This week, the European Commission is fining Facebook £94.1 million, after concluding that the company gave ‘misleading' information during an investigation into its acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014. The EC initially began vetting the acquisition deal between Facebook and WhatsApp on anti-competitive grounds. During the Commission's investigation, Facebook made filings …
Read More »Facebook to close 200+ Oculus VR demo stations in the U.S.
The virtual reality revolution isn't going quite as smoothly as Oculus VR predicted, as its parent company, Facebook, is set to close 200+ of the VR firm's demo stations around the U.S.. This comes amid reports that some of the demo stations would often sit for days at a time …
Read More »Facebook expands paid sick leave to family emergencies, death
In the ongoing race to attract the best software developers in America, Facebook has once again expanded its employee benefits to improve the lives of those with recent bereavements or sick relatives. Moving forward, anyone with a sick family member can take up to six weeks of paid leave to care …
Read More »Google, Facebook to combat fake-news during French election
Following on from claims that fake-news had a large impact on the U.S. presidential elections, technology firms like Google and Facebook are taking steps to combat it in the lead up to the French elections in April. Together they've debuted a service called Cross Check, which when it goes live …
Read More »Facebook cinema stream shut down by Dutch anti-piracy group
While some lobby groups are still railing against the dangers of torrent sites and downloading, many around the world have moved on to much newer ways to watch protected content: like Facebook live streams. Looking to stay on top of emerging trends however is Dutch anti-piracy group, BRIEN, which has shut …
Read More »Facebook Messenger to begin displaying adverts
If you thought using Facebook's Messenger application was a good way to avoid seeing all of the adverts on the Facebook main site, think again. In what will begin as a small-scale trial in select territories, Facebook is set to begin running adverts within the app itself, providing links to …
Read More »Social networks, tech firms to block ‘extremist’ images
Some of the world's biggest technology firms are going to share a database of image and video hashes for ‘extemist content' with one another, in order to prevent them from appearing on their various platforms. This is much the same system they use to tackle child pornography and although it …
Read More »Facebook halts WhatsApp data gathering after ICO warning
The Information Commissioner's Office in the UK has warned Facebook that it may pursue action against the social network over data gathering conducted as part of the WhatsApp messaging service. It claims that Facebook doesn't inform its users enough about what it's gathering. In response, Facebook has paused data gathering …
Read More »Facebook advertising explosion leads to tripling net income
Like a real world game of Agar.io, Facebook is swallowing up everything around it as it expands into new fields of advertising and absorbs old ones. With the release of its second quarter financials, we've learned that its net income has tripled year on year, thanks to a huge expansion …
Read More »Black Mirror? Admiral wants to use your Facebook posts for quotes
A recent episode of Black Mirror that addressed the idea of social networking ratings affecting the real world, could be closer to reality than you might think. Admiral is currently looking to use analysis of Facebook posts, searching for triggers like exclamation points and confident statements, as a bearing on …
Read More »Nintendo, Facebook and Google all using Unity for future games
Unity held its annual Unite conference yesterday, where it launched the new 5.5 game engine and a new Timeline feature for the editor. However the big news was some of the partnerships it has made recently, including ones with Nintendo, Facebook and Google, each of which will be using the …
Read More »Facebook’s new head of Social VR helped make The Sims 4
As the owner of Oculus VR, Facebook has been driving forward virtual reality development for much of the last year and recently announced a new Facebook social experience through the Rift headset. To head up its new social VR team, Facebook has now hired on ex-EA executive Rachel Franklin, who was …
Read More »Despite boosted profits, expansion, Facebook is earning tax credits
Even though it earned close to £5 billion pounds around the world in 2015, Facebook has managed to earn itself more than £11 million in tax credits with the British government, meaning that it can offset future tax bills to reduce those figures. This comes at a time of massive …
Read More »Hacks and spying, how Yahoo lost a billion dollars
As a company still riding its wave of late '90s popularity, Yahoo is a company out of time. Its poor timing has really bitten it in the ass this year though, as while trying to accept a buyout from Verizon to the tune of near $5 billion, it's been faced …
Read More »World’s biggest tech firms now working on AI together
If the robots ever do decide to take over, at least we'll have plenty of people to blame. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and IBM have all formed a partnership to help further the cause of AI development and acceptance the world over. It's not a lobby group, we're told, but …
Read More »Oculus 1.8 update offers deeper Facebook integration
It looks like Facebook is going to be much more involved with the ongoing Oculus VR experience moving forward, as with the latest 1.8 update for the headset's companion software and store, Facebook integration is possible. If you use it though, prepare for your VR skirts to be lifted. If …
Read More »Facebook, Twitter and other tech firms join forces against fake news
Facebook looked pretty unprofessional when earlier this year it fired its entire news curation staff, only to have the algorithm that replaced them promote fake news within 24 hours. To stop that happening in the future, the social network has teamed up with Twitter and other news and tech firms …
Read More »Snapchat secures more credit, possible IPO coming in 2017
Snapchat has proved time and again that you don't have to sell out to the bigger competition to stay afloat. Years on from not accepting $3 billion from Facebook, it's said to be worth upwards of $20 billion and has secured a new line of credit, ahead of what many …
Read More »Zuckerberg attacked for Facebook censoring Vietnam war image
Mark Zuckerberg has been attacked by a Norwegian newspaper and many international commenters, for what many people see as outright censorship of an iconic photo from the Vietnam war. He has been accused of abusing his power and making Facebook limit freedoms with its aggressive editing of certain images. Perhaps the …
Read More »Facebook fake news gaff shows why it still needs human editors
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 …
Read More »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 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 »Not just for hookups: Tinder Social now available worldwide
Tinder might be one one of the world's most popular ways to hook up with someone that you might want to swap fluids with, but that's not all the company behind it wants it to do. Tinder Social is now available on both iOS and Android and makes it possible …
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 »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 »10 year old nabs $10,000 Instagram hacking bounty
A 10 year old boy has set himself up nicely for the next few years, earning more in a day than many of us earn in several months of work. He is the youngest ever recipient of the Instagram/Facebook Bug Bounty system, earning him $10,000 for the discovery of a …
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