That’s a little reductive but essentially the message put out today by Mark Zuckerberg. Writing on his personal Facebook page, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook won’t take a cut of any earnings that influencers earn on its platform through a growing number of Facebook products until 2023—and when it does start, its fees will be “less than the 30% that Apple and others take.” In addition, Zuckerberg said Facebook would shortly release a helpful little dashboard for influencers to (ostensibly) better manage their earnings and see which companies take a portion of their income.
Complicating matters is the fact that many other rival companies—TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, to name only a few—are working on similar things. As well as the fact that Facbeook and Instagram spent many years largely ignoring the influencers on its platforms, while those rivals did a better job at cultivating them and introducing opportunities to earn money off their newfound fame, making those sites a more diserable destination.
To help Facebook stand out, Zuckerberg is willing to do something the others probably aren’t: Let creators earn money on the site without taking a portion of those dollars. Those smaller companies are likely going to be more eager to show investors that these new creator-focused products generate money.
Facebook, by contrast, has the enviable position of . . . not really needing the money. It earned a $9.5 billion profit alone last year and has over $60 billion just in cash. Keeping creators happy and earning money on Facebook keeps them from running off to other sites, taking Facebook users with them. Users have been—and will continue to be—the real moneymakers for Facebook, the people who look at the ads that do make up the majority of the company’s revenue.
The second factor in all this is the burgeoning grudge match between Facebook and Apple—and between Apple and other parts of Big Tech. Apple recently introduced changes to its operating system that will make it harder for Facebook to earn money off ads, part of a larger disagreement between Facebook and Apple over data privacy on the internet.
For its part in the war, Facebook will be doing things like Monday’s announcement: finding ways to paint Apple’s policies as stifling to small businesses on the Web. (Facebook’s timing was blantantly conspicuous, Zuckerberg’s post coming a few hours before Apple begins its much-watched annual developers’ conference.)
Of course, other companies are taking the opportunity to do the same thing to Apple. Less than a month ago, a trial concluded between Apple and Fornite-maker Epic Games over Apple’s allegedly monopolistic grip on large swaths of the internet, a fight also first sparked over fees and a disagreement over who should earn what.
I’m a senior editor at Forbes, where I cover social media, creators and internet culture. In the past, I’ve edited across Forbes magazine and Forbes.com.
It’s a bit simplistic, but it’s the message Mark Zuckerberg is conveying today. Writing on his non-public Facebook page, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will not take any reduction in the profits influencers make on its platform through a number in Facebook product development until 2023, and when it starts, its fees will be “less than the 30% that Apple and others take. In addition, Zuckerberg said Facebook would soon launch a useful little panel so influencers can (apparently) better manage their profits and see which corporations take part in their profits.
The stakes are high here. For starters, Zuckerberg has placed some of Facebook’s hopes for long-term expansion on creators and announced a series of new projects over the next year to inspire influencers to create audiences on Facebook products. Among other things, Facebook. plans to implement audio features with subscription plans, introduce a marketplace where brands and influencers can connect, and launch a subscription newsletter service, Newsletter.
To complicate matters, many other rival corporations (TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, to name a few) are running similar things, as well as the fact that Facbeook and Instagram have spent many years largely ignoring influencers on their platforms, while rivals have done more of a job cultivating them and introducing opportunities to make money through their newfound fame. , making those sites a more disadvantageous destination.
So, this isn’t good. Your iPhone settings enable you to tell Facebook you don’t want your location tracked. It’s clear and non-ambiguous. Why then, if you tell Facebook “never” to access your location, is the data harvesting giant doing exactly that?
Facebook generates almost all its revenue from digital advertising—targeting ads by harvesting as much data from you and about you as it can. “Facebook marketing is generally dominated by iOS,” one ad industry article laments, “it’s pretty safe to assume Facebook has lost at least half their data, arguably the most valuable half.”
All of which means that Facebook will be doing ever more with the data that remains. And there’s a hidden danger in all the iOS 14.5 publicity—a false sense of security for iPhone users, thinking that the Facebook data issue is suddenly over, that everything has now changed. That would be very wrong—it really hasn’t.
Apple has clamped down on Facebook tracking you across third-party websites and apps, not harvesting your data on those it owns. Just like Google with Chrome, Photos and Gmail, Facebook apps compare miserably to their peers when it comes to helping themselves to your information. This isn’t coincidence—it’s a philosophy at play.
iOS 14.5 is also fairly new—the impact is still being assessed. And so we’ll need to wait and see what workarounds the data giants find to keep tracking our web and app activity. The last major privacy innovation was to restrict location tracking. And here we can see exactly how it’s the letter and not the spirit of the rules that seems to apply.
