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

TikTok Sounds used to spread COVID vaccine misinformation - think tank

A TikTok feature that allows users to add another person's audio to their videos is being used to promote misleading and harmful content about COVID-19 vaccines, a think tank said in a new report.

The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyzed 124 videos that used speech from four original TikTok videos, including two that were removed by the company for breaking its COVID misinformation rules, to push misinformation and stoke fears about vaccine side-effects. The 124 videos had more than 20 million views.

"There's a part of the content which is still able to travel," said Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst at the counter-extremism think tank. He likened the spread of misinformation though TikTok's "Sounds" feature to WhatsApp audio messages that proliferated during the pandemic.

Viral trends where users create their own videos by riffing off the same music or speech clip are a central part of TikTok. The popular social video platform, which saw explosive growth during the pandemic, said it reviews the audio of rule-breaking videos and may prevent these being used as Sounds by other users. It said these cases were caused by human content moderation errors. It also said Sounds can be reported on the app.

Audio from one video of a user implying the COVID vaccine's fast development made it unsafe and making misleading comparisons to other illnesses has been used in more than 4,500 videos, ISD found.

TikTok said it had previously limited the distribution of videos using this Sound, rather than remove it completely, as it was only deemed to be potentially misleading. Even so, the top 25 videos on the TikTok page for this Sound have been viewed a total of 16.7 million times.

ISD found many of the videos used the Sound to signal support for the statement. TikTok said it took down some of the videos using the Sound and made the Sound more difficult to find in searches after reviewing the report's findings. It removed the three other Sounds identified in the report.

"We strive to promote an authentic TikTok experience by limiting the spread of misleading content, including audio, and promoting authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines across our app," a TikTok spokesperson said.

ISD found the app had added labels directing to authoritative COVID information on only two of the 124 videos. The company said this was because labels were only added on videos with specific hashtags.

TikTok last week announced changes to its content-moderation systems for certain content, moving to fully automated reviewing systems for categories like nudity and violent or graphic material. (Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; Editing by Stephen Coates)

-reuters-

Snapchat claims 500 million monthly active users

Snapchat, the social network popular with young smartphone users, said Thursday it has 500 million monthly active users amid surging growth in many parts of the world.

The platform, which has expanded its offerings beyond its original disappearing messages, had not previously announced a figure for monthly active users, but had said last month it had 280 million daily active users.

"We now reach over 500 million monthly active users, and nearly one of every two smartphone users in the United States is on Snapchat," chief executive Evan Spiegel said in opening parent firm Snap's partner summit.

"In the US, France, UK, Australia, and the Netherlands, Snapchat is becoming an indispensable part of people's lives, reaching 90 percent of 13- to 24-year-olds, and 75 percent of 13- to 34-year-olds."

Spiegel said Snapchat has seen sizzling growth over the past year with many consumers locked down due to the coronavirus pandemic, with a doubling of daily active users in India over the past five quarters.

"Our community outside of North America and Europe is growing rapidly," he said.

"In fact, roughly 40 percent of our community is now located outside of North America and Europe."

Known for its disappearing messages, Snapchat has expanded partnerships with a range of media companies including games, news, entertainment and sports snippets.

It is also known for its augmented reality features allowing users to share their own content and shop while virtually trying on items.

The company on Thursday unveiled a number of new partnerships including with the dating app Bumble, allowing users to share their content with Snapchat augmented reality technology.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook, Spotify team up to allow in-app music listening

Facebook is expanding its partnership with Spotify to create a mechanism for listening to full songs within the social network, which recently has been turning its attention to audio offerings.

Starting Monday in 27 markets including the United States, paying Spotify subscribers will be able to listen to audio content -- including full music tracks and podcasts -- on Facebook, using a miniplayer to allow continued scrolling within the networking app.

Facebook called the move a "natural next step" in its relationship with Spotify. In 2019 the companies made a deal to allow short music clips from Spotify to be posted on Facebook Stories.

The announcement came a week after Facebook said it was adding podcasts and "live audio rooms" as it faces competition from the fast-growing audio-based app Clubhouse.

More than 170 million people are connected to Facebook pages centered on podcasts, and some 35 million users are members of podcast fan groups, but before now listening to one required leaving the social network.

Facebook also planned to begin testing Live Audio Rooms and expects the feature to be available to all users by the middle of this year.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook rolls out news feeds with less politics

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Facebook said Wednesday it began rolling out news feeds with less political subject matter in line with a plan outlined by chief Mark Zuckerberg to reduce inflammatory content.

