Facebook

Users on a Facebook group for Cybertruck owners are posting about public backlash being directed towards their vehicles, showing people flicking them off and lewd or abusive messages they’ve received.

Meta has ditched the pink/purple hued design it introduced in 2020 and replaced it with a more boring version.

During Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call today, Mark Zuckerberg kept dropping hints about big plans for Facebook. He’s focused on making it more “culturally influential.” He even suggested that some changes could hurt the business in the short term. The goal is to “get back to how Facebook was used back in the day.” So, more of stalking your classmates and less AI Shrimp Jesus?

Mark Zuckerberg “blamed his former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, for an inclusivity initiative at Facebook” when pledging support to Trump advisors late last year, according to the New York Times.

404 Media reports that trans and non-binary pride chat themes were “retired” this week and announcements scrubbed from the web — just as Meta is allowing more hate speech.

Leaked training documents obtained by The Intercept offer more details about Meta’s updated Hateful Conduct rules. Specific examples of speech Meta allows include “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit,” “Jews are flat out greedier than Christians,” and “Trans people are immoral.”

404 Media has updates from unnamed employees on how the moderation changes have been received:

Poor Mark Zuckerberg. Imagine calling the 2024 election a “cultural tipping point” for “prioritizing speech” and then the guy who got elected starts bragging about how he threatened you into self-censorship. At least Trump won’t throw him in jail?

After user outrage, Meta is deleting its small army of AI bot profiles in order to fix a bug that removed the ability to block the accounts. As I reported earlier today, the bots have been around since 2023, but many users just discovered them in the last few days following news coverage and social media posts.

The Irish Data Protection Commission announced the fine following an investigation into a data breach that affected 29 million Facebook users. The incident stemmed from an exploit of Facebook’s video upload feature, allowing hackers to obtain users’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, and more.

In the coming days, Instagram and Facebook users within the bloc will be given the choice to receive “less personalized ads” that are full-screen and temporarily unskippable, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access. The onus won’t be on parents or young people. There’ll be no penalties for users.”

Forbes reports that advertisers have paid Meta more than $1 million to place hundreds of ads promoting lies about the upcoming presidential election. The ads are running despite Meta’s own rules against election misinformation, including posts that “call into question the legitimacy of an upcoming or ongoing election.”