Social media app, launched in the wake of Twitter chaos, recorded 576,000 active users in August, down 79% from 2.3 million in July
The daily usage of Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter, continues to slump after a strong start in its first weeks of existence.
Engagement with the social media app is down 79% from a high of 2.3m active users in early July to 576,000 as of 7 August, according to Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform.
Continue reading...X owner in talks with government over historic site for event – though Colosseum and Rome ruled out
Elon Musk is in talks with Italy’s government about hosting his proposed cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg at a historic site in the country, but the Colosseum has been ruled out as a venue.
The owner of X Corp and the chief executive of Facebook-owner Meta first raised the idea of a one-on-one scrap in a series of social media posts back in June. The challenge came as Zuckerberg prepared to launch Threads, a rival microblogging site to Musk’s now rebranded Twitter platform.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Twitter owner calls Facebook founder a ‘cuck’ as rancour grows over launch of Threads, a competitor to Musk’s network
Twitter owner Elon Musk has suggested he and Mark Zuckerberg should have “a literal dick-measuring contest” in the latest broadside aimed at his rival billionaire.
In a message inspired by the Meta chief executive’s launch last week of Threads, a Twitter competitor, Musk added a ruler emoji.
Continue reading...In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a lawyer for the Elon Musk-owned app said Meta had unlawfully misappropriated trade secrets
Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over its new Threads app, which Mark Zuckerberg has openly billed as a rival, claiming the company has violated Twitter’s “intellectual property rights”.
In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, first published by the news outlet Semafor, a lawyer for Twitter said the company “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.
Continue reading...Restructuring, as part of the company’s ‘Year of Efficiency’, also sees 5,000 unfulfilled job adverts closed without hiring
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is laying off another 10,000 people and instituting a further hiring freeze as part of the company’s “Year of Efficiency”, the chief executive announced in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
The restructuring, which also sees a further 5,000 unfilled job adverts closed without hiring, comes less than six months after the company announced another wave of 11,000 redundancies. At its peak in 2022, Meta had grown to 87,000 employees globally, with a substantial portion of that hiring occurring in the middle of the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...Mark Zuckerberg follows Elon Musk’s lead in introducing fee for blue ticks, as Twitter gets set to charge for 2FA via SMS
Facebook and Instagram users will soon need to pay to be verified on the social media platforms, as Meta follows in the footsteps of rival platform Twitter.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced in a Facebook post on Sunday that the service would first roll out in Australia and New Zealand later this week.
Continue reading...Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says tech company aims to ‘plan somewhat conservatively’ and will ‘further restructure’
Meta employees have been warned of potential layoffs after the Facebook parent company announced on Thursday it would freeze hiring and “further restructure”, Bloomberg News has reported.
In company communication with employees, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg cited the uncertain macroeconomic environment for the changes. The announcement comes after several tech companies have been forced to slash headcount in recent months, as advertisers trim spending in anticipation of a recession.
Continue reading...Meta’s president of global affairs said it would be a decision ‘I oversee’ after the ex-president’s accounts were suspended in 2021
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.
Speaking at an event held in Washington by news organization Semafor, Clegg said the company was seriously debating whether Trump’s accounts should be reinstated and said it was a decision that “I oversee and I drive”.
Continue reading...Dramatic move shows Mark Zuckerberg ‘desperate to avoid being questioned over cover-up’, says Observer journalist who exposed scandal
Facebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that mired the tech giant in repeated controversy.
A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has in principle settled for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the UK analysis firm.
Continue reading...The CEO has changed the world – but he faces regulatory, technological and branding troubles in his push to do it again
It would hardly be hyperbole to say that since its founding in 2004, Facebook has taken over the world – counting more than 50% of the global population as its user base. But after years of domination built on advertising revenue, the company has nearly overnight tried to knock down that empire and build anew.
In October 2021, more than 15 years and 2.8 billion users after the then student Mark Zuckerberg launched the social media platform from his college dorm, Facebook announced it had become “Meta” and was refocusing on the company’s virtual reality endeavors.
