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NEW YORK — The six-hour outage at Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp was a headache for many casual users but far more serious for the millions of people worldwide who rely on the social media sites to run their businesses or communicate with relatives, fellow parents, teachers or neighbors.When all three services went dark Monday, it was a stark reminder of the power and reach of Facebook, which owns the photo-sharing and messaging apps.Around the world, the loss of WhatsApp left many at a loss. In Brazil, the messaging service is by far the most widely used app in the country, installed on 99 percent of all smartphones, according to tech pollster Mobile Time. WhatsApp has become essential in Brazil to communicate between friends and families, as well as for a variety of other tasks, such as ordering food. Offices, various services and even the courts had trouble making appointments, and phone lines became overwhelmed.Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in their homeland and abroad fretted over the WhatsApp outage.Many of the country’s more than 11 million people depend it to alert one another about gang violence in particular neighborhoods or to talk to relatives in the U.S.  » Read More

There are lots of reasons someone might want to delete their Facebook account, from an effort to spend less time on social media to anger over past privacy scandals or the presence of misinformation and hate groups on the platform. Those problems have been reported for years, but they’ve been getting more attention after recent reports in the Wall Street Journal showing Facebook buried evidence of all kinds of issues, including a system that lets high-profile users break Facebook’s rules about harassment and incitement to violence, a weak response to the ways drug cartels and human traffickers abuse the platform, and internal research demonstrating that Instagram (which Facebook owns) has a negative impact on teenage girls’ mental health. Congress launched investigations in the wake of the Wall Street Journal reports, which were based on documents provided by a former Facebook employee. In addition, the whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that Facebook misled investors about its practices. But for anyone who’s fed up after years of bad news about Facebook,  » Read More

Facebook, along with its subsidiaries Instagram and Whatsapp, went down at from roughly 11:45 a.m, until 6 p.m. and there has been no official comment from the tech giant as to why this is.Users have reported being unable to access Facebook across North and South America, Europe and Asia.Many have theorized as to why this has happened. A problem with its Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) being one of the most prevalent.Cloudflare Vice President Dane Knecht was one of the first to voice this hypothesis.“It appears their BGP routes have been withdrawn from the internet,” she tweeted Monday.Rather than using a third-party BGP like Cloudflare, Facebook started using its own BGP with all its social media companies, Whatsapp, Messenger and Instagram.The issue came from an update of Facebook’s BGP. however, the company failed to secure its addresses, or routes back to its pages. Large sections of the routing codes have been deleted.Simply put,  » Read More

___‘Pandora Papers’ bring renewed calls for tax haven scrutinyWASHINGTON (AP) — Calls are growing for an end to the financial secrecy and shell companies that have allowed many of the world’s richest and most powerful people to hide their wealth from tax collectors. The outcry came after a report published Sunday revealed the way that world leaders, billionaires and others have used offshore accounts to keep trillions of dollars out of government treasuries over the past quarter-century, limiting the resources for helping the poor or combating climate change. The report is being dubbed the “Pandora Papers.” Many of the tax dodges are legal, and analysts say one solution is to ban shell companies that help investors avoid paying taxes.___Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram suffer worldwide outageSAN FRANCISCO (AP) Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms have suffered a worldwide outage. The company says it is aware that some people are having trouble accessing the Facebook app and that it is working on restoring access. The company did not say what might be causing the outage,  » Read More

The former Facebook Inc. employee who gathered documents that formed the foundation of the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series said she acted to help prompt change at the social-media giant, not to stir anger toward it. Frances Haugen, a former product manager hired to help protect against election interference on Facebook FB, +1.07%, said she had grown frustrated by what she saw as the company’s lack of openness about its platforms’ potential for harm and unwillingness to address its flaws. She is scheduled to testify before Congress on Tuesday. She has also sought federal whistleblower protection with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a series of interviews, Haugen, who left the company in May after nearly two years, said that she had come into the job with high hopes of helping Facebook fix its weaknesses. She soon grew skeptical that her team could make an impact, she said. Her team had few resources, she said, and she felt the company put growth and user engagement ahead of what it knew through its own research about its platforms’ ill effects.  » Read More

