News of facebook

Meta shutters fake account 'cheerleaders' for Cuban, Bolivian governments

23-02-2023 17:57 Facebook parent company takes down two fake account networks with links to the governments of Cuba and Bolivia that were used to spread official propaganda and discredit the opposition.

CLIMATE DENIERS

Climate disinformation surges in denial, conspiracy comeback

02-02-2023 16:51 False information about climate change flourished online over the past year, researchers say, with denialist social media posts and conspiracy theories nearly doubling from 2021 to 2022 after US environmental reforms and Elon Musk's Twitter takeover.

BACKING BANGLADESH

Argentina fans thank Bangladeshis for support by backing their cricket team

08-12-2022 16:19 The massive celebrations in Bangladesh that have been greeting Argentina's World Cup victories are being reciprocated by Albiceleste fans through a Facebook group in support of the Asian nation's cricket team.

Latin America

LatAm newspapers eye more income after consolidating digital subscriptions

01-11-2022 21:43 Having overcome the resistance to paying for news on the Internet, newspapers in Latin America are seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

Big tech

A Holy War is raging between Google, Facebook, and the media industry

24-09-2022 06:00 The power that Google, Facebook and a few other companies hold over the information ecosystem, where they’ve become the de facto gatekeepers, is troubling. Ultimately they've taken over an editorial role that used to be controlled by media companies, in particular news publishers.

by Agustino Fontevecchia

ANALYSIS

A bite of the digital apple

23-04-2022 00:01 The problem with Google and Faebook sucking the air out of the digital advertising market is that it has seriously deteriorated the quality of journalism worldwide.

by Agustino Fontevecchia

TECH & SOCIETY

The battle to keep Russia's Internet free

18-03-2022 11:28 Western powers have seized the possessions of Russian oligarchs and sanctioned banks, but moves to limit access to the Internet are highly divisive.

Tech giants

Argentina fines Facebook for abusive privacy terms in WhatsApp

07-01-2022 01:35 Government fines Facebook for abusive clauses in the privacy policy terms of messaging service WhatsApp.

Tech giants

Facebook misidentified thousands of political ads, says study

09-12-2021 14:53 Facebook misidentified tens of thousands of advertisements flagged under its political ads policy, according to a study released Thursday, which warned that the failure could lead to political manipulation.

Digital dystopia

The lies behind Zuckerberg’s Meta & Google’s Goodness

29-10-2021 23:37 It is clear that the level of complexity behind managing and supervising content on the Facebook family of products is extreme, yet Zuckerberg simply doesn’t seem interested in it.

by Agustino Fontevecchia

What's in a name?

Facebook’s new name draws critics – but at least it’s not Tronc

29-10-2021 11:25 The company that runs the world’s largest and most controversial social network has a new name. The reactions ranged from “like” to “angry emoji face.”

BLOOMBERG – ANALYSIS

Facebook changes name to Meta in embrace of virtual reality

29-10-2021 10:54 Facebook Inc is re-christening itself Meta Platforms Inc, decoupling its corporate identity from the eponymous social network mired in toxic content, and highlighting a shift to an emerging computing platform focused on virtual reality.

BRAZIL UNDER BOLSONARO

Facebook removes Bolsonaro video linking Covid shots to AIDS

26-10-2021 10:04 Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro found himself in social media time-out Monday after his video warning of a supposed link between Covid-19 vaccines and AIDS triggered action by Facebook and YouTube.

Facebook’s dilemma

How to evade taxes while being a major global corporation in a globalised and digital world

09-10-2021 11:55 Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the largest technology companies out there, most of them headquartered in Silicon Valley but registered in tax havens like Ireland, have long bent the rules in order to innovate, but also to their own benefit.

by Agustino Fontevecchia

explainer

Why did Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp shut down?

05-10-2021 09:11 Hundreds of millions of people were unable to access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for more than six hours on Monday, underscoring the world's reliance on platforms owned by the Silicon Valley giant. But what actually caused the outage?

TECH GIANTS

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp hit by widespread outage

04-10-2021 20:55 Facebook battled duelling crises on Monday as it faced a large-scale outage of its dominant social network for seven hours, and fought against a whistleblower's damning revelations.

BIG TECH

Is Facebook a monopoly? A few ideas to help the FTC out…

10-07-2021 08:20 For anyone operating in the same digital ecosystem as Facebook, it is painstakingly clear that Zuckerberg’s creation has excessive market power and uses it to its own benefit. The same can be said about Google and a few other Silicon Valley giants.

by Agustino Fontevecchia

TECH GIANTS

Facebook wins US antitrust dismissal, surges to US$1-trillion value

28-06-2021 19:23 A judge of the of the US District Court dismissed cases filed in December by the Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states, which could have impeded Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp.