The facts about Facebook

This is a critical reading of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s article in the WSJ on Thursday, also entitled The Facts About Facebook.  Yes Mark, you’re right; Facebook turns 15 next month. What a long time you’ve been in the social media business! We’re curious as to whether you’ve also been keeping count of how many times […]

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Zuckerberg is breaking promises to Instagram and WhatsApp. Be concerned.

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Mark Zuckerberg is doing exactly what he promised Instagram and WhatsApp he wouldn’t: messing with their independence by creating one system to rule them all. 

The Facebook founder plans to bring the back ends of Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram closer together with that of his own social network, as Facebook has now confirmed to the New York Times

This consolidation may come with benefits for the billions of users involved, such as making it easier for anyone to send messages across the apps. But it’s also the biggest sign yet that Zuckerberg is tightening his grip on services he once promised complete autonomy — and it comes on the heels of  the Instagram and the WhatsApp founders exiting Facebook.  Read more…

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50 percent of Facebook users could be fake, report claims

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A long-running feud was thrust back into the spotlight today with a contentious report claiming that over half of Facebook’s monthly active users are actually fake.  

The report, written by Facebook critic Aaron Greenspan, alleges that the social media giant has no way to accurately measure its true user base — or in other words, accounts that are matched up to real people — and that Facebook’s reported metrics substantially overestimate the number of real monthly active users. 

Notably, Greenspan is a former Harvard classmate of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In 2009, Adweek reported Facebook and Greenspan reached a confidential settlement over a trademark dispute regarding the term “the Face Book.” Greenspan’s new report, however, alleges substantially more than a possibly stolen name.   Read more…

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Facebook urged to give users greater control over what they see

Academics at the universities of Oxford and Stanford think Facebook should give users greater transparency and control over the content they see on its platform. They also believe the social networking giant should radically reform its governance structures and processes to throw more light on content decisions, including by looping in more external experts to […]

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Most Facebook users still in the dark about its creepy ad practices, Pew finds

A study by the Pew Research Center suggests most Facebook users are still in the dark about how the company tracks and profiles them for ad-targeting purposes. Pew found three-quarters (74%) of Facebook users did not know the social networking behemoth maintains a list of their interests and traits to target them with ads, only […]

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Zuckerberg’s 2019 resolution: a bunch of ‘public discussions’ about Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg knows he has some work to do. 
The Facebook CEO had a rough 2018, both personally and professionally, with lawmakers turning on his social-media baby and scandal after scandal after scandal. 
But he’s ready to turn that all …

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Zuckerberg’s 2019 challenge is to hold public talks on tech & society

Rather than just focus on Facebook’s problems like his 2018 challenge, this year Mark Zuckerberg wants to give transparency to his deliberations and invite the views of others. Today he announced his 2019 challenge will be “to host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society — the opportunities, the challenges, […]

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Mark Zuckerberg is “proud” of how Facebook handled its scandals this year

After the year Mark Zuckerberg’s had, you’d think he’d struggle to appear so chipper. “I’m proud of the progress we’ve made,” he said in an end-of-year note posted on his Facebook page for everyone to see. Acknowledging that the social network played its part in the spread of hate speech, election interference, and misinformation, Zuckerberg’s […]

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