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Facebook Facial Recognition Opt-Out Not Universal

Andrew Orr ·

Consumer Reports found that Facebook facial recognition doesn’t seem to be a universal setting, despite Facebook promising otherwise.

Consumer Reports examined the accounts of 31 Facebook users across the U.S. The participants let us record video as they navigated their Facebook settings under our direction. We found the Face Recognition setting missing from eight of the accounts we documented, or just over 25 percent.

I could be a smart a** and recommend deleting your Facebook account as a way to opt out, but that wouldn’t help the people still on Facebook.

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Activist Groups Launch Campaign to Remove Mark Zuckerberg from Board

Andrew Orr ·

Yesterday, two activist groups launched a campaign to remove Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook’s board of directors.

Digital civil rights group Color of Change and Majority Action, a corporate accountability organization, told the Securities and Exchange Commission that they will be urging Facebook shareholders to withhold their support for nominating Zuckerberg to the board.

The two groups argue that Facebook’s corporate structure gives Zuckerberg “control without adequate checks,” pointing out that he is CEO and holds 57.7 percent of voting rights in the company.

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The 11 People Trying to Fight Fake News in the Indian Election

Charlotte Henry ·

The Indian election is the world’s largest democratic exercise. There is, unsurprisingly, some concern that it could be undermined by fake news. Bloomberg News met Boom Live, an 11-strong team of fact-checkers that make up 1 of the 7 firms working with Facebook’s efforts.

Based on the early tallies, more than 60 percent of India’s 900 million eligible voters are expected to cast ballots between now and May 19, as the center-left Congress Party tries to seize power from the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party. As in other elections around the world, paid hacks and party zealots are churning out propaganda on Facebook and the company’s WhatsApp messenger, along with Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and other ubiquitous communication channels. Together with Facebook’s automated filters, Boom’s 11 fact-checkers and its similar-size fellow contractors are the front line of the social network’s shield against this sludge.

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Another Creepy Facebook Story: Scanning Your Photos For Profit

John Martellaro ·

FastCompany writes:

Facebook has just been awarded a patent for technology that could let the social network scan through your photos, see what products you like, and then send that data to advertisers in the hopes of selling you more of the product.

So every photo a user posts to Facebook may, someday, be used to manipulate that user. But it’s just a patent award, right?

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Leaked Facebook Documents Show how Mark Zuckerberg Plays Dirty

Andrew Orr ·

Leaked Facebook documents that include emails, chats, presentations, spreadsheets, and meeting summaries show how Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s board and management team played dirty.

Zuckerberg, along with his board and management team, found ways to tap Facebook’s trove of user data — including information about friends, relationships and photos — as leverage over companies it partnered with.

In some cases, Facebook would reward favored companies by giving them access to the data of its users. In other cases, it would deny user-data access to rival companies or apps.

Basically, everything Facebook has said in public, they are doing the exact opposite in private.

Jumbo Privacy Assistant Can Manage Your Social Media
Cool Stuff Found

Jumbo Privacy Assistant Can Manage Your Social Media

Andrew Orr ·

Jumbo is a privacy assistant that can manage your social media. It can delete your old tweets, manage your Facebook privacy settings, delete your Google search history, and delete your Alexa voice recordings. Jumbo has no servers, so your data doesn’t leave your iPhone. When it comes to deleting tweets, there are several options to choose from, like tweets from the past day, week, month, and year. Due to Twitter’s API limitations, Jumbo can only clean 3,200 tweets at a time. Instagram and Tinder are coming soon to the app, so you can clean your Instagram photos and videos, and delete Tinder matches and messages. Personally, I also hope support for deleting Reddit posts and comments will come in the future. App Store: Free

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When I Die I Want You to Delete My Facebook Account

Andrew Orr ·

When I die I want you to delete my Facebook account. Don’t parade my digital corpse around in Facebook’s new Tributes feature.

Facebook is rolling out several updates for memorialized accounts, which are profiles that remain active for people who have passed away. A dedicated tributes tab will let friends and family share stories and memories of their loved one, allowing the late person’s timeline to stay as it was before they passed away.

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Mark Zuckerberg Ruined the Internet. Now He Pretends to Care About It

Andrew Orr ·

Mark Zuckerberg is at it again with another essay. This time he says that the internet needs to be regulated and thinks Congress should focus on four areas first. Roger McNamee gives his thoughts on it.

Mark Zuckerberg’s recent opinion piece in the Washington Post is a monument to insincerity and misdirection. The essay offers proposals to address four important issues – harmful content, election protection, privacy and data protection, and data portability – but each proposal is transparently self-serving.

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Facebook Can't Find Enough Local News for its Platform

Andrew Orr ·

Facebook is in a bit of a dilemma when it comes to news. Back in November it launched a feature called Today In, which would give people local news in their area. But the company is having trouble filling Today In with enough news, and this is because Facebook is a big contributor to the demise of news.

Today In may be live in 400 cities, but it’s unavailable across large parts of the country that perhaps most need it, namely, those with few or no local newspapers. Of course, Facebook contributed heavily to death of so many local news outlets as a large portion of advertising spending shifted from legacy media to the web, leading to dwindling newspaper revenue. Facebook isn’t the only reason hundreds of outlets have bitten the dust. Consolidation and mergers have played a role, but the likes of Facebook and Google have certainly been key factors.

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Was the Facebook Outage Linked to This Criminal Investigation?

Andrew Orr ·

Conspiracy theory time. Yesterday Facebook suffered its biggest outage in its entire history. Other affiliated services like Instagram and WhatsApp were also affected. Facebook is also under a federal criminal investigation over its data sharing practices. Do you think the outage had anything to do with law enforcement seizing some of the company’s servers?

“We are cooperating with investigators and take those probes seriously,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. “We’ve provided public testimony, answered questions and pledged that we will continue to do so.”

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Facebook vs Snapchat is Like Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates

Charlotte Henry ·

Facebook’s so-called “pivot to privacy” has elicited a number of reactions. One of the more incisive ones comes from Kara Swisher. In a New York Times Sunday review column, Ms. Swisher compared Facebook’s attempts to bolster private messaging, in direct competition with Snapchat, to the battle between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. In that case, Mr. Jobs’s “stunning creativity” eventually “won out.” This time, the size of Facebook may mean Mr. Zuckerberg can make a success of the Snapchat model. If he really means it.

Mr. Zuckerberg is to Bill Gates as Mr. Spiegel is to Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs always had better ideas and vision than Mr. Gates. But Apple spent a long time in dire straits while he pushed his high-level concepts about security, privacy, and design and simplicity. Mr. Gates, on the other hand, was an unqualified genius at business models and systems, and he clearly understood the depressing truth that good enough was good enough for a lot of consumers.