Facebook has, perhaps unintentionally, revealed that they are analyzing all of your images, taking note of the content of those images, and using what they find to further their reach.

Facebook has announced that up to 1500 third-party Facebook apps had access to user photos that they were not supposed to be able to access – including unpublished photos. The self-inflicted privacy hole was due to a ‘bug’ in the Facebook photo API which, Facebook says, granted the apps unpermitted access to the photos of as many as 6.8 million Facebook users for 12 days in September of 2018.

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).

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.

You remember Martin Shkreli, right? He’s the guy who founded Turing Pharmaceuticals, and then acquired the only marketing rights in the U.S. to pyrimethamine (a drug used by, among others, HIV patients), marketed in the U.S. as Daraprim, boosting the price by 5500% per dose. Well, he wasn’t convicted for doing that, but he was convicted for securities fraud, and has been out on bail while awaiting sentencing. Except, a post that he made on Facebook just got him sent to jail. For a post he made on social media. Let’s repeat that – someone is going to jail for a post they made on Facebook. Here’s what Martin Shkreli’s post said:

The Blue Whale Challenge, also known as the Blue Whale Game, is purported to be a deadly game which targets teenagers online and through social media. Said to be named after the way a blue whale will beach itself and die, Blue Whale consists of 50 challenges, increasingly harmful, photographic completion of which you send back to your handler (known as the ‘curator’ or the ‘administrator’), with the final fiftieth challenge being suicide, also broadcast via social media.

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.

Once again, Facbook has “helpfully” added a new “feature” – this time it’s a pop-up window showing you new comments that are posted to something that you posted on your timeline. Here’s how to get rid of it.