If you were required to re-enter your password in order to log in to Facebook today (28 September 2018), there’s a good reason: Facebook this morning revealed that it had suffered a massive breach, compromising as many as 50 million user accounts.
Earlier this week, in fact just before the 4th of July (was that planned, knowing fewer people would be paying attention?), Facebook announced that a “blocking bug” (actually an “unblocking bug – some outlets have been referring to it as a virus) had hit more than 800,000 users, causing people that the Facebook users had blocked to become unblocked, with no notice or warning.
Perhaps in keeping with their desire to be at the fore of the online dating frontier, it seems that Facebook is allowing profiles that are overtly sex ads. Or perhaps they just are eight years late to the rush to fill the void for online erotic services that was left when Craigslist shut down their ‘Adult services’ section.
One of the things that Facebook did right was not allowing people to see whether you are logged into Facebook. Unfortunately, they completely undid that when they rolled out Facebook Messenger, and the newest versions of Facebook Messenger turn out to be a stalker’s dream.
At the 2018 Facebook Developer Conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new entry in the online dating world: a Facebook dating service – specifically a Facebook dating app (so sorry web-only users, you will have to download the Facebook dating app in order to use the Facebook dating service).
In recent months you may have heard the term “FANG stocks” to refer to a particular group of stocks. More specifically, a particular group of high tech, high performing stocks. Those stocks are Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (hence F-A-N-G). Of course, the parent company for Google is now Alphabet, so these really should be called FANA stocks.
Following the revelations in the past week that political data analysis outfit Cambridge Analytica somehow managed to harvest the private data of more than 50 million Facebook users, and without the users being alerted, there have been increasing calls for Facebook users to leave Facebook for more secure climes.
Investors and influencers of Facebook and Apple have openly challenged and beseeched the tech giants to acknowledge and address the damage being done to children, adults, and even the very social fabric of society by these companies ignoring, and even intentionally taking advantage of, the addictive nature of Facebook and other social media platforms, and how open to tampering they are, as well as the addictive nature of the iPhone and other electronic devices.
Sean Parker, who joined Facebook as president and an original founder back in 2004, just five months after it was launched as a student directory, stunned many when he stated last week, during an Axios event, that Facebook was intentionally designed to exploit a vulnerability in human psychology. That vulnerability, says Parker, is a “social-validation feedback loop”.
Facebook has rolled out a new ‘safety’ feature, the first instance of which is in partnership with the government of Australia: you upload nude pictures of yourself to them, and, they say, it will help stop revenge porn. We see you checking the date of this article, and no, it’s not April 1st.
If you use Instagram, and have a Facebook page or a Facebook group, at some point you may have wondered how to share something that you’ve posted on Instagram with your Facebook page or Facebook group (or both). It’s very easy to share something that you post on Instagram with your personal Facebook timeline, but a Facebook group or page, not so much. Perhaps at some point, given that Facebook now owns Instagram, Facebook will add the ability to post from Instagram to a Facebook page or group, but for now this automated workaround works really well.
Facebook has taken out a full-page “Tips for Spotting False News” ad in British newspapers, telling people how to spot and avoid fake news ahead of the UK general election. Facebook has also been deleting tens of thousands of fake Facebook accounts that were created solely to spew false news stories, particularly ahead of elections. In fact, Facebook has said that ahead of this week’s election in France, they removed more than 30,000 accounts that were spreading fake news stories that could have (and were likely intended to) influence that election.
If you are wanting to turn off the new Facebook Messenger Day, you’re not alone. Messenger My Day is Facebook’s answer to SnapChat My Stories; it’s also annoying the heck out of a lot of Facebook Messenger users, with its ‘Add to your day’ in your face at the top of the screen. So, if you don’t want to ‘add to my day’, this is for you. Unfortunately, the answer to how to turn off Messenger Day is ‘you can’t’..BUT, you can get rid of it entirely. Here’s how.