Facebook News – Online Marketing Scoops

Facebook Deleting Coronavirus Posts, Leading To Charges Of Censorship

Updated 9PM PST March 17: Facebook says it has fixed the bug and all posts are restored. That may not be completely accurate, however, according to one source.

Facebook and other tech companies are working hard to curb misinformation on their platforms about the emerging COVID-19 or Coronavirus pandemic.

Maybe too hard.

“Facebook is blocking COVID-19 posts from fact based sources,” a Facebook friend who noticed it told me. “Facebook is hiding these posts. At the time of viral pandemic this shouldn’t be happening.”

A screenshot of Facebook’s message to banned posts.

John Koetsier

Multiple others have experienced the same thing, and it’s the day after Facebook, along with Google, Twitter, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Reddit issued a joint statement on combatting misinformation on their platforms. That’s a good thing, as long as what they’re targeting actually is incorrect or spammy information, and not quality reporting from generally-recognized sites.

Apparently, those sites include Medium, Buzzfeed, and USA Today.

Others that I’ve personally seen via screenshotted block notices include Stuff, The Independent, and the NY Post. The Dallas Morning News was also impacted.

Given that Facebook is a key source of news and information for many, this has resulted in more than a few conspiracy theories. “Facebook is going hard on information control, I guess Facebook wants us all to be misinformed and die,” one friend opined.

The reality, according to a Facebook executive posting on Twitter, is that there was a bug in a system designed to stop spam:

We’re on this – this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce. We’re in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back. More soon.

Guy Rosen, VP Integrity, Facebook

That’s resulted in potentially thousands of posts and links being wrongly attributed as spam and blocked from public view. And not all of them are news posts about Coronavirus or COVID-19.

“It’s not just news articles,” according to one response to Rosen’s tweet. “A community flier asking for emergency donations of food to the needy in our community was blocked. A friend in Canada had posts from Royal Canadian Mounted Police blocked. It’s very widespread.”

As you often find with issues like this, conspiracy theories abound.

“[Facebook is] doing what it was designed to do,” said another response to Rosen. “Silencing facts.”

That theory should be easy enough for Facebook to clear up, if the company can fix the bug and get the anti-spam system back on track. Rosen said this afternoon that Facebook was working on it, and should have a fix soon.

A few hours later on March 17, at 6:31 PM PST, Rosen tweeted that the problem was fixed:

“We’ve restored all the posts that were incorrectly removed, which included posts on all topics – not just those related to COVID-19. This was an issue with an automated system that removes links to abusive websites, but incorrectly removed a lot of other posts too.”

That may not be entirely correct, however. Or there may be a lag time in restoring all flagged and deleted posts.

The same Facebook friend who alerted me to the problem in the first place checked her deleted posts at 9:02 PM PST, and was still getting messages about deleted posts. Here’s a video screen grab that illustrates the problem, which she provided.

I’ve asked Facebook for an update or explanation, and will add that when they respond.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

John Koetsier

I forecast and analyze trends affecting the mobile ecosystem. I’ve been a journalist, analyst, and corporate executive, and have chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. I built the VB Insight research team at VentureBeat and managed teams creating software for partners like Intel and Disney. In addition, I’ve led technical teams, built social sites and mobile apps, and consulted on mobile, social, and IoT. In 2014, I was named to Folio’s top 100 of the media industry’s “most innovative entrepreneurs and market shaker-uppers.” I live in Vancouver, Canada with my family, where I coach baseball and hockey, though not at the same time.

Source: Facebook Deleting Coronavirus Posts, Leading To Charges Of Censorship

Newsy

The company said it’s working on limiting “the spread of misinformation and harmful content about the virus.” Learn more about this story at https://www.newsy.com/97530/ Find more videos like this at https://www.newsy.com Follow Newsy on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newsyvideos Follow Newsy on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/newsy

Facebook Hack: Social Network Confirms 13.4 Million Follower Twitter Account Compromised

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

When the official Facebook Twitter account tweets that “even Facebook is hackable,” you know it’s going to be an uncomfortable virtual ride for the social network.

Fortunately for Facebook, that ride was over pretty quickly. Unfortunately, not before the Saudi OurMine hacking group was able to post to Facebook’s social media accounts on Instagram as well.

The temporary account takeovers, which appear to have also impacted the official Messenger Twitter account, lasted for less than 30 minutes. Long enough to cause plenty of embarrassment for Facebook, already in the news this week for a WhatsApp one-click attack risk vulnerability.

How were the Facebook accounts on Twitter compromised?

The Twitter account takeover of the official Facebook accounts happened Friday, February 7. The Facebook Twitter account posted a late night tweet to its 13.4 million followers that read: “Hi, we are OurMine. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security better than Twitter.” The compromised account tweet continued to offer “security services” to “improve your accounts security.”

It appears that it was not Facebook itself, nor Twitter, that had actually been compromised. Instead, as in previous account takeovers by the same group, a third-party marketing platform used to manage social media would appear to be the victim. This was confirmed to me in an email from a Twitter spokesperson. That statement went on to say, “As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them.”

Jake Moore, a cybersecurity specialist at ESET, told me that, in the past, OurMine has used leaked credentials from dark web sources but “here it seems they have used password resets to change account passwords.” I contacted the marketing platform concerned, but have yet to hear back with any comment.

