Business & Tech Yes, Instagram Is Down, and So Are Other Meta Apps The Luigi Mangione memes have officially broken the internet. Meta was experiencing some sort of major "disruptions" Wednesday morning, which were causing outages on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger.
Business & Tech Supreme Court Denies Facebook’s Appeal to Halt Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit From Jilted Investors A multi-billion lawsuit investors brought against Facebook for the Cambridge Analytica data breach can proceed, as the Supreme Court just shot down Facebook’s appeal in a one-sentence ruling.
Business & Tech Ninth Circuit Sides With Musk In Case About California Social Media Content Moderation Law A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has taken Elon Musk's and Xitter's side in a case concerning a new California law that mandates broad disclosures for social media platforms about their content moderation practices.
Business & Tech Zuckerberg Once Again Capitulates to Conservatives Over COVID Misinformation, Hunter Biden Laptop Faced with right-wing criticism that taking down false posts somehow “censored Americans,” Facebook-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg threw in the towel and said that his social media companies will be more hands-off with misleading posts.
Business & Tech Supreme Court Deals Second Blow This Term to Republicans Seeking to Punish Social Media Platforms Over Censorship The Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision Monday tossing two cases back to lower courts, stymieing a Republican-led effort to litigate their feelings about social media platforms' handling of the 2020 election, and of Donald Trump after January 6th.
Business & Tech US Surgeon General Wants Warning Labels on Social Media Sites, Just Like the Ones We Put On Cigarettes Saying Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok are causing “significant mental health harms for adolescents,” US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling for public health warning labels on social media sites and apps, not unlike the warnings placed on packs of cigarettes.
Business & Tech Facebook Remains Bad at Restoring Peoples' Hacked Accounts If this has happened to you, then you know what an incredible pain it is to get Meta to help you get your account back. And some states' attorneys general are pushing back.
Business & Tech Instagram and Threads Now Making You Opt In If You Want to See Political Content, or Anything Related to Anything Important It turns out that Meta's definition of "political content" is quite broad, as the company rolls out a new feature — or, some would say, involuntary content filter — that will scrub your feeds of most anything that isn't cat/dog videos.
Business & Tech Judge Allows Suits to Go Forward Charging That Facebook, YouTube and Reddit Profit From Extremist Content Several lawsuits stemming directly from a 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York grocery store, which contend that social media platforms actively engage and profit from individuals spreading and consuming hate speech with deadly consequences, can move forward, a judge has ruled.
Business & Tech Trump Calls Facebook an 'Enemy of the People' For No Particular Reason Donald Trump is attacking Facebook again for no particular reason, calling it an "enemy of the people" and sending Meta's stock price tumbling.
Business & Tech Meta Hit With Possible Super Tuesday Cyber Attack? Instagram, Threads, Facebook All Go Down People who roll over in bed and start their Instagram scrolling may have found their feeds not loading today, after a major widespread outage appeared to have begun around 7 a.m. Pacific Time.
Business & Tech Meta Oversight Board Rules Altered Biden Video Can Stay on Facebook, But Urges New Rules After the QAnon crowd widely shared an altered video clip of President Joe Biden last year, the Meta Oversight Board just ruled the video can remain on Facebook. But the board is also recommending a massive policy overhaul on manipulated content.
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.
