Tag: Facebook

Facebook has rolled out a new app that is not like any of the apps it has made before. Facebook’s experimental NPE team has released its tenth new app, this time with an early-internet inspired collage board tool called E.gg. Under the banner “Free your Creativity,” this new app from Facebook’s NPE team is a nostalgic call to bring back “the raw and exploratory spirit that was so emblematic of The Early Internet.”

E.gg is an experimental new platform for weird and wonderful expressions of who you are and what you love. E.gg was inspired by early web platforms like Geocities and MySpace. 

What are E.gg’s functions?

E.gg enables users to create what it calls ‘canvases.’ Free-form mixed media collages/pages that let you express anything from your favorite films/albums/novels to a collage of succulent pics to, say, an about page for an app. You can add various types of media, re-size and shape them to fit your display, then paste them to your canvas, which you can then share with other E.gg users.

Canvasses are created within the E.gg app, but they can be viewed and shared across the web via personalized e.gg URLs, with no logins or downloads required. Despite it being a Facebook app, there are no likes or comments possible on canvasses. Toff explained that such metrics were seen as limitations to creative exploration.

There are a lot more about E.gg which is still not known but here is a glimpse of what they have to say about themselves on their about page:

“We started working on E.gg after a few of us found ourselves missing a certain raw and exploratory spirit that was so emblematic of The Early Internet. Sure, it was clumsy to use — dangerous at times, even — but in that awkward mess was a weird and enlivening bazaar of manically-blinking GIFs, passionate guestbook entries, personal webpages made by people who cared deeply about a niche interest of theirs and wanted simply to carve out their own digital space.

So we wondered: Is this misplaced nostalgia? What if people could express themselves more freely today? Can we make more room for the weird and off-beat? Give creative control back to people? Create a low-pressure space for the really unpolished and mismatched things?

We offer to you our experiment at recapturing that atmosphere.”

E.gg has divided its features into three different categories, as mentioned on their website:

• Create

Create without constraints. Bring a wide variety of content into the E.gg app, which can then be freely positioned and sized to look; however, you want. To encourage experimental content, we left out like counts and comments.

• Share

Share anywhere on the web. Canvases are created in the iOS app, but you can view and share them anywhere on the web via a personalized e.gg URL. No logins or downloads required.

• Discover

Discover others w/ similar tastes. Bits can be used and reused across multiple canvases, and because canvases are linked by these bits, you can easily discover new canvases and other creators by following bits you like.

Anyways, I can estimate that E.gg would be welcomed really warmly, especially by creators and artists. To see how users would like it, all we have to do is to wait until it is more official, and more people start using it and leave feedback on it. 

Facebook has made another wise move in trying to stop harassment criminal activity, misinformation, and other types of wrongdoing on the platform.

Facebook says that its researchers are developing new technology they hope will aid in ongoing efforts to make its platform’s AI have the ability to snuff out harassment.

How do these bots work?

These bots have three main functions and procedures. At first, WES uses machine learning to train bots so that these bots can act like real humans on Facebook. Second, WES can automate interactions of bots on a large scale, from thousands to millions.

Finally, WES deploys the bots on Facebook’s actual production codebase, which allows the bots to interact with each other and real content on Facebook — but it’s kept separate from real users.

According to Engadget, in the testing environment, known as WW, the bots take actions like trying to buy and sell forbidden items, such as guns and drugs. The bot can use Facebook like a normal person would, conducting searches and visiting pages. Engineers can then test whether the bot can bypass safeguards and violate Community Standards, according to the statement. 

The plan is for engineers to find patterns in the results of these tests, and use that data to test ways to make it harder for users to violate Community Standards.

It has been a really long time since Facebook has started avoiding harassment, misinformation, and similar things, and now they seem to have reached their goal, and soon Facebook would be able to control and check every action made on the platform with no human supervision at all and all by WES.

Finally, the Facebook messenger is giving us a little more privacy by adding the option to lock and protect our Messenger with a Touch ID and Face ID.

Nobody can deny that we all have secret chats we do not want anybody to be aware of and snoop on. When we get the ability to lock our messenger apps, it gives us a feeling of comfort and extra safety, which is how I am feeling after this news from Facebook messenger.

The new update was first noticed by Matt Navara, our favorite social media expert. He said in his latest tweet that Facebook is now rolling out Touch ID and Face ID lock options for Messenger on iOS.

This feature would surely help us to stop people from additionally snooping on your Messenger chats.

This new update has an extra option, which makes it even better. Once enabled, you can choose how long it takes before your Messenger needs to be unlocked again with Face/Touch ID.