A Facebook whistleblower who brought internal documents detailing the company's research to The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Congress unmasked herself ahead of an interview she gave to "60 Minutes," which aired Sunday night.Frances Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook's civic misinformation team, according to her website, revealed herself as the source behind a trove of leaked documents. On her personal website, she shared that during her time at the company, she "became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safety — putting people's lives at risk. As a last resort and at great personal risk, Frances made the courageous act to blow the whistle on Facebook."Haugen previously worked as a product manager at Pinterest, Yelp and Google, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also lists herself as the technical co-founder behind the dating app Hinge, saying she took its precursor, Secret Agent Cupid, to market."I've seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I'd seen before," Haugen told "60 Minutes."Haugen told "60 Minutes" she left Facebook in May.  » Read More

NEW DELHI: Facebook took action against 3.2 crore posts in India for various content violations in August, the social media giant said in its compliance report, while WhatsApp took down 20.7 lakh accounts. Facebook’s photo-sharing platform, Instagram, took action against 22 lakh posts across nine violation categories. Facebook said it had received 904 user reports through its Indian grievance mechanism between August 1-31. “Facebook provided tools for users to resolve their issues in 754 cases. These include pre-established channels to report content for specific violations, self-remediation flows where they can download their data, avenues to address account hacked issues etc.” For Facebook, the censured content includes that related to spam (2.6 crore), violent and graphic content (26 lakh), adult nudity and sexual activity (20 lakh), and hate speech (2.4 lakh). Other categories under which content was actioned include bullying and harassment (90,400), suicide and self-injury (6.7 lakh), dangerous organisations and individuals: terrorist propaganda (2.7 lakh), and dangerous organisations and Individuals: organised hate (31,600). FacebookTwitterLinkedinEMail  » Read More

“We will continue to face scrutiny — some of it fair and some of it unfair,” he said in the memo. “But we should also continue to hold our heads up high.”Here is Mr. Clegg’s memo in full:OUR POSITION ON POLARIZATION AND ELECTIONSYou will have seen the series of articles about us published in the Wall Street Journal in recent days, and the public interest it has provoked. This Sunday night, the ex-employee who leaked internal company material to the Journal will appear in a segment on 60 Minutes on CBS. We understand the piece is likely to assert that we contribute to polarization in the United States, and suggest that the extraordinary steps we took for the 2020 elections were relaxed too soon and contributed to the horrific events of January 6th in the Capitol.I know some of you – especially those of you in the US – are going to get questions from friends and family about these things so I wanted to take a moment as we head into the weekend to provide what I hope is some useful context on our work in these crucial areas.  » Read More

Waverly farmer's Facebook page shows single stalk of corn growing; 500 people and 15 classrooms nationwide are watching Waverly's Paula Peterson stands near the stalk of corn she has been measuring since June at her home in Waverly. Peterson has been watching this stalks growth as a part of an educational Facebook page entitled "Farmer Paula has a Farm." ELSIE STORMBERG, Waverly News Elsie Stormberg Waverly News WAVERLY — Paula Peterson never thought so many people would be interested in watching corn grow. Since June 18, almost 500 of Peterson’s family, friends and acquaintances from throughout the nation have been keeping tabs on one stalk of corn on her and her husband Tom’s property in Waverly via a Facebook page entitled “Farmer Paula has a Farm.” The stalk is located one row in on the edge of a cornfield on the eastern side of the Peterson property. On June 18, Peterson made her first post showing a 31-inch stalk that had been spray-painted bright orange so she won’t lose it.    » Read More

Here are seven major companies whose stocks moved on the week’s news Facebook, under scrutiny from lawmakers, said it would suspend its plans for Instagram Kids. Photo: Nina Riggio/Bloomberg News Facebook Inc. A version of Instagram designed for children isn’t getting a lot of likes in Washington, D.C. The social media giant said Monday it would suspend its plans for Instagram Kids after lawmakers voiced concerns about the platform’s effects on the mental health of young people. During a Thursday hearing, Senate members then accused the company of disregarding internal research showing that Instagram is harmful for significant numbers of teen girls. Facebook shares fell 3.7% Tuesday. Resume Subscription We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. You will be charged $ + tax (if applicable) for The Wall Street Journal. You may change your billing preferences at any time in the Customer Center or call Customer Service. You will be notified in advance of any changes in rate or terms.  » Read More