Facebook...er, Meta Hatred

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

So, basically, they are being punished for all their help to Putin in working to destroy our country.

 

[Free]

Capitalism at its finest.

Meta can’t buy TikTok, so it hired GOP operatives to run a smear campaign

Consultants placed op-eds, pushed local news to run stories maligning TikTok.

arstechnica.com

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has hired Targeted Victory, a large Republican consulting firm, to place stories in op-eds in local newspapers and on local TV newscasts around the US, according to the report.

TikTok poses perhaps the most existential challenge to Meta and Facebook yet. The video-based social media platform has gained users at a swift pace, and it’s especially popular among younger users, a demographic that Facebook and Meta’s other platforms have struggled with in recent years.

 

[Free]

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta employees "lovingly" refer to him as "The Eye of Sauron"

In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg said his employees at Meta have "lovingly" referred to his level of attention as "The Eye of Sauron."

consequence.net

Um, sure. Lovingly.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Thread

 

[Free]

The product is still called Facebook, yes?

Documents show Facebook axed update that hurt traffic to right-wing sites — then lied about it

On Monday, Gizmodo released a new tranche of documents from the so-called "Facebook Papers" — providing new evidence that the company lied about killing an update to the newsfeed feature that would have prevented fake news from spreading, but that also happened to hurt traffic to right-wing...

www.rawstory.com

 

[Free]

Meta tells employees to stop discussing abortion at work

Meta says the topic can “leave people feeling like they’re being targeted based on their gender or religion.”

www.theverge.com

A Meta executive told employees on Thursday that they are prohibited from talking about abortion on Workplace, an internal version of Facebook, citing “an increased risk” that the company is seen as a “hostile work environment.”

The policy, which Meta put in place in 2019 but hasn’t been reported until now, prohibits employees from discussing “opinions or debates about abortion being right or wrong, availability or rights of abortion, and political, religious, and humanitarian views on the topic,” according to a section of the company’s internal “Respectful Communication Policy” seen by The Verge. Some employees have called on management to do away with the policy in the aftermath of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, arguing that the ban is at odds with employees being allowed to talk “respectfully” about issues like Black Lives Matter, immigration, and trans rights.

This is the kind of mess that happens when a work place (in the generic sense) tries to pretend they can be a community. The company can schedule get togethers with coworkers, have a pizza party, set up teams to bowl or play softball or tennis or golf or...In the long run the creation of the "corporate citizen," providing a facade of open employee participation and a shared company culture, is not as healthy as they claim.

As long as you're "respectful" of others' views or beliefs and aren't "hateful," you can discuss whatever you want. Except you're pay. Or health problems. Your career aspirations or work opportunities outside the company (that's anti-community!). Or oh hey, abortion.

 

[Free]

Facebook enforces ban on gun sales with 10-strikes-and-you’re-out policy

10-strikes policy on gun sales revealed in "internal guidance" obtained by WaPo.

arstechnica.com

People who buy or sell guns on Facebook can violate the social network's ban on gun purchases 10 times before they're kicked off the service, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Facebook's 10-strikes rule is detailed in "internal guidance obtained by The Washington Post," the article said:

The policy, which has not previously been reported, is much more lenient than for users who post child pornography, which is illegal, or a terrorist image on Facebook, which prompts immediate removal from the platform.

A separate five-strikes policy extends even to gun sellers and purchasers who actively call for violence or praise a known dangerous organization, according to the documents.

The policy apparently used to be even more lenient. "Until 2020, the strike threshold for guns was more than 10," the Post wrote, citing anonymous sources. "That threshold seemed 'too high' to many employees, who argued to reduce it to 10 strikes or lower."

OMG, they've become more restrictive. Someone call the NRA!

 

[Free]

Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients - Reveal

The social media giant gathers data from crisis pregnancy centers through a tracking tool that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account.

revealnews.org

A joint investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and The Markup found that the world’s largest social media platform is already collecting data about people who visit the websites of hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers, which are quasi-health clinics, mostly run by religiously aligned organizations whose mission is to persuade people to choose an option other than abortion.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, prohibits websites and apps that use Facebook’s advertising technology from sending Facebook “sexual and reproductive health” data. After investigations by The Wall Street Journal in 2019 and New York state regulators in 2021, the social media giant created a machine-learning system to help detect sensitive health data and blocked data that contained any of 70,000 health-related terms.

