"U.S., states sue Facebook as an illegal monopoly, setting stage for potential breakup The U.S. government and 48 attorneys general filed landmark antitrust lawsuits against Facebook on Wednesday, seeking to break up the social-networking giant over charges it engaged in illegal, anti-competitive tactics to buy, bully or kill its rivals... The twin lawsuits filed in federal district court allege that Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, had behaved as an unlawful monopoly for years -- one that had repeatedly weaponized its vast stores of data, seemingly limitless wealth and savvy corporate muscle to ascend into one of the most widely used services around the world... The state and federal complaints chiefly challenge Facebook’s past acquisition of two companies: Instagram, a photo-sharing tool, and WhatsApp..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/09/facebook-antitrust-lawsuit/
Facebook, Messenger and Instagram down: Apps crash for users in UK and Europe December 10, 2020 https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/10/face...wn-as-surprise-outage-hits-uk-users-13730527/
ACCC takes Federal Court action against Facebook over Onavo Protect VPN service https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-16/accc-takes-federal-court-action-against-facebook/12988974
Facebook slams Apple privacy change again, suggesting it will kill free apps December 17, 2020 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/17/fac...rivacy-change-in-second-day-of-ad-blitz-.html
"Facebook spent $23 million for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s security in 2020 A new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Facebook spent more than $23 million last year on security for CEO Mark Zuckerberg..." https://dnyuz.com/2021/04/10/facebook-spent-23-million-for-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-security-in-2020/
"Facebook: Smoking and alcohol ads 'target Australian children'... Facebook approved adverts targeting teenage children interested in gambling, smoking and extreme weight loss, a report says... Facebook forbids advertising alcohol and other inappropriate products to under-18s - but the researchers were able to advertise, for example, a: cocktail recipe to 52,000 teenage children Facebook identified as interested in alcohol vape pen to 1,000 [children] identified as interested in smoking or vaping..." https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56920992
"Oculus will sell you a Quest 2 headset that doesn't need Facebook for an extra $500 Is that the price of privacy?..." https://www.pcgamer.com/oculus-will...-doesnt-need-facebook-for-an-extra-dollar500/
"Signal Tries to Run the Most Honest Facebook Ad Campaign Ever, Immediately Gets Banned A series of Instagram ads run by the privacy-positive platform Signal got the messaging app booted from the former’s ad platform, according to a blog post Signal published on Tuesday. The ads were meant to show users the bevy of data that Instagram and its parent company Facebook collects on users, by... targeting those users using Instagram’s own adtech tools..." https://gizmodo.com/signal-tried-to-run-the-most-honest-facebook-ad-campaig-1846823457
"FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Facebook dismissed by federal court... A federal judge said that the FTC hasn't provided enough evidence that Facebook has a monopoly power in personal social networking. The judge noted that social networking services are free and what's considered a social network is 'hardly crystal clear'..." https://www.cnet.com/news/ftcs-antitrust-lawsuit-against-facebook-dismissed-by-federal-court/
"Judge Throws Out State and Federal Cases Against Facebook... A federal judge on Monday threw out antitrust lawsuits brought against the company by the Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states. The judge, James E. Boasberg for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the case from the states needed to be dismissed because too much time had elapsed since the alleged offenses took place. The states, led by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, accused Facebook in December of buying up nascent competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp — deals made in 2012 and 2014 — to cement its monopoly over social networking..." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/technology/facebook-ftc-lawsuit.html
A July 4th holiday greeting from the man who controls one of the world's largest purveyors of misinformation and data harvesting: https://twitter.com/TheRealHoarse/status/1411792975391297537 As the title of this thread states: "Facebook, are you kidding?"
Oh, Facebook changed its privacy settings again August 5, 2021 https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/04/oh-facebook-changed-its-privacy-settings-again/
"FTC refiles antitrust case against Facebook, argues no social network comes close to its scale The refined argument is the agency’s attempt to course correct after a major setback in court earlier this summer The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday refiled a bolstered version of its historic antitrust case against Facebook. In the complaint, the agency argues that Facebook holds monopoly power in personal social networking, with no other competitor coming close. The complaint alleges that Snapchat is the next-closest competitor, with tens of millions fewer monthly users than either Facebook or Instagram. 'No other personal social networking provider in the United States remotely approaches Facebook’s scale,' the agency said in the complaint..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/19/ftc-refiles-facebook-lawsuit-lina-khan/
Facebook’s latest “apology” reveals security and safety disarray "Hard to say" who is responsible for platform-wide safety and security. September 21, 2021 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...apology-reveals-security-and-safety-disarray/
"Facebook’s very, very bad day: Services go down as stock plunges in wake of whistleblower revelations... Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp crash... Facebook Inc. services experienced widespread outages Monday morning, adding to the social network’s miserable day... Even the status dashboard Facebook uses to communicate its availability to developers was not working Monday... The decline followed a national broadcast of a whistleblower’s allegations that the social media network placed profits before safety. Late Sunday,...“60 Minutes” interviewed former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen, who alleges that the social-media giant has been deceiving investors about how it has been dealing with hate speech and misinformation on its platform..." https://www.marketwatch.com/story/f...eblower-revelations-11633365581?mod=home-page
Here's some Facebook Schadenfreude: "...One Facebook employee said it appeared to be a Domain Name System problem... 'I wish I knew. No internal tooling, DNS seems totally borked. Everyone is just sort of standing around,' the source told NBC News. 'No reason at this point to suspect anything malicious but the outage is affecting pretty much everything. Can't even access third-party tools.' And a WhatsApp employee told NBC News that no internal services at company headquarters worked except for email and calendars... Even conference rooms were inaccessible during the outage, the employee said, because they’re digitally locked and unlocked through an internet-connected tablet..." https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social...am-whatsapp-all-experiencing-outages-n1280726
"...'Something happened internally at Facebook that messed with their network settings on how Facebook talks to the rest of the world and accesses the Internet,' said Courtney Nash, senior research analyst at security company Verica. The issue seems to be with Facebook’s border gateway protocol routes, or paths that allow routers to exchange information, said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Kentik, a network monitoring company. Facebook’s routes were withdrawn this morning, he said, and now Facebook’s apps cannot be found online because those routes contained the addresses of Facebook’s domain name system servers...The outage appears to be global..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/04/facebook-instagram-down-outage/
From New York Times Tech reporter: "Was just on phone with someone who works for FB who described employees unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren’t working to access doors." https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/1445099150316503057
