The Facebook news thread

[Rewind]

Unilever owns more than 400 brands including Lipton, Dove, Lux, Camay, Surf, Best Foods/Hellman's, Ben & Jerry's, Axe, VO5 and Mrs. Dash. One fourth of Unilever's advertising budget is spent on social media and now they're threatening to pull those ads unless Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and Snapchat get serious about eliminating "fake news, racism, sexism, terrorists spreading messages of hate and toxic content directed at children." Good luck with that!

Unilever threatens to pull its ads from Facebook and Google over 'toxic content'

http://www.latimes.com/business/tech...212-story.html

[Rewind]

Pediatricians, educators and mental health professionals say young children are not ready to have social media accounts and online relationships. I agree. Let kids enjoy being kids. When they're adults, they'll have plenty of time to spend 12 hours every day on a cell phone, tablet or computer.

Child development experts protest Facebook's Kids Messenger app

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/...p/4234902.html

[Rewind]

Every time I read a story about websites tracking Internet users, I picture Chico Marx's character in Duck Soup saying, "Shhh -- this is spy stuff."

Belgian court orders Facebook to stop tracking Internet users or face fines of 250,000 Euros a day

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp...web-users.html

[Rewind]

If you see a Facebook political ad that begins "Dear tovarisch" and is signed by Boris, Ivan, Sergei and Dmitri, it would be best to ignore it -- or report it.

Facebook faces big challenge to prevent future US election meddling

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKCN1G102D

[Rewind]

If I may make a suggestion: Nobody should look to Facebook as a primary news source. Facebook is for LOLs and OMGs and ROFLs and "Look what I ate for dinner."

Facebook ends test that showed users 2 separate news feeds
CNet, Mar 1 2018 4:30 PM

Your news feed won't be splitting up after all. In October, Facebook begantesting a change in the news feed that separated it into two feeds: one for personal posts from friends and family and another one called the "Explore Feed" for brands, publishers and other businesses. Today the social network said it's ending the test because the results came back negative. "You gave us our answer: People don't want two separate feeds," Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of news feed, wrote in a blog post.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/faceboo...te-news-feeds/

[Rewind]

Yes, BlackBerry is still in business in 2018. Believe me, I'm just as surprised as you are!

BlackBerry sues Facebook over messaging technology, alleging patent infringement

http://www.latimes.com/business/tech...306-story.html

[Rewind]

ESPN continues to lose viewers and Facebook continues to add live sporting events. Coincidence?

Facebook will stream 25 afternoon MLB games

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/...D=ansmsnnews11

[Rewind]

A UN investigator says hate speech on Facebook is spreading "acrimony, dissension and conflict." Gee, where have I heard that before?

UN blames Facebook for spreading of hate speech in possible Myanmar genocide of Rohingya Muslims

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-un-...-crisis-2018-3

[Rewind]

Last November, Trump retweeted three of Britain First's anti-Muslim videos. They purported to show Muslims committing acts of violence -- but the scenes were staged by non-Muslims. Yep, our President retweeted faked videos. Sad.

Facebook bans far-right group Britain First and its leaders for inciting hatred

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-br...-idUSKCN1GQ1JS

[Rewind]

We know Russian trolls created hundreds of fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Google for the purpose of getting Donald Trump elected to the Presidency. Now we learn that Trump and his advisers had their own methods of using Facebook to their advantage:

How Trump consultants exploited the Facebook data of millions
The New York Times, Mar 17 2018

As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a problem. The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work, so the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

An examination by The New York Times and The Observer reveals how Cambridge Analytica’s drive to bring to market a potentially powerful new weapon put the firm — and wealthy conservative investors seeking to reshape politics — under scrutiny. Details of Cambridge’s acquisition and use of Facebook data have surfaced in several accounts since the business began working on the 2016 campaign, setting off a furious debate about the merits of the firm’s so-called psychographic modeling techniques. But the full scale of the data leak involving Americans has not been previously disclosed — and Facebook, until now, has not acknowledged it. Interviews with a half-dozen former employees and contractors, and a review of the firm’s emails and documents, have revealed that Cambridge not only relied on the private Facebook data but still possesses most or all of the trove.

Congressional investigators have questioned Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix about the company’s role in the Trump campaign. And the Justice Department’s special counsel, Robert Mueller III, has demanded the emails of Cambridge Analytica employees who worked for the Trump team as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the election.

Cambridge paid to acquire the personal information through an outside researcher who, Facebook says, claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes. During a week of inquiries from The Times, Facebook downplayed the scope of the leak and questioned whether any of the data still remained out of its control. But on Friday the company posted a statement expressing alarm and promising to take action.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/u...-campaign.html