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Privacy groups call foul on WhatsApp sharing data with Facebook
WhatsApp's new terms-of-service are causing quite a stir among privacy advocates. Yesterday, the company announced it would begin sharing user phone numbers, profile data, status message and online status with Facebook, its parent company -- a change that the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) claims violates a Federal Trade Commission consent order.
Tech giants pledge to close the gender pay gap
To celebrate Women's Equality Day, President Obama has announced a group of 29 major US employers who have signed the White House Equal Pay Pledge and promised to help close the gender pay gap. On the list are 10 top tech giants including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel and IBM.
Broadcast your Blizzard games right now via Facebook Live
As originally announced in June, game developer Blizzard Entertainment and social media powerhouse Facebook have agreed to a deal that enables FB users to stream their Blizzard gameplay over Facebook Live. And, starting Friday (hey, that's today!), users will actually be able to.
Facebook is ditching human editors from its trending topics
Facebook made the news a few months ago after claims surfaced via Gizmodo that the social network kept certain conservative news content from hitting the site's Trending Topics section (claims that it denied). Today, the social network announced that humans would no longer write special descriptions for the stories that appear in the site's Trending Topics area seen on the top right of your Facebook profile.
Facebook opens its advanced AI vision tech to everyone
Over the past two years, Facebook's artificial intelligence research team (also known as FAIR) has been hard at work figuring out how to make computer vision as good as human vision. The crew has made a lot of progress so far (Facebook has already incorporated some of that tech for the benefit of its blind users), but there's still room for improvement. In a post published today, Facebook details not only its latest computer-vision findings but also announces that it's open-sourcing them to the public so that everyone can pitch in to develop the tech. And as FAIR tells us, improved computer vision will not only make image recognition easier but could also lead to applications in augmented reality.
President Obama delivers an ode to America's national parks in VR
The first virtual reality film to feature President Obama is, not surprisingly, a love letter to some of America's greatest treasures: its National Parks. Together with Oculus, National Geographic and the VR studio Felix & Paul, the President filmed Through the Ages, a VR experience meant to celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service.
WhatsApp will start sharing your data with Facebook
WhatsApp announced a major change that we suspected was coming today by adding terms that allow it to share user data with its parent company Facebook.
Report: YouTube will fend off Facebook with social features
If you want to post a video on the web several years ago, YouTube was the go-to spot. Now, Google's video network is feeling the pinch with strong video features from Facebook, Twitter and others, and has decided to push back, according to Venture Beat. The feature, internally code-named "Backstage," will reportedly allow users to share photos, short posts, links, polls and videos with subscribers. Much like a Facebook timeline, items will be listed from newest to oldest and posted in subscribers' feeds.
VR game developers prefer the HTC Vive, grapple with nausea
The decision to get a high-end virtual reality headset is as much about the software selection as the technology itself. So which platform is getting the most attention from developers? Apparently, it's HTC's Vive. A UBM Game Network industry report shows that 49 percent of VR developers are targeting the Vive, while 43 percent are writing software for the Oculus Rift. And the gap gets wider when it comes to the next game from these studios -- nearly 35 percent are building for the Vive, while a little over 23 percent are aiming at the Rift.
Facebook tests auto-playing News Feed videos with sound
It's no secret that Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to become a more video-centric social network, and the company has been conducting various tests to see how its users would react to new features. One of its latest mobile app experiments is auto-playing videos on the News Feed... with sound.
Facebook's Lifestage is a video-centric social app for teens
Facebook isn't done launching products designed to capture the Snapchat generation. Its latest attempt after Instagram Stories and live filters? A new standalone, video-centric social app for high school students called Lifestage. To be able to complete your profile, you'd have to take videos and selfies of your likes, dislikes and facial expressions. It will ask you take videos of your BFFs, to bust out dances moves on cam, take photos of your desserts, so on and so forth. When we say that it's for high school students, we mean you won't even be able to see other people's profiles if you're older than 22. That's assuming you won't creepily pretend to be younger than you are.
