Less than six months ago, it seemed that Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, had learned a very public lesson. Between its involvement in spreading disinformation in the January 6 insurrection, a humiliating leak of documents showing how little it cared about the corrosive impact of its policies, and public calls to break the company up,…
Did you know that Facebook’s parent company Meta is now releasing a crypto token called Meta Token? Actually, it isn’t. But the same scammers who placed Facebook ads for the Amazon Token are now advertising a Meta Token, supposedly backed by Mark Zuckerberg — advertised, of course, on Facebook. Same scam, different day If you’ve…
In an interview with Ina Fried of Axios, Andrew Bosworth, who will soon be the CEO of Meta, defended the spread of misinformation on the company’s platforms. The Washington Post described the argument as “Social media doesn’t hurt people. People hurt people.” Is Bosworth right? After all, people post what they want on Facebook. Do…
It’s been four months since Facebook first started showing ads for the “Amazon Token” cryptocurrency scam. New pages and ads continue to pop up on Facebook and eventually get yanked. It’s an easy enough pattern to spot. So why can’t Facebook block them before they go live? First, facts. The Amazon Token advertised on Facebook…
On fivethirtyeight.com, Kayleigh Rogers wrote a piece called “Facebook’s Algorithm Is Broken. We Collected Some Suggestions On How To Fix It.” Let’s try to figure out whether these suggestions would work. I’ll analyze each suggestion in the article from four perspectives: Would it solve Facebook’s major problems right now, specifically the viral spread of misinformation…
CNN surveyed 1,000 Americans about Facebook. What they found will embolden regulators and legislators. Here are the top-line results: 76% say Facebook makes society worse. This finding doesn’t vary much by gender, age, race, or among frequent Facebook users. Among Republicans, 82% feel this way. 53% support government regulation of Facebook. 49% say they know…
Under intense heat due to whistleblower leaks, Meta has agreed to remove ad targeting categories like health, race, and political affiliation from its properties Facebook and Instagram. Here’s why that will do very little about the algorithmic decisions that drive extremism, partisanship, and mental health issues on these social networks — and won’t even slow…
For a decade, Facebook (now known as Meta) used facial recognition to tag millions of photos with the identities of the people in them. Now the company says it’s ceasing the algorithm and deleting a billion face prints. Here’s why I don’t trust them. This is a fraught moment for Meta/Facebook, given the leaked documents…
As Mark Zuckerberg announced, Facebook, the company, is now “Meta.” Meta is the parent company of the applications Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. Many have seen this as an attempt to get out from under the flood of terrible publicity that the company is suffering since the leak of the Facebook papers. In this vein,…