Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[wjfox]

The Facebook Papers may be the biggest crisis in the company's history

Updated 1157 GMT (1957 HKT) October 25, 2021

New York (CNN Business) - Facebook has confronted whistleblowers, PR firestorms and Congressional inquiries in recent years. But now it faces a combination of all three at once in what could be the most intense and wide-ranging crisis in the company's 17-year history.

On Friday, a consortium of 17 US news organizations began publishing a series of stories — collectively called "The Facebook Papers" — based on a trove of hundreds of internal company documents which were included in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's legal counsel. The consortium, which includes CNN, reviewed the redacted versions received by Congress.

CNN's coverage includes stories about how coordinated groups on Facebook (FB) sow discord and violence, including on January 6, as well as Facebook's challenges moderating content in some non-English-speaking countries, and how human traffickers have used its platforms to exploit people.

The reports from CNN, and the other outlets that are part of the consortium, follow a month of intense scrutiny for the company. The Wall Street Journal previously published a series of stories based on tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents leaked by Haugen. (The consortium's work is based on many of the same documents.)

The publication of the Journal's "Facebook Files," which raised concerns about the impact of Instagram on teen girls, among other issues, prompted a Senate subcomittee hearing with Facebook head of global safety Antigone Davis. Haugen herself then testified before the Senate subcommittee, during which she said she believes that "Facebook's products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy."

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/tech ... index.html

[wjfox]

Facebook just revealed its new name: Meta

The company announced the rebranding during Facebook Connect

By Kim Lyons
Oct 28, 2021, 2:19pm EDT

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at the company’s Connect event that the company’s new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”

“To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added. He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does now, and is still closely linked to one product. “But over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company.”

As The Verge first reported on October 19th, the rebrand is part of the company’s efforts to shift gears away from being known as just a social media company to focus on Zuckerberg’s plans for building the metaverse. In July, he told The Verge that over the next several years, Facebook would “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/28/227 ... rg-rebrand

[wjfox]

Zuckerberg’s Meta Endgame Is Monetizing All Human Behavior

Exploiting data to manipulate human behavior has always been Facebook’s business model. The metaverse will be no different.

1.11.21

When Facebook bought Oculus and its much-hyped Rift headset for $2 billion way back in 2014, it wasn’t clear exactly what the social media company had in mind for the resurgent frontier of virtual reality. But to anyone familiar with the company’s countless scandals and insatiable appetite for personal data, it wasn’t hard to guess.

The announcement of Meta, the company’s VR and AR-forward rebrand, is the culmination of a vision that should have been obvious from the start. In 2021, Facebook’s colonization of social data has eclipsed the internet as we know it, and its ambitions now demand the creation of a new reality where intimate data about our social and physical behaviors can be captured and exploited for profit.

During a tech demo in 2016, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described VR as “the next major computing platform”—a space where all our social interactions will play out with new levels of physical presence thanks to headsets and motion-controllers. As I wrote at the time, this could only mean one thing: Zuckerberg wants to build virtual environments where all human behavior can be recorded, predicted, and monetized.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88g9vv/ ... n-behavior

[wjfox]

CNN Poll: Three out of four adults think Facebook is making society worse

Updated 1147 GMT (1947 HKT) November 10, 2021

Roughly three-quarters of adults believe Facebook is making American society worse, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with about half saying they know somebody who was persuaded to believe in a conspiracy theory because of the site's content.

Americans say, 76% to 11%, that Facebook makes society worse, not better, according to the survey. Another 13% say it has no effect either way. That broadly negative appraisal holds across gender, age and racial lines. Even frequent Facebook users -- those who report using the site at least several times a week -- say 70% to 14% that the social network harms, rather than helps, US society. Although majorities across parties say Facebook is doing more harm than good, that feeling spikes among Republicans (82%).

Among the majority overall who think Facebook is worsening society, however, there's less of an overwhelming consensus on whether or not the platform itself is primarily to blame: 55% say that the way some people use Facebook is more at fault, with 45% saying it's more due to the way Facebook itself is run.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/10/busi ... index.html

[caltrek]

By Khalil Bendib | November 17, 2021/ In Other Words

[wjfox]

Reposting funkervogt's mChat post:

[wjfox]

Jack Dorsey just resigned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59465747

[weatheriscool]

Jack Dorsey just resigned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59465747

Great news!!!

[wjfox]

US creditors can now DM debtors on social media

1 day ago

Debt collectors are now allowed to contact Americans on social media and by text message, according to new rules enacted by a US agency this week.

The rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) opens the door for creditors to slide into the DMs of millions of Americans who have loans.