Bigscreen's 'VR LAN party' comes to the Oculus Store
Bigscreen's promise to bring the environment of a LAN party into virtual reality is becoming more credible, now that it's also available in the Oculus store. The free software has been "completely cross-platform" since launch, ready for sharing with friends using Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets, and now you can get it in a new place. As the name implies, it syncs a virtual space so people can show what's on their desktop to everyone else, even if they're not physically looking over your shoulder.
Facebook's point-based recruiting system isn't producing diversity
Two years ago, Facebook proposed a system to make its workforce less universally white or Asian and male. The plan was to incentivize its in-house recruiters to hire diverse candidates, literally giving them more points for Hispanic, black and/or female candidates that would build a score directly applying to their performance reviews and bonuses. Unfortunately, the gains for more female employees are marginal and the racial makeup of the company hasn't changed, and the method can be deemed a failure.
Facebook is open-sourcing its AI bot-building research
Say hello to smarter artificial intelligence. Soon, anyway. Facebook is opening up the secret sauce that powers its bots so the public can employ and study it. This is part of the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) lab's mission to help researchers and engineers by making its work available to all. Called fastText, the library of code is now available on Github for public use and scrutiny, and will require a compiler with "good C++11 support."
Facebook is launching its own PC gaming platform
Facebook's gaming aspirations didn't stop with Farmville and its $2 billion Oculus VR acquisition. Nope, the social network is also launching a dedicated PC gaming platform today. Said platform will lean heavily on developers using the ubiquitous Unity game engine, according to a release from the company. The partnership's first project is admittedly developer-centric, but it has a direct impact on the folks playing games on Facebook. Zuckerberg and Co. describe it as a new export feature baked into Unity that allows a studio to publish directly to Facebook and the aforementioned Facebook PC gaming platform "with very little effort and few code changes."
New algorithm finds signs of depression in your Instagram feed
While Instagram data can already be used to guess your age, a new research paper shows how it might also be used to check upon your mental health. Using a set of machine learning tools and several dozen users' Instagram feeds, a team of researchers from Harvard and the University of Vermont have built a model that can accurately spot signs of clinical depression. By reviewing "color analysis, metadata components, and algorithmic face detection," in each user's feed, the model was able to correctly identify which Instagrammers showed symptoms of depression about 70 percent of the time, even before they had been clinically diagnosed.
Instagram adds event video channels to the 'Explore' feed
Instagram wants you to know it's more than just photos; it's about videos too. That's why the app has been investing quite a bit in surfacing them more in its Explore tab. Earlier this year, it added a video channel for easier to find clips and further sorted them into 23 different categories, such as dogs, comedy and travel. Now Instagram has added yet another way to find interesting videos: through events.
FreedomPop offers unlimited WhatsApp chats in over 30 countries
Don't want to pay a fortune for mobile service, but can't stand the thought of being unable to message your friends? FreedomPop thinks it can help. The sometimes-free carrier has launched an offer that gives you free, unlimited WhatsApp messaging in over 30 countries, including the US. And yes, that includes when you travel -- it should be that much easier to let the folks back home know how you're doing. In a chat with VentureBeat, the company says that there's "really no reason" you need to pay for voice or text in the modern era. This is just taking a logical step, he argues albeit an odd one when WhatsApp isn't nearly as popular in the US as it is elsewhere.
Facebook opens up Messenger to ad bots
Right now, Facebook lets Messenger bots from brands like Expedia and HP help you make a purchase, but they can't try to sell you a new product. However, a policy change means those automated assistants will soon be able to send subscription messages, ads and promotions for services like makeup consultations. If you're worried about spam, Facebook emphasized that the user is in control. "All conversations between businesses and people must be initiated by the person receiving the messages, who can then mute or block the business at any time," wrote Product Manager Seth Rosenberg.
Amazon's pilot episodes are now free on YouTube and Facebook
If you don't have a Prime subscription but want to check out some of Amazon's original series, you're in luck. The company has made ten pilot episodes from some of its best dramas, comedies, and kids' series free to watch on YouTube and Facebook for the first time ever. The lineup includes Amazon's most-streamed show, The Man in the High Castle, as well as Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent, both of which have won multiple Golden Globes.