The leading social network said it would begin testing the change "for a small percentage of people" in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia this week, and the United States in the coming weeks. 

"During these initial tests we'll explore a variety of ways to rank political content in people's feeds using different signals, and then decide on the approaches we'll use going forward," product management director Aastha Gupta said.

The change won't affect information about the Covid-19 pandemic and content from global health organizations or from official government agencies.

"As Mark Zuckerberg mentioned on our recent earnings call, one common piece of feedback we hear is that people don't want political content to take over their News Feed," Gupta said.

"Over the next few months, we'll work to better understand peoples' varied preferences for political content and test a number of approaches based on those insights."

and manipulation, notably during election periods.

Zuckerberg said last month Facebook is seeking to "turn down the temperature" on its sprawling platform by reducing the kind of divisive and inflammatory political talk it has long hosted.

He said the social media giant will no longer recommend politics-themed groups to users and was working on ways to reduce the amount of political content served up in users' news feeds by its automated systems.

"We're still going to enable people to engage in political groups and discussions if they want to," Zuckerberg said last month.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook out to loosen Apple's grip on App Store: report

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Facebook is readying a lawsuit aimed at loosening Apple's grip on the App Store that serves as an exclusive gateway onto iPhones, a tech news outlet reported on Thursday.

The leading social network is preparing an anti-trust civil suit accusing Apple of abusing its control of the App Store by requiring outside developers to abide by rules not applied to its own software, The Information reported.

"As we have said repeatedly, we believe Apple is behaving anti-competitively by using their control of the App Store to benefit their bottom line at the expense of app developers and small businesses," Facebook told AFP, declining to confirm or deny the report.

Apple did not reply to a request for comment.

The dispute between the tech giants centers on changes in the latest version of Apple's iOS operating software, which include a tracking transparency feature that Facebook claims will cripple its ability to serve up targeted ads.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during a conference call with investors on Wednesday that Apple was becoming one of his company's biggest competitors.

"Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own," Zuckerberg said.

"Apple may say that they're doing this to help people but the moves clearly track their competitive interests."

Facebook is not alone among those complaining about how Apple rules the App Store, where it collects 30 percent of sales or subscription fees third-party offerings.

Some developers say Apple takes too big a bite of the revenue and maintains rigid policies that may hamstring services competing with those of the iPhone maker. Fortnite-maker Epic Games has taken Apple to court over the practice.

Apple has argued its App Store delivers billions to independent developers, and that its practices are reasonable compared with other digital marketplaces.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook suspends 'tens of thousands' of apps in privacy review

SAN FRANCISCO, United States—Facebook said Friday it suspended "tens of thousands" of apps on its platform as a result of a privacy practices review launched following a scandal involving Cambridge Analytica.

The review started in 2018 after revelations that the political consultancy hijacked personal data on millions of Facebook users, and it included attorneys, external investigators, data scientists, engineers, policy specialists and others, according to a Facebook statement.

The suspensions are "not necessarily an indication that these apps were posing a threat to people," said vice president of partnerships Ime Archibong, adding that some developers "did not respond to our request for information."

Archibong said the investigation "has addressed millions of apps. Of those, tens of thousands have been suspended for a variety of reasons while we continue to investigate."

The suspected apps were associated with about 400 developers, and many of the software programs were still in testing phases, according to Facebook.

The huge social network became the subject of intense scrutiny after acknowledging in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica misappropriated personal data on tens of millions of Facebook users as part of its work for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Subsequently, Facebook said it would review all apps on the platform to determine how they used data and if they respect its privacy rules.

"In a few cases, we have banned apps completely," Archibong said.

Bans can be caused by violations including inappropriately sharing data obtained from Facebook or making data publicly available without protecting people's identities, according to the social network.

APP CRACKDOWN

"One app banned was called myPersonality, which shared information with researchers and companies with only limited protections in place, and then refused our request to participate in an audit," Archibong said.

A year ago, Facebook said it had banned some 400 apps including one called myPersonality, which according to Archibong "shared information with researchers and companies with only limited protections in place," and refused to accept an audit.

Facebook said a recent agreement on privacy with the US Federal Trade Commission, which included a record $5 billion fine, calls for additional oversight on app developers.

It "requires developers to annually certify compliance with our policies," Archibong said. "Any developer that doesn't go along with these requirements will be held accountable."

