All posts tagged: Facebook

Airbnb 2025 Release Includes Sabrina Carpenter and Patrick Mahomes

Airbnb 2025 Release Includes Sabrina Carpenter and Patrick Mahomes

Published by skeptic

Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky had a problem that he wanted to solve. When the company launched in 2008, it did so with a straightforward proposition: Rent your house, or a room in your house, to change how people travel the world. But that was always a starting point. “I remember thinking, I don’t think we have monetized people’s biggest asset, because I think people’s biggest asset is their time and their full earning potential,” Chesky recalls in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “We started thinking, what if you could Airbnb more than an Airbnb?” The tech company on Tuesday is rolling out an enormous overhaul of its offering and app, adding services (think massages, personal training or meals) and experiences customized to each city or locale (i.e. a pastry-making class in Paris, a lucha libre experience in Mexico City or a gallery tour in New York). “What if this time, instead of just getting like tour operators, we found some of the most interesting people in the world, from famous chefs, to …

Florida Woman Arrested for Selling Human Remains on Facebook Marketplace

Florida Woman Arrested for Selling Human Remains on Facebook Marketplace

Published by José

Image by Getty / Futurism Down in the wild and wonderful world of Florida, the owner of an oddities shop has been arrested for selling human remains on Facebook Marketplace. As USA Today reports, 52-year-old Kymberlee Schopper has been charged with the illegal purchase and sale of human bones on Zuckerberg’s commerce platform. At the end of 2023, police in the Daytona Beach suburb of Orange City received a tip that Wicked Wonderland, Schopper’s shop that also advertises pet taxidermy and animal “mummification” on its website, was selling various human bones and skeletal fragments. From a $35 human rib to a $600 partial human skull, the store’s wares were valued at $850 in the tip authorities received. When they spoke with Schopper’s daughter and co-owner, 33-year-old Ashley Lelesi, the proprietress copped to the sale without hesitation. According to the affidavit viewed by USA Today, the mother-daughter team was unaware that selling bones was illegal in the state of Florida — one of only eight American states that broadly bans the practice, though dozens of other states …

Facebook Is Just Craigslist Now

Facebook Is Just Craigslist Now

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. I was recently surprised to learn that my wife is still on Facebook. “I’m not,” she replied. “I’m on Facebook Marketplace.” Facebook Marketplace has emerged as a major planet within the Facebook universe. Its conceit recalls that of Craigslist, a virtual classifieds page that reached its cultural peak during the early aughts. Accessible and affectless, Craigslist rewards the dogged; successful navigators might refresh a page multiple times a minute. I used it long before the age of smartphones, and bruised my poor mouse smacking those blue links. Craigslist’s bare aesthetic feels as removed as hieroglyphs from our world of For You feeds and AI slop. But toggle over to the more popular Facebook Marketplace, with its thumbnails of wares photographed in gray basements on cloudy days, and see if the word janky—applied, perhaps proudly, to Craigslist—does not fit. I …

Trump’s threat to global media: Publishers should be alarmed

Trump’s threat to global media: Publishers should be alarmed

Published by Sam

Donald Trump. Picture: Shutterstock Why isn’t the global news industry saying more about the impact of Trump two on the business of news and the public’s right to know? This is the question being posed by International News Media Association chief executive Earl Wilkinson ahead of the body’s next World Congress of News Media in New York on 25 May. Press Gazette spoke to Wilkinson before Trump declared a trade war on the rest of the world, thus adding a possible global recession to the challenges publishers are facing. Speaking via video call from the US last week, Wilkinson said: “I am really surprised about the lack of alarm in news media.” He had earlier outlined his concerns in a blog for INMA which warned: “The global ecosystem in which news media companies operate has changed to favour big tech companies, the guardrails for AI have been lowered, and the principles on which journalism are based have come unhinged.” He told Press Gazette: “We are a best-practice organisation, it is pretty unusual for us to …

Facebook, Instagram Fact-Checking Has Ended: What That Means for You

Facebook, Instagram Fact-Checking Has Ended: What That Means for You

Published by skeptic

The era of Facebook, Instagram and Threads using fact-checking to verify information on its platforms is over, as of Monday, April 7, according to Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan. He said in a post on X, “By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers.” In early January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company was going to wind down its decade-old program using third-party fact-checkers approved by the International Fact-Checking Network, to verify Facebook and Instagram posts, including videos and images. Now Meta will be using Community Notes generated by the users themselves. “In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads & Instagram, with no penalties attached,” Kaplan said in his post. Meta’s announcement in early January came weeks before the inauguration of President Donald Trump for a second term. It was part of a large shift among some of the top tech companies including Apple, Amazon and Google to more …

