Facebook

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Facebook leased another new building in Bellevue’s Spring District, increasing its footprint in the greater Seattle area to 3.3 million square feet of office space. Facebook reported about half of that space is in Bellevue.The tech giant was looking for a place to create a campus environment. It stated the Spring District is the perfect fit.“We are really excited because not only is it the space, it is also creating that campus feel. If you look at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, we have this campus. We call it the classic campus,  and it’s amazing. It’s a lot of buildings together. You can walk outside. You can do impromptu gatherings. There are food stalls and things. And so we wanted to recreate that kind of campus feel in Bellevue,” said Rajeev Rajan, vice president of engineering and head of Facebook for the Pacific Northwest.Facebook had already leased space in buildings nearby, and purchased the REI Headquarters building. The latest lease is for Block 5, an 11-story building just across the street.  » Read More

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Republicans and others are calling Mark Zuckerberg “Zuckerbucks.” The Anti-Defamation League wants that to stop, claiming the term suggests that “rich Jews are controlling levers of power.” The Zuckerbucks term has been circulating since last year, when the Facebook founder and his wife, Priscilla Chan, steered $400 million through the nonpartisan Center for Technology and Civic Life to assist local election offices ahead of the November vote. A conservative think tank, the Foundation for Government Accountability, has posted multiple articles using the term and decrying the donations as unfairly tilting elections. This month, the term made it into Congress: Rep. Claudia Tenney, a New York Republican, proposed the End Zuckerbucks Act, which would ban nonprofits classified as tax exempt and nonpartisan from giving money to election offices. Among the co-sponsors are two Republican congresswomen, Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Stefanik, a Donald Trump ally, is the third-ranked Republican in the House of Representatives. Boebert recently drew criticism for likening coronavirus protections to the Nazi era.  » Read More

New York Daily News | Jul 13, 2021 at 9:43 PM Maybe the internet isn’t so bad after all. On Thursday morning, a Yorkshire terrier belonging to Brandi Major was dognapped from her private backyard. Just when Major thought she’d never see her “little muffin” again, watchful Facebook users helped reunite the two after a nerve-racking day. Instead of taking the dog, named Korben, out for a morning walk, Major’s teenage daughter decided to let the puppy roam around the fenced-in New Orleans backyard. When Major returned home from work at 11 a.m., she experienced every dog owner’s worst nightmare. Korben’s collar with its name, Major’s telephone number and address was left behind in the yard. The yard’s gate was opened as well leaving Major to come to the conclusion that someone took her beloved dog. Yorkie puppy (Shutterstock/Shutterstock) “You can’t just push against our gate. It’s slightly embedded in the grass. You have to lift it up and pull it back,” Major said.  » Read More

A schematic shows the design for the phased-array antennas to be used for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite broadband network. (Amazon Graphic) Facebook has struck a deal to have more than a dozen of its wireless internet experts move over to Amazon to work on its Project Kuiper satellite broadband network, The Information reported today. An Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire that the report was accurate. Such a deal represents another step in Amazon’s efforts to get its Kuiper operation up and running — and try to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation, which already has more than more than 1,600 satellites in orbit and is expanding its beta program. Amazon has vowed to spend more than $10 billion to get Project Kuiper off the ground. Under the terms of an authorization order issued by the Federal Communications Commission last July, Amazon has to have half of its planned 3,236-satellite constellation launched by mid-2026, and the rest by mid-2029. Like Starlink, Project Kuiper is aimed at making broadband connectivity available to billions of people around the world who are currently underserved.  » Read More

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Creator Economy Facebook is trying to woo top content creators. But it’s late to the party and lost its halcyon sheen as the spot for influencers and ecommerce brands, reports The New York Times. YouTube is still the backbone of the video creator economy, and TikTok is the unquestioned champion of viral content, with a purely algorithmic feed that rockets video from 10,000 views to more than a million in minutes. TikTok also invested early in creator account tools and marketing partnerships. Snapchat and Twitter are in the mix. Late last year, Snapchat started parceling out more than one million dollars per day to creators for content on its discovery portal. Some individuals have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day. Snapchat and Twitter also both introduced tipping features this year. And Twitter is creating a paywall option so some accounts can charge monthly subscriptions for exclusive content.  » Read More

With scrutiny of Big Tech intensifying every single week, an ambitious new book is measuring Facebook's missteps and miseries. As the title indicates, it's not pretty:"An Ugly Truth" is the name of the book, co-authored by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, both of whom report for the NYT. The book comes out on Tuesday. As I perused an early copy, I was struck by the vastness of the story. Facebook is, as Kang and Frenkel write, an "unstoppable profit-making machine," affecting all of Earth, from the US to Myanmar. The authors have produced a valuable record of what went wrong, when, where, why, specifically in the last five years."No Filter" author Sarah Frier, who was tasked with reviewing "An Ugly Truth" for The Times, says the book documents a clear pattern: "The social media behemoth does as little as possible to prevent disasters from happening, then feebly attempts to avoid blame and manage public appearances." That's why the back cover of the book cleverly lists the company's apologias over the years: "I'm sorry." "We need to do better." "We need to do a better job."The authors conclude that "even if the company undergoes a radical transformation in the coming years,…

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Noalmark Broadcasting for making sure the bi-weekly city council meetings are available to our citizens live on the radio on 94.3FM and 1400AM. It is one of the ways we were able to keep our citizens informed soon after COVID-19 set in last year. Next month will mark one year. Before that time, I was allowed to recap the city council meetings the Friday after the meeting on all the morning radio shows! Initially it was done in person, then by telephone interviews. I genuinely appreciate the way they have worked with us to ensure that even if our citizens are not able to attend the meetings in person, they are still given access to hear it in real time! One of the other avenues of access we tried was Facebook Live. It went over well initially, but there was always an issue with the audio. Some of that is due to the Wi-Fi in the building of City Hall. Until that situation can be rectified,  » Read More

Former President Donald Trump railed at Facebook, Google and Twitter on Sunday in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), claiming the tech companies unduly influenced the 2020 presidential election and continue to silence conservative speech. “The radical left and Big Tech attack on free speech is unlawful,” he said. “It’s unconstitutional, and it’s completely un-American.” Mr. Trump claimed during his speech that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spent $400 million on election meddling in several states and funded “unmanned and unprotected” ballot drop boxes in key swing states. Mr. Trump also claimed that the tech companies collectively worked to suppress news coverage leading up to the election, citing Twitter and Facebook’s ban of The New York Post after the outlet published a report exposing Hunter Biden’s disparaging emails recovered from a computer left at a Delaware repair shop. “The truth was covered up and it had a giant impact on the election,” Mr. Trump said. “This must never happen to another party’s presidential candidate again.  » Read More

Columbus (WCMH) — While scrolling through the Facebook feed in December, Julie Hicks saw an ad for local cleaning company Maid in Columbus 614, LLC. “And I thought this would be a great Christmas gift,” Hicks said. “Get two of these cleaning packages.” First, however, Hicks did some research. “I looked up some reviews,” she said. “I wanted to see what others had to say. They seemed like a pretty good review. I couldn’t find anything with a red flag.” Hicks contacted the company via Facebook, talked to owner Kayla Padilla Reyes, and bought two cleaning packages for $ 370. Once the money was sent, Hicks contacted the company again to make a reservation, but was unable to set a date. Hicks contacted again, but did not receive a reply. “A few days later, when I got back to the third contact, Instant Messenger said it wasn’t available to Facebook users anymore,” Hicks said. “So now I have no way to contact her because it was our only contact.  » Read More

Bashing and labeling on Facebook Not everyone is radical in questioning the story. You don’t become a radical just because you want to make sure you have the right procedures in place to hold a fair and accurate election. Distrust of Dr. Anthony Fauci and government agencies does not make him a radical. What exactly does Facebook want? They are radicals for many who spend their time in Facebook prisons and appear to be living on parole on social media. A radical who simply wants a small and credible constitutional government? The idea that those who question the story are somehow radical because of their lack of “awakening”, or deeply held religious beliefs, and even their unwillingness to obey blindly, is only ridiculous. However, it is dangerous for the foundation of our country itself. It is a discriminatory practice in itself. The lack of tolerance for the opposite perspective in our culture, which is clearly visible on social media platforms, gains a lot of courage while hiding behind the screen and the commonality that exists among all of us.  » Read More