Facebook earlier this year filed a lawsuit against South Korean data analytics firm Rankwave in California to make sure it isn't breaking the leading social network's rules.

REVAMPING CONTROLS

Along with slapping Facebook with a record fine for data protection violations, the settlement in July called for Facebook to create a privacy committee within its board of directors to be appointed by an independent nominating committee.

This would end "unfettered control" of decisions on privacy by Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, the FTC statement said. 

Facebook also will be required to conduct privacy reviews of every new or modified product, service or practice before it is implemented, including for its WhatsApp and Instagram services.

"We have a responsibility to protect people's privacy," Zuckerberg said at the time.

"We're going to set a completely new standard for our industry."

As the news was announced by Facebook, Zuckerberg was in Washington meeting with policymakers on questions about privacy and antitrust issues, and held talks at the White House with President Donald Trump.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook tool lets users see which apps, websites tracked them

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has built an extensive network of tracking technology outside of its core social network to bolster its targeted advertising business. That has allowed the company to collect information about its users’ browsing habits, even when they were not using the social network.

On Tuesday, Facebook said it was changing its practices related to that data — kind of.

The company introduced a new tool that lets people better see and control the information that Facebook has gathered about their browsing habits outside the social network.

The tool, Off-Facebook Activity, allows users to view the hundreds of sites and apps that share data and customer information with Facebook. They can disconnect the data from their account if they want.

“This is another way to give people more transparency and control on Facebook,” the company said in a blog post. It added that people generally had more than 80 apps on their phones and used about half of them every month, making it difficult to know which ones had collected personal information and how the data was being used.

The introduction of the new tool is Facebook’s latest response to criticism over how it safeguards users’ privacy. The issue exploded last year after The New York Times and other outlets reported on how a British consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, had harvested the personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission.

Facebook has been trying since then to contain the fallout, attracting scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers around the world. Last month, the company reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over privacy violations, agreeing to pay a $5 billion fine and to change how it handled users’ data.

Amid the backlash over Facebook’s approach to privacy issues, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, has said the company would develop a technological solution that would give people the ability to clear their browsing histories.

Facebook said it initially hoped to provide an option that would let users delete the entire repository of data that the company collected from other sites to improve its targeting of ads. But Facebook said its research showed that people did not want such an all-or-nothing option. Instead, Facebook said, users frequently asked for better visibility into which sites were providing browsing-habit data to the company, and for more control over how the information was shared.

The new tool will not be a cure-all for those concerned about privacy on Facebook. The company will continue to retain all browsing data of users on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

Yet by giving people the option of wiping clean their browsing history outside Facebook and its apps, the company is taking a risk because of its partial dependence on such information for targeting ads at users. The company said it was prepared for the consequences of users’ deciding to exercise greater control over their privacy by using the tool.

“If this were widely adopted, it would mean less overall revenue for Facebook,” David Baser, a director of product management at the company, said in an interview. “And that’s OK.”

The new tool can be found in the settings menu of the Facebook app. Once people click on it, they can look into an itemized history of the outside apps and websites they have visited that have shared data with the social network. They can also see the types of data the apps and sites have shared.

A user might see that a site for a clothing retailer had one of Facebook’s tracking cookies installed on its webpage. If a customer browsed a pair of pants on the site and then returned to Facebook, the social network’s tracking technology may have shown that user an ad for the same pair of pants inside the Facebook app.

Beyond having access to the itemized browsing history, people can also use the tool to disconnect the historical browsing data from their accounts entirely, or to remove data from individual sites and apps. The tool also lets people turn off data-sharing from all sites and apps off Facebook in the future.

Facebook said that the new tool would be rolled out gradually in the coming months, beginning Tuesday in Ireland, South Korea and Spain.


2019 The New York Times Company

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Instagram begins letting users report misinformation

Instagram on Thursday added a way for users to easily report deceptive posts at the photo and video-oriented social network owned by Facebook.

A new tool being rolled out out lets Instagram users tap a "report" option on-screen when they see a post they deem dubious, then tap a "false information" tag to prompt review by third-party fact-checkers, according to Facebook spokeswoman Stephanie Otway.

The option was expected to be available to all Instagram users by the end of this month.

Such prompts will be one of several "signals" used to determine whether content should be scrutinized by fact-checkers, who will determine their veracity.

"Starting today, people can let us know if they see posts on Instagram they believe may be false," Otway said.

