Facebook

In an effort to further curb the distribution of fake news, Facebook has announced through its official blog, that it will be preventing pages that repeatedly share misleading articles from buying ads on the social networking site. A few months ago, the social network has prevented advertisers from sharing links to stories, that have been […]

Facebook’s Messenger Lite: Free Calls & Messages app surpassed 50 million downloads on Android devices, as revealed by its Google Play Store listing. The latest turn of events marks a significant milestone for the app that the Menlo Park, California-based company isn’t offering worldwide, having designed it exclusively for emerging markets. Messenger Lite’s new download […]

Facebook has added new variants of its family emoji sets that represent a spectrum of skin colors. Previously, only the default yellow tone was supported for family emoji that were all shown together, but this change adds a range of skin tones from white to black. The new emoji skin tone options cover every existing […]

Facebook is shuffling some employees around as it looks to bring some consistency to the many consumer-facing hardware projects it currently has going on. Leading the efforts, the company has now announced, is Andrew Bosworth, an executive with more than 10 years of service to the company since he joined back in 2006. Bosworth’s prior […]

Facebook, through its Building 8 division, is preparing to release a new communications device and based on the limited information currently available, this will be positioned as a direct competitor to Amazon’s Echo Show. This information comes from a new report out of Business Insider which in turn credits “people familiar with knowledge of the […]

Starting today, an update to Facebook’s mobile app started rolling out for its Android users (iOS as well), adding support for taking 360-degree photos and using them as cover photos on this social network. Not only that, but this is the first major update to Facebook cover photos since they were introduced. The users can […]

A new forecast by eMarketer suggests that teenage users of Facebook are gradually moving away from the platform in favor of Instagram and Snapchat. It appears the growth that Facebook is experiencing is slowing considerably in both the United States and the United Kingdom due to lower usage among teenagers and young adults, while the […]

Facebook is set to roll out new changes to its Safety Check feature that will, among other things, consolidate all disaster-related data as well as information on where to ask for or provide assistance during crisis in a single place. On its own Facebook page created for disaster response efforts, the social media giant confirmed […]

Facebook has kicked off testing for a new feature of its News Feed that is designed to customize links to articles tailored in accordance with the interest of users, according to a new report by Reuters. The feature is called Featured Topic and it appears to be available only to a small number of users […]

Facebook is implementing a new rule that could reduce the number and hamper the distribution of video clickbait. Video clickbait refers to the practice conducted by some publishers wherein they use fake play buttons or static images to spam users. For example, some publishers post articles with play buttons that, when pressed, will not play […]

Facebook reportedly shut down an anonymous internal discussion forum last year due to toxic and harassing messages between its employees. The forum, called FB Anon, was closed in December, sources with knowledge of the move said on Wednesday. Facebook staffer Lori Goler said that the group was shut down because it violated Facebook’s rules about […]

Facebook has launched two new features that could help people celebrate their birthdays with the help of their social media accounts. The first feature that the company announced is the ability of the celebrant to start a fundraising campaign. This service is targeted towards people who prefer spending their birthdays by supporting a specific cause […]

After launching in Canada, Facebook’s AI-powered virtual assistant, M, has also launched in major English-speaking countries like Australia, United Kingdom, and South Africa. Like the launch in Canada, most of the features that M offers in the United States will be available in those three states except for a select set of services that the […]

Tech companies lead the way in the world’s most loved brands list compiled by NetBase, with Facebook being at the very top of the new chart. The dominance of tech brands is shown in the 10 Most Loved Global Brands list, with the top five being Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Apple, and Snapchat maker Snap, in that […]

Facebook has finally decided to bring its M Suggestions artificial intelligence service to Canada, as well as a few other regions which include the UK, Australia, and South Africa. This is after launching M Suggestions in the U.S. just earlier this year as it officially rolled out for U.S.-based Messenger users in April, allowing users […]

Facebook has introduced new capabilities to its core mobile app for Android that allow you to go Live, create two-second GIFs and share full-screen text posts with friends and family, all via the Camera feature that was rolled out last March. The Menlo Park, California-based company launched Facebook Camera with the goal of boosting Facebook […]

You will soon have an easier way to read Facebook comments and navigate the site, thanks to a few updates the social networking giant is planning to roll out to its News Feed on mobile and desktop. The Menlo Park, California-based company has announced that it will introduce a fresh design to News Feed to […]

Facebook recently updated its Messenger app with Spotify music suggestions which users are able to receive by interacting with M, the company’s very own artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that’s been in development for some time now. As seen in the screenshot below, any generic command containing the word “music,” “song,” or “track” without specifically mentioning […]

Facebook has allegedly bypassed a block put in place by the Chinese government by launching a photo-sharing application in the country under another name – Colorful Balloons. While the company hasn’t officially commented on the reports, that’s according to sources claiming to be close to the company. Despite the silence from Facebook, the company has […]

Facebook plans to add around 3,000 new staff members to its content control teams around the world in the near future, whose main job will be to hunt down and take action against hate speech and terrorist propaganda on the social network, recent reports indicate. Around 500 of those new employees are reportedly going to […]

