From The Economist: “I’m a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it’s not even 10pm and it’s a Tuesday night?…Let the hacking begin.” So typed a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, liveblogging from his Harvard dormitory as he began work on a website called Facemash. The site displayed randomly selected pairs of students’ mugshots, harvested … Read more
Facebook is not just injurious to health,It’s now a full-on humanitarian crisis.If you think it’s just a harmless bad habit,You’re fanning the flames of social necrosis.Social media ought to make people social,Not make pavlov’s dogs out of humanity.Yet all that facebook actually does today,Is drive society towards clinical insanity.Social media is not necessarily bad,So long … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether social-media platforms can be held liable for terrorist propaganda uploaded by users, opening a new challenge to the broad legal immunity provided to internet companies by the law known as Section 230. The court on Monday took up a set of cases … Read more
I mean Facebook is no longer a company, it’s a country. 2 billion users. It can influence what we think, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, even how we feel. John Kennedy
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook researchers have found that 1 in 8 of its users report engaging in compulsive use of social media that impacts their sleep, work, parenting or relationships, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. These patterns of what the company calls problematic use mirror what is popularly known … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc.’s platforms including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook were down Monday, with users receiving error messages when trying to access the sites. “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook wrote in a message posted on rival Twitter. “We’re working to get things back … Read more
From Jane Friedman: When authors want to advertise their books, three advertising platforms spring to mind for most: Facebook ads, Amazon ads, and BookBub ads. And while each of these platforms can be amazing in their own right and even more so when used holistically together, without a strong foundation (i.e. a great book that … Read more
From Hootsuite: Let’s face it. Facebook is just one part of your marketing strategy. You have so many other things to do, not to mention a life you want to enjoy. And you have only 24 hours in the day. That means it’s time to look at automating some of your Facebook marketing efforts. One … Read more
From Patreon: I’m getting ready to quit Facebook and generally pull back from social media. . . . . My reasons for this are complicated and are expanded on below, but I know that most people (and this is part of the problem) only like to read a tiny bit of text before forming strong … Read more
From Internetcases: A recent federal case from Virginia provides information on the types of “losses” that are actionable under the federal anti-hacking statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). . . . . Plaintiff worked as a campaign manager, communications director and private sector employee of a Virginia state legislator. While plaintiff was in … Read more
From C/Net: Facebook began hiding likes on Friday, Sept. 27, making the number of reactions, views and likes visible only to a post’s author. The test kicked off in Australia, the social media giant confirmed last week, and includes ads. “We are running a limited test where like, reaction and video view counts are made … Read more
From Fortune: A couple of years ago, a group of researchers at Facebook realized that users felt worse about themselves after incessantly scrolling through their news feeds. The researchers decided to do something about it. They surveyed Facebook users about their emotional reactions to using the social network. Those findings helped drive one of the … Read more
After completing the post that appeared just before this one, PG searched for a pungent quote about Facebook and found a site called Quotemaster. Quotemaster has an article entitled 175 Good Quotes to Describe Yourself in Facebook Profile. Here are a few: I am just a girl looking for my heart. Be good and shall … Read more
PG will note that TPV is not and has not been a political blog. PG would like to keep it that way. PG understands that everything is supposed to be political, etc., but he believes such sentiments are, of themselves, political, and he manages to do a lot of things and have many satisfactory online … Read more
From CNN: Facebook announced Thursday afternoon that it had designated some high-profile people, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who’s notorious for using anti-Semitic language, and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as “dangerous” and said it will be purging them from its platforms. Jones and his media outlet InfoWars had previously been banned from … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc. rolled out a substantial redesign of its website and mobile app, geared partly toward steering users to participate in more group conversations as the company strives to reduce abusive content and the scrutiny resulting from it. . . . . Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview that … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc. is bringing on a new top lawyer and a communications boss to handle the mounting regulatory and public-relations issues facing the social-media giant. The company named Jennifer Newstead as its general counsel on Monday, putting a longtime Washington attorney in charge of its legal affairs at a time when … Read more
