Facebook announces changing parent company name to ‘Meta’

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to keep names under rebranding

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday announced the parent company's name is being changed to "Meta" to represent a future beyond just its troubled social network.

The new handle comes as the social media giant tries to fend off one its worst crises yet and pivot to its ambitions for the "metaverse" virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future.

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will keep their names under the rebranding.

"We've learned a lot from struggling with social issues and living under closed platforms, and now it is time to take everything that we've learned and help build the next chapter," Zuckerberg said during an annual developers conference.

"I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. Our mission remains the same, still about bringing people together, our apps and their brands, they're not changing," he added.

Facebook critics pounced last week on a report that leaked the rebranding plans, arguing the company was aiming to distract from recent scandals and controversy.

An activist group calling itself The Real Facebook Oversight Board has warned that major industries like oil and tobacco had rebranded to "deflect attention" from their problems.

"Facebook thinks that a rebrand can help them change the subject," the group said last week, adding the "real issue" was the need for oversight and regulation.

Facebook has just announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the "metaverse," with Zuckerberg emerging as a leading promoter of the concept.

- Crisis mode -

The social media giant has been battling a fresh crisis since former employee Frances Haugen leaked reams of internal studies showing executives knew of their sites' potential for harm, prompting a renewed US push for regulation.

Facebook has been hit by major crises previously, but the current view behind the curtain of the insular company has fueled a frenzy of scathing reports and scrutiny from US regulators.

"Good faith criticism helps us get better, but my view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company," Zuckerberg said in an earnings call on Monday.

The Washington Post last month suggested that Facebook's interest in the metaverse is "part of a broader push to rehabilitate the company's reputation with policymakers and reposition Facebook to shape the regulation of next-wave Internet technologies."

Google rebranded itself as Alphabet in a corporate reconfiguration in 2015, but the online search and ad powerhouse remains its defining unit despite other operations such as Waymo self-driving cars and Verily life sciences.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook removes 'inauthentic' networks spanning 8 nations

SINGAPORE - Facebook on Friday said it has dismantled seven separate networks of fake accounts and pages on its platform that were active in Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Myanmar, Georgia, and Ukraine due to "coordinated inauthentic behavior".

The social media platform announced it had taken down the new networks as part of its monthly report into "coordinated inauthentic behavior", which also noted Facebook had removed nearly 8,000 pages involved in deceptive campaigns around the world in October.

Many of the networks taken down by Facebook were involved in deceptive political influence campaigns using fake accounts, targeting audiences both domestically and abroad.

One network of Facebook accounts and pages was operated from Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco by individuals connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamist movement that operates networks of groups across the Middle East. 

The pages targeted countries across the region and included some terrorism-related content, Facebook said.

Facebook found 2 "inauthentic" networks in Georgia spreading political content, one of which the platform traced to individuals associated with 2 political parties.

In Ukraine and Myanmar, the social media giant found that public relations firms were running similar deceptive campaigns on behalf of political parties.

The company has been cracking down on such accounts globally after coming under fire for not developing tools quickly enough to combat extremist content and propaganda operations. 

In September, Facebook took down 57 accounts in the Philippines that have been allegedly manipulating campaigns on the platform. Most of the accounts were linked to the Philippine military and Philippine police.

-reuters-

Facebook unveils new VR headset 'Oculus Quest' for $399

Facebook Inc unveiled its new wireless virtual reality headset at a conference on Wednesday and said it plans to start shipping it in spring next year.

Oculus Quest, which comes with touch controllers and does not need a PC to operate, will be priced at $399, according to the company. 

The company also plans to launch more than 50 games for the new headset.

Facebook has invested heavily in VR hardware in hopes the technology, which offers a 360-degree panoramic view of faraway or imaginary spaces, will move from a niche interest to a widely used platform for gaming, communication and business applications.

The social media giant, which bought Oculus in 2014 for $3 billion, had released the Oculus Go VR headset earlier in May, and had priced it at $199. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Data scandal threatens Zuckerberg vision for Facebook

WASHINGTON - First it was "move fast and break things." Then it was "connecting the world" and "building a global community."

Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious vision for Facebook spawned one of the world's most powerful companies, but he now faces a moment of reckoning as it becomes clear the social network has been hijacked and manipulated for very different ends.

Snowballing revelations on the misuse of the Facebook platform to spread disinformation, and to harvest personal data in ways users had never imagined, risks undermining the very business model underpinning the social media giant.

