Tausi Insider

Facebook’s parent company Meta is cutting more than 11,000 employees, roughly 13% of its workforce. This mass layoff is the first in Meta's 18-year history. https://www.tausiinsider.com/i-got-this-wrong-mark-zuckerberg-on-metas-mass-layoffs/?feed_id=445973&_unique_id=649fe42b166e4

An artificial intelligence from Facebook owner Meta that is designed to write scientific research papers and Wikipedia articles has attracted criticism over its accuracy and public access has been removed Technology 18 November 2022 ...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg probably isn't going anywhere. But on Tuesday, his company's investors thought he was, and Meta's stock rose by 1%, reports the New York Post . NurPhoto | Getty Images An outlet called The Leak published a story early Tuesday in which an anonymous source said Zuckerberg would exit in 2023 due to Meta's profit shortfall. "Information obtained by The Leak," the article read, "suggests that Zuckerberg has decided to step down himself. The decision, per our insider source, 'will not affect metaverse.'" Meta's stock climbed 1.4% after the report was published. This is false. — Andy Stone (@andymstone) November 22, 2022 The company's Andy Stone tweeted a terse denial of the report: "This is false." As the Post noted, there are reasons to believe...

Meta Platforms Inc META-Q unlawfully steered dozens of hiring ads from trucking companies and other advertisers to mostly one gender or age group, an advocacy group for female truckers alleged in a U.S. complaint on Thursday, citing the social media giant’s own data. In June, Meta said it planned to introduce a “variance reduction system” to its algorithms to ensure housing and employment ads reached diverse audiences in terms of age and gender. The new allegations underscore the issues that Meta’s planned system would counter. Meta on Thursday said it was reviewing the complaint and did not provide immediate comment on it or the status of the planned changes. “Facebook is one of the go-to resources for these life opportunities – the consequences of this kind of discrimination are far-reaching,” said Mitra Ebadolahi, senior project director at Upturn, an advocacy group representing Real Women in Trucking on its charge to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Meta, which owns F...

Meta Platforms’ META-Q Oversight Board recommended on Tuesday that the company revamp its system exempting high-profile users from its rules, saying the practice privileged the powerful and allowed business interests to influence content decisions. The arrangement, called cross-check, adds a layer of enforcement review for millions of Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to celebrities, politicians and other influential users, allowing them extra leeway to post content that violates the company’s policies. Cross-check “prioritizes users of commercial value to Meta and as structured does not meet Meta’s human rights responsibilities and company values,” Oversight Board director Thomas Hughes said in a statement announcing the decision. The board had been reviewing the cross-check program since last year, when whistleblower Frances Haugen exposed the extent of the system by leaking internal company documents to the Wall Street Journal. Those documents revealed that the program was...

The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust law, is about to engage in a real-life courtroom fight over virtual reality. On Thursday, a high-profile trial kicks off in which the FTC will try to prevent Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc META-Q from buying virtual reality app developer Within Inc. The FTC sued in July to stop the deal, saying Meta’s acquisition of Within would “tend to create a monopoly” in the market for virtual reality (VR) fitness apps. It has asked the judge to order a preliminary injunction that would halt the proposed transaction. The trial that starts on Thursday will serve as a test of the FTC’s bid to head off what it sees as a repeat of the company buying its way to dominance, this time in the nascent virtual and augmented reality markets. The FTC is separately trying to force Meta to unwind two previous acquisitions, Instagram and WhatsApp, in a lawsuit filed in 2020. Both were in relatively new markets at the time the companies were purchased. A...

Though Web 3.0 is years to maturity, one analysis predicts that by 2026, 25 per cent of the population will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse. Just_Super Web 3.0 has been heralded as the next evolution of the Internet – one that will make the web more immersive and democratic, thanks to a foundation of blockchain technology. Recent layoffs at Meta and the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX have raised questions about viability and credibility in an emerging space. But many Canadian businesses and investors are still betting big on the transformational potential of Web 3.0 across multiple sectors, including some of the most traditional, such as finance and manufacturing. “I’m starting to see the beginning of killer apps and easy-to-use user interfaces, the integration of the old world with the new world,” says Avivah Litan, a distinguished VP analyst at Gartner Inc., a U.S.-based management consulting company with coverage that includes artificial intelligence (AI) a...

Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc META-Q has agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit accusing the social media giant of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access users’ personal information. The proposed settlement, which was disclosed in a court filing late on Thursday, would resolve a long-running lawsuit prompted by revelations in 2018 that Facebook had allowed the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to access data of as many as 87 million users. Lawyers for the plaintiffs called the proposed settlement the largest to ever be achieved in a U.S. data privacy class action and the most that Meta has ever paid to resolve a class-action lawsuit. “This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case,” the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said in a joint statement. Meta did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which is subject to ...

Ireland on March 15, 2022 imposed a fine on Facebook parent company Meta for breaching EU data privacy laws. OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images Byron Holland is president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. It seems that surveillance capitalism and hyper-personalized ads have become an inescapable part of our one-sided social contract with Big Tech. But last week, the European Union made clear to Meta (formerly Facebook) that some of its advertising practices won’t be tolerated, ruling that Facebook and Instagram can’t force users to accept personalized ads without their explicit consent. The EU ruling represents a blow to Meta’s surveillance-based business model. Canadians may wonder what it will take for our country to follow other jurisdictions’ lead and place our citizens’ privacy interests ahead of Big Tech’s financial interests. The EU’s landmark privacy legislation, the General Data Protection Regulation, created stronger privacy rights ...

Amazon is cutting 18,000 people from its workforce. Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press The U.S. tech giants that built the digital economy and generated trillions of dollars of wealth in the process are suddenly taking a less costly and less innovative approach to innovation. A surge in interest rates last year ended an era of cheap capital, clobbered valuations and dammed the flood of money that the pandemic brought to Big Tech. C-suites have been shuffled. Forward-looking features, such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa voice service, are getting less investment, while more wildly speculative projects – say, the metaverse – are proving to be money pits. For all their talk of innovation, companies such as Amazon AMZN-Q, Alphabet Inc. GOOG-NE, Meta Platforms Inc. META-Q and even Apple Inc. remain deeply dependent on the same core business lines of a decade ago. Cost-cutting is now the norm – more than 175,000 people have lost their jobs in the sector worldwide since the downturn began in la...

Meta Platforms Inc. META-Q said on Wednesday it will restore former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot. The social media company said in a blog post it has “put new guardrails in place to deter repeat offences.” Trump has said he will make another run for the White House in 2024, and Facebook and Instagram are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising. In November he regained access to Twitter, his once-favored online megaphone, and a few weeks after he said he was in talks with Meta about returning. “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, in the blog post. The decision to ban Trump was a polarizing one for Meta, the world’s biggest social media c...

A Home Depot location in Whitby, Ont., on May 28, 2020. Christopher Katsarov/Tausi Insider Retailer Home Depot HD-N shared details from electronic receipts with Meta, which operates the Facebook social media platform, without the knowledge or consent of customers, the federal privacy watchdog has found. In a report released Thursday, privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne said the data included encoded email addresses and in-store purchase information. The commissioner’s investigation discovered that the information sent to Meta META-Q was used to see whether a customer had a Facebook account. If they did have an account, Meta compared what the customer bought at Home Depot to advertisements sent over the platform to measure and report on the effectiveness of the ads. Meta was also able to use the customer information for its own business purposes, including user profiling and targeted advertising, unrelated to Home Depot, the commissioner found. It is unlikely that Home Depot custom...

Though Web 3.0 is years to maturity, one analysis predicts that by 2026, 25 per cent of the population will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse. Just_Super Web 3.0 has been heralded as the next evolution of the Internet – one that will make the web more immersive and democratic, thanks to a foundation of blockchain technology. Recent layoffs at Meta and the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX have raised questions about viability and credibility in an emerging space. But many Canadian businesses and investors are still betting big on the transformational potential of Web 3.0 across multiple sectors, including some of the most traditional, such as finance and manufacturing. “I’m starting to see the beginning of killer apps and easy-to-use user interfaces, the integration of the old world with the new world,” says Avivah Litan, a distinguished VP analyst at Gartner Inc., a U.S.-based management consulting company with coverage that includes artificial intelligence (AI) a...