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In October, the internet was shaken by the Facebook outage that affected dozens of big-name companies, as well as millions of brands and businesses that advertise on Facebook’s platform. Because of something as simple as a misconfigured Domain Name System (DNS) record, every device with the Facebook app integration started DDoS-ing recursive DNS resolvers -- DDoS meaning "Distributed Denial of Service." This, in turn, caused overloading in countless cases across the board. You might be thinking to yourself, "So, what? A few sites were offline for a couple of hours." But the outage brought to light other issues. Communications for the very Facebook employees that could fix this issue were crippled. Some of these hindrances went so far that people were unable to enter buildings because the physical badge system wasn't even online. So, now that the digital dust has started to clear, it's time for the post-mortem. What can we learn from this event and how can you prevent it from happening to your organization? Because let's face it: If a massive platform like Facebook can experience a sprawling outage,  » Read More

People are considering logging off for good. Should they? Credit: BOB AL-GREEN/ Mashable In early October, Facebook shut down for six hours. No one in the world could access the site, or any of the sites they owned, including Instagram and WhatsApp. And, for a moment, we peered into a potential new world in which Facebook does not exist.Spoiler: It was alright. There were negative effects, of course, like shutting creators and small business owners out of their work, but overall, everything turned out OK. Maybe even better than OK, as it afforded everyone a chance to spend a few hours off of the addictive platforms. Now, more people than ever are considering logging off, possibly for good, including every member of my family besides myself — but only because I have to stay on for work and the Shrek fan theories page. On Reddit, users chalk the mass departures up to everything from the platform being less fun to its harm on democracy.  » Read More

Meta, the brand donned by Facebook to launder its past, has expanded its partnership with Microsoft to integrate the Microsoft Teams communications app into its Workplace enterprise social software. Introduced in 2016 by Facebook as a way to expand beyond algorithmic provocation into the recurring revenue of business service subscription fees, Workplace has seen relatively modest adoption compared to Teams, which launched a year later. In May, 2021, the social network said it has managed to attract 7m paying Workplace subscribers, up from 5m in May 2020. Microsoft Teams at the time boasted 145 million daily active users, a figure since revised and recalibrated to 250 million monthly active users – which includes paid, free, and trial users. Workplace already has integrations with Azure Active Directory, Office 365, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Now, with Teams support, those who use both services can avoid copying and pasting data between applications and can rest assured that Meta, and not Facebook, is taking care of their data. "We’re launching an integration between Workplace and Teams,  » Read More

In May 2019, a video purporting to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inebriated, slurring her words as she gave a speech at a public event, went viral on Facebook. In reality, somebody had slowed the footage down to 75% of its original speed. On one Facebook page alone, the doctored video received more than 3 million views and 48,000 shares. Within hours it had been reuploaded to different pages and groups, and spread to other social media platforms. In thousands of Facebook comments on pro-Trump and rightwing pages sharing the video, users called Pelosi “demented,” “messed up” and “an embarrassment.” Two days after the video was first uploaded, and following angry calls from Pelosi’s team, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the final call: the video did not break his site’s rules against disinformation or deepfakes, and therefore it would not be taken down. At the time, Facebook said it would instead demote the video in people’s feeds. Inside Facebook, employees soon discovered that the page that shared the video of Pelosi was a prime example of a type of platform manipulation that had been allowing misinformation to spread unchecked.  » Read More

Meta, the new name for the parent company that oversees Facebook and Instagram, suddenly wants to be less creepy. According to a post on the Meta for Business blog, the company is blocking advertisers from using detailed ad targeting options that show ads based on your engagement in “sensitive” areas including race or ethnicity, religious views, political beliefs, sexual orientation, health, and a whole lot more. “We’ve heard concerns from experts that targeting options like these could be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups,” Graham Mudd, Meta’s vice president for marketing and ads writes in the post. Meta emphasizes that detailed targeting options aren’t actually based on your physical characteristics or personal choices. Rather, they’re what advertisers think you might be interested in based on your activity. Even still, detailed targeting can be harmful. Predatory ads can feel discriminatory, reinforce addictions, negatively influence behavior, and even cause mental distress. Meta is planning on hitting the “delete” key on many of its “sensitive” detailed targeting options,  » Read More

