Following the firing of its entire trending news team, Facebook has immediately hit a snag with its automated replacement. Despite years of ‘training,' the algorithm was quick to follow up on stories that people on Facebook were talking about, even if they were false ones. Within 72 hours, it was …
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WhatsApp is going to start sharing user data with Facebook
It has been quite some time since Facebook shelled out $19 billion for the messaging service known as WhatsApp and now we are starting to see what Facebook plans to do with the app. Soon, the messaging service will be changing its privacy policy in order to share user details …
Read More »Facebook/Oculus deny Zenimax copyright claims
In the ongoing legal battle between Facebook owned Oculus VR and id Software parent company, Zenimax, the VR firm has denied all allegations that it breached Zenimax copyright and non-disclosure agreements in creating the Rift headset. It has also called Zenimax's tactics misleading, unjust and lacking in good faith. Oculus …
Read More »Facebook will bypass desktop ad blockers, but new opt-outs emerge
As one of the internet's biggest sellers of online adverts, Facebook has shown real concern at the rise of ad blocker software, so much so that it's found a way around them. It's not paying to be on a white list either, but has promised that affected users will have …
Read More »Facebook auto-blocked Wikileaks links, claims ‘accident’
Facebook has been accused of deliberately blocking links to Wikileaks after it revealed secretive collusion between U.S. democratic presidential hopeful, Hilary Clinton and the Democratic Party. This lead many users to accuse the social network of censorship, though Facebook has now claimed it was an accident. Although the general election is still months …
Read More »Alleged founder of KAT arrested with help from Apple and Facebook
The alleged founder of KickAss Torrents (KAT), one of the largest torrent sites on the web, has been arrested in Poland this week following an operation spearheaded by the US government to track down the head of the site. More interestingly, the US was able to track him using information …
Read More »U.S. may ask for your Facebook data when you cross the border
The United States border control could begin asking visitors who plan to stay up to 90s days, about their social media activity. Although the proposed changes to visa screening would be optional if brought into play, it's thought that it could give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) a better …
Read More »Off-centre extremism: Facebook, Google auto-takedown videos
Get ready for extremist videos with off-centre camera work, lighting overlays and shrunken content – Google and Facebook are now automatically taking down videos thought to be related to terrorism, so the uploaders may need to find a way to get around it. Although neither Facebook or Google have announced …
Read More »Facebook board creates non-voting shares for Zuckerberg charity
Mark Zuckerberg might not be everyone's favourite person when it comes to privacy, but he has pledged to give away 99 per cent of his Facebook shares throughout his lifetime – worth an estimated $24 billion. To help him do that without losing control of the company, Facebook's board has …
Read More »Student arrested for live streaming a movie to Facebook
A student in Chicago managed to get himself arrested after going into a cinema and live streaming the film to Facebook. As you might expect, a smartphone was used to handle the streaming but the guy only got caught because an anti-piracy outfit in India saw the stream and reported …
Read More »Killing the King: Facebook to curb Zuckerberg power if he leaves
The Facebook of today is much more than the evolution of Mark Zuckerberg's Facemash. It has fingers in all sorts of pies, from free internet to virtual reality, so in-case Zuckerberg goes off and heads one of these other projects, the Facebook board wants to curtail how much say he …
Read More »Facebook trumps Apple by winning China court case
Apple ran into some difficulty with the courts in China recently, when it was ruled that its iPhone brand wasn't “widely known,” enough for it to hold copyright on it. In comparison though, Facebook has fared far better, achieving ownership of its own name against a local Chinese firm, which …
Read More »Hilary Clinton trolls use Facebook reporting to down Sanders pages
As the American political party nominations build up to a frenzy on the road to the general election in November this year, the tactics of the various politicians and their supporters are turning nasty. Supporters of Hilary Clinton's bid for the democratic nomination abused the Facebook reporting system to have many of …
Read More »Facebook to take on Snapchat with in-development camera app
Ever since Snapchat turned down Facebook's $3 billion acquisition offer in mid-2013, the social network has been hankering for its own share of the Snapchat pie. Evidently it's now decided that: if you can't join them, beat them, as Facebook is said to be working on a photo sharing app …
Read More »Facebook’s social VR app lets you jump inside 360 degree images
In-case you haven't been following the VR scene particularly closely, it was shaken up quite violently in 2015, when Oculus VR was purchased by Facebook. While the parent firm has been rather quiet on its plans for the VR start up, now that the first consumer hardware is shipping (slowly), …