Facebook confirmed the “hack” in a tweet once it had regained control over the compromised account: “Some of our corporate social accounts were briefly hacked but we have secured and restored access,” the tweet stated.

Who are the OurMine hackers?

If both the Twitter accounts attack methodology and the name OurMine ring a bell, that’s because this is a prolific hacking group. Indeed, the Dubai-based grouped were behind the recent Super Bowl LIV hack which compromised the Twitter accounts of the Kansas City Chiefs, the San Francisco 49ers, 13 other NFL teams and the NFL itself. Positioning itself as a security consultancy, OurMine always claims the attacks are made so as to draw attention to vulnerabilities in the security of these accounts. There can be little argument that it certainly does just that. There is, however, plenty to debate about the ethics of using these offensive tactics to do so. The legal situation doesn’t even need debating, that is pretty clear cut.

How can you protect your social media accounts from being hacked?

“To hack high profile accounts is quite a feat, but such accounts really need to bolster their own security and discover all of their own weak points,” Jake Moore says. “Using third-party software to manage social media can be convenient, but it also creates an attack vector for cybercriminals,” Moore warns, continuing, “I would suggest companies look at revoking all third party platform access which doesn’t offer robust multi-factor authenticator app protection.”

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Davey Winder

I’m a three-decade veteran technology journalist and have been a contributing editor at PC Pro magazine since the first issue in 1994. A three-time winner of the BT Security Journalist of the Year award (2006, 2008, 2010) I was also fortunate enough to be named BT Technology Journalist of the Year in 1996 for a forward-looking feature in PC Pro called ‘Threats to the Internet.’ In 2011 I was honored with the Enigma Award for a lifetime contribution to IT security journalism. Contact me in confidence at davey@happygeek.com if you have a story to reveal or research to share.

Source: Facebook Hack: Social Network Confirms 13.4 Million Follower Twitter Account Compromised

AVG Technologies

15.5K subscribers

If your Twitter account has been hacked, you’re probably wondering what to do next. Michael McKinnon, AVG Security Adviser gives you the low down on how your account gets hacked, then how to secure it again. For help with your social media privacy and protection, download AVG PrivacyFix: http://www.avg.com/privacyfix

Category

People & Blogs

Facebook Used to Be an Essential Marketing Tool. These CEOs Are Doing Just Fine Without It

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

In 2013, AHS Consulting founder Amna Shah started boosting her business’s presence on Facebook. She and her employees worked to build out a page with information about the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based company, and posted new content multiple times a week. To attract potential customers, staffers crafted ads and paid to boost exposure of posts.

Shah knew consumer-facing brands may be better suited for Facebook’s advertising and paid marketing, but assumed hers, too, could find an audience. Some existing customers interacted with the brand, and likes piled up. But Shah says no one new from Chattanooga or the nearby Atlanta region seemed to be finding her consulting firm through the platform–only some individuals from India and China.

“Over time, we started to think these were fake profiles,” she says. “We got no new business out of Facebook, ever.” Halfway through 2018, the company stopped putting effort into Facebook marketing. Shah is far from alone. In a November survey, Inc. asked CEOs and other high-ranking executives from fast-growing companies what they think about Facebook from a business perspective. Thirty-two percent said they are now getting less for their marketing dollars with Facebook than they used to, while 27 percent said they mistrust Facebook’s use of their business data. In follow-up interviews, several of the survey takers said they have slowed their use of Facebook marketing and advertising. A few, meanwhile, have pulled the plug altogether.

Shannon Hulbert, the CEO of Opus Interactive, a cloud-services provider in Hillsboro, Oregon, had been spending hundreds of dollars a month on Facebook advertising, but said her company cut back dramatically in 2018. The following year Opus removed Facebook from its marketing budget entirely. The social network had stopped driving business, Hulbert says, as Opus had itself grown to cater to much larger businesses.
Moira Vetter, the founder and CEO of Modo Modo Agency in Atlanta, says a decade ago it felt like every business needed to be on Facebook and Twitter. Recently though, her creative agency–an Inc. 5000 honoree the past three years–has shifted its focus to producing content and promoting its work on Instagram and LinkedIn. “I feel that Facebook has run its course,” she says. “It’s not somewhere people in our industry are spending time. In fact, it’s become less and less of something I even think or talk about.”
Bubba Grimsley says he’d just cut off his Fairhope, Alabama-based company Liberty Rent’s Facebook presence in November, due to concerns about data privacy within his industry, which works with real-estate rentals and financing. “I don’t even know why we were doing it,” he says of the company’s Facebook efforts, which included paying to boost exposure of its content. “I don’t think I was finding any customers.”

For years Facebook has poured energy into targeting and educating small businesses, growing a team of publicists and outreach employees. As of 2018, more than 140 million businesses globally used Facebook, at least 90 million of which were small and midsize businesses, according to the company. Veronica Twombly, the head of communications for Facebook Small Business, says SMBs are a “top priority” for the platform.

“We are trying to elevate our free and paid solutions to make sure these small- and medium-size businesses know all of the tools at their disposal to help grow their customers,” Twombly tells Inc. The company offers digital training for businesses, and held more than 100 in-person training sessions in the United States in 2019.