Critics say the messages could be lost online or lead to invasions of privacy and a proliferation of new scams.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59514464

[caltrek]

Twitter’s New Privacy Policy Could Clash With Journalism
by Mathew Ingram
December 2, 2021

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/twi ... nalism.php

Introduction:

(Columbia Journalism Review) On Tuesday, Twitter said it is expanding its privacy policy to include what the company calls “private media.”* Its current privacy policy prevents users of the service from sharing other people’s private information, such as phone numbers, addresses, and other personal details that might make someone identifiable against their will; under this policy, users who have shared such data have had their accounts blocked or restricted in a variety of ways. The new addition to the policy forbids “the misuse of media… that is not available elsewhere online as a tool to harass, intimidate, and reveal the identities of individuals.” Twitter said it is concerned because personal imagery can violate privacy and lead to emotional or physical harm, and this can “have a disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents and members of minority communities.”

Twitter’s blog post describing the new policy goes on to say that the ban applies to any imagery—photo or video—regardless of whether it includes actual abusive content. The important criteria, the company says, is that the content is posted “without the consent of the person depicted.” The only exceptions to this rule are if the person in question is “a public figure,” or if the relevant imagery is shared “in the public interest, or adds value to public discourse.” How the company will determine whether or not the content is in the public interest is unknown. How it defines the term “public figure” is also unclear, which suggests that the new policy may re-ignite the debate that Twitter’s “newsworthiness” standard sparked when it was used to justify keeping abusive tweets by former president Donald Trump.

Even the “public figure” exception is not absolute. If Twitter determines the person in question is a public figure, it may still remove images or videos if it believes the content was shared in order to “harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence them”—though, once again, how Twitter will determine whether the images were posted in order to harass, intimidate, or silence an individual is unclear.

*https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c ... icy-update


Twitter’s New Privacy Policy Is Making It Harder to Spread Warnings About Online Fascists
by Ali Breland
December 3, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... cy-policy/

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) On Tuesday, Twitter rolled out an update to its privacy policy that bans people from posting certain “images or videos of private individuals without their consent.” Many journalists and researchers immediately lambasted the new so-called “private information policy,” including activists who use the platform to spread documentation of far-right movements and their supporters.

“This is absolutely intended to make it more difficult to show our work when calling out identified fascists, and it’s an invitation for Nazis to go back through antifascist accounts and retroactively report shit to get us banned,” tweeted independent extremism researcher Gwen Snyder.

Within days, those concerns were vindicated. By Thursday morning, Snyder had been locked out of her own Twitter account, and met with a prompt asking her to delete, as she wrote in a Tweet explaining the lockout, a “May 2019 thread documenting a public Proud Boys rally attended by the GOP Philly mayoral candidate & Capitol riot defendant Zach Rehl,” if she wanted to regain access.

Chad Loder, another independent extremism researcher and activist, has identified about a dozen similar Twitter users, including himself, who have been locked out of their accounts under the new policy. Loder has compiled records of posts that triggered the suspensions—they include tweets that capture right-wing extremists planning an assault, contain footage of public rallies, and document Alex Jones’s political contributions, among other things.

When I asked Twitter about Snyder’s ban, they soon responded to say that her tweet was not actually a violation of its rules and that forcing her to delete it was an error. But as Snyder warned, and her experience seemingly demonstrates, the far-right has already taken advantage of Twitter’s new policy to target people who are keeping an eye on them

[wjfox]

Instagram announces changes ahead of political grilling

Published

21 minutes ago

Instagram has announced new features it says will help teenagers and parents manage time spent on the app.

Parents will be able to see how much time their children spend on Instagram and set time limits, while teens will get reminders to take a break.

It comes a day before Instagram chief Adam Mosseri is due to appear before US Senators investigating online safety.

Instagram has been under increasing pressure over teens' use of the platform in recent months.

Its internal research suggesting that teens blamed Instagram for increased anxiety was the first in a series of revelations in France Haugen's leaked documents from inside Facebook.

The US Senate Committee is expected to quiz Mr Mosseri on Instagram's internal information on child safety and its plans - as well as what the committee calls "potential legislative solutions".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59565631

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

What if Media Covered the War on Democracy Like an Actual War?
by Monika Bauerlein
December 13, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2021/ ... acy-media/

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) We’re heading into the slow news days of December—that blissful winter week when journalists break out the evergreen stories of puppies and kittens (or, at Mother Jones, What Would Happen if We Really Went to War Against Christmas) as the daily headlines fade. And hoo boy, can we all use the break.

This was supposed to be the year when things went back to a little more normal, and yet the anxiety-inducing news is nonstop: Inflation! Omicron! Shutdown! Weather disaster! Midterm polls! It’s easy to conclude that the world has gone mad, but historians would remind us that the world has always been mad—we just didn’t have 24/7 coverage of it. And the reason the volume—in the sense of both quantity and loudness—keeps going up is that two contradictory things about media are true at the same time.

