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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 cofounder: It’s time to break up company, gov oversight of social media needed

Facebook

While there has been lots of talks about regulating Facebook and the tech industry as a whole, there’s so far been no real action. Now Facebook’s cofounder, Chris Hughes has published an opinion piece today in The New York Times, making the case for why Facebook needs to be broken up. But beyond that, he believes we need a new government agency to handle the growing tech regulation issues. Read on for the five main reasons Facebook’s cofounder believes the platform needs to be broken up.


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Facebook privacy concerns continue: using humans to label posts to help train AI systems

Facebook privacy concerns over human labelling of posts and photos

Facebook privacy concerns continue as it’s revealed today that the social network has been using a team of contract workers to label status updates and photos with keywords, to help train AI systems to do the same thing.

As many as 260 external staff in India have been carrying out the work on content posted since 2014 …


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Facebook’s FTC deal likely to include WhatsApp, require creation of privacy oversight committee

facebook FTC deal

As Facebook continues to negotiate a settlement deal with the Federal Trade Commission over its privacy practices, new reports this week offer additional detail on what that settlement might include. According to the reports, the FTC may require Facebook to create a privacy oversight committee, while the deal will also likely include WhatsApp.


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Facebook shows off major redesign coming to iOS and desktop including dark mode for web, Instagram getting new ‘Create Mode,’ more

Mark Zuckerburg F8 keynote

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and other leaders at the company took the stage at the F8 developer conference today to talk about where the platform is headed. We also got a look at the major new Facebook design headed for iOS and desktop that brings a brand new UI and logo, as well as a glimpse at new features and changes for Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.


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FTC considering taking ‘direct aim’ at Mark Zuckerberg as it investigates Facebook privacy lapses

Facebook FTC

The Federal Trade Commission started investigating Facebook in March 2018 as the Cambridge Analytica scandal unfolded. The investigation centers on whether or not Facebook broke an agreement with the FTC, made in 2011, that required the social network improve its privacy practices. Now, a report suggests that the FTC is specifically putting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg under scrutiny as part of this investigation.


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Facebook takes next step in plans for unified messaging service to rival iMessages

Signs of a unified messaging service spotted in Facebook code

Update: Facebook has confirmed to us that it is testing ways to improve the messaging experience but has no further details to share at this stage.

Facebook has taken the next step in its plans to unify its Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram messaging apps into a single, unified messaging service. The result would be something likely to rival iMessage as an ultra-convenient one-stop messaging option …


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France works on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA) tax, rest of Europe watches

France pushes ahead with plans for GAFA tax

France is pushing ahead on its own plans for a so-called GAFA tax – one that would impose a 3% tax on tech companies with worldwide revenues of more than €750M ($842M). The tax is named after four of the target companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.

Other European countries are in discussions about doing the same across the EU, but have not yet reached agreement on how best to proceed …


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UK’s tough new plans on harmful content could see Apple, Google, others, fined 4% of turnover

Failing to act on 'harmful content' could see tech giants face huge fines

The UK wants to get tough on ‘harmful content’ within apps, on social networks and on websites – and is consulting on new legislation which could see companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter fined up to 4% of their worldwide turnover if they don’t act quickly to remove it.

Government minister Jeremy Wright said that “the era of self-regulation for online companies is over” …


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Mark Zuckerberg joins Tim Cook in calling for GDPR-like privacy regulation in the US

tim cook zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg has published an opinion piece in The Washington Post outlining four ways he thinks new regulation could benefit the Internet. Zuckerberg specifically points to harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability. Zuckerberg calls for expanded privacy regulation, echoing similar statements from Tim Cook.


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Change your Facebook and Instagram password, company admits millions of passcodes were viewable by employees

Uh-oh, says Facebook, it turns out millions of user passcodes were stored in plaint text on the social network’s servers. Facebook disclosed the mistake that risked exposing the passwords of Facebook and Instagram users in a new blog post called Keeping Passwords Secure — presumably the irony is not intentional.


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