Facebook will no longer let advertisers target people with ads based on how interested the social network thinks they are in topics like politics, religion, or race. Jenny Kane/AP hide caption toggle caption Jenny Kane/AP Facebook will no longer let advertisers target people with ads based on how interested the social network thinks they are in topics like politics, religion, or race. Jenny Kane/AP The parent company of Facebook will no longer let advertisers target people based on how interested the social network thinks they are in "sensitive" topics including health, race and ethnicity, political affiliation, religion and sexual orientation. Meta, which makes most of its $86 billion in annual sales from advertising, said it's making the "difficult decision" in an effort to stop advertisers from using ad targeting to discriminate against or otherwise harm users. "We've heard concerns from experts that targeting options like these could be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups," Meta official Graham Mudd wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.  » Read More

The logo of Israeli cyber firm NSO Group is seen at one of its branches in the Arava Desert, southern Israel July 22, 2021. REUTERS/Amir CohenNov 8 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court said Facebook can pursue a lawsuit accusing Israel's NSO Group of exploiting a bug in its WhatsApp messaging app to install malware allowing the surveillance of 1,400 people, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents.In a 3-0 decision on Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected privately owned NSO's claim it was immune from being sued because it had acted as a foreign government agent.Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O), sued NSO for an injunction and damages in October 2019, accusing it of accessing WhatsApp servers without permission six months earlier to install its Pegasus malware on victims' mobile devices.NSO has argued that Pegasus helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies fight crime and protect national security.It was appealing a trial judge's July 2020 refusal to award it "conduct-based immunity," a common law doctrine protecting foreign officials acting in their official capacity.  » Read More

by: Juan Cisneros Posted: Nov 8, 2021 / 07:43 AM CST / Updated: Nov 8, 2021 / 08:42 AM CST LIBERTY, Mo. — The Clay County Sheriff’s Office woke up this morning to a Facebook page that looked different than the night before. According to the department, the page was hacked and they are working to figure out how to fix the problem. Our Facebook page has been hacked. We’re working to stop it and figure out what happened.— Clay County, Missouri Sheriff (@SheriffClayCo) November 8, 2021 The hacker replaced the profile picture with an image of former Chinese communist ruler Mao Zedong with the caption “DESTROY AMERICA” in all caps. A second picture featuring what looks to be a large bomb superimposed on images of the Chinese flag and a mushroom cloud was uploaded shortly after. The sheriff’s office said they are aware of the situation and are actively working to figure out what happened.  » Read More

Skip to main content HomeElectionsLocal PoliticsEditorials & LettersNorthern KentuckyLettersNational PoliticsUSA TODAYReclaiming LivesHeartlandFor SubscribersAnne Saker   | Cincinnati EnquirerShow Caption The Enquirer will host a Facebook Live event at noon Thursday to discuss how to expand the solutions described in the news organization’s in-depth report last month about domestic violence in the Cincinnati region.Kathrine Nero will host the event, to feature two local experts and Enquirer staff writer Terry DeMio, who worked on The Enquirer’s project, “Beyond the Bruises.”Readers are invited to ask questions in advance at dvcomment@enquirer.com and or during the event at Facebook.com/enquirer.  » Read More

image: Professor Fatima Cardoso view more  Credit: Champalimaud Cancer Centre, Lisbon, Portugal Patients with two out of the three most common types of advanced breast cancer now have an average survival time of at least five years, according to a panel of experts at the Advanced Breast Cancer Sixth International Consensus Conference (ABC 6). When breast cancer spreads to other parts of the body (called metastatic or advanced breast cancer), it becomes harder to treat and average survival times have been low as a result. However, over the last ten years, there has been more research on advanced breast cancer (ABC) meaning that doctors now know much more about how to treat the disease. In a session agreeing new guidelines for treating advanced breast cancer, experts said that more work is needed to find treatments that are effective for the third type of ABC (called triple negative ABC), where average survival times remain lower. The most common subtype of ABC is known as hormonal-dependent or oestrogen receptor-positive (ER+) because its growth is fuelled by the hormone oestrogen.  » Read More