Despite me telling my iPhone “never” to allow Facebook access to my location, despite me checking Facebook online to confirm it knows “location history for mobile devices” is set to “off.” Facebook continues to exploit a loophole, harvesting photo location tags and IP addresses, all of which it will, in its own words, “collect and process.”
I took a photo with my iPhone and then uploaded that to my Facebook account. I used Facebook’s app on my iPhone, the same app that has been told “never” to access my location, the same account that knows I have this switched off. But Facebook still collects the location tag from that photo, along with my IP address.
My iPhone adds GPS tags to photos—useful to sort and find images. I can use the share function in Apple Photos to strip location data as I send, and most messengers strip this data, but in Facebook’s app, when I upload a photo, the data is sent as well.
Facebook and Instagram do in fact strip the metadata, the so-called EXIF information, from photos that are saved to their platforms. You can see this, because if you save a photo from Instagram or your Facebook albums onto your phone, there will be no location information. That has been replaced with Facebook’s own codes.
And so, you might assume that Facebook has deleted this data. Wrong. If you go to your Facebook privacy settings and select “your Facebook information,” you can download a copy of the data it holds. If you select “photos and videos,” you will see the data that Facebook saved from the images you uploaded.
In the case of this specific photo, the one just uploaded from my iPhone, that data includes a very precise location and my “upload IP address.” Facebook doesn’t need any more than that. If I type those lat/long co-ordinates into Google Maps, I get an exact match to my location, and Google’s Street View shows me the front of my house. As you can imagine, this is not the kind of privacy I had in mind.
So, is Facebook doing anything valuable with the data? Not for you. Gone are the days when your images could be seen by EXIF location—a huge privacy risk of a different kind. This data is now for Facebook’s own purposes. Remember its business model.
Facebook’s privacy policy says as much. The data “we collect,” it says, “can include information in or about the content that you provide (e.g. metadata), such as the location of a photo or the date a file was created.” The location data, it says, is used “to provide, personalize and improve our products, including ads.
This gets better. The privacy policy links you to “About Facebook Ads,” which explains why targeted ads are beneficial. Facebook tells you “we use location data to show you ads from advertisers trying to reach people in or near a specific place. We get this information from sources such as: Where you connect to the Internet, Where you use your phone, Your location from your Facebook and Instagram profile.”
Then you see a link inviting you to “learn more about your location data.” That link takes you to your account, where it asks if you want to “Turn on Location History for your mobile devices,” because, remember, this is switched off. Which begs the question—how can you collect my location data, and then explain this by taking me to an account setting which confirms I’ve told you not to capture my location?
If this seems Pythonesque to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
You might not save many photos to Facebook these days, perhaps you use Instagram instead. Well, its data policy carries the very same warning, that the data harvested “can include information in or about the content you provide (like metadata), such as the location of a photo or the date a file was created.”
I asked Facebook about this capture of EXIF locations from Facebook and Instagram photos. The company confirmed that it “collects and processes” such data. I suggested to them that this data is used for advertising purposes, and that this is “regardless of the privacy settings selected by the user within the Facebook/Instagram app on their phones.” Facebook told me it was fine to proceed with those assumptions.
As regards Instagram, Facebook pointed me to its privacy policy, which confirms this type of metadata harvesting, and suggested that users strip EXIF data from their photos before uploading them. Easier said than done, but yes, clearly. The company also pointed out that EXIF data is not the same as a phone’s live location.
True, albeit photos uploaded from a mobile device are almost always taken on the mobile device. And combined with its vast data trove, this is all part of painting a more accurate picture of each of you, a profile to mine for ads.
So, what should you do? Don’t upload photos to Facebook or Instagram that have significant location data embedded, unless you want to share that data. You can use an app like iVerify, which will add a metadata stripping function to the share menu within photos, enabling you to save clean duplicates before you upload or share them.
EXIF data isn’t the only secret tracking taking place on your iPhone. If there’s one other setting you absolutely need to change, it’s the “load remote images” option within Apple Mail. This should be switched off, which will stop almost all the email tracking pixels you you are being sent from collecting your location data, your identifier and the date and time, every time you open a marketing email.
This is an absolutely scourge, and with Apple’s crackdown on website pixel tracking, these marketing email pixels are going to become even more important. You don’t lose anything by changing that setting. Apple will give you the option to load remote images on every email that has them. At least this way you get to choose who is checking where you are and storing that information to target you with ads later.
