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.
Business & Tech Congress Gets Report On Antitrust Investigation Into Big Tech, Including Infamous Facebook Memo; Crackdown Looms A report has come out by the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, stemming from an investigation that was launched three years ago, and in particular it calls out a 2018 internal memo to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Business & Tech Facebook and Instagram are Deleting Posts About Abortion Pills, Sometimes ‘Within Seconds’ Big Brother is declaring it’s a thoughtcrime to mention the availability of abortion pills on Meta’s Facebook or Instagram platforms. But the exact same posts are staying up if they substitute the words “guns” or “weed” for “abortion pills.”
Business & Tech Russian Dissident Alexei Navalny Says Google and Meta Are Enabling Putin's War Machine By Banning Ads Imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny gave an address to an international democracy summit suggesting that tech platforms like Google and Facebook have given a "gift" to Putin by shutting down all advertising.
Business & Tech Sheryl Sandberg Steps Down As Facebook/Meta COO, Ending an Era Longtime Facebook/Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg announced Wednesday afternoon that she is leaving her role as COO of the company after 14 years, which is probably an indicator that she's no longer interested in defending the company against storms of its own creation.
Business & Tech Facebook Releases Report On Which Posts They Remove and Censor, Turns Out Most Aren’t Political Facebook held a conference call Tuesday to discuss which posts they most often remove and why, which was inconveniently timed after the weekend’s Buffalo mass shooting video was still on the platform.
Business & Tech Apple and Facebook Both Duped By Hackers Posing as Law Enforcement, Handed Over Personal Data Phone numbers, home addresses, and (yikes!) internet browsing histories have been handed right over to hackers who approached tech companies while posing as police, and what’s more, most of the hackers were teenagers.
Business & Tech Facebook Relaxes (and Then Reverses) Its Rules Over Calling for Leaders to Be Killed, Because of Putin Meta made a Putin-specific change to its policy on calling for the assassination of world leaders late last week, then backtracked today for ill-explained reasons.
SF Politics Peter Thiel Stepping Down From Meta’s Board, Will Focus on Getting Trumpers Elected in the Midterms The billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir will no longer serve on the board of directors of Facebook parent company Meta, where he had Zuckerberg’s ear for years (or held Zuckerberg’s leash, depending on who you ask).
Business & Tech Meta Already Has a Sexual Harassment Problem In the Metaverse In a development that's surprising to absolutely no one, Facebook/Meta is already having to address groping and sexual inappropriateness in the Metaverse, even though there is no real Metaverse yet — there's just a beta version of a very early stab at it.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Meta Stock Price Tumbles Because of Metaverse Spending Facebook/Meta's share price took a dive in after-hours trading after a rare decline in profits due to metaverse spending, the SFPD is withdrawing from a key agreement with Chesa Boudin's office, and the fire near Big Sur is all contained.
Business & Tech Sister of Federal Officer Killed by Boogaloo Extremists Sues Facebook for Letting Them Organize Online The feds say that far-right “Boogaloo” militia types killed federal officer David Patrick Underwood, while trying to pose as Antifa. Underwood’s sister says Facebook gave them the tools to do it, and is suing the company.
Business & Tech Apple Reportedly Doles Out Special Six-Figure Bonuses to Engineers to Keep Them From Getting Poached By Meta Apple is reportedly giving out unusually big bonuses in the form of stock to select groups of engineers in the company, in an effort to stop some attrition that is happening to Facebook/Meta.
Business & Tech Facebook, Desperate to Control Distribution, Looks to Retail Stores — But Will Anyone Shop at The Meta Store? Facebook — because I refuse to call them Meta — is going hard on retail, and eventually we're likely to see stores around the globe selling Portals and Oculus headsets and, like, Meta-branded mugs and T-shirts?
Business & Tech Yep, Facebook Now Wants to Be Called 'Meta' Facebook's big rebranding reveal came on schedule today, during CEO Mark Zuckerberg's keynote address at the company's annual Connect conference, and the new name for Facebook is Meta.
SF News Attention Homosexual Who Wants to Be Miserable, Too "I just had a sargasm." "Obamafont for the win." "Yes marriage is an institution ....it amazes me people actually want to join it!" "{Update: At least
misc Top 5 Comments of the Week We're both flattered an saddened by our witty betters at Gawker -- flattered that they stole our idea to spotlight comments (not that we're especially innovative in doing so, but
misc Top 5 Comments of the Week: Oh, Behave! The signal to noise ratio, frankly, went to s***. We believe that our soon-to-be-implemented new comments system will be a big help, and most of you stayed within bounds and
Arts & Entertainment David and Edie Ichioka, Makers of <em>Murch</em> What was the most surprising thing to you about Walter Murch Walter is a true renaissance man. His areas of expertise are varied and surprising. Not only is he an Oscar winning editor
Arts & Entertainment Stage Fog: It's All Meta at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts This is our pick for most anticipated show of the season, and the season's barely started. This multimedia performance by The Builders Association and
Arts & Entertainment The Slightly Tardy Adventures of the Superfisters starts off with an argument between Knightbat and his teen sidekick, Nightbird, both of whom bear a blinding resemblance to another superhero duo (and we're not referring to Superhorse and Supermonkey)
Arts & Entertainment Review: Voxtrot Hipster posing, shoegazing indifference, emo angst, and punk anger have taken the joy out of being a rock star. A lot of bands make it seem like they would rather be somewhere else
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Gastronomique: Meta Food Post We are living vicariously this week, but those who do get to eat belong to four different media, in some kind of meta-food marathon. On the menu: a newspaper article, a magazine,