But Reveal and The Markup have found Facebook’s code on the websites of hundreds of anti-abortion clinics. Using Blacklight, a Markup tool that detects cookies, keyloggers and other types of user-tracking technology on websites, Reveal analyzed the sites of nearly 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers – with data provided by the University of Georgia – and found that at least 294 shared visitor information with Facebook. In many cases, the information was extremely sensitive – for example, whether a person was considering abortion or looking to get a pregnancy test or emergency contraceptives.

A Facebook spokesperson said it's against their policies for websites and apps to send sensitive information through their tools. Helpful.

 

[Free]

Facebook could be sued for addicting children under California bill

If passed, it would likely impact social media users everywhere.

arstechnica.com

 

[Free]

Zuckerberg has a plan to rescue Meta, but can he convince his own employees?

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”

www.theverge.com

Mark Zuckerberg stared into his webcam, trying to make yet another remote meeting seem urgent.

Since Facebook started, he’d made a habit of frankly addressing employees directly at a weekly Q&A. Almost no topic was off-limits. But as the company grew, these sessions had become more scripted. He’d stopped showing up every week, instead letting other executives field the most upvoted questions submitted by employees.

The raw Zuckerberg persona was back on June 30th, though. Sometimes he sounded like a general preparing his troops for the war ahead. In other moments, he was the wunderkind visionary, hyping where the company’s metaverse push might take it over the next decade.

But mostly, he just seemed annoyed.

An annoyed Zuckerberg. How horrible.

 

[Free]

Oh oh, good question.

MSN

www.msn.com

Yahoo was once the most popular website on the planet, the only place that everyone on the internet seemed to touch at least once an online session. After an ignominious slide, however, Yahoo is just another site that has some fans in certain parts of Asia and offers some niche products.

Has Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook on a similar path?

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Oh oh, good question.

MSN

www.msn.com

I wouldn't cry about it, personally. I get so tired of the changes... like now, I am a scroller. I'll have FB open and just slowly scroll past things, to find my friends posts - but after a while, its set now to make you have to reset - and they keep crippling the ad blocker for FB sponsored posts.

 

[Noodles]

God I can't wait for a sequel to The Social Network. They can even push a Cyrpon angle and bring back the Winklevoss Twins as a side story.

How Zuck just gets increasingly worse until the company fades.

Maybe since the drama with the girlfriend was fake for the first one, they could end it with her divorcing him in the restaurant they opened the first one in.

 

[Free]

Loathsome anti-vax group run by RFK Jr gets Meta permaban—finally

CHD says the ban came "without warning." Meta says it followed many violations.

arstechnica.com

I'd celebrate, but they've already done a lot of damage.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

God I can't wait for a sequel to The Social Network. They can even push a Cyrpon angle and bring back the Winklevoss Twins as a side story.

How Zuck just gets increasingly worse until the company fades.

Maybe since the drama with the girlfriend was fake for the first one, they could end it with her divorcing him in the restaurant they opened the first one in.

Honestly... if not for his bullshit of selling things like non voting shares I wonder if he'd have been booted out by activist investors by now. His leadership seems to be pretty bad at this point.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Free]

Mark Zuckerberg Now Obsessed With MMA, ‘Rolling and Wrestling With Friends’

Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan: "After an hour or two of working out or rolling or wrestling with friends or training with different folks, it’s like, you’re ready to solve all the problems for the day."

www.vice.com

I don't see where he claims it as one of his biggest regrets, but it reads mostly like at least some of his time on Joe Rogan's show was a super rich nerd boy trying to sound tough while talking to the pro-non-nerd, bringing up MMA and wrestling and how he watches but no not just watch! I also do UFC and trains in Guerilla Jiu Jitsu.

 

[Free]

~$175M is a year's flapjack breakfast money for Meta/Facebook, but still.

Meta ordered to pay a hefty sum for violating live-streaming patents

The jury’s unanimous decision awards app developer Voxer almost $175 million.

www.theverge.com