As I’ve said, this is a philosophy, it’s about taking as much valuable information as possible, and then monetizing that information in myriad different ways. That’s why all Facebook’s data harvesting, per its privacy labels, link back to user identities, and it’s why it would never think to refuse that EXIF location data unless explicitly prohibited or prevented from gathering it.
With iOS 14.5 and the rising groundswell of privacy advocacy, the next few years will either be a pivot point for Facebook as it’s forced to examine its business model, or more likely the same kind of almost unnoticeable bump in the road that Cambridge Analytica ultimately proved to be. Just take a look at its stock chart in the years since that existential crisis hit the headlines—it tells you everything you need to know.
“Protecting people’s privacy,” Facebook says, “is central to how we’ve designed our ad system.” No, really, that’s what it says. Four simple steps to enhance your privacy: Say no to tracking when asked by iOS 14.5; disable location sharing for Facebook on your phone; for Facebook itself, delete the app and use a browser instead—Safari or Firefox, not Chrome; and don’t upload EXIF data unless you’re happy it’s collected.
In the meantime, Apple, please address these EXIF issues and also default to remote email images being disabled in iOS 15. Those would be two huge steps forward.
Zak is a widely recognized expert on surveillance and cyber, as well as the security and privacy risks associated with big tech, social media, IoT and smartphone platforms. He is frequently cited in the international media and is a regular commentator on broadcast news, with appearances on BBC, Sky, NPR, NBC, Channel 4, TF1, ITV and Fox, as well as various cybersecurity and surveillance documentaries.
Zak has twenty years experience in real-world cybersecurity and surveillance, most recently as the Founder/CEO of Digital Barriers, which develops advanced surveillance technologies for frontline security and defence agencies as well as commercial organizations in the US, Europe and Asia. The company is at the forefront of AI-based surveillance and works closely with flagship government agencies around the world on the appropriate and proportionate use of such technologies.
Facebook is increasingly willing to admit it has a problem: There’s a lot of misinformation on its site. But the company remains much less willing to do anything about it itself. Instead, it would rather leave the heaviest lifting to other people: its users, its new Oversight Board, its would-be regulators in Washington, D.C.
Over the past week, Facebook has rolled out a number of new tools meant to curb bad content. Moderators of Facebook Groups, for example, can now slow down commenting on posts, making it so someone can only comment once every five minutes. Posts containing misinformation tend to draw lots of comments—from supporters and opponents alike—and the decision to add an emergency brake for comments could theoretically reduce how much attention these types of posts get, stalling the information’s spread.
Then on Tuesday, the company announced a slew of new features for regular users meant further tamp down on problematic speech. There’s now an ability to restrict comments on posts and a new Feed Filter Bar, a navigation tool for changing what appears on a user’s timeline. You can now display posts based on chronology, friends or Facebook’s proprietary algorithm.
The algorithm is the default choice right now and can be a superspreader of misinformation. Giving people the ability to switch off the algorithmically centered feed could help limit the spread of misinformation—as long as everyone knows where to find the Feed Filter Bar and then also remembers how to use it.
Facebook may be a company worth $851 billion with nearly 60,000 employees that pulls in $29.1 billion in annual profit. But the addition of these new tools suggests the firm thinks its average users—not any person or team at Facebook HQ—are the best weapons in fighting disinformation. That’s a lot of responsibility to place on the shoulders of its users, the vast majority of whom lack any of the specialized expertise needed to fight back misinformation.
Zuckerberg has long tried to avoid assuming much oversight over what’s published on Facebook, citing concerns over possibly limiting free speech, and once famously said in 2018 he wouldn’t even boot off Holocaust deniers. He and Facebook then caved a little at the end of the Trump Era and took up some basic policing measures. Holocaust conspiracy theoristists, for instance, were (finally) banned last October.
It has tried to reduce false information about the coronavirus and made a temporary change to its main feed during the election to prioritize information from reputable news sources. And then, of course, it banned President Trump, too, after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
But even with something like Trump’s exiling, Facebook isn’t willing to take ultimate responsibility for the decision. No, the buck doesn’t stop with Zuck. Instead, it stops with Facebook’s fledgling Oversight Board. The 20-person indepedent group of social media experts will review the expulsion and make a final determination about whether it was justified, the board’s first major ruling since its formation last summer. If it decides Facebook erred, the board could allow Trump to rejoin the platform.
“Here, you try” was pretty much the underlying message from CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s in his latest Congressional testimony, too. In prepared remarks, Zuckerberg asked Congress to offer a better definition on “unlawful content,” the type of posts lawmakers would expect Facebook to monitor and remove from its site.
