Just when you thought you couldn’t possibly dislike Facebook any more, the social networking giant has started rolling out a brand-new app dedicated to making memes.
Whale (that really is its official name) makes it easy to add text and special effects to your images. You can then share them instantly to other Facebook apps, including Messenger and Instagram.
Facebook is quietly using your iPhone’s camera in the background while you scroll through your news feed.
The issue is believed to be a bug that affects devices running certain versions of iOS. It has been replicated on handsets with iOS 13.2.2, but not those still using iOS 13.1.3.
Facebook-owned Instagram launched a new standalone app today that pretty much steals some of Snapchat’s key features.
Threads, rolling out globally to iOS today, is built around Instagram’s Close Friends feature, giving you a quicker way to message the people you care about on Insta the most.
The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly preparing an antitrust investigation into Facebook. This comes the same month that U.S. attorneys general revealed plans to probe Google for antitrust violations.
No Facebook investigation has been announced yet. But a “person familiar with the matter” says that is going to happen. This would be the fourth recent antitrust probe of Facebook — and the latest example of the growing pushback against tech giants.
Apple’s long-rumored AR glasses project could get some competition from the world’s biggest social network company.
Facebook is reportedly developing its own augmented reality glasses. The social network recently struck a partnership with Ray-Ban parent company Luxottica to speed the product along, according to a new report.
Facebook revealed some big updates coming to its tools for creators including one feature Instagram users have been begging for for years.
Post scheduling is finally being adding to Instagram but only for business accounts that are linked to a Facebook page. The feature is being added alongside some other tools for live video broadcasting and analytics on Facebook.
Facebook has clarified how its apps collect and uses location data, ahead of the release of iOS 13.
While this data gathering is nothing new, iOS 13 will make it more obvious to users by calling out apps which behave in this way. It therefore looks like Facebook is trying to get out ahead of any potential negative publicity.
Separate groups of US state attorneys general are investigating Facebook and Google for antitrust violations. So far, there has been no word of AGs probing Apple.
However, that doesn’t mean the iPhone maker has escaped probes by other government bodies, both in the US and Europe.
A Facebook server containing hundreds of millions of users’ phone numbers was left completely exposed to potential attackers, according to a new report.
The data linked each phone number to a user’s unique Facebook ID, potentially exposing personal information that could be used against victims. Some of the records also contained the person’s name, gender and country.
Many of our favorite applications are free because advertisers pay for them. But what if that changed? How much would you pay for Facebook or YouTube without advertising… and without these apps profiling everything about you?
A survey conducted by a market-research firm found that subscription fees people would pay for these apps would make them more profitable than they are now.
Facebook’s trick of never letting readers get to the bottom of its homepage would be banned under a law just proposed in the U.S. Senate. The same legislation also would block auto-playing media.
The goal is to make social networking less entrancing.
The Federal Trade Commission hit Facebook with a massive $5 billion fine Wednesday due to the social network’s lax privacy policies.
This stands as the largest fine ever dished out to a tech company by the FTC. The massive penalty eats up approximately 9% of Facebook’s total 2018 revenue.
Stock prices of the major U.S. stock companies all took a tumble in after-hours trading today after the U.S. Justice Department revealed that it is launching a broad antitrust investigation into tech companies.
The department has not said which companies will be investigated specifically but it’s pretty likely that Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook will be swept up in the case.
Tech companies are getting into the finance game, and not everyone’s happy about it.
That’s why a new draft bill is raising the possibility of banning tech companies from acting as financial institutions or issuing their own digital currencies.
Dr. Mario World is now just one week away from making its much-anticipated debut on iOS. If you weren’t already hyped for the game, perhaps a sneak peek at its crazy multiplayer mode will get you more excited.
Check it out in Nintendo’s latest trailer below.
Some of Google’s LGBTQ+ employees have petitioned the San Francisco Pride board of directors to kick the search engine giant out of the SF Pride parade slated for this weekend.
The Google employees posted an open letter this morning saying they’ve spent countless hours trying to get Google to improve policies and practices regarding the treatment of LGBTQ+ persons, but the company has done nothing. Even though they might get in trouble for writing the letter, nearly 100 employees signed it, urging the parade to reject Google’s failure to act.
The clash of tech titans Apple and Facebook continued Monday when Mark Zuckerberg’s newest executive team hire called Apple an “exclusive club” serving only “aspirant consumers with the means to buy high-value hardware and services.”
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s new head of global affairs, didn’t mention Apple by name when he spoke to a group in Berlin today. He didn’t have to.
A Facebook app banned by Apple gathered personal and sensitive data from 187,000 users before it was booted from iOS devices.
According to a letter from Facebook to Senator Richard Blumenthal’s office, the Research app gathered data on 31,000 users in the U.S. The rest of the data came from users in India.
Sign in with Apple could give Facebook and Google some serious headaches when it launches as part of iOS 13 this fall, however, Apple’s strict rules could bring some pushback.
Not only will Apple require all apps that use third-party login services like Facebook to also support Apple’s privacy-focused login service, but it is also asking that the button be placed above competitors’ options.
Sign in with Apple might be the most underrated feature to come out of the WWDC 2019 keynote. A lot of analysts, including Cult of Mac founder Leander Kahkney, think it’s a big shot at Facebook. The social media giant has become one of the iPhone-maker’s favorite companies to hate on recently, but Apple CEO Tim Cook says the new feature isn’t targeting Facebook.
Update: Apple says “Sign in with Apple” will be mandatory for third-party apps that require sign-ins, according to these new App Store guidelines. That means apps that currently use Facebook or Google to sign in will also have to support “Sign in with Apple.”
“It will be required as an option for users in apps that support third-party sign-in when it is commercially available later this year,” the new guidelines say.
Apple is targeting Facebook with a new privacy feature in iOS 13 that privately logs users into third-party apps and services.
Called “Sign in with Apple,” it aims to replace popular cross-web login services like ones offered by Facebook and Google.
The new privacy feature prevents third-party apps and web services from tracking users via their logins. It creates private, disposable logins for every service or app.
Conversations with your friends won’t be the only thing that shows up inside your WhatsApp next year. Facebook has confirmed ads will also start appearing in 2020.
You’ll see them in WhatsApp Status, the messaging platform’s answer to Instagram Stories.
Instagram has confirmed plans to kill its standalone Direct app for Android and iOS.
The Snapchat clone made its debut in December 2017, but is being axed as part of Facebook’s mission to consolidate its services into a single platform. Users will see their conversations automatically moved to the regular Instagram app.
As part of a promise to choke off fake news and conspiracy theories on its platforms, Facebook will begin sniffing out false posts on its photo-sharing app, Instagram.
Facebook reportedly has 52 “fact-checking partners” in 30 countries to flag dubious posts, a program it has been building since December 2016, one month after a contentious presidential election that was widely considered influenced by bad actors using social media.
Facebook is retooling Instagram to take some social pressure out of social media.
The photo-sharing app, which along with the iPhone sparked a revolution in instant photography, will reduce the pressure by making “likes” private so followers engage the content, not how popular it is. Instagram is also playing with ways to reduce the prominence of follower counts.
