Business & Tech Lindsey Graham Tells Social Media Companies 'You Have Blood on Your Hands' and More Drama From Today's Senate Hearing A much anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing took place Wednesday that gave Senator Lindsey Graham and others a chance to grandstand on an issue that has rare bipartisan support, the problem of social media and kids.
Business & Tech Former Facebook Executive Pleads Guilty to Swindling Company Out of $4 Million A one-time Facebook executive based in Atlanta has pleaded guilty to defrauding $4 million out of Facebook parent company Meta, by embezzling money from her company credit card, and directing contracts to friends in exchange for kickbacks.
SF News Pro-Palestine Protest Planned for Tuesday Afternoon at Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters will be the site of a Tuesday afternoon protest, as supporters of Palestine say Facebook and Instagram are 'shadow-banning' or removing their posts about the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Business & Tech Facebook Taking Heat for Blocking News About Wildfires From Canadian Users A new Canadian law requiring Facebook to compensate news outlets for using their content has led the social media company to just block news article posts outright, which has unintended consequences as wildfires continue to rage in Canada.
Business & Tech Elon-Zuck Battle Heats Up With Musk Threatening Lawsuit Over Meta’s Copycat Product Threads Elon Musk’s lawyer sent Mark Zuckerberg a quasi-cease-and-desist letter complaining that Meta poached “dozens of Twitter employees” (whom Musk had fired!) to create the Twitter knock-off Threads, and even implies that Zuckerberg played a role in Twitter’s recent glitches.
Business & Tech Meta's 'Twitter Killer,' Called Threads, Launches Thursday It looks like Mark Zuckerberg and his crew at Meta wanted to fast-track their Twitter competitor just as other products like BlueSky are drawing away disgruntled Twitter users. And now the new app, called Threads, hits the App Store Thursday.
Business & Tech Musk and Zuckerberg Are Play-Fighting Over Meta's 'Sanely Run' Twitter Competitor, Maybe Called Threads Meta is going to be rolling out its "answer to Twitter" sometime soon. The internet is chattering about it. And Elon Musk has challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a "cage match" over it.
Business & Tech Meta Is Abandoning Their COVID-19 Misinformation Policy on Facebook and Instagram Great news for your crazy uncle: Facebook and Instagram will no longer remove posts with COVID misinformation in countries that no longer have a COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, which is basically most of the world.
Business & Tech EU Agency Issues Meta Largest-Ever Fine Over Data Privacy, Orders Company to Stop Exporting User Data to US Facebook/Meta has just hit with a huge fine and a suspension order by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) over its practice of exporting EU user data to its US offices, which is in violation of EU law.
Business & Tech San Mateo County School Board Sues Social Platforms Over 'Monetizing Misery' of Kids — But Leaves Out Instagram The San Mateo County Board of Education has filed suit against the parent companies of YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok citing evidence that they were designed to be addictive and are harming the mental health of children. But where is San Mateo County resident corporation Meta in all this?
Business & Tech Meta Laying Off Another 10,000 Employees, Or 13% Of Workforce It’s another 10,000 layoffs at Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, on top of the 11,000 layoffs from November, as their pandemic growth hangover collides with bad bets on Web3 and metaverse boondoggles.
Business & Tech High-Profile Tech Layoffs Continue With Thousands More Expected at Meta This Week Facebook parent entity Meta is reportedly planning to lay off thousands more employees in a second round of cuts, possibly happening as soon as this week.
Business & Tech Google, Facebook, and Twitter to Be In the Crosshairs In Biden's State of the Union Address In his likely-to-be fruitless quest to boost bipartisanship in Congress, President Joe Biden is expected to launch some rhetoric in the direction of Big Tech during this evening's State of the Union address.
Business & Tech Facebook Is Letting Trump Back On the Platform After Two-Year Suspension Two years and change after inciting an insurrection and showing no remorse or sympathy for the deaths and injuries of Capitol Police personnel, former president Donald Trump is being allowed back on Facebook and Instagram. But the big question: Will he be invited into the Metaverse!!?!
Business & Tech Meta Looking to Offload All Of Its Office Space at 181 Fremont Adding to the already historic level of office vacancy in San Francisco, Meta is looking to dump 435,000 square feet of offices that it leased for Instagram employees five years ago in 181 Fremont.
Business & Tech Trump Now Wants Facebook to Make Good On Its Promise to Reinstate His Account After a Two-Year Ban The Trump campaign has formally petitioned Meta to reinstate the Donald's former Facebook account, now that his two-year timeout has expired, and given that his dormant account still has seven times more followers than he has on Truth Social.
Business & Tech Meta Threatens to Pull Journalism Content From Facebook Over Congressional Bill That May Cost Them Meta is putting up a stink in the face of a bill that's working its way through Congress, and is currently folded in to a defense-spending authorization package, which would give journalistic content creators the ability to seek payments from Meta for using their content.
Business & Tech The Facebook-OnlyFans Bribery Lawsuit Is On, Claims Meta Took Cash to Label Adult Sites as ‘Terrorist Content’ A long-simmering allegation that Facebook execs took bribes from OnlyFans is now a lawsuit that will move forward, as several OnlyFans creators say rival adult sites were literally blacklisted onto a terrorist list.
Business & Tech Meta/Facebook Lets Go Of 11,000 Workers; Zuckerberg: 'I Got This Wrong' Mark it: Today, November 9, 2022, is the day that the seemingly unstoppable rise of Mark Zuckerberg's social media empire was stopped.
Business & Tech Reports: Facebook Parent Company Meta Planning Mega-Layoffs, ‘Many Thousands’ May Get the Ax This Week The long-feared Big Kahuna of tech-boom layoffs, massive cuts at Meta companies Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, could arrive as soon as Wednesday, and it’s beginning to feel a lot like 2001.
Business & Tech Major Investor Says Meta 'Needs to Get Its Mojo Back,' Says Pivot to the Metaverse Was Too Hasty Another shoe may be dropping for Facebook/Meta, and for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as a key investor in the company speaks out publicly, on behalf of investors, saying that the company needs to dial back its investment in the metaverse and lay off about 20% of its employees.
Business & Tech Meta Announces That Metaverse Avatars Will Soon Gain Legs — Also, They'd Like to Sell You a $1,500 VR Headset "It's painful how hellbent Mark Zuckerberg is on convincing us that VR is a thing." That's a TechCrunch headline on an article about Meta's VR developer conference this week, at which the company unveiled a new $1,500 headset for use in the still very beta metaverse.
Business & Tech Meta Is Downsizing Its Offices, Prefers to Call This ‘Vibe Planning’ Amidst a hiring freeze and a plummeting stock price, Meta says it is downsizing and rearranging its offices, a process they bizarrely refer to as "vibe planning."
Business & Tech Facebook Takes Down Influence Campaigns Originating In Russia and China Regarding Ukraine War Meta/Facebook says that it has discovered and removed "the largest and most complex Russian-origin operation" to influence social media users since the war in Ukraine began, as well as a separate, smaller, more inept campaign out of China.
Business & Tech Zuckerberg Reportedly Getting Increasingly Snippy and ‘Intense’ In Pivot to Metaverse, Amidst Declining Profits Some new leaks of palace intrigue from Facebook (now Meta) show that Mark Zuckerberg is becoming increasingly demanding to work for as the company pivots its focus to the Metaverse, which by the way, still does not actually exist.