But Congress is unlikely to agree on something like that anytime soon, and Zuckerberg surely knows it. For now, Facebook won’t have to change anything, and it’ll have a plausible justification for doing so: It’s waiting on Congress to figure out solutions to the problem. Just as it hopes its users figure out some, too.
I’m a senior editor at Forbes, where I cover social media, creators and internet culture. In the past, I’ve edited across Forbes magazine and Forbes.com.
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What in some cases can be truly disturbing content, moderators are the invisible, human grease that keep the social media machine running. It’s grueling but essential work that happens behind the scenes.
The message was for Mark Zuckerberg. “Without our work, Facebook would be unusable. Its empire collapses,” the founder of the social media titan was told in a letter sent last year and signed by more than 200 people.
“Your algorithms cannot spot satire. They cannot sift journalism from disinformation. They cannot respond quickly enough to self-harm or child abuse,” the missive went on to say. “We can.”
The we, in this case, are social media content moderators. Employed not only by Facebook, but also Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and all the other major digital platforms, they are the clandestine guardians of what a contemporary network puts out. It’s a crucial profession, but one that’s also goes largely unseen.
Moderators are sacrificed in the chase of the illusion of complete editorial automation.
“I believe that the most difficult aspect is the condition of total invisibility in which they are forced to work — for safety reasons, but also to minimize the importance of human work,” says Jacopo Franchi, author of the book Obsolete. “Today, it is impossible to establish with certainty whether a moderation decision depends on the intervention of a man or a machine. Moderators are sacrificed in the chase of the illusion of complete editorial automation.”
Speed is of the essence, silence is golden
Because technology fails to grasp the way we mean some of our words — and who knows if it will ever understand them — platforms still need someone to hide the dirt under the carpet in the eyes of the billions of subscribers and advertisers. Someone, in other words, needs to take that stuff down before it infects too many monitors and smartphones.
Digital moderators are men and women without specific skills or specializations, and of any ethnicity and background. They’re absolutely interchangeable workforce. To be hired, you just need to be immediately available, have a stable connection and some nerve.
They sift through and possibly delete the millions of anonymous daily posts, videos and stories reported by users. Such content includes child pornography, hate messages, fake accounts, hoaxes, revenge porn, cyberbullying, torture, rape, murder, suicide, local wars and live massacres. These rivers of mud escape the fallible dam of algorithms, and can end up making unspeakable horrors viral. These are the people that resolve machine selection errors, even if everything must appear, to the end user, to be a uniform and indistinct projection of artificial intelligence.
It’s essential and misunderstood work. It’s also, in many ways, barbaric. “I was paid 10 cents per piece of content,” writes Tarleton Gillespie in his Custodians of the Internet. “For this amount I had to catalog the video, published by ISIS, of a boy who had been set on fire.”
A former moderator said that Facebook even keeps track of their bathroom breaks.
The custodians work at a frenzied pace, deleting up to 1,500 pieces of content per shift. This happens one at a time, following the guidelines provided by the companies, the changing Community Standards (which the moderators refer to as the Bible).
If a post is in a language they don’t know, they use an online translator. The important thing is to be fast: They have a few seconds to determine what needs to be removed from our feeds. Valera Zaicev, a former moderator and one of the major activists in the battle for rights in this category, said that Facebook even keeps track of their bathroom breaks. Nobody knows anything about their mandate, forced as they are to silence by martial confidentiality agreements.
“Content moderators are an example, perhaps the most extreme, of the new forms of precarious work generated and directed by algorithms,” says Franchi. “Nobody can say how many there are: We are talking about 100,000 to 150,000 moderators, but it has never been clarified how many of these are hired full time by companies, how many are hired with temporary contracts by subcontracted agencies and how many instead are paid piecemeal on the ‘gig working’ platforms.”
Always answering to the algorithm
At Facebook, the most protected moderators in the United States have a stable contract paying about $15 per hour. But there are also roughly 1,600 moderators employed by the contractor Genpact in Hyderabad, India, where they are paid $6 dollars per day, according to Reuters.
The latter are part of a reserve neo-industrial army that responds at the platform’s disposal, thanks to outsourcing companies like TaskUs — people in unspecified corners of the globe, paid peanuts for one gig after another.
They face immense body and mind fatigue, commanded by an algorithm, a mathematical-metaphysical entity that never stops, and makes for an authoritarian leader.
“It is an algorithm that selects them on LinkedIn or Indeed through deliberately generic job offers,” says Iacopo Franchi. “It is an algorithm that organizes social content that can be reported by users. It is an algorithm that plans review queues and it is often an algorithm that determines their score on the basis of their ‘mistakes’ and decides on their possible dismissal.”
Yes, if they are wrong in more than 5% of cases, they risk getting the boot.
For those who manage to keep their jobs, it’s essential to disconnect completely in their free time. “There are thousands of moderators in the European Union and all of them are working in critical conditions for their mental health,” says Cori Crider, director of Foxglove, a pressure group that assists them in lawsuits.
Few last more than a few months on the job before being fired for disappointing performances or leaving by their own volition because they are no longer able to observe the evil of the world without being able to do anything other than hide it.
For those who manage to keep their jobs, it’s essential to disconnect completely in their free time.
The aftermath can be heavy. The accumulation of bloody visions traces a deep furrow. Who else has ever plunged so deeply into the abysses of human nature?
“Exposure to complex and potentially traumatic contents, as well as information overload, is certainly a relevant aspect of their daily professional experience, but we must also not forget the high repetitiveness of their tasks,” says Massimiliano Barattucci, work psychologist and professor of organizational psychology.
“Unlike another new job, that of delivery couriers, content moderators are exposed to all sources of technology-fueled stress,” he adds. “And this helps to understand their high turnover and burnout rates, and their general job dissatisfaction.”
Alienation and emotional addiction to horror could be just around the corner. “A progressive cynicism can arise, a habit that allows you to maintain detachment from the shocking content they see in their work,” says Barattucci. “They may develop disorders such as insomnia, nightmares, intrusive thoughts or memories, anxiety reactions, and in several cases, PTSD.”
One day, in the Facebook center of Phoenix, Arizona, everyone’s attention was caught by a man who threatened to jump from the roof of a nearby building, a former moderator tells The Verge. Eventually, they discovered he was a moderator, a colleague of theirs: He had walked away during one his two allowed breaks. He wanted to log off the horror.
Did you know the average app includes six third-party trackers that collect and share your online data?
The war over data privacy continues to heat up in the tech world. Two of the world’s biggest technology companies, Apple and Facebook, are taking very different approaches to user privacy, and their decisions are having ripple effects throughout the tech community.
Apple’s New Transparency Requirement
Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature, which will automatically be enabled on iOS in early spring, forces app developers to explicitly ask for permission from users to track and share information for cross-platform ad targeting.
With App Tracking Transparency, Apple requires every iOS app to ask you upfront if they’re allowed to share your information with data brokers and other networks, so they can serve mobile ads to you and measure your response to those ads.
After this change is in place, you’ll see a notification the first time you launch any new app on your phone, explaining what the proposed third-party tracker is used for, and whether you want to approve or reject the tracking and sharing of your data.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized Apple’s new changes publicly, saying they were specifically put in place to put Facebook at a disadvantage. Zuckerberg says Apple is Facebook’s biggest competitor.
But while Apple is adding more privacy features to give its users more control, Facebook is moving in the other direction.
The Thin Line Between WhatsApp and Facebook
Facebook recently announced changes to the WhatsApp Privacy Policy that have some users outraged.
Right now, WhatsApp has some features that allow users to communicate with businesses through WhatsApp chat—and some of those businesses are hosted by Facebook. According to the new policy, messages between the prospect or customer and the business they’re communicating with could be collected and shared with the larger Facebook ecosystem.
That means Facebook and its advertisers could potentially use customer service chats or transaction receipts for marketing and advertising purposes.
The content of users’ individual chats will continue to be encrypted, so they cannot be seen by the company. The data within those chats will not be harvested or shared with third parties. Nonetheless, Facebook faced a huge backlash against the new rules after the announcement, prompting them to publish an FAQ page to clarify the policy and reassure upset WhatsApp users.
The pushback was big enough that Facebook decided to delay the rollout of the new rules (originally slated for February) to May 15th. In mid-May, WhatsApp users will need to accept the new Privacy Policy terms, or lose access to their accounts.
For many WhatsApp users, this announcement was a distinct reminder that WhatsApp users are now Facebook customers, and over time, Facebook will be moving information between the two platforms more often, in the name of “interoperability.”
Transparency: Winning Hearts and Minds in the Tech World
Apple and Facebook often take different approaches to user privacy. More and more, Apple seems to be taking steps to be more transparent and to protect user data, including regulating app developers in their ecosystem.
Meanwhile, Facebook has trouble gaining the trust of many of its users, and the common assumption is that the company prioritizes the needs of its advertisers over the privacy of its users.
Clearly, the market is sensitive to privacy issues, and they want companies to be more transparent – as evidenced by the backlash to Facebook’s recent WhatsApp announcement.
In the long run, I believe the companies that are more transparent with their users and take a stand to protect data privacy will be the ones who succeed – but only time will tell.
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchains, and the Internet of Things. Why don’t you connect with Bernard on Twitter (@bernardmarr), LinkedIn (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bernardmarr) or instagram (bernard.marr)?
Only on “CBS This Morning,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, philanthropist Priscilla Chan, invited us into their home. They have never allowed a TV camera crew inside before. Gayle King was able to see first-hand who this couple is outside their Facebook lives. They discussed raising their two young daughters and how family inspires the work they do. Watch “CBS This Morning” HERE: http://bit.ly/1T88yAR Download the CBS News app on iOS HERE: https://apple.co/1tRNnUy Download the CBS News app on Android HERE: https://bit.ly/1IcphuX Like “CBS This Morning” on Facebook HERE: http://on.fb.me/1LhtdvI Follow “CBS This Morning” on Twitter HERE: http://bit.ly/1Xj5W3p Follow “CBS This Morning” on Instagram HERE: http://bit.ly/1Q7NGnY
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Do you need to take your business to the next level? Facebook presents Connection: Reinventing Business , a digital training event for entrepreneurs and owners of Small and Medium Enterprises ( SMEs ).
This event in collaboration with the Association of Entrepreneurs of Mexico (ASEM) and Victoria 147 will be held on October 28 and 29 . You can find workshops and content to reinvent the way they do business and find and satisfy their customers in the digital space.
According to figures from the most recent Global Report on the State of Small Businesses , carried out by Facebook in collaboration with the OECD and the World Bank, 51% of the Mexican businesses surveyed said that 25% or more of their sales originated on digital platforms. during the last month, which highlights the importance that businesses, on their way to reopening, recovery and to meet new consumer habits, acquire or reinforce their digital skills.
Digital tools have helped small and medium-sized businesses face the challenges of the unprecedented business disruption facing Mexico and the world. Businesses that manage to build a strong presence and digital services could emerge stronger from the crisis.
In this way, Facebook wants to support SMEs to maintain contact with their customers through online resources at no cost, easy to implement and use, and that can become the tools that local businesses need.
The trainings will provide SMEs with inspiration through other success stories and knowledge to grow their business and adapt their use of the different tools according to what is best for their type of business. The modules will be presented by Priscila Arias , entrepreneur, activist and influencer, who will help participants navigate through the content.
Sessions will be led by program partners to provide training on leadership and gender inclusion (Victoria 147), sales and business model (ASEM), innovation during crises (ASEA) and how to present the business to investors (Endeavor).
Market experts and entrepreneurs will be invited to help participants learn from real life experiences. Each one in a different specialty:
Basic Concepts of Finance , by Angélica Castellanos, Konfío Chief Operating Officer
Human Resources and Payroll , by Courtney McColgan, Founder of Runa
Negotiation skills , Victor Kong, CEO of Cisneros Interactive
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Facebook announced Wednesday it would launch a section that will be devoted to debunking common myths about coronavirus, as it aims to combat criticism that its been too lax about misinformation on its platform.
KEY FACTS
Called “Facts About Covid-19,” the new section will appear under the Covid Information Center part of the site that features local and national updates about the pandemic as well as suggestions of pages to follow for more information.
In an example of what the section will look like that was posted to Twitter on Wednesday, tabs appeared to show information to dispute common myths repeated throughout the pandemic, like how hydroxychloroquine is not generally recommended as a preventative or treatment for the virus, along with consuming bleach or disinfectants.
The aim of the section is “to further limit the spread of misinformation,” the social media giant said in a tweet Wednesday.
The company also announced that both Facebook and Instagram will feature new alerts to remind users to wear face masks.
On Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg will interview Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease official, including about the country’s efforts to slow the pandemic, how close a vaccine could be and what everyday people can do to pitch in—all to be livestreamed on Facebook, of course.
Zuckerberg has invited Facebook users to submit questions they would like to see Fauci answer.
KEY BACKGROUND
Facebook has recently taken steps to curb misinformation on the platform in a change of course for Zuckerberg, who just months ago criticized Twitter for its decision to fact check President Donald Trump’s tweets. “Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” Zuckerberg said to Fox News anchor Dana Perino in a May interview. However, by April, Facebook announced that users who engaged with posts flagged as containing misinformation about coronavirus would get a notification to direct them to the World Health Organization’s information about the virus.
Last month, Zuckerberg finally followed Twitter’s lead to flag political figures’ posts that violate Facebook policies but are considered newsworthy. Last week, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said the firm “has to get better at finding and removing hateful content,” after a campaign called Stop Hate For Profit called on companies to boycott advertising on the site until Facebook addresses the “hate and disinformation being spread” on the platform.