From The Washington Post: Facebook on Thursday said that it had left “hundreds of millions” of users’ passwords exposed in plain text, potentially visible to the company’s employees, marking another major privacy and security headache for a tech giant already under fire for mishandling people’s personal information. Facebook said it believed the passwords were not visible to … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc. is removing age, gender and ZIP Code targeting for housing, employment and credit-related ads as part of a settlement with advocacy groups and other plaintiffs. The new actions—and just under $5 million in payments—settle five discrimination lawsuits filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the Communications Workers of America and … Read more
Not exactly about books, but an interesting point about unintended consequences of social media. From The Wall Street Journal: Did you document your hair-raising rock-climbing trip on Instagram? Post happy-hour photos on Facebook ? Or chime in on Twitter about riding a motorcycle with no helmet? One day, such sharing could push up your life insurance premiums. … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: The internet, the web, all things digital are officially in beta. Because they’re in beta, everything is forgiven—there is absolution for the infelicities, the flaws and the wrongs, intended and unintended. Here we are in the midst of e-evolution, looking for a moral and intellectual GPS at a time when … Read more
PG hadn’t heard of Facebook Custom List Audiences before. Here’s a simple description from Facebook: A Custom Audience from a customer list is a type of audience you can create made up of your existing customers. You can target ads to the audience you’ve created on Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network. You upload, copy and … Read more
From Fast Company: About a year ago, Mark Zuckerberg began publicly pushing a certain idea about social media and its supposed benefits, one he said was backed up by research: Facebook, the CEO claimed, is more beneficial to users when they engage more frequently with people they care about, rather than just scrolling through the … Read more
From re/code: Amazon could double its ad revenue among top US ad buyers in the next two years, giving it 12 percent of total ad spending in 2020. Meanwhile, Facebook’s main social network platform is expected to lose 3 percentage points of market share in that time. That’s according to a new Cowen survey of … Read more
From Fox News: A Fox News investigation has found that Facebook is a breeding ground for groups where reviews for products on Amazon, among other online platforms, are bought and sold. And small businesses competing in the online marketplace may already be suffering because of a lack of controls, or a lack of efficiency, on behalf of two … Read more
From The New York Times: Sheryl Sandberg was seething. Inside Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, top executives gathered in the glass-walled conference room of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. It was September 2017, more than a year after Facebook engineers discovered suspicious Russia-linked activity on its site, an early warning of the Kremlin campaign to disrupt the … Read more
From Business Insider: Have you seen a post from a Facebook friend asking you to participate in a book exchange? The system is basically an old-school fraudulent chain letter. It won’t work the way you probably expect, and it might be illegal.Here’s the text from a typical post: Hello all! Calling out to all of … Read more
From Fast Company: Headlines over the past few weeks–nay, years–have been hard on Facebook. If it’s not a story detailing how the company mismanaged user data, it’s another scathing report about how it misleads customers, can’t get fake news under control, or is killing the news business. And analysts are getting increasingly worried. Yesterday, an … Read more
Two tech giants generate differing reactions. Facebook From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc. suffered the biggest-ever one-day loss in market value for a U.S.-listed company, marking a Wall Street U-turn on a company that has been a pillar of a yearslong tech-stock surge. Facebook shares fell 19% to $176.26, erasing about $119.1 billion in market value, … Read more
From c/net: AI [artificial intelligence] software reportedly uncovered suspected GDPR breaches by Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook. The software — created by EU Institute researchers and a consumer group — looked at the privacy policies of 14 major technology businesses in June, the month after the EU’s new data privacy laws went into effect, according to Bloomberg. Researchers named the … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: In early May Google banned bail-bond companies from advertising on its platforms. Such companies profit from “communities of color and low income neighborhoods when they are at their most vulnerable,” it explained in a blog post. They use “opaque financing offers that can keep people in debt for months or years.” That Google can … Read more
From the American Booksellers Association: Facebook’s attempts to regulate political advertisements on its social media platform have made it more difficult for bookstores to “boost” author events. Boosted posts are those which have been paid for to ensure that they reach a wider audience. In early June, A Room of One’s Own Bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin, encountered … Read more
Not exactly to do with book authors, but game and app developers are authors as well. Interesting issues about how your data can potentially become someone else’s intellectual property. From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc.’s internal probe into potential misuse of user data is hitting fundamental roadblocks: The company can’t track where much of the data … Read more
