In the middle of February, as the Australian government was passing a bill that would force Google and Facebook to pay publishers for news that surfaces on their platforms, Australia’s 16 million users found that news content had vanished from Facebook’s website and app. Now, with Canada’s government mulling similar legislation, it’s possible the story …
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After canceling last year’s F8 developer conference due to the pandemic, Facebook on Tuesday revealed that its 2021 event will happen in a virtual-only format called F8 Refresh. The one-day event takes place June 2, and you can sign up for it now. It’ll be livestreamed on its Facebook for Developers page. “We’ll feature the latest product tools to help …
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Facebook disabled more than 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December 2020. That’s just one of the stats the company highlighted in a blog post on Monday detailing its efforts to combat misinformation ahead of a House hearing on the topic later this week. Facebook has over 35,000 working on tackling misinformation on its platforms, according to the blog post. …
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Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger appear to be working again after widespread issues plagued the apps for roughly an hour on Friday. Issues started to pop up with the three Facebook-owned apps at around 10 a.m. PT, according to reports on DownDetector. People, including us here at CNET, ran into errors when trying to send messages on WhatsApp and Messenger. …
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Facebook is looking to create a version of Instagram for kids under the age of 13, according to a Thursday report by BuzzFeed News. The publication cited an internal company post about the project. “I’m excited to announce that going forward, we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list,” …
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The public feud between Facebook and Apple keeps heating up. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear before he isn’t happy with Apple’s upcoming privacy update that will prompt users to give apps, including the social network he co-founded, permission to track their activity across other apps and the web. Apple, on the other hand, has said the change …
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Facebook is expanding its support for hardware security keys to iOS and Android devices. The feature, available worldwide starting Thursday, lets you enable two-factor authentication to log into Facebook on a phone or other mobile device using a physical security key. Hardware security keys are a top authentication technique and particularly useful for two-factor authentication because you register them to work …
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Popular encrypted social media app Signal has become “unusable” for some in China, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, suggesting that the app may have been blocked in the world’s most populous country. Signal users in China reported issues sending or receiving messages on Monday night, according to the Journal. The issues reportedly went away when they used a virtual private …
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Apple scored a legal win in France on Wednesday when the country’s competition authority, known as the Autorité de la Concurrence, declined to prohibit the tech giant from instituting new privacy rules for its devices. Apple’s upcoming iOS 14.5 software update will ask users if they want to allow ad tracking across various apps and websites. The French regulator said …
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If you’re worried about falling in with a bad crowd on Facebook, a new change from the social media giant should help. The website will now alert you if a group you’re joining has run afoul of its rules. Facebook will also limit the invite notifications for these groups to reduce membership and limit the distribution of their content, the …
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