All posts tagged: Meta

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 …

With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘Red Note’

With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘Red Note’

Published by skeptic

In fact, the app doesn’t even have a good English translation of its own name: Xiaohongshu is the just the phonetic translation of its Chinese name. 小红书. While the literal translation “little red book” may remind English-speaking users of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s collection of speeches and propaganda slogans by the same name, it has a different connotation in China, where users interpret it as a source of reliable user-generated recommendations for mundane things, like which restaurant to go to or which cosmetic product to buy. The recent influx of American users has certainly caught the attention of Xiaohongshu’s existing user base. David Yang, a recent master’s program graduate from China currently living in Paris, suddenly found his Xiaohongshu feed full of American users on Sunday. He had previously seen some non-Chinese creators intentionally coming to the platform to attract Chinese followers, but nothing at this scale. Now, when he scrolls his Xiaohongshu home page, about one quarter of the content is from so-called TikTok refugees, according to a screen recording he shared. “Some …

Latin American Fact-Checkers Brace for Meta’s Next Moves

Latin American Fact-Checkers Brace for Meta’s Next Moves

Published by skeptic

This 180-degree change is a response to Donald Trump’s imminent second presidential term and to the methods of the competition, such as X’s Community Notes. Meta decided not to invest any more money in its program. Now, it hopes that Facebook and Instagram users themselves will be the ones to decide what content is disinformation or not. In the statement where Zuckerberg announced that he will dismantle the program, he said that fact-checkers succumbed to political bias, destroying more trust than they’d created in the US. However, for Laura Zommer, former director of Chequeado (one of the most important Spanish-speaking verifier organizations) and LatamChequea, and now leader of Factchequeado (a verification media aimed at the Latino community in the US), Zuckerberg’s statements are not a surprise, and he does not have scientific evidence for his claims. “Far from censoring, fact-checkers add context,” Zommer says. “We never advocate for removing content. We want citizens to have better information to make their own decisions.” Zommer, who is skeptical of how the dissolution of this program might benefit …

No Fact-Checking and More Hate Speech: Meta Goes MAGA

No Fact-Checking and More Hate Speech: Meta Goes MAGA

Published by skeptic

Since Donald Trump won back the presidency on November 5, a parade of Silicon Valley luminaries have been engaging in an unseemly grovel-fest, making pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, shoveling million-dollar contributions to his inaugural fund, and meddling in the editorial departments of the publications they own in an apparent attempt to gain the new leader’s favor. Yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “hold my beer.” In a five-minute Instagram video, rocking his new curly hairdo and a $900,000 Gruebal Forsey watch, Zuckerberg announced a series of drastic policy changes that could open the floodgates of misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. His rationale parroted talking points that right-wing legislators, pundits, and Trump himself have been hammering for years. And Zuckerberg wasn’t coy about the timing, explicitly saying the new political regime was a factor in his thinking: “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” he said in the video. In Zuckerberg’s telling, the main impetus for the change is the desire to boost …

Meta Follows Elon Musk’s Lead, Moves Staffers to Billionaire-Friendly Texas

Meta Follows Elon Musk’s Lead, Moves Staffers to Billionaire-Friendly Texas

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“Executives are doing everything they can to create an environment conducive for actions they want to take, absent review or accountability from actors like our courts or legislators or others,” she says. Since taking over X, formerly Twitter, Musk has become one of Trump’s most important allies, backing his campaign financially and lending the full weight of his own platform to promoting Trump’s talking points during the campaign. He has since sat in on meetings with foreign leaders with the president-elect, and weighed in on staffing choices for the new administration. Other tech leaders have taken note, cozying up to Trump and donating to his inauguration fund. But even before the election, other tech companies were following X’s lead in rolling back policies and protections that had previously been in place. For his part, David Greene, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that Meta and other social platforms would likely have to comply with state laws regardless of location. And relocating staff to Texas doesn’t mean all its supposed moderation problems will …