"We're investing heavily in limiting the spread of misinformation across our apps, and we plan to share more updates in the coming months."

The world's biggest social network has been cracking down on fraudulent influence campaigns and bogus posts as pressure has mounted for online platforms to defend against efforts to manipulate online conversations.

User-reported Instagram posts found to be bogus but not in violation of the service's policies will not be deleted, but won't appear when users use "explore" or hashtag searches to discover content.

"Explore and hashtags allow people on Instagram to find content they haven’t already chosen to follow, and by filtering misinformation from these places, we can significantly limit its reach," Otway said.

Feedback from the new tool will be used to train artificial intelligence software to scan for, and rate, fake posts without waiting for them to be reported, according to Facebook.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook listened to users' conversations: report

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook has paid hundreds of contractors to listen to and transcribe snippets of users' conversations, US media reported on Tuesday, amid heightened scrutiny of the social network's data collection practices.

Facebook acknowledged the transcriptions, which were first reported by Bloomberg, telling the news agency in a statement that they were made with users' permission, but that the practice has nonetheless been stopped.

"Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago," the company said.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

The contractors were testing the ability of the social network's artificial intelligence to interpret messages, and the only users affected were those on Facebook Messenger app who had opted to have their voice chats transcribed.

Bloomberg said the contractors working on the project were "rattled" by listening to private audio whose origin wasn't disclosed and which sometimes contained vulgar content.

The contractors also weren't told the reason why they were doing the transcribing, the news agency reported.

Amazon, Apple and Google -- all companies offering voice assistants -- have previously acknowledged collecting conversations for the purpose of improving their products.

Apple and Google have in recent weeks said they've halted the practice, while Amazon gives users the option of blocking the collection of their voice by Alexa, the artificial intelligence driving their Echo voice assistant.

Facebook, which just settled a record $5 billion fine with the US Federal Trade Commission for misusing users' private data, has given differing responses to reports that it uses audio recordings to better target ads or make its pages more attractive.

"You're talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we listen to what's going on on your microphone and use that for ads," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in US Senate testimony last year.

"We don't do that," he said.

But the company later told lawmakers in writing that it does actually collect conversations if users have specifically allowed it to do so and are using certain audio features.

The company didn't specify what it did with the audio afterwards.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

G7 finance chiefs pour cold water on Facebook's digital coin plans

CHANTILLY, France -- Group of Seven finance chiefs cast a cloud over prospects for Facebook's Libra digital coin on Wednesday, insisting tough regulatory problems would have to be worked out first.

The massive social media company's plan to launch a digital coin has met with a chorus from regulators, central bankers and governments saying it must respect anti-money-laundering rules and ensure the security of transactions and user data.

But there are also deeper concerns that the powers of big tech companies increasingly encroach on areas belonging to governments, like issuing currency.

"The sovereignty of nations cannot be jeopardized," French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told journalists after chairing the first day of the two-day meeting.

"The overall mood around the table was clearly one of important concerns about the recent Libra announcements, and a shared view that action is needed urgently," he added.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said Facebook's plans do not "seem to be fully thought through", adding that there were also data security questions.

"I am convinced that we must act quickly and that (Libra) cannot go ahead without all legal and regulatory questions being resolved," Scholz told journalists.

France, which chairs the Group of Seven advanced economies this year, has asked European Central Bank executive board member Benoit Coeure to set up a G7 task force to look into cryptocurrencies and digital coins like the Libra.

Coeure presented a preliminary report to ministers and central bankers at the meeting, in the quaint chateau town of Chantilly, north of Paris.

Central bankers say that if Facebook wants to take deposits, it needs a banking licence, which would subject it to the strict regulation that goes with operating in that industry.

Some central bankers also say that allowing people to transact anonymously is a non-starter given financial sector regulations that require payments firms to hold basic information about their customers.

JAPAN: GLOBAL CONSENSUS NEEDED

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the G7 task force was likely to evolve over time into something including a broader range of regulators beyond the group, given the huge impact Libra could have on the global economy.

"If the Libra is aspiring to be used globally, countries must seek a globally coordinated response," Kuroda said.

"This is not something that can be discussed among G7 central banks alone."

G7 finance ministers are also concerned about how best to tax big tech companies, with France keen to use its presidency of the two-day meeting to get broad support for ensuring minimum corporate taxation.

