Category Archives: Social networking

Facebook usage has collapsed since scandals, data shows

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Company’s own upbeat figures thrown into doubt by business analytics firm Mixpanel

Facebook usage has plummeted over the last year, even as the company continues to insist that its use has stayed stable or even grown in the same period, according to data seen by the Guardian.

Since April 2018, the first full month after the news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in the Observer, actions on Facebook such as likes, shares and posts have dropped by almost 20%, according to the business analytics firm Mixpanel.

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Pro-Kremlin media ‘spread false claims that EU has Nazi roots’

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Security commissioner reveals disinformation acts aimed at influencing EU elections

Pro-Kremlin social media accounts spread false claims that the EU has Nazi roots, the European commissioner for security has said in the first analysis of disinformation acts aimed at influencing last month’s EU elections.

Malicious actors sought to promote extreme views and polarise local debates, said Julian King, the British commissioner in Brussels.

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Facebook emails seem to show Zuckerberg knew of privacy issues, report claims

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Firm has uncovered emails that appear to show chief executive’s connection to potentially problematic practices, WSJ reports

Facebook has uncovered emails that appear to show Mark Zuckerberg’s connection to potentially damaging privacy practices at the company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The emails were uncovered as part of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation that began after the Guardian reported that the personal data of 50 million Facebook users had been improperly harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked on Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign.

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Naked protesters condemn nipple censorship at Facebook headquarters

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Demonstrators cover bodies with stickers to ensure nipples on display are ‘male’, in line with Facebook policy

Some were hairy. Some were pointy. Some were dark brown, some a pale pink. But the hundreds of nipples on display in front of Facebook’s New York City headquarters on Sunday were technically “male”, despite some being on female protesters.

More than 100 people lay nude on the sidewalk to call for a change to the company’s censorship policies. The action, called #wethenipple, was organized by the artist Spencer Tunick and the National Coalition Against Censorship.

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Facebook refuses to delete fake Pelosi video spread by Trump supporters

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Footage of House speaker deliberately slowed down to make her appear drunk or ill

Facebook says it will continue to host a video of Nancy Pelosi that has been edited to give the impression that the Democratic House speaker is drunk or unwell, in the latest incident highlighting its struggle to deal with disinformation.

The viral clip shows Pelosi – who has publicly angered Donald Trump in recent days – speaking at an event, but it has been slowed down to give the impression she is slurring her words. Several versions of the clip appeared to be circulating.

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Leaders and tech firms pledge to tackle extremist violence online

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Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron met companies and G7 nations in Paris for Christchurch Call summit

World leaders and heads of global technology companies have pledged at a Paris summit to tackle terrorist and extremist violence online in what they described as an “unprecedented agreement”.

Wednesday’s event, organised two months to the day since the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, drew up a “plan of action” to be adopted by countries and companies to prevent extreme material going viral on the internet.

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Facebook’s Zuckerberg announces privacy overhaul: ‘We don’t have the strongest reputation’

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At annual F8 developer conference, CEO focuses on ‘sense of intimacy’ and unveils plans for payments tools

Even Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t keep a straight face.

The Facebook founder and chief executive repeatedly broke out in laughter as he announced a product roadmap for his company’s new “privacy-focused social platform” at its annual developer conference, F8, in San Jose on Tuesday.

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Facebook could have 4.9bn dead users by 2100, study finds

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Deceased may outnumber the living if current growth rates continue, raising questions about what happens to our data

Facebook may eventually have more dead users than living ones.

If Facebook continues to grow at its current rate, the site could have 4.9 billion deceased members by 2100, according to a study by Oxford researchers. Even if growth had stopped entirely last year, the study finds, Facebook would be looking at about 1.4 billion dead members by 2100. By 2070, in that scenario, the dead would already outnumber the living.

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Canada says Facebook broke privacy laws and ‘refused to act responsibly’

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Top watchdog promises to force change following Cambridge Analytica scandal as New York announces new investigation

Facebook broke Canadian privacy laws when it collected the information of some 600,000 citizens, a top watchdog in the country said on Thursday, pledging to seek a court order to force the social media company to change its practices.

Canada’s privacy commissioner, Daniel Therrien, made his comments while releasing the results of an investigation, opened a year ago, into a data sharing scandal involving Facebook and the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

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Sri Lanka’s social media blackout reflects sense that online dangers outweigh benefits

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Features that make Facebook so useful for spreading information have also made it potentially dangerous

The Sri Lankan government’s decision to block all social media sites in the wake of Sunday’s deadly attacks is emblematic of just how much US-based technology companies’ failure to rein in misinformation, extremism and incitement to violence has come to outweigh the claimed benefits of social media.

