Digital world

  Tech giant Meta is facing great scrutiny from watchdogs located in the EU. The news comes after the rollout of ad-free subscriptions took center stage in 2023 but EU regulators feel the thought of the ‘pay or ok’ initiative is just worrisome and they’re making sure Meta knows how they feel about this. In the recently   published joint letter , several watchdogs from that part of the globe had people talking more on this front and speaking against the model for ad-free subscriptions. The leading concern is that there is a $14 monthly fee attached which Meta would take to ensure user data was secure and privacy was maintained at all times. The firms who are expressing concern include those hailing from Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands. There were plenty of concerned parties who felt Meta’s Pay or Okay policy might be too expensive and therefore they would find it hard to say no to the option that allows them to reject the offer. The document similarly goes on to point out ...

  A hacker has just raised the alarm amongst Facebook users after confirming that 200,000 personal data record entries were reportedly stolen from the firm’s database. The news is alarming for obvious reasons as the claims further went on to delineate how the cybercriminal dubbed ‘alogoatson breached contractors’ efforts that are in charge of Facebook’s cloud services. They stole part of the user database that featured a significant number of entries. The information was rolled out by a leading threat actor dubbed ‘IntelBroker’ which is notorious for a long list of leaks that entailed data stolen through General Electric and a long list of high-profile attacks taking place. This sample entails lists featuring full names, profile image links, and hashed passwords. Other than that, profile ratings, settings, and plenty of reviews were on display. The hacker explained how the data that was compromised included the likes of Physical IDs. This database was first rolled out in February a...

  Tech giant Meta is under pressure after greater  concern grew  surrounding its respective hate speech policy. Many users were wary about the terminology linked to zionists and how it was being used for posts linked to the Arab and Jewish communities.  The policy currently enables the use of the term in a political discourse. Still, it was removed when it had to do with Jews or Israelis directly, especially when it was in the context of a violent or dehumanizing manner. This was just confirmed through an email generated by a Meta rep who mentioned that it planned to invite others to discuss the matter in the future, as first spotted by  TheIntercept . Meanwhile, the email further mentioned how the firm considered reviewing this in context to posts and concerns of users who were the real stakeholders on this front. This means we might soon be witnessing a possible change in policy while advocacy groups (including  MPower Change  and  7amleh )...

  Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive Officer of Meta, expressed his heartfelt apologies during a Senate session on online child safety topic, acknowledging the distress experienced by parents who attributed their children's tragic outcomes to Instagram. Senator Josh Hawley's inquiry prompted Zuckerberg's candid response, "I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through. It’s a terrible ordeal, and no family should endure the hardships yours have faced." The Senate Judiciary Committee convened the hearing, titled “ Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis ,” where Zuckerberg, alongside the CEOs of TikTok, Discord, X, and Snap, faced a barrage of queries from lawmakers. Holding snapshots of their children, parents confronted the tech leaders, donning blue ribbons advocating the "STOP Online Harms! Pass KOSA!" initiative, urging the enactment of the Kids Online Safety Act. Upon Zuckerberg's entrance, audible disapproval emanated from ...

  Surfshark  recently did a deep dive into the top 100 most popular apps on the App Store, and they found that 20% of the data they are collecting is for tracking purposes with all things having been considered and taken into account. These apps were ranked based on 32 data points that they are currently in the process of collecting, all of which are defined by Apple’s privacy policy. Facebook and Instagram were found to be the least privacy conscious apps of all. They collect all 32 data points, all of which are tied to the identity of the user in question, and 7 of which are used specifically for tracking purposes. These include data points such as names, home addresses as well as phone numbers, which seems to suggest that these apps offer far less privacy than users would ideally prefer. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that X, formerly known as Twitter, was also a major offender in this regard. It collected fewer data points...

