In the early days of Facebook, how the News Feed was sorted was from the newest first, meaning that the latest posts from friends and pages you follow surfaced at the top of the feed. However, over the years, Facebook has opted to use a more algorithmic approach where they surface posts that they think are the most relevant to you.
You can instantly stream live video on Facebook with the Facebook Live feature and following the horrific terrorist attack in New Zealand which was streamed live on the platform, the world’s largest social network is now rolling out some restrictions for Facebook Live. The company says that it has been reviewing what more it can do to limit its services from being used to spread hate, hence these restrictions.
Facebook has announced today that it’s increasing the hourly pay rate for thousands of its contract workers in North America. The base rate that the company pays its contractors is being increased from $15 per hour to $18. There will also be marginally higher rates than this in cities where the costs of living are higher, up to $22 per hour in some cities.
Facebook is the biggest social network on the planet and no other service has the kind of reach and influence that it boasts. This has obviously led to concerns about competition in the marketplace, with some calling for the social network to be broken up. Joining those calls is one of Facebook’s co-founders Chris Hughes.
Facebook has been working on clamping down on fake news published to its platform, and now it looks like they’ll be going after fake news posts shared on Instagram as well. While Instagram might not necessarily have the same fake news problem as Facebook, the fact that it is a social media platform means that it gives users a place to potentially spread fake news.
It was first reported last year that Facebook is developing a cryptocurrency of its own which would be backed by the U.S. dollar. Users will reportedly be able to transfer the coin to each other over WhatsApp. A new report mentions that Facebook’s plan for its stablecoin, a cryptocurrency that’s backed by an actual currency, go far beyond what was initially expected.
Facebook has been the subject of a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its privacy practices following the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other incidents. Earlier reports have suggested that the company could be looking at a multi-billion dollar fine. A new report suggests that the terms of its settlement may also include independent oversight of Facebook’s privacy practices.
Earlier this year, it was rumored that Facebook could be looking to unify some of its apps. This included WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger where the idea was that by unifying them, users could chat across them all at once. This is versus the current situation where each app is standalone and more or less separate from each other.
If you’re getting a bit bored of the way Facebook looks, you’re in luck because at the company’s annual F8 developer conference, they took the wraps off what appears to be a brand new upcoming design that they will be rolling out across all platforms, including mobile and the web versions of Facebook.
Last year, Facebook introduced Facebook Dating which is pretty much as the name suggests. Given how Facebook already has such a huge established user base, it made sense that they would try to leverage it in this manner. Now it seems that the company is rolling out new features to its Dating section.
Facebook Messenger has seen incredible improvement and growth ever since Facebook made the decision to unbundle it from the main app. The functionality has been enhanced considerably over the past few years and the company is now fulfilling a consistent demand from users. It’s going to release a dedicated Facebook Messenger app for the desktop.
Facebook has confirmed today that it will now start selling its Portal smart display outside the United States. It’s also adding new features to the device, some of which were confirmed at the company’s F8 developers’ conference today. The Portal and Portal+ have only been available in the United States and Canada so far.
Another day, another privacy investigation concerning Facebook. The New York attorney general’s office has confirmed that it has launched an investigation against Facebook’s “unauthorized collection of 1.5M of their users’ email contact databases.” The investigation has been announced following recent reports that Facebook had been scraping the contact list of some users who had joined the social network after 2016.
The FTC’s ongoing investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices has already been expected to cost the company a significant amount of money. A multi-billion dollar fine has been expected and there’s now a range in which this fine could fall between. FTC may fine Facebook up to $5 billion as it wraps up its investigating into the company’s data sharing practices following the explosive Cambridge Analytica scandal.