All you have to do in order to enable your Messenger’s Face or ID Touch lock is to go to your app lock settings and turn the ability on.

As clarifies in more detail by Social Media Today, the addition is in line with Facebook’s gradual shift towards improving messaging security, which includes its plan to eventually enable end-to-end encryption as the default setting for all messages. That plan has come under intense scrutiny by several government agencies, who believe that a move to full encryption will facilitate increased criminal activity in Facebook’s apps. Already, various authorities have raised concerns about encryption in WhatsApp.

Anyways, we are all very excited by the new update, and I personally can not wait to lock my Messenger app with a Touch ID so I could be sure nobody can snoop on my chats whenever I am not near my phone.

Yesterday was the world’s emoji day, a day social media users and addicts need to celebrate because these little cartoonish icons have changed the way we communicate with each other forever. Emojis have made conversations much more fun and easier to understand. Using Emojis, we can express how we feel and what we mean in a more convenient way.

Created by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge in 2014, World Emoji Day has been historically used to reveal upcoming emojis, and this year is no different. That’s why tech giants such as Facebook, Apple, and Google are celebrating World Emoji Day today by announcing new emojis, as always.

Apple’s new Emojis

Yesterday Emojipedia shared some of the new emojis which are going to be available to apple users later this year, and these new emojis are real fun, and some of them were wanted by users for a long time. These emojis would soon be available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch users.

The list includes a dodo, tamale, set of pinched fingers, boomerang, ninja, coin, piñata, beaver, bubble tea, nesting dolls, and an all-gender sign.  These emojis will be available in a free software update this fall.

Another surprise Apple has announced for the world’s emoji day is that it will introduce new ways to create Memojis with the iOS 14. It will allow users to create their own look with more customization options.

Facebook’s new Emojis

Facebook has upgraded its default emoji pack in Messenger with new animations.

As Facebook messenger officially announced in a tweet, their default sticker pack, “Moodies” got an upgrade with some new animations.

Facebook has experimented with various animations for its Reactions and other emoji sets, and that seems like the next level.

Google’s new Emojis

According to 9To5Google, the 65 new characters are a part of a concerted effort for more compassionate depictions in the cartoon figures category. The Android 11 additions also include an anatomic lung and heart, but goes further with realistic and “authentic” animals, including a beaver and bison, as well as a turtle that might look familiar to users, as it was the original turtle emoji used in Android 7.1.

Google explained the new update for emojis in more details:

“Hit that piñata or bang on the long drum to celebrate. Send an anatomical heart when the love is so real, so raw. Or perhaps you’ll identify with one of the new animals, like a super cute bison, an eager beaver, or a polar bear that just needs a little love. There are also new food emoji, like a tamale (nom nom), a boba tea sure to make you thirsty (“black milk tea, boba, 30 percent sugar please”) and even a teapot for those who felt the “hot beverage” emoji (☕) was simply not “tea time“ enough.”

World’s largest tech giants have tried to make this emoji day as special as the previous ones with rolling out new and cool emojis for their users. You can now celebrate this day knowing that new sets of emojis would soon be available for you.

Another company added to the long list of advertisers’ boycotting Facebook. Britain’s main opposition Labour party announced that it has also joined the Facebook advertising boycott.

UK labour said Facebook’s failure over sufficiently curbing hateful content is the reason for this boycott. Shadow minister Rachel said that they wanted to express our concern about the failure of Facebook to take down some hateful material, and that’s the main reason for the decision they have made about Facebook ads.

The Facebook advertising boycott was started by the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in the US city of Minneapolis. And now, lots of big brands and companies have joined this movement and have stopped working with Facebook ad campaigns.

Regarding what BBC news have included, The organizers, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, accused Facebook of allowing “racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform.”

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Ms. Reeves said: “All MPs in the Labour Party use Facebook to get across our message, but what we’re not doing at the moment is advertising on Facebook.”

“And that is in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter campaign but also in line with what many businesses are doing this month, which is to express our concerns about the failure of Facebook to take down some hateful material from their platform and take more responsibility for the lies and propaganda that are sometimes put out there on Facebook.

“Facebook needs to do more to take responsibility, and this is just one way that businesses and the Labour Party and others can put pressure on Facebook to do the right things and take tougher action on hate crime and hate speech.”

This movement of boycotting Facebook ad campaign has so far had terrible impacts on Facebook, which you can read more about on our article for what the boycotts have done to Facebook, and its reputation and the list of names who are joining the boycott t is getting longer and longer day by day, and this is when Mark Zuckerburg has to do something serious about this matter.

