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Facebook is the most popular social media service in the world with 2.32 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2018

Facebook is the most popular social media service in the world with 2.32 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2018. It also averages 1.52 billion daily active users as of December 2018.

Facebook was launched in February of 2004 (as The Facebook) for college students and then rapidly grew as it opened the service to more than those with a .edu email address. It was the subject of the 2010 movie called “The Social Network“.

In 2012, the social media giant offered its IPO and Facebook earned the title of the fastest company to grow to $250 billion market capitalization in the S&P 500.

In recent years, the company has been at the center of attention related to its role in the Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Since then, it’s been a continual stream of negative news for the company. They recently had all of their enterprise certificates for iOS revoked after it was discovered they had repackaged Onavo VPN as a ‘Research’ app and were paying teens $20/month to sneakily sideload it.

In early 2019, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a “privacy shift” for the company. He outlined a detailed vision for the future of the social media platform, specifically its messaging services. Notably, in contrast to how the company operates today, he says the future of the platform will be privacy-focused with features like end-to-end encryption, interoperability between its various apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, reducing how long it holds data, secure storage of personal data, and more.

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Facebook AR glasses – prototype revealed, providing auditory superpowers

Facebook AR glasses prototype

We’re not expecting to see Apple Glasses before 2022 at the earliest, but we’ve now seen a prototype of one rival effort: Facebook AR glasses.

Interestingly, this prototype has no display and is entirely focused on an auditory experience. It’s part super-sophisticated hearing aid, part virtual reality device …

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Facebook wanted to tell users about Apple’s 30% cut; Apple blocked it

Apple's 30% cut in the news again

Apple’s 30% cut of all in-app purchases is again making the news. Facebook said that when it tried to help out small businesses who’d lost income due to the coronavirus, Apple refused to waive its 30% commission on sales. Facebook itself takes no cut of the income.

The social network then tried including a ‘transparency notice’ advising users that Apple would get 30% of the amount paid, and Apple blocked that …

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Facebook again criticizes iOS 14 privacy changes, warns of drastic effect on advertising industry

Facebook continues to warn advertisers about the effects of the privacy and tracking changes that Apple has planned for iOS 14. While a pair of earlier reports indicated Facebook’s concerns, the company has now published a blog post detailing how advertisers will be affected by iOS 14’s new anti-tracking features.

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Facebook launches new shopping section as Instagram expands ‘Checkout’ feature and Live Shopping

Facebook has launched a number of updates to its shopping experience for both Facebook and Instagram today. After debuting “Facebook Shops” back in May there is now a dedicated section in the app for shopping while Instagram is opening up its Checkout and Live Shopping features to all sellers in the US. Today’s changes also bring new tools to help businesses with e-commerce.

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Twitter shares content moderation plans, highlights contrast with Facebook

On the heels of the US House Judiciary Committee antitrust hearing looking into big tech and also the European Commission working on the Digital Services Act and Democracy Action Plan, Twitter has spoken out today about its two most important goals in supporting an Open Internet. The message also highlights how its moderation approach differs from Facebook.


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