Tag Archives: Facebook

It was a dark day in 2017 when Twitter announced it was shutting down Vine, the six-second video-looping social app. In less than four years, Vine became a hub for micro-video memes, creating the rise of a generation of young Vine stars with its potential for quick and quirky humor. As users consoled themselves with …

Facebook on Tuesday outlined how it has enhanced parental controls on Messenger Kids, its messaging app for children under 13. It comes months after the social network acknowledged a flaw that let thousands of users join group chats that their parents hadn’t approved. The new features allow parents to check their children’s recent contacts and chat history, a log of …

Twitter has revealed a security incident that occurred at the end of last year, where phone numbers were matched to usernames. The company said Monday that a large number of fake accounts exploited its API to access the information. The accounts were suspended immediately. We recently discovered an issue that allowed bad actors to match a specific phone number with …

Whoa. I was excited about this deal when I first ran it last week — but as of this morning it’s better still. Everything I look for in a laptop can be found right here. Thin and light: check. Solid-state storage: check. Backlit keyboard: yep. Truth be told, I’d already been eyeballing the Lenovo IdeaPad 730S before this deal came …

End-to-end encryption could be at risk if a new bill to protect children online becomes law. Sen. Lindsey Graham drafted the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2019, or Earn It. It could affect platforms that use encrypted messaging, such as Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage. The draft law would see formation of a National Commission …

Virtual reality seems like it’s undergone a dramatic refocusing over the past year: away from PCs, and toward do-it-all self-contained headsets like the groundbreaking Oculus Quest. A very Oculus Quest-like standalone VR headset ended up on my face at CES in Las Vegas, one of a number of VR demos I tried at the show. The Pico Neo 2 Eye …

Facebook on Thursday said it’ll remove harmful misinformation about the coronavirus, including posts about false cures and prevention methods as well as content that discourages people from seeking treatment. The company will also block hashtags being used to spread misinformation about the outbreak on Instagram. The moves comes after the World Health Organization on Thursday declared the coronavirus a public …

Facebook will create a cash fund of $550 million for its Illinois users who filed a lawsuit over its privacy practices, law firm Edelson PC said on Wednesday. The settlement came after Facebook was sued for collecting facial recognition data to use in tagging photos, which allegedly violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Tagging someone in a photo on Facebook …

Facebook, already dealing with criticism about misinformation and protection of user privacy, has a new problem to worry about: slipping profits. The social media giant, which makes most of its money from selling ads, on Wednesday beat Wall Street’s expectations for earnings and revenue in the fourth quarter. But for the full year, the company’s profit shrank due to rising …

There’s a growing consensus that it’s the browser’s job to protect our privacy on the web. But on Tuesday, a Google Chrome leader warned that trying to make that change too soon could actually hurt the web by driving developers to mobile apps instead. “At our scale, it’s not reasonable to move too fast, because it’s too destructive,” said Justin …