Facebook has made a new move this time on education and in India. On Sunday, Facebook announced it had partnered with the Central Board of Secondary Education, a government body that oversees education in private and public schools in India, to launch a certified curriculum on digital safety and online well-being, and augmented reality for students and educators in the country.

What is the purpose of Facebook by this move?

“Facebook has a good purpose for these actions. The best reason why Facebook started these educations pushes in India was to train secondary school students for available job offers for the future or now. Facebook wants to help these students to develop skills to safely browse the internet, make “well-informed choices,” and think about their mental health, they said. Just like there are companies that provide online help for students so they are not in too much stress.”

Regarding what TechCrunch has explained more about the move, Facebook said that it would provide these training in various phases. In the first phase, more than 10,000 teachers will be trained; in the second, they will coach 30,000 students. The three-week training on AR will cover fundamentals of the nascent technology, and ways to make use of Facebook’s Spark AR Studio to create augmented reality experiences.

“I encourage the teachers and students to apply for the programs commencing on July 6, 2020,” said Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union Minister of Human Resources Development in India, in a statement.

Facebook has been trying to create awareness about the ill side of technology as its platform confronts with misuse of its own services in the country. For example, Last year, it partnered with telecom giant Reliance Jio Platforms — in which it would eventually invest $5.7 billion — to launch “Digital Udaan,” the “largest-ever digital literacy program” for first-time internet users in the country. India is the biggest market for Facebook by users count.

The announcement today caps a remarkable week in India that started with New Delhi blocking nearly 60 services developed by Chinese firms over cybersecurity concerns.

Today Facebook has updated its news feed algorithm to something way better and more reliable for users.  The news feed algorithm is going to put more emphasis on original reporting and boost content from news websites that provide information on their journalists, increasing transparency.

Facebook has decided to apply this change mostly because many of its users rely on Facebook as a reliable news source for any filed such as Covid-19 now. Moreover, with many local news outlets being forced to close due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the reliance on Facebook for news, especially local updates, is only going to rise.

From now on, Facebook has promised to show its users more original reporting and stories with transparent authorship.

How does the new algorithm work?

Regarding what Facebook has announced on an official announcement:

“When we ask people what kind of news they want to see on Facebook, they continually tell us they want news stories that are credible and informative. Today, we’re updating the way news stories are ranked in News Feed to prioritize original reporting and stories with transparent authorship.”

“We do this by looking at groups of articles on a particular story topic and identifying the ones most often cited as the original source. We’ll start by identifying original reporting in English language news and will do the same for news in other languages in the future.”

Let me make the procedure of this algorithm a little easier for you. There will be variable impacts but take this example form me. Think that several of your friends share reports on the same news topic, and one of them shares the original reportage, Facebook will show you that first.

The second element of the update pays attention to ‘Transparent Authorship.’

Another big change of the algorithm with the new update is Transparent Authorship. According to Facebook itself, they are also starting to demote news content that does not have transparent information about the publisher’s editorial staff.

They will review news articles for bylines or a staff page on the publisher’s website that lists the first and last names of reporters or other editorial staff. They’ve found that publishers who do not include this information often lack credibility to readers and produce content with clickbait or ad farms, all content people tell us they don’t want to see on Facebook.

Overall, we all surely love the idea of the new algorithm change, and I guess that might help Facebook gain the trust and credibility it has lost in the past few days due to controversies.

As you surely have heard by now, many huge companies and big advertisers are boycotting Facebook for various reasons, such as allowing misinformation or violent content from politicians such as President Donald Trump.

After Facebook came to know it is losing its best brands and businesses, such as Verizon and Unilever, as the result of the global Facebook ads boycott, CEO Mark Zuckerburg decided to take serious action and do something about the issue.

After all the controversy and user complaints, Mark Zuckerberg has announced a new plan to occasionally do something about content that violates Facebook’s policies. This action is not for 100% of the situation and is applied every now and then.

Zuckerburg, who had previously refused to do anything against Trump’s posts suggesting that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud, is now forced to take actions due to the vast complaints and boycotts. 

Mark Zuckerburg announced the decision in a Facebook live stream and then an official Facebook post on Friday. He seemingly attempted to mollify critics of his decision to allow a post from Donald Trump threatening violence against protesters with a new policy that may or may not address similar posts by the president in the future.

Below is the written statement Mark made on his Facebook post:

“The policies we’re implementing today are designed to address the reality of the challenges our country is facing and how they’re showing up across our community.”.

