Representatives from movie studio Universal spoke at South by Southwest (SXSW) this weekend about how the company used customized Facebook ads based on users’ race to advertise the film “Straight Outa Compton” about the rap group N.W.A. Doug Neil, Universal’s executive vice president of marketing, noted that the “general population” (non-ethnic people) saw a trailer…
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A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook and seven cancer institutes that claims the social media giant spied on users who divulged private health information on cancer institute websites and then used that data for advertising purposes. Lead plaintiff Winston Smith claims that the websites features a secret “Facebook code” that “commandeers” users’…
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While Facebook is increasingly being used by law enforcement as a tool to track down major criminals, it can help catch small ones, too. That was the case this week when a man received a traffic ticket for posting a video to Facebook of himself taking an illegal shortcut. Michael Dalton recorded a short video…
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In the midst of Apple’s ongoing battle with the FBI over private data in the San Bernardino terrorist shooting investigation, The Guardian reported that Facebook and several other tech companies are increasing their own privacy technology. The New York Times also reported last week that Facebook could soon face its own legal pressures from the…
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Facebook’s head of policy management spoke at SXSW’s first Online Harassment Summit on Saturday, revealing that Facebook receives over 1 million violation reports every day from users. Monika Bickert spoke at the panel about the delicate balance Facebook must strike in policing its content, noting that while automation may be in its future, the site…
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The former IT director for Jersey City, New Jersey, claims he was fired from his job after a mayoral aide saw controversial right-wing posts on his Facebook page denouncing Hillary Clinton and criticizing the acceptance of Syrian immigrants. According to Alan Guglielmi, he received a call from the mayoral aide about two weeks after he…
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According to an in-depth investigation by Forbes reporters, private gun sales are thriving on Facebook despite the site’s recent ban on such transactions. Facebook announced in January that it was banning private gun sales on its pages (and also on the Facebook-owned Instagram platform). However, a Forbes reporter gained access to gun pages and discovered…
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Out of all of Facebook’s features, the site’s bug bounty program may have the highest return on investment. For just a few thousand dollars, the social media giant incentivizes hackers around the world to find security and privacy flaws and notify the site, which fixes them quickly. However, eyebrows were raised this week when it…
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A store owner in Manitoba, Canada, caught a thief who’d broken into his shop to steal watches with a simple strategy: he friended him on Facebook. Stefan Tergesen, the owner of H.P. Tergesen & Sons, said the thief broke a window in his shop early Friday morning and stole several watches from a display case.…
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Facebook has had a few very eventful weeks in the country of Germany. First, the site was fined $109,000 by a German court for refusing to follow an order to inform users about how it was using their intellectual property. “Facebook is persistently trying to evade consumer laws in Germany and Europe,” said Klaus Mueller,…
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