The world’s largest social network has more than 2 billion daily users, and is expanding rapidly around the world. Led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook undergirds much of the world’s communication online, both through its flagship app and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. Despite huge financial success, Facebook is also confronted with questions about data privacy, hate speech on the platform, and concerns that frequent social media use can lead to unhappiness. The Verge publishes a nightly newsletter about Facebook and democracy, subscribe here.
A t-shirt company is running thousands of ads claiming to donate a portion of sales to Trump, Harris, and other political causes, 404 reports. In reality, the company appears to be based abroad — which means it’s either lying about making campaign contributions, or illegally making campaign contributions.
While campaigning for the US Senate in 2021, Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance filmed a Facebook Live using his smartphone’s selfie camera, which mirrored the image, and therefore his campaign signs.
That can be fixed, but Vance’s idea — rotating the phone — is not it. (I recommend waiting a moment to turn on the volume, unless you’re a fan of TikTok’s text-to-speech voices.)
Focus grouping upcoming films is a pretty standard practice. But according to Variety, the rise of toxic online fandoms who treat review bombing and leading harassment campaigns like it’s their job has prompted many of Hollywood’s studios to start soliciting feedback from “superfans” about how to avoid potential backlash from trolls who “are just out for blood, regardless.”
NBC News reports the following statement from an unnamed Meta spokesperson:
After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity.
The move follows warnings by the Biden administration that RT is part of Russian disinformation campaigns targeting the 2024 US election and a State Department notice last week saying, “[W]e now know that RT moved beyond being simply a media outlet and has been an entity with cyber capabilities.”
The update will start impacting Facebook and Instagram users in the UK over the coming months, meaning any public posts, comments, and photos on adult accounts (including those featuring children) will be scraped.
Meta says this will bring its generative AI products to the UK “much sooner,” and help them to reflect “British culture, history, and idiom” ...whatever that bloody means.
With exceptions for users under 18, posts that weren’t set to public, or EU accounts that opted out.
Now ABC reports on Australian senator David Shoebridge’s question to Meta’s global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh.
Shoebridge: “...Meta has just decided that you will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That’s the reality, isn’t it?”
Claybaugh: “Correct.”
Creators who break Facebook’s rules for the first time can now waive a warning from their account by completing in-app training. They’ll be eligible to remove another warning if they don’t violate Facebook’s policy for one year.
This feature is only available to professional mode users for now, and it doesn’t include serious violations, such as posting content containing sexual exploitation.
[Facebook for Creators]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook and Instagram are still running ads that promote online marketplaces for illegal drugs — including cocaine, hallucinogens, and prescription opioids — months after the publication first noted that Meta was facing a federal investigation for doing so.
Meta says it will continue working with law enforcement, and will “invest resources and further improve our enforcement” to combat this type of activity.
Because we often wonder how much a CEO actually knows about the goings on of their company—particularly when a large company like Meta has is being sued by dozens of Attorneys General over its policies around underage users.
It turns out Zuckerberg may have had a very direct hand in crafting policies that targeted children and exacerbated issues with body image on Meta’s platforms, at least according to a new report from the New York Times
[The New York Times]
Silicon Valley’s favorite Harvard dropout (sorry, Gates) has arrived in Panama at the same time as the “Launchpad” vessel he apparently purchased for around $300 million, after the Russian-commissioned megayacht was seized. Longer than an NFL football field, it’s still slightly smaller than Jeff Bezos’ own midlife crisis.
The super-secretive yachting community makes all this difficult to confirm but the video below from March gives an expert account of Zuck’s fancy birthday boat.
An unknown number of “targeted cuts” are coming to staffers who support the 22-member board that polices the world’s largest social media network. Launched in 2019, Meta has contributed $280 million to keep the board operational through 2025... which is a lot for a company that just emerged from its “year of efficiency.”
[The Washington Post]
According to Financial Times, regulators are concerned that Meta isn’t doing enough to stifle disinformation being seeded by countries like Russia in order to undermine EU elections.
Officials reportedly also believe Meta’s process for flagging illegal content isn’t “user-friendly enough to comply with the EU Digital Services Act.” The probe would apparently begin today.
[FinancialTimes]
Alex Garland isn’t the only filmmaker thinking about the current state the US’ political system. During a recent appearance on The Ringer’s The Town podcast, Aaron Sorkin shared that he’s in the early stages of writing a new The Social Network-esque movie about January 6th and Facebook’s role in galvanizing the attempted coup.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
A series of bot-filled communities on Facebook keep popping up to praise AI-generated images of Jesus Christ. The Dead Internet Theory explains why the internet might feel lonely even when there are many voices crying out “Amen 🙏.”
Well... if you can’t beat ‘em, #scarlettjohansson
404 Media reports that a parent soliciting advice in a Facebook group got something unexpected when Meta’s AI chatbot chimed in with some thoughts. The reply starts with “I have a child who is also 2e,” which refers to a child who is both academically advanced and has a disability. Let me stop you right there, AI chatbot.