“A handful of times a year, we leave up content that would otherwise violate our policies if the public interest value outweighs the risk of harm,” wrote Zuckerberg. “Often, seeing speech from politicians is in the public interest, and in the same way that news outlets will report what a politician says, we think people should generally be able to see it for themselves on our platforms. We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case.

As a result, Facebook will begin adding new labels to all posts about voting that will direct users to authoritative information from state and local election. officials. Moreover, violating posts from politicians or other people is still allowed but will be labeled as inappropriate by Facebook, just like Twitter.

It has been several years since Facebook is being used as the number one platform for advertising, and a remarkable percentage of marketers have been using Facebook to market their brands and businesses. The main reason which makes Facebook a great place for marketing is its vast amount of audience and popularity among people all over the world.

But in recent days, Facebook is seen from a totally different view, and many users have changed their view on Facebook, and thousands of people have even stopped using it.

Facebook is confronting a new pressure campaign from advertisers, unlike anything it has ever experienced before. A growing number of big household names have joined a Facebook advertising boycott over its handling of hate speech and misinformation, culminating on Friday with the news that home goods giant Unilever would halt ad spending for at least the remainder of the year on Facebook, as well as Twitter.

With major advertisers like Verizon joining the campaign Thursday and Unilever, Coca-Cola and Honda saying they would pull advertising on Friday, Facebook is now facing a snowball effect of advertisers abandoning the site. 

Meanwhile, as CNBC explains, Facebook has signaled it intends to do things on its own terms. In a more than 1,600-word memo to advertisers obtained by CNBC, the company’s VP of global business solutions, Carolyn Everson, said, “boycotting, in general, is not the way for us to make progress together.” 

“I also really hope by now you know that we do not make policy changes tied to revenue pressure,” Everson said in the memo. “We set our policies based on principles rather than business interests.”  

Facebook’s stock closed down more than 8% Friday. 

What exactly is the #StopHateForProfit campaign and Where things could go from here

As you might have known a bit about the campaign by now, it is a campaign created by users to boycott Facebook, especially its advertising. The Campaign Forces Zuckerberg to Change Facebook Policies.

This boycott is surely getting Facebook to somewhere bad, and the effects of this act are being shown even now.

Since the boycott launched, over 133 advertisers, including high profile brands and companies, have joined the fight, such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, The North Face, Ben & Jerry’s, REI, Patagonia, Hershey’s, Honda, Levi Strauss, Verizon and many more. As a result, Facebook’s stock dropped more than 8%, roughly $50 billion devaluations. 

From my point of view, the campaign is more serious than what Mark Zuckerberg could ever think it to be and if he does not change Facebook’s rules and keep ignoring users’ complaints, soon, there will be not even one well-known brand advertising on Facebook, which is a disaster for the company.

Until Zuckerberg himself decides to change the limits of free expression on his platform, Facebook may simply lose brands until only those that don’t object to the company’s conductor who cannot survive without the platform’s reach are left, Martin said.

Facebook dark mode has always been one of the most wanted features of all time. Today Facebook released some good news for all the users out there who have been awaiting this feature for a long time.

Facebook rolled out the Facebook dark mode earlier today on iOS on both iPhone and iPad. Yes, Finally, the popular dark mode is now available. But the unfortunate thing is that not all users have access to the feature.

The dark mode is rolled out to a small percentage of mobile users and is being tested now, so some users are now able to switch to dark mode in the mobile app, and the others need to wait for an unknown time for Facebook to globally roll out the feature to every one of its users and make their old Facebook wish come true.

It is still a wonder why it took Facebook so long to start testing this feature since the Dark mode is already available on many other apps of the Facebook family, including Messenger, Facebook Lite, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The dark mode is even available on Facebook’s recently expanded desktop app refresh.

The first picture of how the dark mode looks like on the Facebook app was published on titter by posted by user @NotFridayCraig.

How to enable Facebook dark mode?

• In order to see if you are one of those lucky users who got the dark mode on its beta version, all you have to do is to follow the steps below:
• Open the Facebook app on either your iPhone or iPad
• Tap the Menu icon (both iPhone and iPad)
• Find the “settings and privacy” option and tap on it
• If you are given the dark mode, it’d then appear as the fourth option after ‘Your Time on Facebook’ and before ‘App Language’

At the end of the day, whether you’ve been included in the test roll-out of the dark mode or not, it is very good news that after a really long time, all of us are going to have the dark mode on our accounts early in the upcoming future.