Last December, Washington D.C. attorney general Karl Racine filed a lawsuit against Facebook for its role in the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, arguing that the social media giant violated the District’s consumer protection laws. Now Facebook is defending itself in court, and denying aspects of its privacy practices that don’t even make sense. According…

It’s no secret that Facebook is on a mission to collect as much of our information as possible. Data is how the company makes money, using likes, interests and history to target advertising to its users. And the platform’s facial recognition technology is one of the most effective—and insidious—methods it relies on to gather this…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a big splash in March when he announced the company would begin a “pivot to privacy.” Since then, Facebook has followed through with some of its promises to do a better job protecting users. However, experts are raising concerns that the social media giant’s “pivot” may come with harmful unintended…

Facebook is no stranger to controversy, and it has accrued many prominent critics over the years. Now you can add Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak to the list, who recently stated in no uncertain terms that most users should get off Facebook as quickly as possible. “There are many different kinds of people, and some of…

This week, Facebook experienced a strange outage that caused many users to be unable to load images, video and other data to Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. This was obviously annoying for anyone attempting to use these platforms, but it also revealed something about Facebook’s use of technology: namely, that it uses artificial intelligence to analyze…

Over the past year, Facebook has increasingly come under scrutiny from U.S. regulators for its questionable data and privacy practices. However, the pressure that the company faces here at home pales in comparison to what it deals with overseas. Another instance of Europe’s aversion to the social media giant occurred this week, when German officials…

Last year, Facebook launched an internal civil rights audit following criticisms that the platform was too soft on hate speech and abusive content. Now, the company has released its first update on the audit’s findings, and many civil rights advocates are not impressed with the results. Many of these civil rights advocacy groups banded together…

In recent months, Facebook has been hit with repeated attacks from U.S. lawmakers fed up with how the social media giant handles user data. This week, the company tried to get in front of the problem by updating its terms of service to do a better job of explaining its actions. Facebook tweaked the language…

Facebook often finds itself between a rock and a hard place when it comes to assisting law enforcement. If it does nothing, it’s allowing criminals to freely use its platform. But if it cooperates too much and delivers suspects’ information to officials, it could be seen as infringing upon user rights. That’s why it was…

Facebook has had a difficult time through the years proving it knows what to do with controversial content. That’s why, according to the company’s head of policy, Nick Clegg, Facebook plans to set up an “independent” oversight board that will hear users’ appeals when they think the company got a censorship decision wrong. According to…