of global affairs

The announcement comes less than a week after whistleblower Frances Haugen accused the company of failing to improve Instagram after internal research confirmed that the social media app negatively affects the mental health of young people. Clegg explained that Facebook has invested $13 billion in the last years to keep the platform safe. However, he also noted: “We need greater transparency,” and that Facebook’s algorithms “should be held to account, if necessary, by regulation so that people can match what our systems say they’re supposed to do from what actually happens.”

It is very interesting to observe how Facebook is defending its strategy in this ongoing debate. The social media company is one of the most powerful forces in our times and therefore influences people’s daily life worldwide. Therefore, this debate is not only about Facebook’s repetition, but also determines how people, and in particular teenagers, are going to consume and use social media in the future.

Facebook Outage On Top of Current Backlash

On By Kendra FranklinIn facebook, Social Media, TechnologyLeave a comment
Zuckerberg Loses $5.9 Billion In A Day As Facebook Faces Rare Outage, Whisteblower Testimony
Image: Forbes

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were a few of the Facebook family apps rendered inaccessible on Monday for over five hours. This completely shifted the social media sphere for the day, as billions use Facebook and its apps. This is the largest outage the platform has had since 2008.

Facebook’s apps first started to display error messages around 11:40am Eastern time, according to the New York Times. The apps struggled to load content, some not displaying anything at all. It wasn’t until after 6:00pm Eastern time when the apps’ features slowly started to work, one by one.

This outage affected more than just Facebook and its apps, as many use Facebook as a sign-in feature on many websites and devices. Many rushed to other apps, like Twitter and Snapchat, who then experienced some issues from overloaded servers.

Facebook issued an apology using its competitor’s platform, Twitter.

Many on social media noted the interesting timing of this outage. It happened only a day after whistleblower, Frances Haugen exposed how the company consistently chooses its own interests over the public good. Haugen appeared on “60 Minutes” on Sunday to discuss her knowledge on Facebook’s effect on young users.

As usual, social media users rushed to Twitter to voice their feelings about the inconvenience throughout the entirety of the 5-hour outage.

Even Twitter itself decided to join on the fun.

Facebook has had its fair share of issues this past few weeks due to legal troubles, Haugen’s statement, and now the massive server outage. More is to come as Haugen is set to testify before Congress sometime this week.

Youtube Terminates Anti-vaccine Accounts and Content

On By emmaspaethIn Censorship, coronavirus, facebook, YouTubeLeave a comment
Photo Via NBC News

Youtube is cracking down on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and has announced a total ban on content falsely claiming that the vaccine is harmful or ineffective. Youtube has terminated the accounts of several prominent anti-vaccine influencers, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joseph Mercola who have contributed to skepticism surrounding the vaccine and slowed vaccination rates in the United States. Since the ban, over 133,000 videos featuring coronavirus misinformation have been removed from the platform.

Youtube had existing policies on COVID-19 misinformation but this new ban had broadened its enforcement against content claiming the vaccine is dangerous or that vaccines are a cause of autism. The company announced, “We’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines.”

Anti-vaccine advocates have been using platforms like Youtube and Facebook for over a decade. In the past both platforms haven been reluctant to censor content arguing it challenges users’ rights to free speech. Matt Halprin, YouTube’s vice president of global trust and safety stated, “Developing robust policies takes time. We wanted to launch a policy that is comprehensive, enforceable with consistency and adequately addresses the challenge.”

Facebook Just Invested 5.3 Billion Into An Indian Company–It’s Largest Investment To Date

On By Kirsten BeachIn Brand, Data, Distribution, facebook, Marketing, Media Covergence, News Media, Social Media, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Yesterday, Facebook made its largest single investment into Jio Platforms of India which was a huge bet on the developing company.

Because Facebook wants to appeal more to the Indian audience, they felt the investment was essential, especially since over the past four years, more than 388 million people in India have been connected to the internet.

Mark Zuckerberg spoke on this in a Facebook post saying,

The country is in the middle of a major digital transformation, and organizations like Jio have played a big part in getting hundreds of millions of Indian people and small businesses online…With communities around the world in lockdown, many of these entrepreneurs need digital tools they can rely on to find and communicate with customers and grow their businesses.

Jio Platforms itself is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries (which is one of India’s biggest multinational companies and a major provider of cellular and internet services in the country,) therefore, the investment proves to be something that will propel the company forward and will ultimately help the Indian people to stay connected through the internet.

Although the Coronavirus pandemic has created a very fragile time for large tech companies when it comes to moving forward with investments, Facebook felt that taking a risk with Jio Platforms was necessary during this time and wants to display perseverance during this difficult period.

With this deal, Facebook will incur a 9.9 percent stake in Jio Platforms, and the respective money from Facebook will help Reliance to reduce some of their debt and invest further into its network (which it needs to do after regulators delayed approval of a high-profile $15 billion deal to sell 25 percent of its energy business to the Saudis.)

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/technology/facebook-jio-india.html

 

Zoom Sued for Sharing Personal Data with Facebook

On By David SonIn Censorship, Consumer behavior, coronavirus, Data, Distribution, facebook, Online SafetyLeave a comment

Zoom Video Communications is under serious scrutiny as they have been caught giving personal data of users to outside companies such as Facebook. The popular web-camming company that has gained popularity due to the Coronavirus outbreak is under serious legal troubles.

A lawsuit filed Monday stated that Zoom’s software would give information about the user such as the device the person is using, device’s model and the device’s advertising identifier.

“The unique advertising identifier allows companies to target the user with advertisements,” the lawsuit states. “This information is sent to Facebook by Zoom regardless of whether the user has an account with Facebook.”