Sri Lanka’s government moved to block Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – all owned by Facebook – on Sunday out of concern that “false news reports … spreading through social media” could lead to violence. The services will be suspended until investigations into the blasts that killed more than 200 people are concluded, the government said. Non-Facebook social media services including YouTube and Viber have also been suspended, but Facebook and WhatsApp are the dominant platforms in the country.

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Facebook bans far-right groups including BNP, EDL and Britain First

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Number of organisations and individuals permanently banned for being ‘dangerous’

Years after the company first dismissed fears it was empowering extremists, Facebook has permanently banned a number of far-right organisations and individuals including the British National party (BNP), the English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First .

The ban, which came into effect at midday on Thursday, extends beyond the groups and individuals specifically cited as hate organisations: posts and other content that “expresses praise or support” for them will also be banned, as will users who coordinate support for the groups.

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Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users report outages

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Thousands having difficulty accessing social networks, says tracking site

Facebook was inaccessible to some users on Sunday, according to Downdetector, a website that monitors outages.

The site showed there had been more than 7,700 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook at its peak.

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Facebook spent $22.6m to keep Mark Zuckerberg safe last year

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Security costs for the tech billionaire and his family more than doubled last year, as an outcry over Facebook’s practices grew

Facebook more than doubled the money it spent on top executive Mark Zuckerberg’s security in 2018 to $22.6m, a regulatory filing has showed.

Zuckerberg drew a base salary of $1 for the past three years, and his “other” compensation was listed at $22.6m, most of which was for his personal security.

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Toyota distances itself from Liberal ads falsely claiming Labor wants to tax cars

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The ads use Facebook functionality to target users with an interest in particular car brands, including Toyota Hilux utes

Toyota has said that it was not consulted on a Liberal party campaign that uses targeted Facebook ads to falsely claim Bill Shorten wants to tax popular car brands including the Toyota Hilux and other utility vehicles.

“Toyota Australia were not consulted on the use of the HiLux in government materials.”

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Facebook to use AI to stop telling users to say hi to dead friends

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Algorithmic features have sent suggestions to wish happy birthday to those who’ve died

Facebook has promised to use artificial intelligence to stop suggesting users invite their dead friends to parties.

The site’s freshly emotionally intelligent AI is part of a rash of changes to how Facebook handles “memorialised” accounts – pages whose owner has been reported deceased, but that are kept on the social network in their memory.

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Facebook are ‘morally bankrupt liars’ says New Zealand’s privacy commissioner

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John Edwards calls out social media giant after Christchurch attack for refusing to accept responsibility for harm

New Zealand’s privacy commissioner has lashed out at social media giant Facebook in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, calling the company “morally bankrupt pathological liars”.

The commissioner used his personal Twitter page to lambast the social network, which has also drawn the ire of prime minister Jacinda Ardern for hosting a livestream of the attacks that left 50 dead, which was then copied and shared all over the internet.

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Facebook stored hundreds of millions of passwords unprotected

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Company admits to mistake and says it has no evidence of abuse – but the risk was huge

Facebook mistakenly stored “hundreds of millions” of passwords in plaintext, unprotected by any encryption, the company has admitted.

The mistake, which led to user passwords being kept in Facebook’s internal servers in an insecure way, affects “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users”, according to the social networking site. Facebook Lite is a version of Facebook created for use in nations where mobile data is unaffordable or unavailable.

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‘A perfect platform’: internet’s abyss becomes a far-right breeding ground

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After Christchurch many are asking what role the ‘darkest reaches of the internet’ play in radicalisation

No depth goes unplumbed on the far-right forum 8chan. Its threads reveal a seething, toxic mass of rabid antisemitism, neo-Nazism, Islamophobia, gratuitous violence, coded inside jokes and conspiratorial ravings published by anonymous users.

Nothing has changed in the days after the Australian alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant, 28, came to 8chan boasting of the imminent massacre in Christchurch. Posts have since praised Tarrant as a “hero” and called for copycat attacks, or, alternatively, denounced him as a pawn in a false flag conspiracy.

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Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016

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Faulty server migration blamed for mass deletion of songs, photos and video

Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.

The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations.

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The Cambridge Analytica scandal changed the world – but it didn’t change Facebook

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A year after devastating revelations of data misuse, Mark Zuckerberg still hasn’t fulfilled his promises to reform

It can be hard to remember from down here, beneath the avalanche of words and promises and apologies and blogposts and manifestos that Facebook has unleashed upon us over the course of the past year, but when the Cambridge Analytica story broke one year ago, Mark Zuckerberg’s initial response was a long and deafening silence.

It took five full days for the founder and CEO of Facebook – the man with total control over the world’s largest communications platform – to emerge from his Menlo Park cloisters and address the public. When he finally did, he did so with gusto, taking a new set of talking points (“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you”) on a seemingly unending roadshow, from his own Facebook page to the mainstream press to Congress and on to an oddly earnest discussion series he’s planning to subject us to at irregular intervals for the rest of 2019.

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