Facebook is under intense criticism again this week for removing an article about the French government’s attempt to overhaul mammogram-screening in the country. The article’s main image on Facebook featured an exposed breast, and Facebook censored it for violating the site’s nudity policy. To point out the double standard of Facebook’s policy, another French publication…

When Facebook removed human editors from its Trending News feature, many experts expressed skepticism that an algorithm could do the same job. Those fears were proven correct when a fake news story about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly began trending only days after the automated system took over. Facebook played it off as an unfortunate…

According to a bombshell report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) this week, police used special feeds of user data provided by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to track protesters in Ferguson and Baltimore. Of course, many of the individuals participating in these racially charged protests were minorities, adding another degree of controversy to Facebook…

Late last week, a European privacy rights group gave Facebook the dubious honor of becoming its “Privacy Villain of the Year.” The European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi) “awards” these negative prizes in an attempt to draw attention to what it deems are the worst user privacy abuses in a given year. The group said that…

One of Facebook’s most prominent (and controversial) initiatives is its Free Basics project, dedicated to providing free Internet access to people in poor or remote areas around the world who otherwise wouldn’t have it. It’s a noble goal on its face, though many critics accuse Facebook of using this charitable outreach to control the future…

Pictures of cats are one of the most commonly shared — and harmless — staples of Facebook and other social media sites. However, a weird glitch recently led to the banning of Facebook accounts for many users who shared an innocent picture of a cat wearing a suit and tie. One of the users affected…

This week, Facebook finally finished rolling out its “Secret Conversations” feature to all 900 million Facebook Messenger users, allowing anyone using the tool to send encrypted messages that can’t be read by prying eyes — including the government or Facebook itself. Before this week, Messenger was one of the last major chat platforms not to…

Earlier this week, Facebook introduced a new feature called Marketplace on its mobile app that allows users to buy and sell things with both friends and strangers. However, within the first 24 hours of the tool’s existence, Facebook was apologizing for some pretty shocking listings that appeared on it. The site said that a technical…

University of Oregon professor Nicole Dahmen issued a broad warning for Facebook users this week, calling out everything from the site’s “manipulation” of news to the social media giant’s use of personal data. Dahmen, a media studies professor specializing in the moral responsibilities of digital communicators, criticized Facebook for offering a one-sided selection of news…

Facebook apologized this week for disabling the personal accounts of several Palestinian news editors and executives. The site said the accounts were mistakenly suspended after being reported for violating Facebook’s Community Standards, though the journalists believe there was more to the profile takedowns than the social media giant is letting on. “The pages were removed…