Thousands of users complained about issues, citing problems with sharing posts and sending messages
For many attempting to share Thanksgiving posts on Facebook on Thursday morning, it seemed the social network was not in the holiday mood.
Thousands of users complained about issues with Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram, citing problems with sharing posts and sending messages, according to Down Detector, a website that tracks such outages.
Continue reading...‘Final straw’ was refusal to allow partner to mark dubious claims by far-right parties
Facebook’s only Dutch factchecker has quit over the social network’s refusal to allow them to highlight political lies as being false.
The online newspaper Nu.nl had been Facebook’s only factchecking partner in the Netherlands since Leiden University dropped out of the programme last year. The website had sole responsibility for marking Facebook and Instagram news content for Dutch users as being false or misleading, in order to help power the social network’s tools that suppress distribution of misinformation.
Continue reading...Former presidential candidate criticises Facebook’s decision to let politicians lie in adverts
Mark Zuckerberg “should pay a price” for what he is doing to democracy, Hillary Clinton has said, as she expressed doubts about whether free and fair elections were even possible in the wake of Facebook’s decision to not factcheck political advertising.
Speaking in New York at a screening of The Great Hack, a Netflix documentary about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate cited the threat to upcoming elections in both the US and UK as she made the damning remarks about Facebook’s decision to allow politicians to lie in adverts posted to its platform.
Continue reading...Activists speak out after being warned of alleged cyber-attack to infiltrate mobile phones
More than a dozen pro-democracy activists, journalists and academics have spoken out after WhatsApp privately warned them they had allegedly been the victims of cyber-attacks designed to secretly infiltrate their mobile phones.
The individuals received alerts saying they were among more than 100 human rights campaigners whose phones were believed to have been hacked using malware sold by NSO Group, an Israeli cyberweapons company.
Continue reading...Fake networks in eight nations are connected to man allegedly behind disinformation empire
Facebook has taken down accounts linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin – the businessman allegedly behind Russia’s notorious troll factory – which were actively seeking to influence the domestic politics of a range of African countries.
The company said on Wednesday it had suspended three networks of “inauthentic” Russian accounts. The Facebook pages targeted eight countries across the continent: Madagascar, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya.
Continue reading...Commissioner says ‘still some way to go’ in battle against disinformation on social media
Facebook and other major social media platforms have been accused by the European commission of giving a misleading picture of their efforts to remove fake accounts spreading politically motivated disinformation.
The security commissioner, Julian King, told the Guardian on the publication of the sites’ self-assessment reports to the EU’s executive that there remained a “disconnect” between the claims of progress from social media companies and “the lived experience”.
Continue reading...Mark Zuckerberg faced a gruelling examination from the Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, with questions over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook’s reluctance to police political advertising.
The Facebook CEO declined to disclose when he found out the company was harvesting and selling user data to influence elections. She also asked Zuckerberg about his 'dinner parties with far-right figures' and if at those meetings he addressed the popular rightwing theory that Facebook cracks down on conservative speech, a question Zuckerberg also dodged
Democratic lawmaker challenges Facebook CEO during hearing over Libra cryptocurrency
Mark Zuckerberg faced a grueling examination from the Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, with questions over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook’s reluctance to police political advertising.
Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers grilled the Facebook CEO during a hearing in front of the US House of Representatives financial services committee regarding the launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Libra.
Continue reading...The presidential hopeful and Mark Zuckerberg are facing off over big tech and its influence over our lives
More than two hours into the Democratic debate in Ohio on Tuesday night, after discussions on healthcare, gun control and foreign policy, the moderators turned to another issue that sharply divided the candidates: is it time to break up Facebook?
The question was framed slightly differently: is Elizabeth Warren right?
Continue reading...Ad claims CEO backs Trump – then admits it’s not true – after company admits letting politicians make false statements
Facebook has been taking heat all week for its decision to allow politicians to make false statements in paid advertisements. Now the Democratic senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is taking the fight to the social media company’s own turf by taking out a series of Facebook ads that make false statements about Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.