I am a Texas native covering breaking news out of New York City. Previously, I was a Forbes intern in London. I am an alum of City, University of London and Texas State University.
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Facebook is facing an unusually public backlash from its employees over the company’s handling of President Trump’s inflammatory posts about protests in the police killing of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis.At least a dozen employees, some in senior positions, have openly condemned Facebook’s lack of action on the president’s posts and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s defense of that decision. Some employees staged a virtual walkout Monday.
“Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind,” tweeted Ryan Freitas, director of product design for Facebook’s news feed.”I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up,” tweeted Jason Toff, director of product management. “The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard.”
The social network also is under intense pressure from civil rights groups, Democrats and the public over its decision to leave up posts from the president that critics say violate Facebook’s rules against inciting violence. These included a post last week about the protests in which the president said, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.“
Twitter, in contrast, put a warning label on a tweet in which the president said the same thing, saying it violated rules against glorifying violence.The move escalated a feud with the president that started when the company put fact-checking labels on two of his tweets earlier in the week. Trump retaliated by signing an executive order that attempts to strip online platforms of long-held legal protections.
Zuckerberg has long said he believes the company should not police what politicians say on its platform, arguing that political speech is already highly scrutinized. In a post Friday, the Facebook CEO said he had “been struggling with how to respond” to Trump’s posts.
“Personally, I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric,” he wrote. “I know many people are upset that we’ve left the President’s posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies.”
Zuckerberg said Facebook had examined the post and decided to leave it up because “we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.” He added that the company had been in touch with the White House to explain its policies. Zuckerberg spoke with Trump by phone Friday, according to a report published by Axios.
On Monday evening, Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, held a Zoom video call with leaders of three civil rights groups that have criticized the company’s response to Trump’s posts.
Vanita Gupta of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Rashad Robinson of Color of Change said in a joint statement they were “disappointed” by Zuckerberg’s “incomprehensible explanations” for allowing Trump’s post about the protests as well as earlier false claims about mail-in ballots.
“He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump’s call for violence against protesters,” they said. “Mark is setting a very dangerous precedent for other voices who would say similar harmful things on Facebook.”
Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, said: “We’re grateful that leaders in the civil rights community took the time to share candid, honest feedback with Mark and Sheryl. It is an important moment to listen, and we look forward to continuing these conversations.”
While Facebook’s 48,000 employees often debate policies and actions within the company, it is unusual for staff to take that criticism public. But the decision not to remove Trump’s posts has caused significant distress within the company, which is spilling over into public view.
“Censoring information that might help people see the complete picture *is* wrong. But giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy,” tweeted Andrew Crow, head of design for the company’s Portal devices. “I disagree with Mark’s position and will work to make change happen.”
Several employees said on Twitter they were joining Monday’s walkout.”Facebook’s recent decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe,” tweeted Sara Zhang, a product designer.
In a statement, Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said: “We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community. We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership. As we face additional difficult decisions around content ahead, we’ll continue seeking their honest feedback.”
Less than 4% of Facebook’s U.S.-based staff are black, according to the company’s most recent diversity report.Facebook will not make employees participating in the walkout use paid time off, and it will not discipline those who participate.
On Sunday, Zuckerberg said the company would commit $10 million to groups working on racial justice. “I know Facebook needs to do more to support equality and safety for the Black community through our platforms,” he wrote.
Facebook has a history of either copying or acquiring their competitors. This isn’t meant to be a slight; it’s smart. Facebook has the war chest, talent and billions of global visitors to its platforms. There’s no need for them to keep reinventing the wheel.
It didn’t come as a surprise when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg copied Jack Dorsey, the dual CEO of Twitter and Square. Dorsey previously announced that he’d allow his employees to continue working from home “forever.” Dorsey said, “We want employees to be able to work where they feel most creative and productive.”
On the heels of Dorsey’s announcement, Facebook said this week that it would permit its employees to work remotely too. Zuckerberg isn’t known for being warm and cuddly. He’s viewed as a brilliant and tough business person. He clearly sees the trend and benefits of allowing employees to work from home and jumped on the bandwagon. The massive, forced remote-work experiment made by major corporations, during the pandemic, proved a great success. The workers didn’t have to be subjected to long, time-wasting commutes. They were able to take care of and teach their children, as their schools closed, and available to help sick or needy family members.
Companies recognize that their costs will appreciably drop if they’re no longer required to lease pricy real estate in big, overcrowded cities that have high tax rates. They also understand, from a public relations standpoint, that less people driving or taking busses to and from work cuts down on pollution and saves the environment. We’ve all seen by now the before Covid-19 and after photos of cities showing the improvement of the air quality.