Facebook on Wednesday announced Watch, a new video service with a large social focus which seems like the company’s latest attempt to take on YouTube and continue pursuing its growing video ambitions. The solution is meant to serve as a comprehensive video hub for discovering new content that you may be interested in and isn’t […]

Facebook has moved to shut down its social networking app exclusive to teen users called Lifestage, nearly a year after launching the tool, according to a new report. Lifestage is one of the social media giant’s apps designed to clone Snapchat that worked to allow high school-aged users to take selfies and videos they can […]

The Facebook Groups Android App will soon be discontinued, the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant said on Saturday, specifying that the mobile service will be officially shut down on September 1. The move marks the latest step in the company’s endeavor to focus its development efforts on the main Facebook app, according to an […]

Facebook has started to test its Stories feature on the desktop version of the social networking site, an indication that the Menlo Park, California-based company is planning to roll out the tool to desktop users in a final release soon, according to a report from TechCrunch. Unlike the mobile version of Facebook Stories, the desktop […]

Facebook started rolling out its Related Articles feature to a wider audience, the social media giant confirmed on Thursday, with the wording of its statement indicating that the functionality still won’t be available globally for the time being. Initially announced in late April, Related Articles were presented as Facebook’s latest attempt to combat fake news […]

Facebook is one of the tech firms leading the charge on creating more diverse workplaces, and even though doing so can be difficult, the marginal growth shown in Facebook’s latest diversity report shows that the company is trying. The proportion of Facebook employees who are Hispanic has gone up from four to five percent in […]

Facebook on Wednesday announced a major change to its News Feed algorithm, noting how it’s now set to start punishing websites that are slow to load. The move is meant to improve the overall user experience of the Facebook mobile app by prioritizing content from sites that are responsive, consequently allowing users to browse the […]

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) will hold its first meeting later today, as announced on Monday by Twitter, one of the main sponsors of the initiative meant to combat online extremism and entities that promote it. Initially established in late June, the forum was described as the Silicon Valley’s latest effort to […]

WhatsApp is an extremely popular chat app that can fully encrypt conversations, and Facebook’s own COO Sheryl Sandberg says that changing that might actually make things easier for violent extremists, rather than making it easier for police and response forces to track their actions. While the common logic is that removing encryption from WhatsApp would allow […]

Facebook has shut down a number of its AI systems after they developed their own language in order to communicate more efficiently. It’s no secret that Facebook is investing heavily into AI, with one of its goals being to create AI that can successfully communicate with people using English. It appears that one of the […]

Facebook’s messaging platform, Messenger is as popular as the former – boasting 1 billion monthly users as of July, 2017. The social media giant has implemented a flurry of changes to its Messenger platform in the recent past. The chatting app which was first introduced back in 2011, has now managed to become a fully-fledged, […]

Facebook on Thursday announced the Messenger Platform 2.1, a new technological solution that enables a wide variety of new content and features on the company’s instant messaging (IM) service. Following the new update, developers are able to access a broad range of tools that can help them create new services for Messenger, the company said, […]

Facebook’s upcoming online video service could be set to launch mid-August. The social media company has been rumored for some time now to be readying a new video service launching with a number of short videos in order to capture a younger audience. Now, though, it appears the company has started asking production partners for […]

Facebook on Thursday released its financials for the second quarter of the year, revealing that the company managed to generate a historic revenue figure — $9.32 billion — in the three-month period ending June 30. The achievement managed to surpass analyst expectations and marked a 45 percent increase in revenue year-on-year, with the Menlo Park, California-based […]

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s knowledge of AI is “limited,” in response to Zuckerberg’s criticism of Musk’s recent dire warning concerning the future of AI. In the comment thread of the Tweet, Musk was asked to elaborate, and said that an upcoming movie would have more details on […]

Facebook has been working for years to help combat online piracy on its platform, and the Menlo Park, California-based social media company is now boosting its anti-piracy portfolio with the acquisition of Source3, a New York City-based start-up that develops technologies for detecting intellectual property (IP) in unrelated content. The acquisition will presumably help Facebook […]

Facebook’s hardware division known as Building 8 seems to be working on a modular device designed to incorporate a variety of modules with different functionalities into a single chassis. The product currently doesn’t seem to have a name but Building 8’s patent application for the mysterious modular device was recently published by the United States […]

Reading Facebook’s Instant Articles is currently free regardless of the number of articles you view, but that could soon change as the social media giant is discussing a subscription-based news service with publishers. Campbell Brown, Facebook’s chief of news partnerships, said the company aims to use its social media platform to figure out ways of […]

Newspapers and associated media outlets are under more threat from Google and Facebook than many may have guessed and the organizations responsible for the news have decided not to take that threat lying down. According to David Chavern, who acts as both the President and CEO of the News Media Alliance – an organization representing […]

With every new Facebook update, our walls become filled with posts from friends who either love or hate the change, and the majority of people tend to hate the changes. However, this new feature shouldn’t bring any negative feedback to the social media giant. Facebook is gradually adding a built-in Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) creator […]