Continue reading...Facebook founder’s planned metaverse, blending reality with digital experiences, will require enormous computing power
Mark Zuckerberg has announced his social media empire is building what he claims is the world’s fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer as part of plans to build a virtual metaverse.
The Facebook founder said in a blogpost that the metaverse, a concept that blends the physical and digital world via virtual and augmented reality, will require “enormous” computing power. The AI supercomputer, dubbed AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) by Zuckerberg’s Meta business, is already the fifth fastest in the world, the company said.
Continue reading...Virgin and Amazon bosses do well in our awards for business brass neck, but there are also nods to big oil, big money – and a powerful whiff of Musk
Every Christmas, Observer Business Agenda casts its eye over the year that was, seeking to spotlight the business luminaries whose deeds might otherwise have gone unrecognised. At first glance 2021 looked awfully similar to 2020 – a pandemic, various lockdowns and a new wave of infections to round it all off – but it soon became clear that there were still candidates worthy of special recognition.
Continue reading...Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, also calls misuse of user data as unethical as child labour
A former adviser to Mark Zuckerberg has said democracy “may never recover” if Facebook does not change and has called for misuse of users’ data to be labelled as unethical as child labour.
Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook who has become a staunch critic of the business, said revelations from whistleblower Frances Haugen have created an opportunity for change at Zuckerberg’s social media empire.
Continue reading...The explosive documents from Frances Haugen have renewed calls for legislation, but actually passing it is another story
It’s been a rocky few weeks for the company formerly known as Facebook.
First came the Facebook papers, a series of blockbuster reports in the Wall Street Journal based on a cache of internal documents leaked by Frances Haugen, a former employee turned whistleblower.
Continue reading...The rebrand comes as the company faces a series of public relations crises
The announcement by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the social media giant will change the name of its holding company to Meta in a virtual-reality rebrand has prompted dismay and bemusement.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg said Meta would encompass Facebook as well as apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp and the virtual reality brand Oculus.
Continue reading...Ex-employee tells UK MPs Mark Zuckerberg ‘has unilateral control over 3bn people’ due to his position
Mark Zuckerberg “has unilateral control over 3 billion people” due to his unassailable position at the top of Facebook, the whistleblower Frances Haugen told MPs as she called for urgent external regulation to rein in the tech company’s management and reduce the harm being done to society.
Haugen, a former Facebook employee who released tens of thousands of damaging documents about its inner workings, travelled to London from the US for a parliamentary hearing and gave qualified backing to UK government proposals to regulate social media platforms and make them take some responsibility for content on their sites.
Continue reading...Whistleblower and critic of Mark Zuckerberg will give evidence to MPs scrutinising online safety bill
The Facebook whistleblower is to give evidence to MPs and peers scrutinising the online safety bill, amid calls for a toughening up of the landmark legislation.
Frances Haugen has triggered a deep crisis at Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire after she released tens of thousands of internal documents detailing the company’s failure to keep its users safe from harmful content. On Monday Haugen, 37, will testify in person at the joint committee scrutinising the draft online safety bill, a piece of legislation that places a duty of care on social media companies to protect users – with the threat of substantial fines if they fail to do so.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
Continue reading...Can the social media giant rebrand itself without alienating users? Here are five suggestions
Facebook’s proposed rebrand comes at a crucial time for the company. On one hand, Mark Zuckerberg’s increasing focus on the “metaverse” seems to hint that he has ambitions far beyond simply destroying every non-Facebook industry on the planet. But at the same time, he also has to unveil this new unstoppable machine of death without scaring off too many regular Facebook users. How will he be able to manage such an impossible highwire act? Here are some suggestions.
Continue reading...Rebrand could position tech giant’s social media app as one of many products under a parent company which oversees the likes of Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus
Social media giant Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name next week, the Verge reported on Tuesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about the name change at the company’s annual Connect conference on 28 October, but it could be unveiled sooner, the Verge report said.
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