Read More »Facebook set to recruit army of chat bots for customer service
As much as companies have made great strides in improving customer service over the past few years, offering social media responses, live-chats on websites and more localised call centres, they're still far from perfect. To help improve that, Facebook is looking to recruit chat bots to answer more people's questions, …
Read More »Facebook/Whatsapp to discontinue support for BlackBerry
At this point, BlackBerry is in a tricky position financially so in an attempt to win back some customers, the company launched its first Android smartphone. However, this has led to some companies, like WhatsApp and Facebook to presume that BlackBerry OS might be dead now, which is causing support …
Read More »U.S. DOJ and Facebook/WhatsApp may clash over encryption
As the case of the FBI against Apple continues to draw eyeballs and backing for both camps from various parties, Facebook and its WhatsApp service may have their own clash with the U.S. legal system. The Department of Justice is struggling with a case where a wiretap cannot be performed …
Read More »Oculus digital platform now supports Facebook
Although the specifics of how Oculus VR's digital store and home-hub platform will work are still mostly unknown, we do know that it can support Facebook. Although unsurprising considering the social network is the parent company of the VR startup, this is something that could really separate Oculus' Rift headset …
Read More »Facebook will start paying more tax in the UK
Facebook, like other major tech firms in the UK is often accused of paying far too little corporation tax. In 2014, despite making more than £840 million through UK advertising sales, it paid just £4,300 for the entire year. That's set to change moving forward, as Facebook is changing its …
Read More »Facebook takes down Syrian groups selling ‘CIA’ weapons
Facebook is playing whack-a-mole with a number of specific groups on its social networking site that claim to be selling weapons in the Middle East. There's even a suggestion that they were supplied by agencies like the CIA. The pages offered everything from small arms to grenade launchers, with admins …
Read More »Facebook to start showing ads in Messenger
It looks like Facebook will soon be monetizing its Messenger app with paid advertisements some time in the next few months. Facebook is currently distributing a document to business partners indicating that they will be able to send ad messages to customers directly starting this year though businesses will only …
Read More »Steroids are being quite brazenly sold through Facebook
As much effort as the police and other authorities put into stamping out the Silk Road darknet market, even going so far as to hand its convicted owner life in prison, not much seems to be being done about drug sales on Facebook. As part of a report by investigating …
Read More »Thai government wants Facebook to remove ‘harmful’ content
Officials from the Thailand's National Council for Peace and Order military government, are set to meet with executives from Facebook and Korean search provider, Line, in order to discuss censoring their sites. The content it wants removed without fail is anything that could be considered harmful to the monarchy, or …
Read More »Facebook makes its first billion dollar quarter profit
Despite being one of the world's most valuable companies for the best part of a decade, it's taken a long time for Facebook to earn the kind of money that matches its valuation. Still as advertising on it has improved and it's increased its usage to more than a billion …
Read More »WhatsApp to start sharing data with Facebook
While it is common knowledge at this point that Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, the company hasn't actually done much with the messenger app until recently. Just last week it was announced that WhatsApp would no longer require a yearly subscription and now, it seems that the app is …
Read More »Facebook’s Sports Stadium puts all your sports talk in one place
Although Facebook and Twitter definitely target different social networking activities, the latter certainly has the live-commenting on events down. Facebook may be looking to offer a competing service now though with its Sports Stadium, which brings together all of your friends and family, journalists and analysts to talk about sporting …
Read More »Flash’s dead horse beaten again – Facebook just dropped it
Adobe's Flash Player is continuing its steady demise with another major blow to its usage: Facebook has now killed off all flash videos on its site. With more than eight billion views a day, the switchover to HTML 5 will see the number of flash videos watched every day immediatly decline …
Read More »Facebook to offer $15,000 subsidies to ease worker housing costs
Working for the big tech companies has a lot of advantages. Earlier this year Netflix, Adobe and a number of other firms announced that they now offered their employees unlimited parental leave following the birth of a child, as well as unlimited holiday allowance. Facebook is upping the game again, …
Read More »Facebook changes Real Name policy, adds more context
Facebook has been at the forefront of people using their real names on the internet since its inception. However as time has gone on, it's received more and more pressure from certain groups to allow for the occasional use of faux-names to cater to different lifestyle choices. To try and have …
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