Facebook’s Messenger Lite Android app is now expanding its availability to India, months after it reached numerous other markets. Following its limited debut in late 2016, the lightweight mobile communications service developed by the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant had a significantly wider release this spring but still wasn’t available in India until today. The app itself is meant to be a more […]

Users of the chat application Facebook Messenger around the world will see advertisements on their home screens by the end of the year. The information regarding the advertisements’ worldwide roll out came from Facebook Messenger’s head of product, Stan Chudnovsky. Putting advertisements on Messenger’s home screen allows the social media giant to monetize the service […]

Former Facebook, Oculus, and Google executive Mary Lou Jepsen recently founded a telepathy startup called OpenWater which is looking to develop non-invasive mind-reading tech that allows people to communicate with other individuals and computers through thoughts. The company may be able to launch its technology in as little as eight years, Lou Jepsen claims, adding that […]

Facebook’s real estate is entering a new chapter. The Menlo Park-based company plans to build a mixed-use village comprising some 1,500 housing units,  a pharmacy, parking space, a strip mall and more just behind its headquarters in Menlo Park. The new extension will be called the Willow Campus, a 125,000 square-foot retail space that will […]

Facebook has a reputation of acquiring emerging social media apps it deems to be posing a threat to its business, and even cloning their unique features once negotiations fail, Snapchat being the most popular of them, but it now seems group video chat app Houseparty is also getting the social media giant’s attention. According to […]

A federal district court in San Jose, California, dismissed a privacy lawsuit against Facebook on Friday, with U.S. District Judge Edward Davila ruling that the Menlo Park-based social media giant did not violate California’s wiretapping laws and privacy regulations by tracking browsing habits of users who deleted their Facebook accounts. Davila made an identical conclusion […]

The government of South Korea is currently in the process of reviewing a number of antitrust regulations in the country due to Google and Facebook, i.e. the business models of the two companies. Chairman of the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Kim Sang-jo recently revealed that the two U.S. tech giants may be forced to pay […]

Facebook has officially reached two billion monthly active users, further strengthening the company’s position as the largest social networking site globally. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, shared the company’s milestone via his Facebook page, adding that the company is “making progress connecting the world.” Coincidentally, Zuckerberg’s announcement came only a few days after he unveiled […]

Facebook Messenger has introduced a slew of fresh features to its video chat service such as animated reactions, filters, masks and effects, and the ability to take screenshots in a bid to make your experience more fun. While Facebook recently announced the availability of reactions on Messenger, these were limited to one-on-one chats only. The […]

Facebook debuted a new Android app for video producers, with the company detailing its latest tool at the latest iteration of VidCon on Friday. The company used the annual Anaheim, California-based conference to reveal the tool that’s meant to exclusively cater to content creators, according to Facebook Product Director Daniel Danker. Despite its specific focus, […]

WhatsApp, the popular cross-platform messaging application is slowly becoming a trusted source for news from across the globe. According to a study conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, it has been revealed that in some countries, WhatsApp has become a reliable source of news, at least if you ask the users. […]

Facebook is ready to pay up to $3 million per episode of original programming that it intends to distribute through its online service, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Sunday. The Menlo Park, California-based social media giant is currently in the process of reviewing solicited pitches for a wide variety of original series […]

Facebook introduced an experimental, suggestions-based video tab to its Android app, with the new element currently only being available in India, some users of the most popular social network on the planet reported on Friday. It’s currently unclear whether the change debuted via a client-side update or server-side switch, though most users of the Facebook […]

Mark Zuckerberg spoke yesterday at the first ever Facebook Community Summit, where he unveiled a new mission statement for the company that reflects what the site has evolved into in recent years; “To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” The new statement and the summit where it was […]

Facebook‘s British division on Friday announced a new initiative aimed at educating non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on fighting extremist content posted online. In addition to training people for countering Internet activities of extremists, the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant is also looking to directly finance their efforts of doing so. The company’s Online Civil Courage Initiative […]

Facebook announced on Wednesday that it will be launching a new tool, which will be providing its users with more control as to who can download and share their profile pictures. A dedicated team has already been assigned to explore of different ways on how people can add designs to their profile pictures with ease, […]

Facebook’s AI research department, FAIR for short, is working on teaching chat bots to work out deals in a very human manner; by setting goals, prioritizing, and planning ahead strategically. The way that it was done was a bit simpler than it could have been. Instead of programming the AI by hand to learn how […]

Facebook has finally made the GIF button available to everyone. This means that now, instead of having to paste in a link to the GIF, you can simply use the GIF button and find the GIF you want to add in a comment and you’re all set. It works very similar to the way it […]

Facebook has updated its Safety Check feature to include new features that will help not only in ensuring the safety of its users but also their recovery from a crisis. The new features added to Safety Check include the ability to start fundraisers, expanding the scope of the Community Help feature, allowing users to describe their […]

Facebook has started rolling out Spanish support for its M Suggestions feature that’s part of Messenger. The newly supported language was available within Messenger as of yesterday though at the moment it’s only been made available for users in the U.S. That said, all U.S. users should see the new option following an update to […]