G7 governments are concerned that decades-old international tax rules have been pushed to the limit by the emergence of companies like Facebook and Apple, which book profits in low-tax countries regardless of the source of the underlying income.

The issue has become more vexed than ever in recent days as Paris defied US President Donald Trump last week by passing a tax on big digital firms' revenues in France, despite a threat from Trump to launch a probe that could lead to trade tariffs.

Their bilateral dispute aside, France and the United States are in favor of rules ensuring minimum taxation as part of an effort among nearly 130 countries to overhaul international tax rules.

Although a G7 agreement would set the tone for the broader push, an agreement among all of the G7 ministers on a minimum rate or range of rates is likely to prove elusive as Britain and Canada have reservations, a French Finance Ministry source said.

"If we don't agree at the G7 level on the broad principles for taxing digital companies today or tomorrow, then quite frankly it will be complicated to find among 129 countries at the OECD," Le Maire said. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

$5-billion US fine set for Facebook on privacy probe: report

WASHINGTON, United States - US regulators have approved a $5-billion penalty to be levied on Facebook to settle a probe into the social network's privacy and data protection lapses, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The newspaper said the Federal Trade Commission approved the settlement in a 3-2 vote, with the two Democratic members of the consumer protection agency dissenting.

According to the report, the deal, which would be the largest penalty imposed over privacy violations, still needs approval from the justice department before it is finalized.

Facebook did not immediately respond to an AFP query on the agreement.

The settlement would be in line with Facebook's estimate earlier this year when it said it expected to pay $3 billion to $5 billion for legal settlements on "user data practices."

The FTC announced last year it reopened its investigation into a 2011 privacy settlement with Facebook after revelations that personal data on tens of millions of users was hijacked by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, working on the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.

Facebook has also faced questions about whether it improperly shared user data with business partners in violation of the earlier settlement.

The leading social network with more than 2 billion users worldwide has also been facing inquiries on privacy from authorities in US states and regulators around the world.

Some Facebook critics have argued the company should face tougher sanctions including monitoring of its data practices, or that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg should be personally liable for penalties.

Charlotte Slaiman of the consumer group Public Knowledge said it was not immediately clear if the settlement would require changes to Facebook's business practices, but suggested that the partisan split on the vote was a bad omen.

"I'm hopeful that additional conditions placed on Facebook's business practices will be forthcoming," Slaiman said in a statement.

"Those conditions should protect not just user privacy, but also the users' opportunity to easily leave Facebook for a competitor if they choose."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Dissecting Data: Facebook's latest report on protecting users

Amid rising scrutiny, Facebook recently released its latest report on how its protecting users against harmful content such as fake news, terror propaganda and even the sale of drugs and firearms.

Warren De Guzman and the ABS-CBN Data Analytics group break down the report in this edition of Dissecting Data.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

US presidential contender favors look at breaking up Facebook

WASHINGTON—Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said on Sunday that U.S. officials should consider breaking up Facebook Inc, the world's largest social media company, saying it is a utility that has gone unregulated.

Harris, a U.S. senator and one of more than 20 Democrats seeking the party's nomination for the 2020 presidential election, said Facebook has prioritized growth over consumers' interests, especially on privacy.

"I think we have to seriously take a look at that (breaking up Facebook), yes," Harris said in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. She said very few people can get by in their communities, business or commerce without somehow using Facebook. "So we have to recognize it for what it is. It is essentially a utility that has gone unregulated."

Facebook has been under scrutiny from regulators around the world over data sharing practices as well as hate speech and misinformation on its networks.

Some other U.S. lawmakers, including Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, have pushed for action to break up big tech companies as well as federal privacy regulation.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes called last week for the social network to be split into three parts.

Facebook, which has more than 2 billion users on its social network, rejected Hughes' call. Spokesman Nick Clegg said Facebook accepted that with success comes accountability, "but you don’t enforce accountability by calling for the breakup of a successful American company."

Early opinion polls show Harris in the top tier of Democrats who have announced presidential campaigns. She and several other Democratic candidates have spent large sums on Facebook ads.

Warren and another senator seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Amy Klobuchar, have proposed plans to increase antitrust scrutiny of the technology sector, with Warren vowing to break up Facebook, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google if elected.

But Senator Cory Booker, another Democratic presidential candidate, said Sunday "we do not need a president that is going to use their own personal beliefs and tell you which companies we will break up.

"We need a president that's going to enforce anti-trust laws in this country, and I will be that person," Booker told ABC's "This Week."