Zuckerberg took an idea hatched in his Harvard dormitory and created a network connecting more than 2 billion people, crushing competing social networks while imagining new ways to connect friends to each other -- and for marketers to reach users.

The rise of social media fueled a wave of optimism about empowering ordinary people, notably following the Arab Spring uprisings starting in 2010.

"I had the feeling in 2011 that digital technologies were inherently democratic and would fuel democratic revolutions around the globe," said Dannagal Young, a University of Delaware professor who studies social media.

Young said these networks did indeed help propel the Arab Spring, as well as social movements like Black Lives Matter or #MeToo -- but that the public had failed to grasp their darker side.

"People use these platforms and do not understand the economic model," Young said.

"They don't understand what is being commodified, as is everything they do and everything they share."

ELIMINATING GATEKEEPERS

While social networks appear to empower individuals by doing away with "gatekeepers" -- such as the traditional mass media, or political authorities -- the selling of user data can have the opposite effect.

"If the business model is predicated on selling user data, it can seem as democratic as you want but it's serving a surveillance function that undermines democratic values," Young said.

Facebook's reputation has been tarnished ever since 2016, following disclosures of Russian-led efforts to influence the US election -- notably by spreading "fake news" and other forms of disinformation on social media.

But things got markedly worse following weekend revelations that data on 50 million users was culled by a British-based political firm working on Donald Trump's presidential campaign, prompting calls for investigations on both sides of the Atlantic.

Zuckerberg, who began touring the United States after the presidential election, sparking speculation he might run for top office, last year offered his vision of a "global community" as more people become disillusioned with troubled political institutions.

"The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do," the 33-year-old wrote.

But first of all, Zuckerberg will need to focus on the more immediate mission he set himself earlier this year: to "fix" his embattled social network.

'POLLUTED BY BAD ACTORS'

Roger Kay, a technology analyst and consultant for Endpoint Technologies Associates, noted that Facebook is just one of many online firms that make use of detailed digital records on its users' activities, which can rarely be expunged.

"Facebook adds to this, but it's not the cause of the problem," Kay said. "The problem is your long-term digital footprint."

Young, of the University of Delaware, voiced optimism that users can regain better control over their Facebook data -- as more people learn about online privacy and how to determine what is shared about them.

"We as users have a lot more control than we think," she said.

"If enough users go in and change their settings Facebook will be forced to respond. I do think there is a fix but it requires a whole lot of learning."

Then comes the issue of disinformation -- which Facebook has been under mounting pressure to combat.

Emily Vraga, a George Mason University professor of communication, said Facebook has taken positive steps in ferreting out false information in recent months.

"But I would like to see even more of that," she said.

One way, she said, would be making Facebook's algorithm available.

"I do think the public should be more aware" of how the network operates, she said.

For Young, both Facebook and Zuckerberg appear to have assumed that "when you crowdsource things the truth will come out" -- a belief that appears naive in light of the "fake news" phenomenon.

"It could be that 98 percent of people on Facebook do it in good faith," she said, but "it doesn't take a lot to undermine that system."

Kay also voiced doubt over Facebook's ultimate ability to eliminate all malicious content without examining every item on its platform -- an impossible task.

"They can't curate something with two billion users, there aren't enough editors out there," he said. "And if they held up the content, the users would go away."

He also notes that Facebook is not the first digital firm to be manipulated in such a way.

"Social networks have come and gone," Kay said. "They are first seen as an amazing way to connect people and then they become polluted by bad actors."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook: 'Security bug' caused lock-outs

A "security bug" caused Facebook to lock the accounts of hundreds of Filipinos, the social media giant said Monday.

A Facebook spokesperson, in an emailed statement to news.abs-cbn.com, said the company has built "numerous defenses to combat phishing and malware, including complex automated systems that work behind the scenes to detect and flag Facebook accounts that are likely to be compromised."

The same automated systems prompted Facebook "to ask a set of people to secure their accounts."

"This was due to a bug in the system and the precautionary step was not needed in this case, so we have removed the messages and the impacted people should now be able to access their accounts normally," the spokesperson said. "We apologise for any inconvenience we caused."

Over the past week, reports of Filipino Facebook users getting locked out of their accounts surfaced, alarming some that it may be the work of a secret group of hackers.

Leonard Postrado, a 29-year-old BPO content writer, said he was chatting with friends on Facebook earlier this week when he was suddenly kicked out of the social networking site.

"When I entered the password, ayaw pumasok sa account ko. I did it four times until Facebook notified me na may phishing attack sa FB ko at pinapabago ako ng password. I don't know what that means kasi di ako techie until ginoogle ko and nakalagay nga collecting data," he said.

