Tag: facebook
End of Facebook Instant Articles
Nick Heer: Sara Fischer, of Axios, is reporting today that Meta’s proprietary Instant Articles format will go away in April. This should not be a surprise — Instant Articles does nothing for Meta’s virtual reality efforts, Meta is cutting costs, and Google has been phasing out its commitment to its similar AMP format. Another one…
Verizon sold Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm
NY Times: Yahoo and AOL, kings of the early internet, saw their fortunes decline as Silicon Valley raced ahead to create new digital platforms. Google replaced Yahoo. AOL was supplanted by cable giants. Now they will become the property of private equity. Verizon, their current owner, agreed to sell them to Apollo Global Management in…
The Instagram ads Facebook won't show you
Signal: We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea. Maybe everyone should try Facebook’s advertising platform at…
Facebook and Instagram Ask Users to Enable App Tracking in Order to Keep Services Free
MacRumors: As a way to convince users to enable tracking across other apps and websites, Facebook is deploying the tactic of telling users that they must enable tracking as part of the App Tracking Transparency framework in iOS 14.5 if they want to help keep Facebook and Instagram “free of charge.” Are they threatening to…
Facebook apologizes to users, businesses for Apple’s monstrous efforts to protect its customers' privacy
The Register: Facebook has apologized to its users and advertisers for being forced to respect people’s privacy in an upcoming update to Apple’s mobile operating system – and promised it will do its best to invade their privacy on other platforms. The antisocial network that makes almost all of its revenue from building a vast,…
Facebook stored millions of Instagram passwords unencrypted
Kurt Wagner reported for Recode that Facebook stored millions of Instagram passwords unencrypted. Facebook first announced late last month that it had stored hundreds of millions of user passwords unencrypted on its servers, a massive security problem. At the time, it said that “tens of thousands” of Instagram passwords were also stored in this way.…
Facebook says it ‘unintentionally uploaded’ 1.5 million people’s email contacts without their consent
Business Insider reported that Facebook says it ‘unintentionally uploaded’ 1.5 million people’s email contacts without their consent. Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts. Since May 2016, the social-networking company has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social…
Facebook stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in plain text for years
Krebs on Security reported that Facebook stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in plain text for years. The Facebook source said the investigation so far indicates between 200 million and 600 million Facebook users may have had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The source…
Anti-vaxx propaganda has gone viral on Facebook. Pinterest has a cure
Julia Carrie Wong reported for The Guardian about how Pinterest is taking action against anti-vaccination propaganda that Facebook has failed to address. Pinterest has responded by building a “blacklist” of “polluted” search terms. “We are doing our best to remove bad content, but we know that there is bad content that we haven’t gotten to…
Western companies build products, while Chinese companies build ecosystems
TechNode wrote about why WeChat blocks competitors, while Facebook doesn’t. Chinese and Western companies tend to have a dramatically different approach to expansion. In a few words: Western companies build products, while Chinese companies build ecosystems. Nowhere is this trend more obvious than in the investment pattern of Chinese and Western companies. Chinese companies tend…