Zoom officials have said they have changed the practices after they were caught.

After a news report by Vice Media, CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, said the data sharing began after a user signed up for Zoom through facebook. He says, “Our customer’s privacy is incredibly important to us, and therefore we decided to remove Facebook SDK (Software Development Kit) in our client and have reconfigured the feature so that users will still be able to login with Facebook via their browser.”

The lawsuit goes further, claiming Zoom was being paid to share data. Court documents won’t disclose how much money Zoom allegedly received.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking Zoom to provide details on how they will change their practices to ensure user privacy. Zoom may have a hard time transitioning privacy practices because of the already intact data sharing system.

As Zoom is becoming more popular due to the work from home lifestyle everyone is adapting to, more hackers are using it as a medium to spread hate messages. Also as stocks have been hit hard, Zoom’s stock has soared 46%.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zoom-app-personal-data-selling-facebook-lawsuit-alleges/

Facebook faces potential $529B fine, By Australia over Cambridge Analytica

On By kashifwIn facebookLeave a comment

An Australian watch dog is suing Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data breach in 2018. An Australian privacy act set out a provision for penalties up to 1.7 million to be levied per infraction. It is believed that there were 311, 074 local Facebook users who’s data was in the cache of 86 million profiles lifted by Cambridge Analytica.

The Office of Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has logged proceeding against Facebook in federal court for the companies repeated privacy interference. Facebook allegedly disclosed personal information to an application called, this is your digital life. This application used user data for purposes other than what the data was collected for. In doing so Facebook breaches an Australian privacy act from 1988. The creator of the app “GSR” was hired by Cambridge Analytica to obtain and process Facebook users’ data for politically targeted ads.

User data was syphoned off from March 2014 to May 2015 by GSR. Under contract with Cambridge Analytica they were working on United States political campaigns of Ted Cruz and later President Trump. Facebook failed to take responsible steps to protect its individuals’ personal information from unauthorized disclosure. Along with the fines, Australian and international regulators want to restrict information available to app developers. Which would imply new protocols for social media. This case is currently before the Federal Court.

Australia sues Facebook over Cambridge Analytica, fine could scale to $529BN

Facebook Contemplating Transparency on Platform

On By Jared RohlfingIn ads, Algorithms, facebook, Internet Of Things, Political, Social Issue(s)Leave a comment

In an article for CNBC, Julia Boorstin covers the most recent development in FaceBook’s ongoing transparaceny debacle that this time involves Presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg.  Facebook is apparently concerned about the lack of transparency regarding Bloomberg’s campaign in regards to campaign staffers and activists using the platform to garner support for the former New York Mayor’s Presidential campaign.  Currently, posts advocating for Bloomberg’s campaign don’t specifically indicate that these endorsements are in fact created by paid campaign staffers and supporters. According to the article, Facebook is in the process of considering necessary steps to increase transparency and make these campaign posts more obvious in their partiality.  In recent months, the social media juggernaut has been progressively taking steps to gain users trust through increased transparency regarding campaign advertisements as a result of the Cambridge Analytical debacle the company faced in early 2018. That particular scandal arose after it was reported that the company had unethically gathered user data to target political ads supporting Donald Trump for President in 2016.  Since then Facebook has instituted new policies such as flagging political ads and launching a database that reports ad purchases in relation to politics and special interests. 

I find it interesting that Facebook is now reactively making transparency regarding advertisements on its platform a priority after years of ignoring the issue altogether.  The mounting distrust and negative press the site has received in recent years has obviously had some kind of effect on the company’s standards in relation to transparency on the platform.  It remains to be seen however if the company can rebound from the awful public relations issues the site has been facing in recent times and potentially gain consumer trust. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/21/facebook-considers-transparency-around-posts-from-political-staffers.html

Mark Zuckerberg wants regulation! Yay?

On By Mónica G. RodríguezIn facebookLeave a comment
According to experts, this might not mean what you think it means.

This past weekend, Mark Zuckerberg visited Europe to show his support for regulation. Yes. That’s right. This is great news right? Unfortunately, no. This doesn’t mean that Zuckerberg had a change of heart. According to experts, the “regulation” Zuckerberg asks for is his definition of regulation. They say that he continues to avoid responsibility for the bad and damaging content on his platform, all while making sure the regulations approved are “toothless”.

The Facebook CEO dismissed all the evidenced claims about his platform contributing to political polarization, among other things, at the Munich Security Conference last Saturday. He argued that the social media platform should be regulated like something in between a newspaper and a telecommunications company, while acknowledging that it would simply be impossible to keep up with the insane amount of content posted everyday – the amount is in the billions.

Later Sunday, the Financial Times published an interview with Mark Zuckerberg where he expanded his willingness to welcome regulation. He had stated before that the areas for which he mostly supports state regulation are “elections, political discourse, privacy, and data portability.” In the op-ed piece, he told FT “I believe good regulation may hurt Facebook’s business in the near term but it will be better for everyone, including us, over the long term.” He later added “to be clear, this isn’t about passing off responsibility.”

After this, experts and academics continued to criticize Zuckerberg for his “hypocritical” stance and Facebook’s overall lack of accountability for many issues such as the rise of extremist groups who use Facebook to nurture hate speech. They come to this conclusion because there has been a significant investment in lobbying efforts from Facebook towards the lawmakers involved in the development of Europe’s Digital Services Act, a law that intends to regulate the internet.

As future media professionals, this is obviously something to follow closely; but it’s also important to analyze on a deeper level how an American company (in this case Facebook) has become so powerful, it aims to control or seriously influence the decisions of other countries.

Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884mqp/mark-zuckerberg-is-literally-begging-europe-to-regulate-facebook-it-will-be-better-for-everyone