Meta to end fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram : NPR

Meta to end fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram : NPR

Published by Sam

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying during the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2024. Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7, 2025 that the company would no longer work with third-party fact checking organizations. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the social media company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, would stop working with third-party fact-checking organizations. Repeating talking points long used by President-elect Donald Trump and his allies, in a video Zuckerberg said the company’s content moderation approach resulted too often in “censorship”. “After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg said. “But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.” Meta set up one of the most extensive partnerships with fact checkers after the 2016 presidential election, in which …

Nick Clegg to step down from Meta role – with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan to replace him | US News

Nick Clegg to step down from Meta role – with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan to replace him | US News

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Former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg has said he is stepping down from his role at Facebook parent firm Meta. He said it was the “right time for me to move on” from president of global affairs. With Donald Trump just weeks from being sworn in, he will be replaced by former Republican White House deputy chief of staff Joel Kaplan, who served under George W Bush from 2006 to 2009. Sir Nick said: “As a new year begins, I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role as president, global affairs at Meta. “It truly has been an adventure of a lifetime!” The ex-Liberal Democrat leader joined Meta as vice‑president for global affairs and communications in 2018 after losing his seat as an MP the year before. He was promoted in 2022, with Mark Zuckerberg saying the move put Sir Nick on a par with himself and that he would lead “on all our policy matters”. Sir Nick reportedly enjoys a multi-million-dollar …

Meta’s Smart Glasses Gain Live AI and Live Translation

Meta’s Smart Glasses Gain Live AI and Live Translation

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Meta today added new features to its Ray-Ban smart glasses, including live translation and live AI. With live AI, the Meta smart glasses are able to see whatever the wearer sees thanks to the built-in camera, and can hold real-time conversations. According to Meta, the glasses are able to provide hands-free help with meal prep, gardening, exploring a new neighborhood, and more. Questions can be asked without the need to say the “Hey Meta” wake word, and the AI can understand context between requests for referencing prior queries. Meta says that eventually, the AI will be able to “give useful suggestions before you even ask.” Along with live AI, there’s now a new live translation feature that can translate in real-time between English and either Spanish, French, or Italian. When someone is speaking in one of those three languages, the glasses will translate what they say into English through the speakers or on a connected smart phone, and vice versa. The Meta glasses are now able to use Shazam to identify songs, so if you …

Netflix Sued Over Deal with Meta to Stand Down on Streaming for Data

Netflix Sued Over Deal with Meta to Stand Down on Streaming for Data

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In 2015, Meta had a problem with its ad business. The company, then Facebook, was reckoning with a slowdown in ad pricing growth, caused by a shortfall in data needed to train its system that personalized ads and other content for users. Against this backdrop, Meta in 2017 launched in-house streaming platform Facebook Watch. It announced plans to spend more than $1 billion on the vertical, signing splashy deals for original content starring Elizabeth Olsen, Bill Burry and Catherine Zeta-Jones, among other names, and licensing premium content with plans to become an exclusive TV hub. By Meta’s thinking, the service could be a goldmine of user data it could exploit for targeted ads. Last year, Meta quietly shut down its original programming arm for the streaming platform. A proposed class action, filed in Illinois federal court on Monday, points to the shuttering of the service as part of an allegedly anticompetitive agreement struck by the company to cede the video-streaming market to Netflix by hobbling Facebook Watch. In exchange, Netflix funneled customer data and ad …

Meta unveils AI tools to give robots a human touch in physical world

Meta unveils AI tools to give robots a human touch in physical world

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Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Meta made several major announcements for robotics and embodied AI systems this week. This includes releasing benchmarks and artifacts for better understanding and interacting with the physical world. Sparsh, Digit 360 and Digit Plexus, the three research artifacts released by Meta, focus on touch perception, robot dexterity and human-robot interaction. Meta is also releasing PARTNR a new benchmark for evaluating planning and reasoning in human-robot collaboration. The release comes as advances in foundational models have renewed interest in robotics, and AI companies are gradually expanding their race from the digital realm to the physical world. There is renewed hope in the industry that with the help of foundation models such as large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs), robots can accomplish more complex tasks that require reasoning and planning. Tactile perception Sparsh, which was created in collaboration with the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University, is a family of encoder models for vision-based tactile …