Disabled man has iPhone stolen in cruel Facebook Marketplace scam

Disabled man has iPhone stolen in cruel Facebook Marketplace scam

Published by skeptic

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more A man with cerebral palsy who was struggling to afford his heating bill during the January cold snap has been scammed out of £300 after attempting to sell his old iPhone online. Ben Simmonds, 62, from Suffolk, listed an old iPhone 12 Max he no longer used on Facebook Marketplace hoping to raise some extra cash. Simmonds, who is retired, quickly found a buyer and dutifully shipped the phone via Royal Mail. After confirming delivery via the Royal Mail app, he contacted the buyer regarding payment. The buyer provided screenshots of a bank transfer, seemingly confirming the money was on its way. However, these images now appear to be fake and the scam was all but confirmed when he discovered he had been blocked …

Grandmother spoken to by police after criticising Labour politicians online

Grandmother spoken to by police after criticising Labour politicians online

Published by Sam

A grandmother was spoken to at her home by police after she criticised Labour politicians online for sending offensive WhatsApp messages. In a series of Facebook posts Helen Jones called for the resignation of a councillor embroiled in the WhatsApp scandal which led to the sacking of Andrew Gwynne, the former health minister. The 54-year-old school administrator, who was not accused of committing a crime, said she was left feeling scared to post on social media following the unannounced visit by two officers on Tuesday. The WhatsApp scandal erupted after it emerged Mr Gwynne, the MP for Gorton and Denton, posted a message to Labour colleagues in a group chat saying he hoped one elderly constituent, who didn’t vote for the party, would die before the next election. Mr Gwynne made the offensive comment on WhatsApp group called Trigger Me Timbers after the pensioner sent a letter to David Sedgwick, a Stockport Labour councillor, complaining about her bin collections. The letter was reportedly shared in the WhatsApp group by Cllr Sedgwick. In the wake of …

Jesse Eisenberg Unfriended Mark Zuckerberg a Long Time Ago

Jesse Eisenberg Unfriended Mark Zuckerberg a Long Time Ago

Published by Sam

Fourteen years after earning an Oscar nomination for playing Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg has very proudly shed his former character’s hoodie and fuck-you flip-flops. But that hasn’t stopped the world from asking the actor about his most famous role. Eisenberg has been frequently questioned about Zuckerberg while Oscar campaigning for his film A Real Pain, which earned him a best-original-screenplay nomination. During a recent appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today, Eisenberg said that he hasn’t been following the Facebook and Meta chief’s “life trajectory, partly because I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that.” Distance from Zuckerberg has not made Eisenberg’s heart grow fonder, either. “It’s not like I played a great golfer or something and now people think I’m a great golfer,” he continued. “It’s like this guy that’s doing things that are problematic—taking away fact-checking and safety concerns, making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened.” In recent months, the same man whom screenwriter Aaron Sorkin depicted as an innovative …

Meta Settles a Million Trump Lawsuit Because It Had More to Lose by Winning

Meta Settles a $25 Million Trump Lawsuit Because It Had More to Lose by Winning

Published by Sam

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will pay roughly $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump, who accused the platform of unlawfully suspending his accounts after the Capitol insurrection. The Wall Street Journal reported that most of the money will fund Trump’s presidential library, with the rest covering legal fees and other plaintiffs. Meta won’t admit wrongdoing, and experts widely agree Trump was unlikely to win: the judge in this case, like the one in a similar failed suit against Twitter, appeared openly skeptical of his arguments. But Meta arguably had more to lose by winning this one. Tech and media companies, eager to avoid conflict with the new administration, have recently settled a string of Trump lawsuits they probably would have won in court. According to the Journal, this settlement, in particular, grew out of Zuckerberg’s efforts to cozy up to Trump last November. The paper’s sources said the then-president-elect signaled during a Mar-a-Lago dinner that the Meta boss would need to resolve the suit before he could ever be allowed “into …

Meta allowed pornographic ads that break its content moderation rules

Meta allowed pornographic ads that break its content moderation rules

Published by skeptic

Meta owns social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram JRdes / Shutterstock In 2024, Meta allowed more than 3300 pornographic ads – many featuring AI-generated content – on its social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. The findings come from a report by AI Forensics, a European non-profit organisation focused on investigating tech platform algorithms. The researchers also discovered an inconsistency in Meta’s content moderation policies by re-uploading many of the same explicit images as standard posts on Instagram and Facebook. Unlike the ads, those posts were swiftly removed for violating Meta’s Community Standards. “I’m both disappointed and not surprised by the report, given that my research has already exposed double standards in content moderation, particularly in the realms of sexual content,” says Carolina Are at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens in the UK. The AI Forensics report focused on a small sample of ads aimed at the European Union. It found that the explicit ads allowed by Meta primarily targeted middle-aged and older men with promotions for “dubious sexual enhancement products” and “hook-up …