Zuckerberg anticipates that a large percentage of his people will work remotely and said, “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale.” While this sounds noble and magnanimous, there’s an underlying threat to workers.
At first blush, Facebook, Twitter, Square and other employees who’ve been offered the chance to work remotely will be delighted that they don’t have to commute, deal with annoying co-workers, endless in-person meetings and their bosses glaring at them.
Some will say that it’s not worthwhile to live in San Francisco, Silicon Valley or other cities where rentals and houses cost a fortune. The taxes and cost of living are also too high. Many will leave the cities and move to places that offer more affordable housing, along with a better quality and higher standard of living. This can be boom for many suburbs and warm, sunny low-tax states and a detriment to the cities that throngs of people escape from.
Here’s the Facebook catch: employees will have to tell their boss if they move to a different location. According to Zuckerberg, those who flee to lower-cost cities “may have their compensation adjusted based on their new locations.” He ominously added, “We’ll adjust salary to your location at that point. There’ll be severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this.”
It’s becoming clear that the “gift” of remote work may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Let’s face facts, Zuckerburg and Dorsey didn’t become multimillionaires because they’re nice. They are sharp, aggressive, genius wolves dressed in T-shirts, jeans and hoodies. They know that a person can work from home in San Francisco, North Dakota, Iowa, Utah, England or India. It’s been proven that the available technology, such as Zoom videos, Slack and other products, make it easy to work from anywhere in the world and seamlessly connect with co-workers and managers.
Zuckerberg can now scout for talent all over the country and world. This could be the worst trend for workers, as CEOs arbitrage the best, cheapest job seekers globally. Facebook will source job applicants who possess all of the right skills and experience and live in lower-cost places and pay them less money then they’d receive working in San Francisco. Dorsey was upfront about this stating, “We can get talent anywhere. There’s a lot of folks out there that do not want to move to San Francisco. They feel comfortable working in a much smaller office or just home.”
This will cause a ripple of serious repercussions. Salaries for workers in San Francisco and other large cities may fall due to the introduction of job seekers that weren’t previously considered. Compensation may also be suppressed due to the overhang of over 39 million Americans who are out of work.
It’s also telling that Facebook just launched a new group video chat product, Messenger Rooms.This looks like it’s specifically designed to compete against Zoom, Skype, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. Conveniently, Facebook’s own employees can create a video chat room and invite up to 50 people to join a video call. It will make it easier for their remote workers and also steal market share from Zoom, which has become the Covid-19 breakout success story.
A large number of companies, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Capital One, Amazon, Microsoft, Zillow and others have all announced that they’ll extend their work-from-home programs. They most likely will follow Zuckerberg and Dorsey’s lead by seeking out talent that live in lower-cost places, so they can bring down their costs. In light of the economic hit companies have taken due to the effects of Covid-19, saving money has become a top priority.
On the flip side, there is some positive news. Job seekers will have more opportunities—albeit along with greater competition—as they can apply to jobs anywhere in the United States. If you see a job advertisement for a position outside of where you reside, feel free to submit your résumé. The odds are that most companies will adopt this remote-work strategy and consider candidates from various locations. This trend will free you from being relegated to only applying to jobs within commuting distance.
This power move by Zuckerberg could be the biggest game changer for the job market coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I am a CEO, founder, and executive recruiter at one of the oldest and largest global search firms in my area of expertise, and have personally placed thousands of professionals with top-tier companies over the last 20-plus years. I am passionate about advocating for job seekers. In doing so, I have founded a start-up company, WeCruitr, where our mission is to make the job search more humane and enjoyable. As a proponent of career growth, I am excited to share my insider interviewing tips and career advancement secrets with you in an honest, straightforward, no-nonsense and entertaining manner. My career advice will cover everything you need to know, including helping you decide if you really should seek out a new opportunity, whether you are leaving for the wrong reasons, proven successful interviewing techniques, negotiating a salary and accepting an offer and a real-world understanding of how the hiring process actually works. My articles come from an experienced recruiter’s insider perspective.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he expects 50% of the company’s employees to work from home over the next five to 10 years. The social media giant will embrace remote work, even after coronavirus restrictions end, with Facebook limiting offices to 25% capacity when workers return in July. The company has 48,000 employees in 70 offices around the world Subscribe to The Guardian on YouTube ► http://is.gd/subscribeguardian Facebook expects half of employees to work remotely over next five to 10 years ► https://www.theguardian.com/technolog… Support the Guardian ► https://support.theguardian.com/contr… Today in Focus podcast ► https://www.theguardian.com/news/seri…