Facebook in the past has acknowledged the growing cost of its advertising for business, even as user growth has slowed. Finance chief David Wehner said in an investor conference call that in the fourth quarter of 2017 alone, the average price per ad climbed 43 percent, while the number of ad impressions served increased just 4 percent. Still, Twombly says the company is continuing to see growth in monthly active advertisers.

Several of the executives who told Inc. they have stopped advertising on Facebook over the past year were from business-to-business companies, which often can find customers more reliably on LinkedIn or through other marketing channels. But others outside of the B2B realm have followed suit. One example is Jack Wight, the founder of an electronics reseller that advertised aggressively to individuals on Facebook in 2018 but pulled the plug on the effort the following year.

“We weren’t making any money on those people by the time we paid for the advertising,” says Wight, the chief executive of Buyback Boss, which is based in Tempe, Arizona. “The marketing cost was just higher than other channels.”

Wight estimates his company spent about $20,000 on Facebook ads over the course of a year, before giving up on Facebook about seven months ago. For 2020, his company is using a strategy of SEO and Adwords to find people who type in, for example, “sell my iPhone 10” on Google.

A Buyback Boss employee who had been handling the company’s Facebook presence and advertising now focuses on search marketing. Wight says he’s open to resuming ad spending on Facebook–but only after he’s scaled the other marketing channels he’s found more effective.

“We put some money into it, we risked some money to experiment,” he says, “and it just didn’t work.”

By Christine Lagorio-Chafkin Senior writer, Inc. @Lagorio

Source: Facebook Used to Be an Essential Marketing Tool. These CEOs Are Doing Just Fine Without It

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Dismissed Tinder Cofounder As Irrelevant But Still Let Dating App Get Special Access To Users’ Data

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered entering the online dating business as far back as 2014, but he put the idea on the back burner, instead giving Tinder special access to its users’ data, leaked emails between top executives show.

Despite the preferential treatment, Zuckerberg rejected the suggestion he meet with Tinder cofounder Sean Rad, explaining, “I don’t think he’s that relevant. He probably just wants to make sure we won’t turn off their API.”

The leaked correspondence, released on Wednesday, is part of an ongoing lawsuit between Facebook and Six4Three, a now-defunct app developer that sued the social network in 2015 for restricting user data access, alleging the actions were uncompetitive. A spokesperson for Facebook, which is facing multiple antitrust investigations, said that these documents “are taken out of context by someone with an agenda against Facebook.”

Today In: Billionaires

The documents shed new light on Facebook’s deliberations to break into the multibillion dating market, a move that pummelled the shares of Match Group, owner of Tinder and Match.com, when Zuckerberg eventually launched Facebook Dating in September. The free service borrows elements of popular dating apps Hinge, Bumble and Tinder with specialized features that take advantage of its 2.4 billion user network.

The correspondence also shows how perilously close Tinder came to losing key access to Facebook user information that helped Tinder grow rapidly in its early years, when members often used their Facebook logins to access the app. When Facebook further restricted the kind of information third-party apps could access after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March 2018, Tinder’s app crashed.

The dating app known for its “swipe right” feature was on Facebook’s radar in 2013, the year after it had launched, according to an email exchange between Monika Bickert, current head of global policy management at Facebook, and Mike Vernal, a former Facebook executive who was then vice president of search. “I saw some folks complain about Tinder,” Vernal wrote, in response to a note Bickert shared around enforcement of “sexually themed apps.”

“I know a bunch of people who think this app is really interesting / could be big, so before we decide to take any enforcement action against them, can you let me know?”

The next year, Zuckerberg considered what a Facebook alternative would look like.

“[Facebook] isn’t explicitly a dating service, so there’s no stigma to being a part of it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I’d bet that more dates and relationships start on Facebook than all the other dating services combined.”

That same year, he also expressed concern Tinder was growing too fast at Facebook’s expense, echoing a worry shared by executives about other apps including Vine around the same time. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Tinder,” Zuckerberg wrote in January 2014 to two executives. “Tinder’s growth is especially alarming to me because their product is built completely on Facebook data, and it’s much better than anything we’ve built for recommendations using the same corpus.”

Tinder was just one among thousands of other developers, from game developer Zynga to music sharing software Spotify, that had access to large amounts of data around Facebook’s users and their friends.

In 2014, Facebook announced it would start preventing third-party app developers from having access to data on users’ friends, including birth dates, photos and pages they liked. The company gave a May 2015 deadline for developers to comply with its new set of access rules.

However, Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives made some companies and apps an exception, documents show. Tinder was one. According to the documents, Facebook agreed to give Tinder a special data-sharing agreement, internally known as “whitelists,” if the dating app shared trademark rights on “MOMENTS.” which was the planned name for a photo app that Facebook wanted to launch, an email exchange in March 2015 showed.

“Facebook’s decision to give Tinder special access to data that has been cut off to other developers presents ‘value we think is far greater than [Tinder’s] trademark,’” wrote Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, current director of platform partnerships at Facebook.

When asked about this agreement, a spokeswoman for Tinder at the time said, “Tinder never received special treatment, data or access related to this dispute or its resolution.”

The trove of emails and messages are part of nearly 7,000 pages of confidential internal Facebook documents, which were leaked to Duncan Campbell in February 2019 but first published on Wednesday. According to Campbell’s website, he is an investigative journalist and a forensic expert based in Ireland.

The U.S. government has taken on a multipronged attack on Facebook for how it handles user data and privacy following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which erupted in March 2018. A former employee of Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm that included President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign as a client, revealed that his former employer had inappropriately purchased data on what turned out to be 87 million Facebook users.

Zuckerberg testified before Congress as a result of that incident. In the months after, multiple federal and state agencies have launched investigative probes on Facebook, on charges ranging from engaging in anticompetitive behavior to violating consumer privacy laws.

Other online dating apps that had whitelist agreements with Facebook include Bumble, Badoo, Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge and jSwipe.

Follow me on Twitter. Send me a secure tip.

Angel Au-Yeung

Angel Au-Yeung has been a reporter on staff at Forbes Magazine since 2017. She covers the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and tracks how they use their money and power.

Source: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Dismissed Tinder Cofounder As Irrelevant But Still Let Dating App Get Special Access To Users’ Data

CBC News

1.54M subscribers

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announces new dating app at F8 developer conference, taking on Match Group, owner of Tinder, Match, OKCupid and PlentyOfFish. To read more: http://cbc.ca/1.4643498 »»» Subscribe to CBC News to watch more videos: http://bit.ly/1RreYWS Connect with CBC News Online: For breaking news, video, audio and in-depth coverage: http://bit.ly/1Z0m6iX Find CBC News on Facebook: http://bit.ly/1WjG36m Follow CBC News on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1sA5P9H For breaking news on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1WjDyks Follow CBC News on Instagram: http://bit.ly/1Z0iE7O Download the CBC News app for iOS: http://apple.co/25mpsUz Download the CBC News app for Android: http://bit.ly/1XxuozZ »»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» For more than 75 years, CBC News has been the source Canadians turn to, to keep them informed about their communities, their country and their world. Through regional and national programming on multiple platforms, including CBC Television, CBC News Network, CBC Radio, CBCNews.ca, mobile and on-demand, CBC News and its internationally recognized team of award-winning journalists deliver the breaking stories, the issues, the analyses and the personalities that matter to Canadians.

Category

News & Politics

Mark Zuckerberg’s Answer To An Anti-Vaxxer Question Highlights Facebook’s Problematic Response To Misinformation

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for the first time since April 2018, answering a litany of questions about Facebook’s digital currency project and how it balances freedom of expression with demands it prevent the spread of false information. One exchange, on its approach to the controversial anti-vaccination movement, underlined the many ways its strategy can get muddled.

The hearing, held by the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, was billed as an opportunity for lawmakers to probe the company’s plan to launch a global digital currency, called libra. The agenda for the meeting quickly derailed in the opening minutes when chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-California) ripped into Zuckerberg for what she called an inability to adequately govern the platform he created.

“As I have examined Facebook’s various problems, I have come to the conclusion that it would be beneficial for all if Facebook concentrates on addressing its many existing deficiencies and failures before proceeding any further on the Libra project,” she said. Zuckerberg’s response: “While we debate these issues, the rest of the world isn’t waiting. China is moving quickly to launch similar ideas in the coming months.”

Today In: Innovation

Waters’ opening remarks set the tone for what took place during the remaining four-hours-plus of testimony. Legislators questioned Facebook’s decision to continue to run political ads with false information and failure to stop foreign governments from interfering on the platform. One revealing moment came from an outspoken anti-vaccination supporter, Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL), who wanted assurance Facebook would “support users’ fair and open discussions and communications related to the risk as well as the benefits of vaccinations.”

“We do care deeply about giving people a voice and freedom of expression,” Zuckerberg said. “At the same time, we also hear consistently from our community that people want us to stop the spread of misinformation. So we try to focus on misinformation that has the potential to lead to physical or imminent harm, and that can include misleading health advice.”

Facebook’s has tried to tackle the spread of misinformation by lowering its value in News Feed and making it easier for users to report false posts. Independent third-party fact-checking organization review them—if they determine a story is false, it will be flagged as disputed and there will be a link to a corresponding article explaining why. But Facebook fact-checkers have described the process like “playing a doomed game of a wack-a-mole.” These various approaches have been widely criticized for not doing enough to stomp out the spread of false information across the platform.

In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that vaccinations have prevented more than 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children born in the last 20 years. Scientists have yet to find any evidence for claims that vaccines can cause illnesses like autism. But anti-vaccine sentiment, which has flourished on Facebook and other social platforms, has led some parents to forgo vaccinations, leading to the rebound of some childhood diseases like measles. In March, Facebook rolled out a new policy on anti-vaccination content, including the decision to reject ads with false information.

Zuckerberg, who told Congressman that his “understanding of the scientific consensus” is that people should get their vaccines, said Facebook won’t stop its users from posting information that’s wrong.

“If someone wants to post anti-vaccination content, or if they want to join a group where people are discussing that content, we don’t prevent them from doing that. But we don’t go out of our way to make sure our group recommendation systems try to encourage people to join those groups.”

In other words, Facebook won’t prevent one of its 2 billion users from posting false information—it may not even flag it as wrong. The Facebook algorithm just won’t help it gain traction. If the user can spread that information on his own, then in Zuckerberg’s words, that’s “freedom of expression.”

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Send me a secure tip.

Michael Nuñez

I’m an associate editor at Forbes covering Facebook and social media. I previously worked as an editor for Popular Science, Gizmodo, and Mashable leading investigations and spotting emerging trends. In 2016, I authored an investigative series that pried open the inner workings of Facebook’s Trending Topics and news operation, causing a global referendum on how the social network curated the news for its readers. Follow me on Twitter at @MichaelFNunez and email me at mnunez@forbes.com. Securely share tips at https://www.forbes.com/tips/

Source: Mark Zuckerberg’s Answer To An Anti-Vaxxer Question Highlights Facebook’s Problematic Response To Misinformation

Global News

708K subscribers

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced aggressive questions in a day-long Congressional hearing on election interference, free speech, hate groups and fake news from members of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee on Wednesday. Zuckerberg was quizzed on Facebook’s steps to combat misinformation and voter suppression ahead of the November 2020 U.S. presidential election, to being asked how he feels about being compared to Trump. The CEO said Facebook would insist on U.S. regulatory approval before launching Libra, which is being established by a Switzerland-based consortium including venture capital firms and nonprofits. Zuckerberg navigated the hostile room without major slip-ups, and managed to crack a smile when he was jokingly asked about the betrayal he felt in his portrayal in the movie, “The Social Network.” For more info, please go to http://www.globalnews.ca Subscribe to Global News Channel HERE: http://bit.ly/20fcXDc Like Global News on Facebook HERE: http://bit.ly/255GMJQ Follow Global News on Twitter HERE: http://bit.ly/1Toz8mt Follow Global News on Instagram HERE: https://bit.ly/2QZaZIB #GlobalNews

Category

News & Politics

Bitcoin Chaos Continues As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Libra Woes

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets went into meltdown this week, with the bitcoin price suddenly falling off a cliff.

The bitcoin price lost some 15% in a shock sell-off on Tuesday, dragging down the wider bitcoin and crypto market and catching traders, who had hoped the hotly-anticipated Bakkt crypto platform launch would give bitcoin a boost, off-guard.

Now, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has revealed his libra cryptocurrency, which is largely credited with sparking bitcoin’s bull run earlier this year, may not launch in 2020, as previously expected.

“Obviously we want to move forward at some point soon [and] not have this take many years to roll out,” Zuckerberg told Nikkei Asian Review, a Japanese business newspaper. “But right now I’m really focused on making sure that we do this well.”

Facebook’s libra has run into opposition around the world as countries, including India, France and the U.S., warn it will undermine their national currencies, with U.S. president Donald Trump launching a blistering attack on libra, bitcoin, and crypto earlier this year.

Bitcoin traders and investors have closely-watched the development of Facebook’s libra, which has been adopted as something of a cryptocurrency regulatory bellwether and a tacit endorsement of bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology.

“A lot of people have had questions and concerns, and we’re committed to making sure that we work through all of those before moving forward,” Zuckerberg added.

The bitcoin price lost further ground yesterday, dropping some 5% and dipping below the psychological $8,000 per bitcoin mark.

Bitcoin cash, an offshoot of bitcoin itself, led the cryptocurrency market lower, recording losses for the day of over 5% and taking its weekly decline to almost 30%.

The bitcoin sell-off comes after a muted launch of the New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange’s Bakkt crypto platform, which was unveiled last year boasting software giant Microsoft and coffee chain Starbucks among its partners.

Bakkt’s platform allows traders and institutional investors to swap so-called “physically” settled bitcoin futures contracts, meaning traders and investors are not able to sell more bitcoin than they actually have, but the total number traded came to just 72 by the end of its first day, compared to over 5,000 traded on the first day of CME’s cash-settled futures, launched at the peak of bitcoin-mania in December 2017.

“Bitcoin staged a brief recovery yesterday but is again below [$8,000], currently trading at $7,990,” Marcus Swanepoel, chief executive of bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Luno, said in a note to traders.

“Similar losses have been recorded by all the main altcoins. The loss of value is certainly as a result of the overall global market negativity, but the change in the structure of the market with the launch of the bitcoin futures on Bakkt is thought, by a number of traders, to have been a contributing factor.”

bitcoin, bitcoin price, libra, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, chart — The bitcoin price sunk further over the last 24-hour trading period after a sudden sell-off earlier … [+]

Coindesk

Facebook’s libra, considered by some to be a competitor to bitcoin, is being pitched as a global currency, with the social media giant aiming to bring as many countries on board as possible.

However, the primary target is developing countries where banking and access to finance is low.

Facebook and Zuckerberg, who launched the platform in 2004, are both still reeling from a string of data-sharing and privacy scandals that have plagued the company in recent years and led to questions around the power of some of Silicon Valley’s biggest internet companies.

“Part of the approach and how we’ve changed is that now when we do things that are going to be very sensitive for society, we want to have a period where we can go out and talk about them and consult with people and get feedback and work through the issues before rolling them out,” Zuckerberg said.

“And that’s a very different approach than what we might have taken five years ago. But I think it’s the right way for us to do this at the scale that we operate in.”

Follow me on Twitter.

Billy Bambrough

I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on how technology is changing business, political trends, and the latest culture and lifestyle. I have covered the rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrency since 2012 and have charted its emergence as a niche technology into the greatest threat to the established financial system the world has ever seen and the most important new technology since the internet itself. I have worked and written for CityAM, the Financial Times, and the New Statesman, amongst others. Follow me on Twitter @billybambrough or email me on billyATbillybambrough.com. Disclosure: I occasionally hold some small amount of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Source: Bitcoin Chaos Continues As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Libra Woes

NowThis News

389K subscribers

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is speaking at the social media giant’s annual F8 Conference, where it will announce new services. » Subscribe to NowThis: http://go.nowth.is/News_Subscribe #Facebook #F8 #MarkZuckerberg Connect with NowThis » Like us on Facebook: http://go.nowth.is/News_Facebook » Tweet us on Twitter: http://go.nowth.is/News_Twitter » Follow us on Instagram: http://go.nowth.is/News_Instagram » Find us on Snapchat Discover: http://go.nowth.is/News_Snapchat NowThis is your premier news outlet providing you with all the videos you need to stay up to date on all the latest in trending news. From entertainment to politics, to viral videos and breaking news stories, we’re delivering all you need to know straight to your social feeds. We live where you live. http://www.youtube.com/nowthisnews @nowthisnews

Category

News & Politics

Facebook Is Considering a Huge Shift That Would Dramatically Change How You Use the Social Network (It’s a Good Thing)

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

Facebook invented the ‘like’ button as a subtle way of sending a message, short of adding a comment, that you supported whatever it was your friend posted on the social network. It was like a virtual nodding of your head at whatever they shared, a “Yeah, I agree with that,” without saying a word.

Over time, the ‘like’ became a little more flexible, adding a few other emotive options. You can now add a range of options from a heart, laughing, angry, or even sad. It also happens to be how many people measure whether or not a post was worth the time it took to create, the metric being, how many ‘likes’ did it get?

Soon, however, the ‘like’ may be no more, at least not as a measure of popularity. That’s because Facebook is apparently testing what happens when they remove the ‘like count’ from posts.

The test was discovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who spends a lot of time digging under the hood of the apps you use everyday, to discover unreleased features that are being tested. And it isn’t just a hunch–Facebook has confirmed to Techcrunch that it plans to test removing the feature.

I reached out to Facebook, but did not immediately receive a response.

Facebook has already begun testing this on Instagram (which was also discovered first by Wong), and apparently the company views it as a success because it has continued to roll it out to additional countries. According to Verge, users in the test have responded positively overall.

The problem with ‘likes.’

Here’s why this is interesting. Facebook helped created a world where people obsess over how many likes their selfies and photos of their pets receive. For many, it’s become a signifier of self-value. It even has a name: The ‘like’ culture.

Now it appears the company clearly realizes that the adverse effects of that culture have real world consequences for people. Anxiety over how much attention a social media post receives is a real thing. Depression and bullying online are also real. The best case scenario–at least for the users–is that they simply stop using social media site. The worst-case-scenario is, well, far worse.

Why engagement matters.

Part of the problem for Facebook is that if people fear that their content might not get very many ‘likes,’ they could be less interested in sharing. If they don’t share, overall engagement goes down. And engagement is extremely important to Facebook. Engagement means that people are using the site, which means they’re able to view the target ads that make the company a lot of money.

My guess is that most people won’t love this change at first, but it’ll be better for all of us in the long run. If it helps people become less addicted to the instant gratification that comes with little red notification dots and ‘like counts,’ it’s a step in the right direction.

If it helps people become a little less obsessed with what other people think about the curated view into their lives that they share online, we’ll all be better off. In that regard, I’ll give Facebook credit for helping people’s mental health, even if it may also helps the company at the same time.

By: Jason Aten

Source: Facebook Is Considering a Huge Shift That Would Dramatically Change How You Use the Social Network (It’s a Good Thing)

Between Facebook stock in freefall and the platform being used to destabilize democracy we thought it a better time than ever to explore David Fincher’s blockbuster hit The Social Network. Get ready to learn the true story about Facebook in all it’s gory details. If you enjoy what you see and hear don’t feel shy about subscribing, liking or sharing our channel. It helps us produce more contact. Join the Serfs! http://www.patreon.com/theserfs Or find us on social media: https://www.weareserfs.com https://twitter.com/Theserfspodcast https://www.instagram.com/serfspodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/serfspodcast https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/t… https://www.soundcloud.com/theserfs Sources: https://www.thedailybeast.com/faceboo… http://www.mtv.com/news/2437629/the-s… http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an… https://www.businessinsider.com/is-th… https://www.thedailybeast.com/mark-zu… https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014… https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/29/tech/s… http://ew.com/article/2010/10/12/soci… https://jezebel.com/5654633/the-socia… Keywords: facebook,mark zuckerberg,the social network,the social network debunked,the social network fact check,the social network true story,social network true story,is the social network true,the social network fact vs fiction,social network fact vs fiction,fact check social network,facebook documentary,facebook what happened,facebook stock,facebook popularity,zuckerberg,zuckerberg stock,facebook scandal,facebook news,aaron sorkin,david fincher,facebook loss

Category

Comedy

Facebook Defends Libra Cryptocurrency in Sometimes Hostile Senate Hearing

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

Ahead of the launch of its new global cryptocurrency, Facebook (FB – Get Report) sent its crypto chief David Marcus to the Senate Tuesday to face questioning from the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

The mixed reaction Marcus received among senators was mostly divided along party lines, with some of the toughest questioning coming from Democratic Senators still skeptical of the company in the wake of the Russian election hacking scandal that Democrats blame for their candidate’s loss in the 2016 presidential election.

Download Now: To be a profitable investor you first need to know the rules. Get Jim Cramer’s 25 Rules for Investing Special Report

Senator Mark Warren (D-VA) stated that “Facebook has a history of buying or copying competing technologies,” before demanding that Marcus assure the panel that competing digital wallets wouldn’t be hindered on WhatsApp and Messenger, two of Facebook’s most popular products.

Marcus went back and forth with Warner before assuring Warner that users would be able to send and receive non-Libra digital currencies on Facebook’s networks. But Marcus would not commit to embedding those competing currencies on its platforms.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) baldly stated that “Facebook is dangerous,” saying that the company has continued to misuse customer data while continually referring to each instance as a “learning experience.”

Brown concluded his remarks by saying that “it takes a breathtaking amount of arrogance to look at that record” and believe that the next move for the company should be to create a digital currency.

Republican Senators were more forgiving for the most part, with Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) applauding the company’s efforts to provide financial services for the under-banked.

“I want to make clear that we are only at the beginning of this journey,” Marcus said. “We expect the review of Libra to be one of the most extensive ever. Facebook will not offer the Libra currency until we have addressed the concerns and receive appropriate approvals.”

Marcus also stated the Calibra network will have the “highest standards” when it comes to privacy and that the social and financial data will be completely separated.

Users will have to provide an authentic government ID so sign up for Calibra and will not be able to register by simply using their existing Facebook profiles.

Marcus stressed Calibra’s independence from Facebook, stating that the company has taken the lead in developing the technology but that it would give up the lead once the digital currency is launched.

“We will not control Libra and will be one of over 100 participants that will govern over the currency,” Marcus said. ” We will have to gain people’s trust if we want people to use our network over the hundreds of competing companies.”

Facebook shares were up 0.18% to $204.27 on Tuesday early afternoon and are up more than 55% this year.

Facebook is a holding in Jim Cramer’s Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells FB? Learn more now.

By: Tony Owusu

Source: Facebook Defends Libra Cryptocurrency in Sometimes-Hostile Senate Hearing

More from Investing

Great Investors Need Good Judgment: Cramer’s ‘Mad Money’ Recap (Friday 8/16/19)

Jim Cramer says that, above all else, the thing you really need to be a great investor is good judgment.

Scott Rutt

Aug 16, 2019 6:58 PM EDT

General Electric Rebounds as CEO Culp Buys $2M in Shares Following Fraud Claim

GE rises after CEO Larry Culp purchases $2 million worth of shares in the group following reports that its accounting tactics were targeted by the whistleblower who helped bring down Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Martin Baccardax

Aug 16, 2019 6:33 PM EDT

What to know about Cloudflare’s Upcoming IPO

Formidable rivals, a focus on growth over profits, and a few unsavory customers are some of the potential risks to investing in Cloudflare, a fast-growing cloud security firm.

Annie Gaus

Aug 16, 2019 6:18 PM EDT

Palo Alto Networks Down Sharply On Resignation of Key Sales Exec

Shares of the security firm fell late Friday after the company confirmed that its head of sales is leaving after three years.

Annie Gaus

Aug 16, 2019 4:13 PM EDT

Experts Say Facebook’s Mind-Reading Brain Interface Isn’t That Crazy

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

Facebook says it’s getting closer to eliminating one of the tech world’s biggest problems: namely how ridiculously long it’s taken me to type this sentence.

Ok, so it only took me about 30 seconds, but the words formed in my head in a fraction of that time. This problem of human latency is a key hurdle for tech giants like Google and Facebook that are looking for new ways to grow by shoving ever-more petabytes of data into our brains, and vice versa.

Two years ago, Facebook announced it was working on a non-invasive wearable device that would allow users to type by imagining themselves speaking the words. The hope is that such a device can be used as an input interface for augmented reality glasses.

As part of their effort, Facebook has been funding a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) working to help patients with neurological damage to speak again by detecting imagined speech in real time.

The team published its results in the latest issue of Nature Communications, and although the patients it worked with each had implanted electrodes measuring brain activity, the demonstrated ability to decode a small set of words and phrases in real-time represents a significant breakthrough.

Facebook hopes the work of the UCSF team will serve as a proof of concept to inform the development of the non-invasive wearable it dreams of pairing with AR glasses.

“We’re a long way away from being able to get the same results that we’ve seen at UCSF in a non-invasive way,” reads a Facebook blog post detailing its efforts. “It could take a decade, but we think we can close the gap.”

Karen Panetta, IEEE Fellow and Dean of Graduate Engineering at Tufts University agrees that Facebook’s ambitions are feasible.

“If we can now measure signals in the brain via implantable devices, then we can transmit those signals outside of the brain.”

