Category Archives: Facebook

Rishi Sunak considers curbing social media use for under-16s

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Reports suggest a ban is among potential options to protect young people from online harm

Rishi Sunak is considering limiting social media access for teenagers under the age of 16 to try to protect them from online harm, with reports suggesting a potential ban is on the cards.

The government is considering further action despite bringing in the Online Safety Act, which requires social media platforms to shield children from harmful content or face fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue.

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Meta platforms are marketplaces for child predators claims lawsuit

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Facebook and Instagram ‘enabled adults to find, message and groom minors’ for sexual exploitation, alleges state of New Mexico legal filing

Meta has allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit filed against the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit claims that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content”. It claims Meta “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”. The company is also accused of fostering unmoderated user groups devoted to facilitating and selling child sexual exploitation content.

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Meta designed platforms to get children addicted, court documents allege

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Instagram and Facebook parent company also knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, unsealed legal complaint says

Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint.

The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew – but never disclosed – it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an “open secret” at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents.

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Dick Smith criticises Facebook after scammers circulate deepfake video ad

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Businessman warns people to ‘never ever’ purchase from advertisers on Facebook and Instagram after ‘totally fraudulent’ video appears

Australian businessman Dick Smith has urged people to stop buying anything from Facebook or Instagram after a deepfake video of him spruiking an investment opportunity was circulated by scammers online.

Smith posted a message on his personal website on Monday afternoon about the video, which was designed to appear like a segment on A Current Affair, featuring host Ally Langdon apparently interviewing him, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest.

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Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram

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Policy was reportedly introduced quietly in 2022 after the US midterm primary elections, according to the WSJ

Meta is now allowing Facebook and Instagram to run political advertising saying the 2020 election was rigged.

The policy was reportedly introduced quietly in 2022 after the US midterm primary elections, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the decision. The previous policy prevented Republican candidates from running ads arguing during that campaign that the 2020 election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, was stolen.

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RMIT’s fact check reinstated by Facebook two months after suspension over News Corp voice complaints

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Exclusive: Meta suspended RMIT FactLab from Facebook’s fact-checking program after no campaigners claimed it was biased

Facebook has agreed to reinstate RMIT FactLab to its factchecking program two months after it was suspended in the wake of repeated complaints by Sky News Australia about the key factchecker’s debunking of claims by the no campaign about the voice.

No voice campaigners – including Sky host Peta Credlin, Liberal senator James Paterson and the right-wing thinktank the IPA – claimed RMIT FactLab was biased and demanded Facebook remove it from its program which aims to tackle online misinformation.

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Amazon and Facebook owner Meta agree to protect consumers, CMA says

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Sites agree to stop practices that give them an unfair advantage over businesses and shoppers

The UK’s competition watchdog has said it has secured commitments from Amazon and the Facebook owner Meta to protect consumers on their marketplaces.

The agreements come after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched separate investigations into Amazon, which sells its own products and allows sellers to retail via its online marketplace function, and Meta, which owns Facebook Marketplace.

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Thousands of men in private Facebook groups that are ‘cesspits’ of racism and misogyny

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While women’s groups on the platform support and warn others, men’s groups feature mostly derogatory comments

Thousands of Australian men are in private Facebook groups that are “cesspits” of racism, misogyny, doxing, slut-shaming and fat-shaming.

Some of them appear to be set up in response to women’s groups that are dedicated to exposing cheaters. Those sites, hundreds of which have sprung up around the world and in many parts of Australia, also “out” men for violence and abuse.

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Meta’s settlement talks with Kenyan content moderators break down

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Facebook parent company and two subcontractors face court hearing over unfair dismissal allegations

Settlement talks have collapsed between Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and Kenyan content moderators over a lawsuit alleging unfair dismissal, a tech rights group working with the plaintiffs has said.

The 184 moderators sued Meta and two subcontractors earlier this year after they allegedly lost their jobs with one of the subcontractors, Sama, for organising a union. They say they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at a second firm, Majorel, after Facebook changed contractors.

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Indonesia bans e-commerce sales on social media platforms like TikTok

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Government says regulation aimed at protecting small businesses from competition

Indonesia has banned goods transactions on social media platforms as it aims to protect small businesses from e-commerce competition.

Calls had grown in recent months for a regulation governing social media and e-commerce, with offline sellers seeing their livelihoods threatened by the sale of cheaper products on TikTok Shop and other platforms.

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Meta encryption plan will let child abusers ‘hide in the dark’, says UK campaign

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In Home Office initiative, survivors urge Mark Zuckerberg to rethink changes to Messenger and Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to roll out encrypted messaging on his platforms will let child abusers “hide in the dark”, according to a government campaign urging the tech billionaire to halt the move.

