Some time around early February, Facebook users started sharing a post claiming that, because of a new algorithm ranking, the company’s News Feed only surfaces content from about 25 or 26 of a user’s friends.
Actor and comedian Jim Carrey has joined the chorus of Facebook investors and former executives bashing the platform. In a tweet, he said he was dumping his stock in the company and deleting his account—which had more than 5 million followers. He told others to do the same.
Seattle, Washington, has taken the issue of who pays for political ads on Facebook into its own hands.
Facebook knows how to make money. It just doesn’t know its identity.
Lurking in Facebook’s stellar quarterly earnings report Thursday were some troubling numbers: The company added fewer daily active users than analysts expected, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that as a result of the company’s moves, the time people spent on the platform dropped by 50 million hours daily.
Immediately after a 15-year-old started shooting a handgun inside his western Kentucky high school last week, the state’s police turned to Facebook to warn and inform the greater community. The first post was shared by users more than 6,000 times, and throughout the day, the agency posted updates about the crime scene. The following day police department used its Facebook page to ask the public for any information about the shooting.
Facebook posted another record-breaking quarter, and Mark Zuckerberg says it’s time to get serious.
Facebook admitted in its fourth quarter earnings report Jan. 31 that users spent tens of millions of hours less with the social network each day. But that didn’t stop the social media giant from posting yet another record-breaking quarter.
The family of Robert Godwin Sr., a 74-year-old man whose 2017 murder was posted on Facebook by the man who killed him, is suing the company in a wrongful death lawsuit.
Keeping up with what’s new in Facebook’s News Feed is becoming a full-time job.
As it prepares for a massive update of privacy laws in the European Union later this year, Facebook announced tools for users to better control how their data is shared with others. The EU plans in May to implement new privacy laws, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Failure to comply could cost companies up to 4% of their annual revenue in fines.
“I want a dyke for president,” artist Zoe Leonard writes in her 1992 poem. Inspired by the author Eileen Myles’ run for president, and written at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the poem, “I want a president,” has since been shown in museums, galleries, and outdoor installations around the world. More than a quarter-century after it was written, the poem made its way to Instagram—and became the center of a controversy over censorship on social media.
Facebook says that news sources deemed as “trusted” perhaps won’t lose as much exposure as others, as a result of its recent News Feed change. Whether an outlet is trustworthy or not will be determined not by the platform or outside experts, but by users themselves, the company said last week.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch thinks that Facebook should pay news publishers, just like cable companies pay networks to carry their programming.
Facebook is starting the new year with a healthy dose of public soul-searching.
After thinking up many possible solutions for delivering trustworthy news, Facebook is letting users judge for themselves.
Facebook is making good on its promise that it would add an African-American member to its board of directors. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Kenneth Chenault, the retiring head of American Express, will be joining the board, which currently does not include any people of color, and only two women among its eight members.
Some governments may be alarmed about the political influence of social media, but Singapore is embracing it to reach its younger constituents.
After UK lawmakers were unimpressed with the results of Facebook’s investigation into Russian influence into the country’s Brexit referendum campaign, the company said it would broaden its probe.
Police in Denmark have charged 1,004 young people after they shared on Facebook Messenger a video showing two 15-year-olds having sex. The tip-off came from Facebook itself, which went to the US authorities, who in turn informed Europol.
Mark Zuckerberg did what everyone in the news industry feared and many anticipated. Facebook announced Thursday that from now on, users would see more posts from their friends and family rather than from publishers and brands.
Facebook announced Thursday it would prioritize posts from family and friends in users’ News Feeds over content from publishers and brands in order to ensure more “meaningful interactions” on the platform.
Facebook is testing a new product meant to help users find local news, events and various community updates.
Longtime Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee says that mentoring Mark Zuckerberg in Facebook’s early days, and his influence on the company, had been his “proudest accomplishment.” But, like others involved with Facebook in its infancy, including its founding president Sean Parker and former executive Chamath Palihapitiya, McNamee has become disillusioned, and is demanding that the company change its ways.