(When I entered the password, I still couldn't get to my account. I did it four times until Facebook notified me that there was a phishing attack on my account and said I should change my password. I didn't know what that meant because I'm not techie so I googled it and found out it meant collecting data.)

A similar incident happened to 36-year-old government employee Kim Quilinguing, who said he was writing a status update when he was logged out of his account due to "suspicious activity."

"My feeling is that someone tried to access my account by claiming to have forgotten my password. And then instead of being provided a new password to a false email account, Facebook alerted me by logging me off and making me review my activities," he told ABS-CBN.

It prompted netizens to think that a self-confessed pro-Duterte group had something to do with it.

The group posted on Facebook a call for the surveillance of people who are supposedly trying to influence young people into believing anti-Marcos rhetoric.

Since then, students from the Ateneo de Manila University, which was one of the first schools to protest the Marcos burial, have had their accounts "compromised."

User Jan-Daniel Belmonte, whose account was also compromised, has found more than 200 other victims, most of whom are students from Ateneo and the University of the Philippines.

 The verified personal Facebook account of veteran journalist Inday Espina-Varona was also disabled by Facebook on Monday, without any explanation, for several hours.

 Her account was restored, as of 11:30 p.m. Monday night.

 Elizabeth Hernandez, Facebook's head of public policy in the Asia Pacific, told Espina-Varona in an email that her verified account "was incorrectly enrolled in a fake name checkpoint."

"Your account has been cleared from this checkpoint," Hernandez said.

Following reports of Filipino Facebook users getting locked out of their accounts, the social networking site also gave some tips on how to secure them.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook rolls out Workplace for businesses

Social media giant Facebook is taking social media to a more professional level with the global introduction of a beta-version of its Workplace service.

The new Workplace serves as an all-in-one communications platform for companies of any size.

It incorporates most of the current functions of Facebook, such as news feed, group share and chat, along with unique business-related functions such as Facebook Live video, group video, live reactions, search and trending posts.

Facebook Workplace is a reworked Facebook at Work that the company tested for more than a year with several companies.

The company has been looking to target companies of different sizes, from small-to-medium scale enterprises to multinationals.

One departure from the traditional interface for Facebook Workplace is the use of gray color scheme, instead of the more familiar blue Facebook background.

And unlike the regular Facebook that hundreds of millions of people know, Facebook Workplace would come at a cost and is also uniquely priced: US$3 per person a month for the first 1,000 users; US$2 per person a month for 1,001 to 10,000 monthly users; and US$1 per person a month for 10,000 or more users.

Workplace would be free to non-profit organizations and educational institutions.

Facebook is one of the largest social media service in the Philippines with more than 54 million monthly active users. It has also become one of the more popular platforms for free, albeit basic, business-to-business and business-to-consumer services.

The company has also launched a buy and sell service called Marketplace though it is not yet available in the Philippines.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Facebook's stock price dives, and California could take hit

Facebook's stock has nosedived since the social media giant debuted on Wall Street earlier this month, and that's bad news for California's budget.

Gov. Jerry Brown was counting on about $1.5 billion in income taxes related to the company's IPO to help patch the state's swelling $15.7-billion deficit. But if the stock price remains low, a haul that big becomes unlikely.

The Brown administration pegged the stock at $35 per share -- lower than its $38 starting point but significantly higher than the $28.19 per share at the close of trading on Wednesday.

Jason Sisney at the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, which provides budget advice to lawmakers, said tax revenue from Facebook "could be hundreds of millions of dollars less than has been projected."

Of course, that assumes the stock price stays at its current level. And even if it does, Sisney said, there are other ways for the state to make up the difference. For example, the sale of Facebook stock would increase a California resident's tax bill.

The bigger question for the state budget, Sisney said, is how the overall stock market performs. That could sway tax revenue by billions, not millions.

H.D. Palmer, spokesman for Brown's Department of Finance, said the administration does not plan to redo its revenue forecast based on the lower Facebook share price.

He pointed out that the administration's $1.5 billion estimate did not include Brown's plan for higher taxes, which the governor hopes voters approve in November. If Brown's proposal passes, the state would reap more tax revenue from the Facebook IPO.

Asked if the administration is worried about the stock price, Palmer replied by email: "We’ve kept an eye on it –- but at the same time realizing that a) it’s only been trading for less than two weeks, and b) stock prices will fluctuate -- both down as well as up relative to an opening price."

source: latimes.com