Facebook announced late last week that it acquired a facial recognition startup company to help compete with Snapchat’s filters. The startup, called FacioMetrics, specializes in creating face detection apps, including one that can recognize seven different emotions in human faces. There’s no doubt that Facebook has its sights set on Snapchat, the popular photo-sharing app…

Facebook was blocked in China in 2009, its dedication to openness clashing with the Chinese government’s desire to censor and control communication. However, according to a new report in The New York Times, Facebook might be bending over backwards to accommodate Chinese censorship. Three anonymous current and former Facebook employees were quoted in the report…

Verizon announced this week that it will combine its data with AOL to create a huge pool of customer information. The information gathered will include browsing cookies, postal addresses, device types, Google advertising IDs and much more. But while this merger could be a bad deal for consumer privacy, it is still being positioned as…

Facebook announced this week that it will place control of its Safety Check disaster response tool completely in the hands of its users. This means that, when enough Facebook users are posting about an incident in a given area, the site will automatically generate a notification asking people in the area if they’re OK. Safety…

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hacked again this week by a group that also broke into his social media accounts in June, according to a report in CNET. The group, which calls itself OurMine, defaced Zuckerberg’s Pinterest account by changing his bio to read “Don’t worry, we are just testing your security.” The…

Facebook doesn’t want to become a media company, but it’s clear that the social media giant needs to step up its efforts to fight fake news content — Mark Zuckerberg himself said as much this week. However, according to a bombshell report in Gizmodo this week, the site may have intentionally allowed hoax stories to…

Facebook has long had a problem with fake news, hoaxes and scams spreading quickly on its pages. However, it has been an issue that has largely been discussed outside of the public spotlight — until this week, when many critics accused Facebook’s news algorithm of allowing the spread of fake news that influenced the U.S.…

If you pay any attention to Facebook’s trending news content, you’ve probably seen more than a few phony stories pop up in your feed. That has been especially true this election season, with both right-wing and left-wing blogs circulating false articles and attacks on their political opponents — and with Facebook’s recent lack of human…

Facebook released its quarterly earnings report this week, and as usual, it was full of interesting (and often scary) nuggets. For instance, the social media giant breaks out its annual revenue per user worldwide, dividing that information by region and country. So we know that Facebook values each user in the United States and Canada…

Facebook prevented UK-based Admiral Insurance from using data to profile its users this week in a decision that could have widespread ramifications for how companies collect info on the site. Admiral planned to launch an app targeted at first-time drivers that would analyze their Facebook profiles to determine what kind of driver they are. Some…