President Donald Trump, a Republican, has also suggested that Amazon and social media networks like Facebook need tougher regulation.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook says it stored 'millions' of unencrypted Instagram passwords

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - "Millions" of Instagram users had their passwords stored in unencrypted form on internal servers, Facebook said Thursday, raising its original estimate of tens of thousands.

"We discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format. We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users," Facebook said in a blog post.

"We will be notifying these users as we did the others. Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed," the social network said.

Facebook, Instagram's parent company, revealed last month that the unencrypted passwords of hundreds of millions of users had been stored, putting the number of Instagram users affected in the tens of thousands.

The social network's handling of user data has been a flash point for controversy since it admitted last year that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, used an app that may have hijacked the private details of 87 million users.

Facebook has announced a series of moves to tighten handling of data, including eliminating most of its data-sharing partnerships with outside companies.

The California firm reaches an estimated 2.7 billion people with its core social network, Instagram and messaging applications.

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Twitter may tag rule-breaking Trump tweets

SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter said Thursday it could start tagging tweets from newsworthy figures such as US President Donald Trump that break its rules, while stopping short of deleting them.

The one-to-many messaging platform used extensively by Trump to fire off comments, some of them inflammatory, said it is exploring ways to add context to tweets considered to be of legitimate public interest but which violate its terms of service.

"Twitter is exploring ways to provide more context around tweets that violate our rules, but are newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest," the company said in an emailed statement.

A day earlier, Twitter's trust and safety chief Vijaya Gadde made similar remarks asked about abusive tweets, which may be from a public figure such as Trump.

Gadde said during an onstage interview at a Washington Post technology forum in San Francisco that Twitter was looking at ways to "put some context around it so people are aware that that content is actually a violation of our rules and it is serving a particular purpose in remaining on the platform."

Tweets that go too far, such as threatening someone with violence, would be removed no matter who posts them, according to Gadde.

Twitter and other online platforms have faced pressure to remove abusive and hateful content, while at the same time avoiding criticism of acting due to political bias.

Trump earlier this month stepped up claims of political bias by Big Tech firms in a fresh assault on Silicon Valley after one of his key congressional allies sued Twitter claiming it discriminates against conservatives.

Twitter and other Silicon Valley firms have vigorously denied claims of political bias built into their platforms.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook settles with rights groups on ad discrimination

WASHINGTON - Facebook unveiled major changes to how it uses targeted advertising on Tuesday, settling a legal challenge alleging it discriminated in messages on jobs, housing, credit and other services.

The leading social network said housing, employment or credit ads will no longer be allowed to target by age, gender or zip code -- a practice critics argued had led to discrimination.

The changes came as part of a settlement with the National Fair American Civil Liberties Union, National Fair Housing Alliance, Communication Workers of America and others.

"Today's changes mark an important step in our broader effort to prevent discrimination and promote fairness and inclusion on Facebook," chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a statement announcing the changes.

"But our work is far from over. We're committed to doing more, and we look forward to engaging in serious consultation and work with key civil rights groups, experts and policymakers to help us find the right path forward."

The ACLU called the agreement a "historic settlement" that will result in major changes to Facebook's advertising platform.

Under the settlement, Facebook will take proactive steps to prevent advertisers from discrimination when sending job, housing or credit ads to users of Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. 

"Advertisers will no longer be able to exclude users from learning about opportunities for housing, employment or credit based on gender, age or other protected characteristics," ACLU attorneys Galen Sherwin and Esha Bhandari said in a blog post.

"Ad-targeting platforms can be used to exclude users on the basis of race, gender or age, as well as interests or groups that can serve as proxies for those categories (think 'soccer moms' or 'Kwanzaa celebrators')."

The ACLU said it began exerting pressure on Facebook several years ago to stop its use of an "ethnic affinity" category, which labeled users as Asian American, Hispanic or African American based on what they liked on Facebook.

The organization said Facebook took some steps to eliminate discriminatory targeting but did not always follow through. 

For certain ad categories, Facebook will create a separate portal for such ads with a much more limited set of targeting options excluding Facebook users' age, gender, race or other characteristics.

Facebook will also implement a system of automated and human review to ensure compliance and to study the potential for unintended biases in algorithmic modeling.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

New Facebook bug may have exposed unposted photos

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook apologized Friday for a "bug" that may have exposed unposted photos from as many as 6.8 million users over a 12-day period through third-party applications.