“Breaking news: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just endorsed Donald Trump for re-election,” the ads read, above a photograph of a recent Oval Office meeting between the billionaire tech executive and the president.
Continue reading...Social media giant said the move was backed by anti-bullying and mental health groups
Some Facebook users will soon no longer see the number of likes, reactions and video views on other’s posts in a world-first trial aimed at boosting users’ wellbeing.
Instead, likes will be private and only visible to the post’s author in a change that follows a similar test on Instagram which started in July in Australia. The new Facebook trial, which begins on Friday, will also kick off in Australia.
Continue reading...Removals are part of inquiry into how developers use data, which the company started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal
Facebook has suspended tens of thousands of apps from the platform for privacy reasons, it announced in a blogpost on Friday.
The removals come as part of an ongoing investigation into how developers use data, which the company started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March 2018. The news also reveals that the platform is home to more problematic apps than previously thought.
Continue reading...The information was stored in an online server that was not password protected, according to a report from TechCrunch
Hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers were exposed in an open online database, the company confirmed Wednesday, in the latest example of Facebook’s past privacy lapses coming back to haunt its users.
More than 419m Facebook IDs and phone numbers were stored in an online server that was not password protected, the technology website TechCrunch reported. The dataset included about 133m records for users in the US, 18m records for users in the UK and 50m records for users in Vietnam.
Continue reading...Badiucao accuses the social media firm of violating the free speech of people who speak up against China’s bullying
A Melbourne artist who posted anti-Chinese government work has had it pulled offline by Instagram, while death threats against him have remained uncensored.
The censorship of Badiucao – and later restoration – by Instagram came as Twitter and Facebook suspended more than 200,000 accounts deemed to be part of a “co-ordinated state-backed operation” of misinformation from the People’s Republic of China.
Continue reading...Committee chairman suggested staff knew Cambridge Analytica had misused data before Guardian revelation
Facebook executives did not give contradictory evidence to a parliamentary committee investigating the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the firm has claimed, insisting that it learned of the misuse of data only when the Guardian reported it in December 2015.
The company was responding to Damian Collins, the chairman of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, who had sought clarification on points made by two Facebook executives before the committee.
Continue reading...Disinformation committee wants CTF Partners chief to detail its propaganda activities
Sir Lynton Crosby could be called to give evidence to a House of Commons select committee on disinformation after the Guardian revealed how his lobbying company, CTF Partners, was involved in running a propaganda network on Facebook on behalf of foreign states and major corporate clients.
MPs told the Guardian they would seek to summon representatives of CTF to discuss their role in running a disinformation network that reached tens of millions of people. It comes as trade groups seek to distance themselves from CTF and its activities.
Continue reading...Senator says bill aims to tackle features that ‘capture attention by using psychological tricks’
Autoplaying videos on YouTube, Facebook’s infinite newsfeed and Snapstreaks could be banned in the US under a proposed new bill.
The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (Smart) Act takes aim at techniques and features that, according to its author, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, are created to encourage and deepen addictive behaviours.
Continue reading...Penalty by US government reflects scale of breach, first reported by the Observer
Facebook will pay a record $5bn (£4bn) penalty in the US for “deceiving” users about their ability to keep personal information private, after a year-long investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data breach.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US consumer regulator, also announced a lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica and proposed settlements with the data analysis firm’s former chief executive Alexander Nix and its app developer Aleksandr Kogan.
Continue reading...Books by James Williams and Carles Boix offer fascinating takes on how we can combat anger and distraction online
We’re having problems with the internet and big tech, principally Alphabet (Google/YouTube), Amazon, Apple and Facebook. The government has taken note.
Related: 'Facebook is dangerous': tech giant faces criticism from Congress over Libra currency
Continue reading...The $5bn fine would be the largest ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission against a technology company
The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly voted to approve fining Facebook roughly $5bn to settle an investigation into the company’s privacy violations that was launched following the Cambridge Analytica revelations.
The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, both citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, reported Friday afternoon that the settlement was approved by a 3-2 vote that broke along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The justice department is expected make a final approval of the fine.
Continue reading...