Facebook’s regulation dodge: Let us, or China will
Facebook is leaning on fears of China exporting its authoritarian social values to counter arguments that it should be broken up or slowed down. Its top executives have each claimed that if the U.S. limits its size, blocks its acquisitions or bans its cryptocurrency, Chinese...
Highlights from Facebook’s Libra Senate hearing
Facebook will only build its own Calibra cryptocurrency wallet into Messenger and Whatsapp, and will refuse to embed competing wallets, the head of Calibra David Marcus told the Senate Banking Committee today. While some like Senator Brown blustered that “Facebook is dangerous!”, others surfaced poignant...
Facebook answers how Libra taxes & anti-fraud will work
Facebook provided TechCrunch with new information on how its cryptocurrency will stay legal amidst allegations from President Trump that Libra could facilitate “unlawful behavior”. Facebook and Libra Association executives tell me they expect Libra will incur sales tax and capital gains taxes. They confirmed that...
Select FCC leaders announce support for T-Mobile, Sprint merger
It’s been more than a year since T-Mobile and Sprint formally announced a merger agreement. This morning, members of FCC leadership have issued statements voicing their support for the $26 billion proposal. Ajit Pai was first out with a statement, suggesting that the pricey consolidation...
Facebook changes algorithm to promote worthwhile & close friend content
Facebook is updating the News Feed ranking algorithm to incorporate data from surveys about who you say are your closest friends and which links you find most worthwhile. Today Facebook announced it’s trained new classifiers based on patterns linking these surveys with usage data so...
Twitter’s new Developer Labs offers beta access to rebuilt APIs
Twitter is finally modernizing its core APIs after seven years of stagnation, and it wants early feedback from developers. That’s why today it’s launching Twitter Developer Labs, which app makers can sign up for to experiment with pre-release beta APIs. First up will be re-engineered...
Facebook sues analytics firm Rankwave over data misuse
Facebook might have another Cambridge Analytica on its hands. In a late Friday news dump, Facebook revealed that today it filed a lawsuit alleging South Korean analytics firm Rankwave abused its developer platform’s data, and has refused to cooperate with a mandatory compliance audit and...
Instagram will let you appeal post takedowns
Instagram isn’t just pretty pictures. It now also harbors bullying, misinformation, and controversial self-expression content. So today Instagram is announcing a bevvy up safety updates to protect users and give them more of a voice. Most significantly, Instagram will now let users appeal the company’s...
Facebook talked privacy, Google actually built it
Mark Zuckerberg: “The future is private”. Sundar Pichai: ~The present is private~. While both CEO’s made protecting user data a central theme of their conference keynotes this month, Facebook’s product updates were mostly vague vaporware while Google’s were either ready to ship or ready to...
Sean Parker’s Brigade/Causes acquired by govtech app Countable
Causes grew to a jaw-dropping 200 million users as one of the first 10 Facebook platform apps. Started by Facebook co-founder Sean Parker, it was meant to turn a generation into activists and philanthropists. Causes acquired Votizen to augment shallow clicktivism with a way to...
Social