In the latest in a string of incidents on data protection, the leading social network said using Facebook login and granting permission to third-party apps to access photos may have led to the unintended lapse between September 13 and 25.

"When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos on Facebook, we usually only grant the app access to photos people share on their timeline," engineering director Tomer Bar said in a message to developers.

"In this case, the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos, such as those shared on Marketplace or Facebook Stories."

Bar added that the bug also impacted photos that people uploaded to Facebook but chose not to post -- in situations where someone uploads a photo but doesn't finish posting it, for example.

"We store a copy of that photo so the person has it when they come back to the app to complete their post," he said.

Bar said affected users would be notified and directed to a help center where they will be able to see what images may have been affected.

"We're sorry this happened," he said. "Early next week we will be rolling out tools for app developers that will allow them to determine which people using their app might be impacted by this bug. We will be working with those developers to delete the photos from impacted users."

Facebook has been facing heightened scrutiny over its data protection practices in recent months, notably since the revelations over hijacking of personal data of tens of millions of users by Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy working on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Google+ social network to shut down earlier due to new bug

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google said Monday it would close the consumer version of its online social network sooner than originally planned due to the discovery of a new software bug.

The Google+ social network will close in April -- 4 months earlier than planned -- and the internet giant will focus on operating a version tailored for businesses, according to G Suite product management vice president David Thacker.

Application programming interface programs (APIs) used by developers to access Google+ data will be shut down within 90 days, according to Thacker.

"With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs," Thacker said in a blog post.

"While we recognize there are implications for developers, we want to ensure the protection of our users."

A new bug introduced via a software update in November was discovered during routine testing and fixed, according to the company.

Google determined that the vulnerability affected approximately 52.5 million users, allowing applications to see profile information such as name, occupation, age and email address even if access was set to private.

"No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for 6 days were aware of it or misused it in any way," Thacker said.

In October, Google announced plans to shut down the social network after fixing a bug exposing private data in as many as 500,000 accounts.

A security audit revealed a software bug that gave third-party apps access to Google+ private profile data people meant to share only with friends.

The data involved was limited to optional profile fields, including name, age, gender, occupation and email address, Google said.

There was no evidence found at the time that developers had taken advantage of the bug, according to Google.

Google+ failed to gain meaningful traction after being launched in 2011 as a challenge to Facebook.

A Google spokesperson cited "significant challenges in creating and maintaining a successful Google+ that meets consumers' expectations" along with "very low usage" as reasons for pulling the plug.

The social network allows users to download and share data such as pictures and videos.

Meanwhile, Google planned to add new workplace-oriented features to enhance the appeal of Google+ as a "secure corporate social network" to be used inside business operations.

"Our review showed that Google+ is better suited as an enterprise product where co-workers can engage in internal discussions," the California-based internet firm said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Tumblr bans porn to clean up the blogging platform

SAN FRANCISCO - Tumblr on Monday said it is banning adult content from the Yahoo-owned blogging platform, which saw its app pulled from Apple's App Store last month over child pornography.

Tumblr will begin enforcing its new policy on December 17, giving users who host unwanted explicit content an opportunity to take their imagery elsewhere, according to chief executive Jeff D'Onofrio.

"There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content," D'Onofrio said in a blog post.

"We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community."

The decision to purge porn from Tumblr was made after "serious thought" regarding standards in the blogging community, according to the chief executive.

"Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we've updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change," D'Onofrio said.

He maintained that Tumblr will strive to balance allowing conversation about topics such as sex and relationships with banning porn, and noted there are likely to be stumbles.

Child porn was already against Tumblr guidelines.

"Posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community," D'Onofrio said.

"We've always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content."

Tumblr's applications for Apple devices were shut out of the App Store last month after child sexual abuse material was found on the platform.

Tumblr uses an industry database to filter content being uploaded, but child porn material that had not yet been added to the database made it onto the platform, the company said.

The offending content was removed as soon as it was discovered in a routine audit, according to Tumblr.

D'Onofrio took over as chief of Tumblr from founder David Karp late last year.

Karp's departure from the company came a few months after Verizon bought parent-company Yahoo in a $4.5 billion deal.

Karp founded Tumblr in New York in early 2007 as a platform where people could share writing and short-form media. Now, Tumblr hosts some 417 million different blogs.

Yahoo acquired Tumblr in May 2013 for $1.1 billion, as part of an effort to better connect with younger online users.

source: news.abs-cbn.com