Facebook’s rules on what images users can and can’t post are often confusing, but the site’s enforcement of these rules is often even more baffling. That was the case recently when the site censored an iconic photo from the Vietnam War featuring a naked young girl running away from a napalm attack on her village.…

Facebook’s live streaming video feature has played a major role in several recent violent incidents, most notably when the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile, a black man, was broadcast with the tool. Now, several professors have released a study examining the legal rights of people to live-stream video – and the…

These days, many police departments use Facebook and other social media platforms to catch criminals. While law enforcement snooping on Facebook can present an ethical dilemma, this practice can also provide moments of unexpected humor – like when a man was arrested this week while he had his own “wanted” poster displayed as his profile…

In a setback for Facebook users trying to band together in legal action against the site, a federal judge ruled late last week that a group seeking to file a class action lawsuit against the social media giant for alleged privacy violations cannot move forward because the plaintiffs don’t have enough in common. “Because the…

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill is a noted advocate for consumers, taking a strong stand against scams and falsely-advertised products. It was unfortunately ironic, then, when she recently became the subject of a phony Facebook profile scam. The fake Sen. McCaskill Facebook page looked close to the real thing, featuring an official picture of her and…

According to a report this week from Fusion.net, the patients of a psychiatrist had their privacy compromised when Facebook’s “People You May Know” tool began recommending they add each other as friends. At first, according to the therapist, she began noticing her patients being recommended to her as friends. Most of her patients are senior…

Last Friday, Facebook announced in a blog post that it would change the way its Trending Topics news feed works. Now, instead of humans writing the descriptions for news stories, the copy will be automatically generated. “Making these changes to the product allows our team to make fewer individual decisions about topics,” the company said.…

Facebook recently launched an app designed for users under the age of 21 to share videos and connect with each other locally. It’s an innovative idea, and one designed to challenge Snapchat’s supremacy in the market, but there’s one major problem: the app has virtually no privacy settings. The app, called Lifestage, launched last week,…

With the introduction of its ad preferences tool earlier this month, Facebook has made it easier than ever for users to control the advertisements they see in their Newsfeeds. However, this newfound transparency also means that you can now see all of your private information that Facebook has gathered for advertisers, including data about your…

When Facebook acquired the hugely popular messaging app WhatsApp in 2014, many users were concerned what the merger could mean for the privacy of their data. WhatsApp declared strongly at the time that it would not collect or store user information, but that changed this week when the company announced that it will begin sharing…