Berlin, Germany | AFP | German data protection authorities on Tuesday said they had blocked Facebook from collecting subscriber data from its subsidiary WhatsApp, citing privacy concerns. Facebook and WhatsApp promised in the wake of the Silicon Valley giant’s 2014 acquisition of the messaging app that they would not share …
Read More »Zuckerberg fund pledges $3 bn to banish disease
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Mark Zuckerberg and his wife on Wednesday pledged $3 billion over the next decade to efforts to prevent, cure or manage disease, aiming to use the Facebook founder’s fortune for innovative research. “This is a big goal,” Zuckerberg said at a San Francisco …
Read More »Web privacy debate in Italy after woman’s suicide
Rome, Italy | AFP | The suicide of a woman who battled for months to have a video of her having sex removed from the internet is fuelling debate in Italy on the “right to be forgotten” online. The 31-year-old, identified as Tiziana, was found hanged at her aunt’s home …
Read More »Facebook Messenger allows for direct merchant sales
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Facebook announced Monday a new online payment system that will allow businesses to sell directly to consumers on its Messenger application. “We’re kicking off the beginning of messages with payments that will allow businesses to sell products and services directly to customers in …
Read More »Facebook backs off censoring ‘napalm girl’ photo
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Facebook backtracked Friday on a decision to censor an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing, after its block on the historic image sparked outrage. The online giant stopped short of apologizing, saying the image had been …
Read More »Facebook aims for video-loving teenagers with new app
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Facebook on Friday took direct aim at video-loving adolescents, and Snapchat, with the release of a new iPhone app that allows teens to watch clips about the lives of their classmates. The app, called Lifestage, was released with no fanfare, and is available …
Read More »Ad blockers out-flank Facebook
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Ad blockers on Thursday said they foiled a move by Facebook to sidestep software used to stop marketing messages at social network pages visited on desktop computers. Adblock Plus announced that it is updating its free software with a new filter …
Read More »Live-streaming of attacks a challenge for social media
Washington, United States | AFP | As more gruesome crimes and attacks show up on live online video, social media platforms are facing new challenges on preventing the spread of gruesome and horrific content. The challenge was underscored in Monday’s deadly attack on a policeman and his wife in France …
Read More »Zuckerberg streams live chat with men in space
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg took the leading social network on a new journey Wednesday, with a live-streamed chat with astronauts on the International Space Station. In a Facebook Live video broadcast shown at the NASA page of the social network, Zuckerberg praised the …
Read More »The Facebook furor
By Esther Dyson Facebook’s experiment raises the issue of manipulation and unintended consequences There has been a lot of fuss lately about the psychological experiment that Facebook conducted on nearly 700,000 of its users. In order to gauge how people’s Facebook “News Feeds” affect their moods, the company temporarily implemented …
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