Popular Mechanics: Facebook Admits Its New Gadget Might Use Your Data for Ads After All. “The debut of Portal, Facebook’s video chatting device, sparked an obvious question: Does this camera-enabled home assistant manufactured by a company attached to numerous privacy scandals keep your private data private? Facebook was quick to note that Portal wouldn’t feed your data to advertisers — ‘Portal conversations stay between you and the people you’re calling,’ last week’s announcement said — but that reassurance has already proven false: Facebook might use your calls and Portal app usage as queues for its advertising network, a company spokesperson told Recode.”
Nieman Lab: Did Facebook’s faulty data push news publishers to make terrible decisions on video?
Nieman Lab: Did Facebook’s faulty data push news publishers to make terrible decisions on video?. “‘Five years to all video’ wasn’t just [Nicola] Mendelsohn’s line — it came from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself. ‘We’re entering this new golden age of video,’ Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed News in April 2016. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you fast-forward five years and most of the content that people see on Facebook and are sharing on a day-to-day basis is video.’ But even as Facebook executives were insisting publicly that video consumption was skyrocketing, it was becoming clear that some of the metrics the company had used to calculate time spent on videos were wrong. “
Neowin: Several major Facebook stakeholders call for Mark Zuckerberg to step down as Chairman
Neowin: Several major Facebook stakeholders call for Mark Zuckerberg to step down as Chairman . “On Wednesday morning, state treasurers from Illinois, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, along with the comptroller of New York City signed a proposal that was issued in June by Trillium Asset Management. The agenda set by the proposal aims to leverage the hundreds of billions of dollars in pension funds and state investments that these parties control, in order to have other major Facebook shareholders coerce the company to replace Zuckerberg with an independent chairman.”
CBS8: Facebook takes down ads mentioning African-Americans and Hispanics, calling them political
CBS 8: Facebook takes down ads mentioning African-Americans and Hispanics, calling them political. “Dozens of advertisements removed from Facebook for being political ahead of the November midterm elections did not appear to express any political view, a USA TODAY analysis showed. The Facebook ads from businesses, universities, nonprofits and other organizations did seem to have something in common: They mentioned ‘African-American,’ ‘Latino,’ ‘Hispanic,’ ‘Mexican,’ ‘women,’ ‘LGBT’ or were written in Spanish. Even offers of free delivery from Chipotle Mexican Grill were mislabeled as political until an inquiry from USA TODAY.”
CNET: Facebook accused of misleading advertisers, then trying to hide it
CNET: Facebook accused of misleading advertisers, then trying to hide it. “Facebook knew it was misleading advertisers about the average time users spent watching videos long before admitting it. And it tried to shift attention from the error, a lawsuit says. The social network revealed in September 2016 that it artificially inflated the metric for two years because it only counted videos as viewed if they had been watched for three or more seconds — failing to taking shorter views into account — and possibly misleading advertisers.”
TechCrunch: Facebook News Feed now downranks sites with stolen content
TechCrunch: Facebook News Feed now downranks sites with stolen content . “Facebook is demoting trashy news publishers and other websites that illicitly scrape and republish content from other sources with little or no modification. Today it exclusively told TechCrunch that it will show links less prominently in the News Feed if they have a combination of this new signal about content authenticity along with either clickbait headlines or landing pages overflowing with low-quality ads. The move comes after Facebook’s surveys and in-person interviews discovered that users hate scraped content.”
CNET: Facebook breach hit 3 million in EU, putting new privacy law to test
CNET: Facebook breach hit 3 million in EU, putting new privacy law to test. “Facebook may have a run-in with Europe’s new privacy law. The Irish Data Protection Commission said Tuesday that roughly 3 million Facebook users living in Europe were affected by a data breach at the social network in September, according to CNBC.”
