Facebook – Gloomberg News

4Feb

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Science

Meta to reinstate Trump on Facebook, Instagram

Former President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts will be reinstated "in the coming weeks," the social media platforms' parent company Meta said on Wednesday. Trump's accounts have been suspended since January 2021 when Meta initially banned the him indefinitely, after finding his posts on Jan. 6 amid the attack on the U.S. Capitol stoked violence and posed a risk to public safety. The announcement comes as Trump ramps up his third presidential campaign. But Meta said Trump will come back to the platform "with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses." "In light of his violations, he now also faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses," Nick Clegg, Meta's President of Global Affairs said in a blog post. "In the event tha...

16Dec

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Science

Is that Facebook account real? Meta reports “rapid rise” in AI-generated profile pictures

Facebook parent Meta is seeing a "rapid rise" in fake profile photos generated by artificial intelligence. Publicly available technology like "generative adversarial networks" (GAN) allows anyone — including threat actors — to create eerie deepfakes, producing scores of synthetic faces in seconds. These are "basically photos of people who do not exist," said Ben Nimmo, Global Threat Intelligence lead at Meta. "It's not actually a person in the picture. It's an image created by a computer." "More than two-thirds of all the [coordinated inauthentic behavior] networks we disrupted this year featured accounts that likely had GAN-generated profile pictures, suggesting that threat actors may see it as a way to make their fake accounts look more authen...

Nearly Half Of Meta Job Cuts Were In Technology, Reorganisation Underway, Say Executives

12Nov

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Science

Nearly Half Of Meta Job Cuts Were In Technology, Reorganisation Underway, Say Executives

By Reuters Nov 12, 2022, 10:34 AM IST (Published)The executives said that the first mass layoff in the social media company's 18-year history affected staffers at every level and on every team, including those with high-performance ratings.Facebook owner Meta Platforms told employees on Friday that it would stop developing smart displays and smartwatches and that nearly half of the 11,000 jobs it eliminated this week in an unprecedented cost-cutting move were technology roles.Speaking during an employee townhall meeting heard by Reuters, Meta executives also said they were reorganizing parts of the company, combining a voice and video calling unit with other messaging teams.The executives said that the first mass layoff in the social media company's 18-year history affected staffers at eve...

4Nov

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Gaming

10 Anime Characters Who Would Absolutely Fail No Nut November

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Image: Mappa / Crunchyroll / Kotaku / Thomas Pajot (Getty Images)For whatever reason, every time November rolls around a chosen few take it upon themselves to participate in the internet’s self-celibacy challenge: No Nut November.As silly as it sounds, the celibacy challenge has a huge following online. It’s even got its own dedicated community on the r/nonutnovember subreddit with over 134,000 “nut cumrades” and 3,000 “nut spectators.” The rules for No Nut November, colloquially known as “coitus reservatus” or “The Contest” by Seinfeld enjoyers, are that participants must abstain from having sex, masturbation, or watching anything pornographic within the month of November. Unlike the good old American pastime of baseball, there are no “three strikes a...

U.K. coroner finds “negative effect” of Instagram, Pinterest content contributed to teen Molly Russell’s suicide death

30Sep

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Science

U.K. coroner finds “negative effect” of Instagram, Pinterest content contributed to teen Molly Russell’s suicide death

Molly Russell is shown in this photo shared by the Molly Rose Foundation. The Molly Rose Foundation London — A coroner in London concluded Friday that social media was a factor in the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in November 2017 after viewing large amounts of online content about self-harm and suicide on platforms including Instagram and Pinterest. "It's likely the material viewed by Molly… affected her mental health in a negative way and contributed to her death in a more than minimal way," senior coroner Andrew Walker said Friday according to British media outlets. "It would not be safe to leave suicide as a conclusion. She died from an act of s...

20Aug

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Gaming

Mark Zuckerberg Responds To Bad Metaverse Graphics Backlash

Image: Meta / KotakuEarlier this week was supposed to be a celebratory time for the folks at Meta, as its reality-devouring project Horizon Worlds was now available in more countries. The occasion was marked by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself posting a “selfie” of his in-game avatar in front of a digital Eiffel tower. Sounds cute, right? Problem was, the graphics were comparable to what you’d expect from a children’s game like Roblox, not from a multi-billion dollar company’s efforts to shape our collective virtual future. The internet immediately roasted Mark Zuckerberg’s selfie to hell and back. And now, Zuck is here to do some damage control. Posting over on Instagram, for those of you who scrolled through enough recommended posts to see it, is an entirely new virtual rendition of ...

YouTube is the most popular social media among teens, followed by TikTok – and 35% said they are using at least one app or site “almost constantly”

11Aug

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Science

YouTube is the most popular social media among teens, followed by TikTok – and 35% said they are using at least one app or site “almost constantly”

YouTube and TikTok's popularity among teens has skyrocketed in recent years, while other social media platforms, like Facebook, have seen a decrease in teen using their service. A whopping 95% of kids ages 13 to 17 say they use YouTube, according to the Pew Research Center. And 19% say they use YouTube almost constantly,Pew compared the social media usage of teens in 2022 to seven years ago. After YouTube, TikTok is second most popular among this age group, with 67% of 13 to 17 saying they use it. On top of that, 16% say they use TikTok almost constantly. Pew's 2014 to 2015 survey found 71% of teens used Facebook. The new survey found 32% use it in 2022. Like YouTube and TikTok, teens' use of Snapchat and Instagram has also increased in the past ...

1Aug

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Gaming

Indonesian Government Blocks Steam, Epic, Ubisoft & Nintendo

Over the weekend the Indonesian government began the task of blocking any website or service that had failed to register as part of new “internet control” laws. That ended up being a lot, including everything from Steam to the Epic Games Store to Nintendo Online to EA and Ubisoft’s platforms.Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kominfo) took the steps after the introduction of strict new laws, which the government says is part of a crackdown on anything appearing online that is “deemed unlawful”, and which would require any online service platform or provider hosting any such “unlawful” content to remove it within 24 hours (or four if it is deemed to be “urgent”).In order to abide by those laws, international companies operating in Indonesia needed to have sign...

Instagram says new safety features will give parents more control over how long teens spend on site

14Jun

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Science

Instagram says new safety features will give parents more control over how long teens spend on site

Instagram's parent company Meta is giving parents new tools to watch over teens. The company announced that starting on Tuesday, parents will have more power to supervise and limit their teens' time on both Instagram and its Oculus Quest virtual reality headsets. They will be able to monitor what they're doing, and who they are interacting with. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri told "CBS Mornings" that as a father himself, he wants Instagram to lead on teen safety online. "As a dad and as someone who's talked to a lot of experts around the world, we believe that parents know what's best for their children. What I'm most excited about is providing more tools for parents to shape their children's experience on Instagram and on Quest VR into what's best for...

Sheryl Sandberg leaving Facebook parent company Meta after 14 years

2Jun

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Science

Sheryl Sandberg leaving Facebook parent company Meta after 14 years

Meta's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is leaving the company after 14 years, she announced Wednesday in a Facebook post.Sandberg will be replaced by Javier Olivan, the company's current chief growth officer, after a transition period this summer. She will continue to serve on the Board of Directors."I am not entirely sure what the future will bring," Sandberg wrote on Facebook. "But I know it will include focusing more on my foundation and philanthropic work, which is more important to me than ever given how critical this moment is for women." Sandberg has been with the company since 2008, and has often been credited with helping shephard it from the business Mark Zuckerberg started in his dorm room to a $100 billion publicly traded company. S...