With Facebook acquiring Giphy, a bipartisan group of senators are sounding the antitrust enforcement alarm Friday over Facebook’s newly announced acquisition of Giphy, a GIF-making and sharing website. On Friday, Facebook announced that it would acquire Giphy for the reported price of $400 million. Giphy is one of the largest GIF sites on the internet and social media and messaging services like Twitter, Tinder,...
When Facebook users learned last March about Facebook trackers and that the social media giant had given their sensitive information to political-data firm Cambridge Analytica, Mozilla (parent company of the security-focused browser Firefox) reacted fast: Within eight hours, the product team had built a browser extension called the Facebook Container. The plug-in, now the most popular browser extension Mozilla has ever built (1.5 million...
Facebook and Google have both been hit with lawsuits claiming that the Silicon Valley giants secretly track their users’ locations against their will and use the information to pad its advertising business. The class action complaint against Facebook, which was filed by Brett Heeger last Friday in San Francisco federal court, said the social network tracks its users even after they’ve opted out of...
Apple has updated its rules to restrict app developers’ ability to harvest data from mobile phones, which could be bad news for a Facebook-owned data security app called Onavo Protect. Onavo ostensibly provides users with a free virtual private network (VPN) which, it claims, helps “keep you and your data safe when you browse and share information on the web”. What is not immediately...
Facebook is reportedly testing out a pilot program to counter revenge porn that involves users sending the company nude photos of themselves that may be in others’ possession. The program, which is currently only being deployed in Australia, creates a digital thumbprint of the potential revenge porn images, known as “hashing,” that users don’t want spread without their consent on Facebook. Once a photo...
Facebook added an additional defense today against the spread of fake news and viral hoaxes. If a Facebook page is found to be repeatedly sharing false stories, the company will ban the page from advertising on Facebook. The company uses third-party fact-checking organizations to flag stories that are false. Under Facebook’s rules, advertisers are already not allowed to run ads that link to false...
Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube and Microsoft on Tuesday agreed to an EU code of conduct to tackle online hate speech within 24 hours in Europe. EU governments have been trying in recent months to get social platforms to crack down on rising online racism following the refugee crisis and terror attacks, with some even threatening action against the companies. As part of the pledge...
If you find yourself just not as happy with your Facebook as you used to be, you’re not alone. New research from Bridge Ratings shows that Facebook users are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the service, and it might be because people are tired of being bombarded with political posts from their friends and the pages they follow. Counting only Facebook users who...
Facebook has been accused of misleading the European Commission over its $22 billion takeover of WhatsApp in 2014—when the Mark Zuckerberg-run company claimed that it wouldn’t be able to knit together user IDs, thereby combining the data of the two services. Brussels’ competition officials issued a charge sheet against Facebook on Tuesday, in which it is alleged that the free content ad network failed...
Facebook really wants you to hang out and talk about your feelings. But, does it want you to have those conversations anywhere else other than on Messenger? Probably not. Messenger launched a new and distinctly Snapchat-like tool complete with art and special effects on Thursday. The update lets users exchange photos with text, stickers, animated effects, illustrated frames and doodles. Sound familiar? Hijacking your...
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