  To date, the social media giant Meta has been penalized with a massive $2.8 billion (yes with B in USD) fine for going against the GDPR. Meta continues to remain a favorite company by officials in the EU and they’ve been targeting the organization left and right for several violations of the GDPR. It wouldn’t be wrong to refer to Ireland as the world’s ‘Leading Data Regulatory Authority’ that continues to impose massive fines on big technology companies in the industry who fail to follow the stringent GDPR law that came out in 2018. Meta is a big player in the digital space and it’s been subject to legal actions for years, let’s not forget how fines worth billions have been handed over. GDPR breaches incurred by Meta have been a constant worry for Zuckerberg and from what we’re seeing right now, it’s not ending soon. The company was penalized a massive $442 million in Sep. 2022 and then another massive one comprising $425 million was rolled out on Meta Limited in Januar...

  Shocking new documents about the domain of child safety from tech giant Meta were recently unsealed. This has to do with the organization’s striving to fight a new lawsuit from the DOJ of New Mexico that was against the company and its CEO. These made some bombshell findings including how Facebook’s parent firm knew a lot of things that were going wrong but yet chose to keep a blind eye on the matter. The findings include how the company intentionally chose to market messaging apps to minors while also ignoring the huge volumes of inappropriate and explicit data being shared between kids and adults. The papers were unraveled on Wednesday and have now become a huge part of the complaint about several instances regarding employees working internally and raising doubts about how children were being exploited by the firm’s own messaging apps. The company did see the risks of DMs for both Messenger as well as Instagram but they still chose to keep a blind eye on the ordeal, knowing ve...

  Tech giant Meta is again under fire after a new report exposed the company’s Facebook app as invading user privacy by tracking their online activities. The study was conducted recently  by leading company  Consumer Reports  who proved a whopping 2,230 firms that were engaged in sharing information of users through the Facebook app. There were also some alarming facts mentioned including how instances had 7000 firms involved who shared data amongst their users through Facebook making the ordeal easy. The news is very shocking because it comes at a time when the concerns linked to data privacy are growing around the globe. The stats are creating serious trust issues and may end up impacting the company’s reputation as well. But in today’s markets such as the EU, data privacy regulations are going strong and continue to be at the topmost agenda for discussion. Rules keep getting stricter and data privacy regulations in place ensure no trust issues are broken. But with...

  Meta is launching new  functionality  that prevents users from seeing irrelevant content on their Facebook news feeds. Meta says the new feature is designed to assist users in avoiding content that they find annoying or unappealing when they're scrolling. While the company did say that this new feature enables you to customize your entire news feed, it’s not enabling users to make the right changes. But you can help train the app’s algorithms to show content that you’re not interested in or find irrelevant. A recent blog post regarding the matter revealed how the app will begin seeing a new tab that states, ‘show more’ or ‘show less’. These will be located right under your posts on the feed. After the button for ‘show more’ gets selected, all such posts’ ranking scores will increase for that post or those similar to it. But when the option to show less is selected, the ranking score witnesses a decline. In this way, the algorithms of Facebook will make use of the feedba...

  Digital ads are the main source of income for most tech platforms, and users have been reporting seeing an increase in the number of ads that they are exposed to. 52% of Facebook users  stated  that they are seeing more ads than they used to, and that number is around 47% for YouTube. In spite of the fact that this is the case, most other platforms have a majority of users stating that the number of ads they are seeing has stayed more or less the same. Facebook and YouTube are unique in that they are the only platforms that have more users reported a higher number of ads than those that say they are the same number. 39% of Facebook users and 45% of YouTube users said that the number of ads has stayed consistent, although there is clearly a far larger disparity when it comes to Facebook with all things having been considered and taken into account. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that LinkedIn is satisfying its users the ...

 The rise of TikTok has been nothing short of meteoric, and while the social media platform has faced controversies related to potentially harvesting data for the Chinese government, its popularity continues to increase unabated. For example, the British legislative assembly recently suspended its own TikTok account for fear of leaking sensitive data to a foreign power, but in spite of the fact that this is the case the citizens of the island nation have been using TikTok more and more frequently as of late. TikTok is now the best performing social media platform out there in terms of average time spent by users, with British consumers spending an average of 49 minutes on it per day. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that this has put it in the lead ahead of Facebook, whose average time spent fell to 43 minutes this year after reaching a high of 47 minutes in 2020. TikTok has also turned into yet another competitor that is giving Snap...