One, there is less actual journalism being created: In the last decade-plus, some 30,000 news jobs have been lost in this country and the pandemic eliminated 6,000 more last year. And two, there is more news coming at us all the time, on more platforms and in more formats, because more content and (often) more outrage is still the path to more eyeballs and revenue.

Further Extract:

For decades now, the default mode for political reporting in America has been sports coverage: which team is winning, which is losing, what the star players are up to, which tactics the coaches are pursuing, all within a framework of rules that everyone knows and mostly respects. It’s no coincidence that the dominant polling news site grew out of fantasy baseball.

That model, rooted in the need to maximize revenue and minimize offense to audiences or advertisers, has always been problematic. But its most dangerous blind spot is this: Play-by-play coverage means we don’t see what happens outside of the game. Say, if someone is setting the arena on fire.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Facebook/Meta is the worst company of the year, Yahoo Finance audience survey finds

Thu, December 16, 2021, 4:53 PM

Every December, Yahoo Finance selects a Company of the Year, based on its market performance and its achievements that particular year. In 2021, Microsoft (MSFT) took home the crown, smashing through the $2 trillion market capitalization mark and seeing a 53% surge in its stock price as of Dec. 16, year-to-date.

However, the spirit of Festivus has taught us we can learn just as much from the bad as the good by airing our grievances. That’s why Yahoo Finance also selects a Worst Company of the Year, polling our audience as to which company upset them the most.

Our survey’s 1,541 respondents were mad about a lot this year, from the Robinhood (HOOD) trading freezes last winter to electric truck startup Nikola still not having its act together. But one company irked them the most — Facebook (FB). The survey’s results shed more light on why the company decided to rebrand this year to a new name: Meta Platforms.

The open-ended survey was posted on Yahoo Finance on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5, and dozens of names were submitted. Facebook received 8% of the write-in vote.

Facebook has had its share of controversies this year. It’s been under the antitrust microscope and faced a flurry of allegations from a whistleblower claiming Facebook ignored safety issues for the sake of growth. Congress is constantly demanding answers from the company on both fronts. At the same time, some critics, including conservatives, say Facebook over-policed the platform’s speech and stifled their voices. Other critics, including those on the left side of the aisle, claim Facebook allows the spread of misinformation.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-fac ... 45819.html

[Lurking]

Twitter is next

[caltrek]

Could Supernova be an 'Ethical Alternative' to Social Media Giants?
by Mike Butcher
December 20, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/20/could ... ia-giants/

Introdcution:

(TechCrunch) Supernova* is a new app that has now gone live on the Apple and Android app stores billing itself as a new “ethical alternative” to Instagram and Facebook, where most of the ad revenues go to charities. Does it have a chance?

It would be fair to say that after many years of either watching Facebook become a panopticon-like prison which jauntily suggests you join private groups to topple the US government or doom-scrolling through Instagram, where you and your teens’ mental health is slowly eroded, many people would be quite happy with an alternative social media platform with – please God – higher-minded principles. A few of these have come and gone over the years (RIP Path) but none have managed to wrestle the masses away from Zuckerberg’s vice-like grip.

Perhaps what people have forgotten is that the only reason Facebook (and by extension, Instagram) are as big as they are is that their advertising revenues prop up these free services. If advertisers had somewhere else to go that could capture the social media crowd with a compelling enough app, Facebook and Insta would start to feel some heat. At least, that’s how the theory goes.

Now, a British entrepreneur, who knows the ad industry inside-out, plans to take on these giants with a solution of his own, designed to appeal to Millenials and Gen Z-ers who are generally led by a desire to support good causes far more than previous generations.

*https://go-supernova.com/

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[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

China Appears to Have Blocked the Global Steam Store

By Ryan Whitwam on December 28, 2021 at 11:12 am
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/3300 ... team-store

500151-steam-logo

Valve’s Steam storefront has been nominally available in China for years, but the company launched a China-specific store earlier this year. Now, the other shoe has dropped. Chinese authorities appear to have blocked the global Steam domain, leaving affected gamers with only the much smaller (and government-approved) Steam China domain.

The Chinese government has been slow to accept video games as a legitimate form of media. It didn’t even allow game consoles in the country from 2000 until 2015, and restrictions have been ramping up even on mobile games. For example, China has instituted limits on how long children are allowed to play games, and a few publishers have even implemented creepy features in their games to enforce the restrictions. China is also strengthening its restrictions. As of earlier this year, gaming companies can only let those under 18 play online for one hour per day, from 8 to 9 PM on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays.