Facebook’s new Avatars feature lets you customize a virtual lookalike of yourself for use as stickers in chat and comments. Once you personalize your Avatar’s face, hair, and clothes, they’ll star in a range of frequently updated stickers conveying common emotions and phrases. From Likes to Reactions to Avatars, you could see this as the […]
Facebook wants to make reporting bugs as easy as shaking your phone. In fact, that’s all you’ll have to do. Thanks to a new feature, when you encounter a bug, you can simply shake your phone and file a report through a pop-up menu that will appear on the screen. The “shake to report” method […]
Facebook’s fake account problem keeps getting bigger. The company is removing more fake accounts than ever, taking down more than 2 billion accounts so far in 2019 alone, Facebook disclosed in a new transparency report. Company executives said there’s been a sharp uptick in the number of fake accounts created this year. There were 2.19 […]
Facebook hires contractors through outside providers, including Accenture and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, and sets minimum wage standards through contracts with those companies. As a result, Facebook said it doesn’t know exactly how much each of its contractors is paid, and it’s possible that some already make more than Facebook’s new threshold. “Today we’re committing […]
In a New York Times editorial, the social network’s VP for global affairs and communications says stronger oversight is needed, not a dismantling of the company. Nick Clegg has hit back at calls for Facebook to be broken up after claiming that critics should focus on “getting the rules of the internet right” and not […]
Facebook’s co-founders has called for the social network to be broken up. Chris Hughes, who helped Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook from his Harvard dorm 15 years ago, says that the Federal Trade Commission should reverse Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram in order to create more competition in the social media and messaging markets. “Mark’s […]
Facebook has assembled a team in Dublin to monitor for misinformation ahead of European Parliament elections in May, gathering 40 people at its European headquarters to fight against any attempt to manipulate the outcome of the vote through its apps. The room is similar to the room that Facebook set up back in October 2018 […]
Facebook announced an overhaul of its main mobile app today that puts more emphasis on two of its most critical features: events and groups. The company says it’s placing groups front and center as a cornerstone of how it wants users to think of the main Facebook app, while events is getting a fresh coat […]
Facebook’s F8 developer conference kicked off today. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is that “the future is private.” After a year plagued by controversy over whether Facebook is invading its users’ privacy and encouraging social division, it’s pushing hard on helping people connect with close family and friends. Facebook announced updates to Instagram, Facebook Messenger, […]
Facebook’s financial success continues unabated in the face of countless security and privacy scandals, including a potential record-setting Federal Trade Commission fine. The fine, the potential amount of which was first reported by The Washington Post in February, is related mostly to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that was revealed in March of last year, as […]
Facebook is planning its own voice assistant as it looks to increase competition with rivals Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. According to a report from CNBC, Facebook has been working on this AI assistant since early 2018. Facebook’s virtual assistant development team is being led by Ira Snyder, who also serves as the company’s director […]
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were all experiencing issues this morning for users worldwide. Facebook and Instagram were both inaccessible, with news feeds refusing to refresh and the main Facebook.com domain unavailable for more than two hours. WhatsApp messages were also unable to be sent or received, and users of Facebook’s main services (Facebook owns Instagram […]
As Facebook prepares to roll all its messaging services together (including WhatsApp and Instagram), it might also turn back the clock and reintegrate Messenger back its its main app. Facebook appears to be considering re-adding Messenger to its core app, years after removing it and spinning it out into a separate app. Jane Manchun Wong, […]
Facebook Live was announced in August 2015 as a rival to Twitter’s Periscope live-streaming app. To begin with, access was restricted to VIPs like Serena Williams, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Ricky Gervais and Michael Bublé. Journalists were next to gain access. Since then, all of Facebook’s two-billion-plus active users can live stream video to their […]
Facebook has spent so much time on the defensive since 2016 that it can be startling to see the company come out swinging. But with Europe beginning to peel away from the open web, and American lawmakers rattling their sabers a bit more each day, Facebook is undertaking a kind of regulatory shock-and-awe campaign: a […]