Facebook thinks that a promising way to make the leap from “reading minds” via wired electrodes to a wireless system is by measuring changes in oxygen levels in the brain using infrared light similar to a pulse oximeter at a doctor’s office.

“This could work, though I am afraid that the rates (timing) of oxygenation processes are much lower than the actual rate at which speech is produced,” Josep Jornet, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Buffalo, told me. “Certainly more work is needed, but this is what research is about and should be promoted.”

Todd Richmond, an IEEE member and Director of the Tech and Narrative Lab at the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica says “having a viable capability in the lab” to wirelessly send brain signals to a computer could be less than five years away.

“It will likely take longer to move from the lab to commercial deployment for a variety of reasons,” he adds.

Richmond thinks the first hurdles will be solving technical problems to make the system lighter, smaller, faster and essentially, more practical. Next comes the process of refining the user experience to make brain interfaces a necessity rather than a novelty.

“The third set of developments will be around improving accuracy, efficacy, and safety,” he explains. “Like any consumer product, we’ll need to sort out what agencies are looking at what aspects of how devices impact humans, both individually and from a societal level.”

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Eric Mack

I’ve covered science, technology, the environment and politics for outlets including CNET, PC World, BYTE, Wired, AOL and NPR. I currently produce the Warm Regards podcast and I’ve written e-books on Android and Alaska.

I began covering Silicon Valley for the now defunct Business 2.0 Magazine in 2000, but when the dot-com bubble burst, I found myself manning a public radio station in the Alaskan Bush for three years.

Upon returning to the lower 48, I covered politics, energy and the environment as a freelancer for National Public Radio programs and spent time as an online editor for AOL and Comcast. For the past 7 years, I’ve returned to focusing on the world of technology.

Source: https://www.forbes.com

Facebook Removes Fake Accounts It Says Are Tied To The Saudi Government

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment

Facebook, which has been under fire for not doing enough to combat misinformation, said Thursday that it took down hundreds of fake accounts that had ties to the government of Saudi Arabia and that posed as news outlets and criticized rival countries.

The social media giant has previously announced takedowns of fake accounts associated with other countries, such as Russia. But the company typically stops short of directly linking fake accounts to a government.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review found links to individuals associated with the government of Saudi Arabia,” Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in a blog post.One of the fake accounts tied to Saudi Arabia posted about Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman kissing the head of a wounded soldier

People behind these fake accounts pretended to be news organizations and created fake personas to run Pages and Groups on the social network. They posted propaganda about the Saudi Armed Forces and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

The government of Saudi Arabia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Overall, Facebook pulled down 217 Facebook accounts, 144 Facebook Pages, five Facebook Groups and 31 Instagram accounts it said were tied to Saudi Arabia. These accounts spent $108,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads while raking up more followers, Facebook said. About 1.4 million accounts followed at least one of these Facebook Pages.

The social network removed these accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” which means they misled others about who they were and the purpose behind the account.

Separately, Facebook also found another network of fake accounts tied to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, but it didn’t specify government involvement in those cases. The social network removed 259 Facebook accounts, 102 Facebook Pages, five Facebook Groups, four Facebook Events and 17 Instagram accounts associated with those two countries.

“We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we’ve said before, it’s an ongoing challenge,” Gleicher said.

By Queenie Wong

We tested 5G speeds in 13 cities. Here’s what we found: Faster speed versus more coverage. That’s the most important issue for 5G networks today.

We drowned AirPods, Powerbeats Pro and Galaxy Buds: We sprayed them, dunked them and even put them through the wash to find out which one of these three wireless earphones can handle the most water.

Category: Facebook News

Facebook Deleting Coronavirus Posts, Leading To Charges Of Censorship

Like this:

Facebook Used to Be an Essential Marketing Tool. These CEOs Are Doing Just Fine Without It

Like this:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Dismissed Tinder Cofounder As Irrelevant But Still Let Dating App Get Special Access To Users’ Data

Category

Like this:

Bitcoin Chaos Continues As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Libra Woes

Category

Like this:

Facebook Defends Libra Cryptocurrency in Sometimes Hostile Senate Hearing

More from Investing

Great Investors Need Good Judgment: Cramer’s ‘Mad Money’ Recap (Friday 8/16/19)

General Electric Rebounds as CEO Culp Buys $2M in Shares Following Fraud Claim

What to know about Cloudflare’s Upcoming IPO

Palo Alto Networks Down Sharply On Resignation of Key Sales Exec

Like this:

Experts Say Facebook’s Mind-Reading Brain Interface Isn’t That Crazy

Like this:

Facebook Removes Fake Accounts It Says Are Tied To The Saudi Government

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Category

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Category

Share this:

Like this:

Category

Share this:

Like this:

Category

Share this:

Like this:

The problem with ‘likes.’

Why engagement matters.

Category

Share this:

Like this:

More from Investing

Great Investors Need Good Judgment: Cramer’s ‘Mad Money’ Recap (Friday 8/16/19)

General Electric Rebounds as CEO Culp Buys $2M in Shares Following Fraud Claim

What to know about Cloudflare’s Upcoming IPO

Palo Alto Networks Down Sharply On Resignation of Key Sales Exec

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: