meta

The Oversight Board, a group Facebook created to review its policy decisions, weighed in on a case of misinformation in war-torn Ethiopia Tuesday, warning the company about the risks of allowing hate speech and unverified information to spread freely in conflict zones.The Oversight Board...

Reuters: Meta says it has acquired the worldwide trademark assets of US regional bank Meta Financial Group for $60M in cash through a company called Beige Key — Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O), the owner of social media network Facebook, is behind a $60 million deal to acquire the trademark assets …

Ina Fried / Axios: In an interview, Meta's Andrew Bosworth says political and COVID-19 misinformation are societal problems, not issues that have been magnified by social networks — Longtime Facebook veteran Andrew Bosworth insists that political and COVID-19 misinformation are societal...

Queenie Wong / CNET: Meta struggles with harassment in VR, where solutions like letting users record everything need to be balanced with privacy and headsets' storage and power — Sydney Smith had dealt with lewd, sexist remarks for more than a month while playing the Echo VR video game.

Richard Lawler / The Verge: Meta launches new tools for creators and says it is testing live chat help for some English-speaking users globally who are locked out of their accounts — Better customer support for creators and average users alike — Despite eagerly participating in a platform...

Sylvia Varnham O'Regan / The Information: Meta has moved its artificial intelligence group to the Reality Labs unit, shifting the AI team's focus towards metaverse-related efforts — Facebook parent Meta Platforms has moved its artificial intelligence group to the Reality Labs unit developing...

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: In a letter, Sen. Warren asks the US DOJ and SEC to investigate whether Meta executives knew the company inflated a key metric measuring an ad's potential reach — Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the DOJ and SEC, after Sen. Maria Cantwell sent a letter...

The company formerly known as Facebook is taking a step toward its goal to transport us to the metaverse. Now, Horizon Worlds — the Second Life or Minecraft of Meta’s VR apps — is expanding out of invite-only beta, opening up to all users over 18-years-old in the US and Canada. This is a huge...

Alex Heath / The Verge: Meta opens its VR social platform Horizon Worlds to all adult users in the US and Canada, after announcing a private beta in September 2019 — Facebook's first stab at the metaverse is Roblox meets the OASIS — More than two years and a company rebrand later, Meta is...

Meta (formerly Facebook) today is introducing a number of Facebook Live updates that will allow creators to engage with fans during their live broadcasts, including new features like Polls, support for 4-person co-broadcasting via the “Live With” feature, new commenting features, a new post...

WABetaInfo: WhatsApp begins a limited test of Meta's Novi digital wallet in the US, letting users send and receive crypto within a chat, after launching a pilot in October — Like Love Haha Wow Sad Angry — Today, WhatsApp is finally announcing a small pilot program to some people in the US …

Queenie Wong / CNET: Meta says its new AI system, Few-Shot Learner, adapts more quickly to tackle new types of harmful content, including COVID-19 misinformation — Meta, formerly known as Facebook , said Wednesday it has created artificial intelligence technology that can adapt more quickly to...

Steve Lohr / New York Times: Meta, Nike, CVS, GM, IBM, Walmart, and others join the Data & Trust Alliance, which has developed an anti-bias scoring system to analyze AI usage during hiring — The organization has created a format for evaluating the technology, which is often used to screen job...

Patrick McGee / Financial Times: Sources: Meta, Snap, and other iOS developers continue to collect anonymized and aggregated data on users for targeted ads, despite Apple's ATT changes — Group's unacknowledged shift lets companies follow a looser interpretation of its privacy rules — Apple...

Bloomberg: Meta's head of research says Meta is restructuring its research department, bringing ~50 employees from teams like WhatsApp and Instagram into a central group — - Shake-up will affect 50 employees studying politics, health — Meta faces pressure over leaked research on hate speech...

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Meta launches a website that lets fans buy digital tokens called Stars to tip Facebook creators using Facebook Pay, avoiding app store payment commissions — Meta (formerly Facebook) has found a new way to avoid the app stores' commissions on in-app purchases with the...

Axios: Seventeen groups representing ~150 newspapers quietly filed antitrust lawsuits in the past year against Google and Meta for monopolizing the digital ads market — Newspapers all over the country have been quietly filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook for the past year …

As Facebook transitions its corporate branding and organizes around a “metaverse” future, a number of high-profile execs have been leaving the company.Last week, former Messenger boss and current crypto czar David Marcus announced he was leaving at the end of the year. Today, Meta’s current...

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg: Stan Chudnovsky, Meta's Messenger chief, who is also leading the integration of Meta's messaging services, plans to leave the company around Q2 2022 — The executive has been overseeing efforts to integrate the company's messaging services — Stan Chudnovsky, the Meta...

Lizzy Lawrence / Protocol: Q&A with Julien Codorniou, Meta's outgoing head of Workplace, on expanding into enterprise services, maintaining privacy, the future of Workplace, and more — As a parade of executives have announced plans to leave Meta (formerly known as Facebook), employees know...