From Wired: The digital commons has become a common problem, clogged by disinformation, stripped of privacy and squeezed by insatiable shareholders. Online propagandists stoke violence, data brokers sway elections, and our most intimate personal information is for sale to the highest bidder. Faced with these difficulties, big tech is increasingly turning to Wikipedia for support. … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: A pizza shop needs your address to deliver your pizza. A chat app service needs your selfie if you want to send it to friends. But do internet giants like Facebook and Google really need a list of websites you recently visited? A battle is looming in Europe over what information … Read more
From CNBC: Facebook did not read the terms and services of the app that improperly shared user data with Cambridge Analytica, the company’s chief technology officer said Thursday. “We require that people have a terms and conditions and we have an automated check there at the time — this was in 2014, maybe earlier,” Mike … Read more
From Inverse: A huge movement could hit Facebook next Monday. Mike Schroepfer, its chief technology officer, announced on Wednesday that the company will place a link at the top of everyone’s news feed to a privacy tool. This tool will reveal whether a user’s data is embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal — and it could reignite … Read more
From CNN: Facebook is rolling out a series of changes to give people better control of their privacy settings and data. The company’s redesigned security settings let people control what personal information the social network and third-party apps keeps. Facebook used to display security tools and settings across 20 different tabs. . . . . … Read more
From The Straits Times: Facebook will roll out a centralised system for its users to control their privacy and security settings in fewer taps following an outcry over the way it has handled personal data. The system, which will be introduced to Facebook users globally over the coming weeks, will allow people to change their … Read more
From Social Media Examiner: If you were a car salesman, who would your ideal customer be? People of all ages buy cars, but if there’s one specific audience that’s guaranteed to want a car, it would be teenagers who just got their driver’s license. A successful car salesman will do some research before targeting these … Read more
From Bloomberg: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission confirmed it has an open, non-public investigation into Facebook Inc.’s privacy practices. “The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers,” Tom Pahl, the acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said in an emailed statement … Read more
From Medium: In her eye-opening piece this week, The Guardian’s SF reporter Olivia Solon opens the curtain on the draconian efforts by Google, Facebook and others to muzzle their employees from speaking publicly about their company’s doings. Aptly titled “‘They’ll squash you like a bug’: how Silicon Valley keeps a lid on leakers,” Ms. Solon opens with one employee’s … Read more
If you’re concerned about FB or the creator of one of the zillions of Facebook Apps using too much of Facebook’s information about you, following is the best summary PG has found about various Facebook settings you can use to limit access to your personal information. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-keep-facebook-from-oversharing-your-info-1521668940 x
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc. confronted an intensifying crisis as political leaders in the U.S. and Europe called for aggressive inquiries into whether the technology giant failed to stop improper access and handling of user data, scrutiny that sent the company’s stock to its biggest decline in four years. The uproar pushed Facebook’s stock down 6.8% to $172.56 Monday, … Read more
From Fast Company: Perhaps you saw a post this morning on your Facebook feed touting face recognition for “more features.” According to the social network, this ability to analyze users’ faces–which before only helped users tag photos–is becoming even more widespread. . . . . For background: Facebook has long analyzed biometric data in photographs … Read more
From The Washington Post: In a rare move, some members of the British Parliament are traveling to Washington this week to question Facebook, Google and Twitter about fake news and the spread of misinformation on their platforms. Experts say that by coming to the United States, U.K. officials are signaling how seriously they’re treating the issue. … Read more
From Reuters: In the latest Reuters Institute report almost half of publishers (44%) expressed more concern about the power and influence of platforms than this time last year. This year marks major changes in the relationship between publishers and platforms. In January, Facebook announced changes to its news feed. The news feed is set to favor user content over … Read more
From C/Net: There are lots of uncertainties about Facebook’s future, but one thing is for sure: CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been busy making big changes. Earlier this month, he announced a drastic overhaul of the social network’s vaunted news feed. Facebook will soon put more focus on posts from family and friends and less emphasis … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Standard Oil and Co. and American Telephone and Telegraph Co. were the technological titans of their day, commanding more than 80% of their markets. Today’s tech giants are just as dominant: In the U.S., Alphabet Inc.’s Google drives 89% of internet search; 95% of young adults on the internet use a Facebook Inc. product; and Amazon.com Inc. now … Read more