Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook was intensely criticized for allowing misinformation, spam and propaganda to spread on its platform. To make matters worse, much of that info originated from foreign bad actors looking to influence the outcome of the election. That’s why Facebook vowed to clean up its act this time around —…

Facebook has long been criticized for its content moderation policies, which can be confusing and inconsistently applied at best. That’s why the company announced the creation of an independent Oversight Board last year that would act as a “Supreme Court,” hearing individual users’ complaints about content removal. And after many stops and starts, Facebook announced…

Facebook received a great deal of criticism following a shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last month that stemmed from a clash between right-wing militia groups and social justice protestors. The social media giant allowed militia groups to post actively on the platform, drawing attention and potentially adding fuel to an already explosive situation. Now, Facebook has…

Cybercriminals run many scams on Facebook, but one of the most persistent involves stealing the images of innocent users and setting up fake accounts in their name. However, a new tool that Facebook is planning could help address the issue by giving users the ability to claim ownership of images and issue takedown requests.  Though…

Facebook’s entire business model is built around collecting our information and using it to target advertising, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some users believe Facebook is spying on us to gather even more data. This week, a lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco federal court accusing Facebook and Instagram of observing…

Last month, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his employees that it was an “operational mistake” that allowed an event page from a local militia to remain posted that promoted violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The page had been flagged for removal at least 455 times, yet the social media giant did nothing to remove…

In the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Facebook has come under intense scrutiny again for the behavior of foreign actors on its platform. However, according to fired Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, that is just the tip of the iceberg. On her way out the door from the social media giant, Zhang dropped…

In July, a coalition of civil rights organizations and advocates led a successful boycott of Facebook that saw some of the world’s biggest advertisers withdraw their dollars in protest of the company’s hate speech policies. And this week, the group announced that its back with another campaign, this time targeted at Facebook-owned Instagram. The group,…

European governments have long taken a stronger stance against Facebook than the U.S., and that trend continued this week with reports that Irish regulators may order the social media giant to stop sending user data to the U.S. The reported ruling comes a few months after the European Court of Justice stated that this data…

Facebook announced this week that it will not accept new political or issues-based ads in the week leading up to the U.S. presidential election. The move comes in the wake of concerns that the social media giant will allow misinformation to spread on its platform as it did in 2016. In the announcement, Facebook founder…