The Facebook founder has been under pressure from ministers over plans to automatically encrypt communications on his Messenger service later this year, with Instagram expected to follow soon after.

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Meta closes nearly 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Chinese ‘Spamouflage’ foreign influence campaign

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Company says users targeted in Australia, UK, US and elsewhere by political spam network across more than 50 platforms

Meta shut down close to 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, groups and pages associated with a Chinese political spam network that had targeted users in Australia and other parts of the world, the company has revealed.

Meta began investigating in 2019 and its research aligned with several research groups, including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi), who coined the term Spamouflage.

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Facebook suspends RMIT FactLab after voice no campaigners criticise factchecker

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Meta spokesperson says suspension was decided after voice opponents raised criticism and apparent lapse in accreditation

Facebook has suspended a key factchecker which monitors and debunks online claims after repeated criticisms from Indigenous voice no campaign leaders and some conservative media outlets about the factchecker’s work.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has temporarily suspended RMIT FactLab as one of the partner organisations for its factchecking program, which can slap warning or information labels on dubious content.

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Yellowknife wildfire: communication issues and Facebook news ban hamper evacuation efforts

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Canada’s ongoing fight with social media company Meta and the resulting ban has led to difficulties with staying on top of information

Communication issues, fast-spreading rumours and a Facebook news ban have all disrupted evacuation efforts by residents of Yellowknife, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, as they race to leave the city before an out-of-control wildfire hits in the coming day or so.

On Wednesday night, officials told the city’s 20,000 residents they had to be out by Friday at noon (1900 BST) before a massive wildfire gets any closer.

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CEO regrets her firm took on Facebook moderation work after staff ‘traumatised’

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Outsourcer Sama facing legal cases brought by Kenya-based employees alleging exposure to graphic content

The chief executive of a company contracted to moderate Facebook posts in east Africa has said she regretted taking on the work, after its staff said they were left traumatised by graphic content on the social media platform.

The US outsourcing firm Sama is facing a number of legal cases brought by Kenya-based employees, who alleged being exposed to graphic and traumatic content such as videos of beheadings, suicide and other material at a moderation hub.

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Canada publishers urge Ottawa to stop Meta from blocking users’ news access

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Dust-up began after law passed requiring social media companies to compensate news publishers for posting their content

A group of Canadian news publishers and broadcasters has called on the country’s competition regulator to stop Meta from blocking access to news as the federal government and technology companies clash over revenue and content sharing.

News Media Canada, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and CBC/Radio‐Canada warned on Tuesday that Meta’s decision to bar Canadians from viewing news on Facebook and Instagram amounted to “anticompetitive conduct” and violates a provision of a federal law.

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Moroccan man jailed for five years for criticising king in Facebook posts

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Court’s sentence over posts denouncing country’s ties with Israel is ‘harsh and incomprehensible’, says lawyer

A Moroccan internet user has been sentenced to five years’ jail for criticising the king on Facebook over the country’s normalisation of ties with Israel, his lawyer has said.

Said Boukioud, 48, was jailed on Monday for posts denouncing the normalisation “in a way that could be interpreted as criticism of the king”, lawyer El Hassan Essouni said on Wednesday, adding that he had appealed.

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Meta to ask EU users’ permission to show targeted advertising

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Facebook and Instagram’s parent company will stop harvesting audience data to create profiles for advertisers after regulatory rulings

Facebook and Instagram are to ask EU users for permission to show them personalised adverts, in a concession that challenges the platforms’ core money-making strategy.

The social media networks’ parent company, Meta, announced the change after a series of regulatory rulings struck down the company’s legal justification for harvesting audience data to create user profiles that can be targeted by advertisers.

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Meta to end news access in Canada over publisher payment law

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Move comes in response to Canadian legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers

Meta has begun the process to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada, the company said on Tuesday.

The move comes in response to legislation in the country requiring internet giants to pay news publishers.

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Changing Meta’s algorithms did not help US political polarization, study finds

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Study of Facebook and Instagram data from 2020 election shows chronological lists had no measurable impact on polarization

The powerful algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram have increasingly been blamed for amplifying misinformation and political polarization. But a series of groundbreaking studies published on Thursday suggest addressing these challenges will require more than just tweaking the platforms’ software.

The four research papers, published in Science and Nature also reveal the extent of political echo chambers on Facebook, where conservatives and liberals rely on divergent sources of information, interact with opposing groups and consume distinctly different amounts of misinformation.

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