NEW YORK POST - The UK reportedly blocks Meta's $315M of Giphy, the popular animated GIF maker. The authority has told Meta that it has until Dec 1 to divest itself from Giphy, whose acquisition it completed in May 202. Meta also claimed that Giphy would have "continued in a diminished and underfunded state absent the merger."
by Abraham Ziff
See full article at New York Post
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FORBES - Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs will come under the same level of default end-to-end encryption that now protects WhatsApp. "We don't plan to finish the global rollout of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023," Meta's Global Head of Safety confirmed.
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USA TODAY - Facebook researchers conducted dozens of in-depth interviews and in-home visits with 18 real people from one city who they'd identified as vulnerable users with low digital literacy skills. The study determined that the upsetting posts that permeated these users' feeds caused them to disconnect from Facebook for long periods and exacerbated the hardships they were already experiencing. They found that algorithms harmed users with low-tech skills with repeated disturbing content. Some users did not understand how content came to appear in their feeds or how to control it. These users were often older, people of color, lower-educated, and with lower socioeconomic status.
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IANS - Facebook is reportedly paying creators up to $50K to use the platforms Live Audio Rooms feature, a rival to audio chat app Clubhouse. Facebook is offering to pay musicians and other creators "$10K to $50K per session, plus a fee for guests of $10K or more."
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TIMES OF SAN DIEGO - Facebook has expanded Neighborhoods, a space within the social networking app that allows users to connect with neighbors, to two North County communities, Carlsbad and Oceanside. The feature is designed to take on hyperlocal sites such as Nextdoor.
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TELECOM PAPER - A new Marktest study on social networks has shown that 19.6% of users in Portugal have abandoned a network in the last 12 months. The rate is much higher among the youngest users, rising to 34.3%. Most users indicated that they stopped using Facebook (26.0%), followed by Snapchat (25.2%), with a lack of interest given by 36.8% as the main reason.
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TECH CRUNCH - Facebook announced a series of updates and new tools for managing Facebook Groups, including tools designed to help admins better develop the group's culture and several other new additions like subgroups and subscription-based paid subgroups, real-time chat for moderators, and support for community fundraisers, and more.
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TECH CRUNCH - Facebook's newly named parent company Meta would close shop on its facial recognition systems and delete a massive collection of ~1B facial recognition templates used to pair faces with photos and videos. Facebook will no longer do that pairing moving forward for users who previously opted in.
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TECH CRUNCH - Meta announced that it is acquiring Within. The Los Angeles firm is the developer of Supernatural, a Beat Saber-style workout app. Supernatural has been one of the real success stories in virtual reality fitness, with movement-based high-impact cardio exercises.
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TECH CRUNCH - The social networking parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus has a new name, Meta. The new title captured more of the company's core ambition: to build the metaverse. "From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first." Mark Zuckerberg said.
by Lucas Matney & Taylor Hatmaker
See full article at Tech Crunch
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TECH IN ASIA - Facebook has launched Instagram Reels in Singapore, enabling users in the country to be a creator on the global platform via the TikTok-like short-video feature.
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ENGADGET - Facebook has sued Ukraine national Alexander Solonchenko for allegedly scraping data for ~178M users. Solonchenko reportedly exploited Messenger's contact import feature by using an automated tool that mimicked Android devices and sold user info on the black market.
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HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW - Much of the dominance of today's tech firms, from Amazon to Google to Facebook, arises from network effects. These platforms facilitate connections: they connect people to products, to friends, to apps...More connections, more value to each person.
The question of how much competition tech giants face is now at the center of worldwide policy debate. Traditional antitrust policy is ill-equipped to regulate network-based platforms. Some platforms are offered free to users, charging in data or attention.
Antitrust authorities err on the side of not intervening; Google and Facebook have gone on a shopping spree to acquire early-stage competitors that could have become a threat if left independent. But the tide may be turning.
A better understanding of these networks can help societies fully reap the benefits of digital innovation, while mitigating emerging harms.
by by Daniel Björkegren & Chiara Farronato
See full article at Harvard Business Review
Mark Brooks: Scale and complexity will continue to increase. The job of overseeing the scale and complexity of platforms at the Governmental level is not easy. Mistakes will be made. It is essential companies, leaders, take the macro-perspective more seriously, right now, or potentially face overzealous oversteps from Government interventions. Leaders should provide more transparency and education to users and Government stakeholders alike.ons. Leaders should provide more transparency and education to users and Government stakeholders alike.
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WALL STREET JOURNAL - The U.K.'s competition regulator fined Facebook $69.6M, alleging it breached reporting requirements during a continuing review of its proposed takeover of Giphy, a provider of animated images for use in social media. The Competition and Markets Authority said that Facebook had failed to provide required updates outlining its compliance with an interim order the watchdog imposed in 2020, as part of its review of the Giphy deal.
by Anthony O. Goriainoff & Sam Schechner
See full article at Wall Street Journal
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DCD - Google has acquired 120K sqm of land in Taulov, in Denmark's Fredericia municipality, while Facebook has bought 212 hectares in Andrup, in the Esbjer municipality. Those acquisitions are for potential data center developments.
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