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Kanye West says Facebook and Google 'lied to you'
You're not the only one upset that the internet might have misled you. Kanye West cut short a Sacramento concert with an epic 15-minute speech where he railed against the state of the music industry, politics, and... the internet. The superstar says that people feel like they lost (due to the election, among other issues) because Facebook and Google "lied to you." He even calls out Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg by name around the 12-minute mark. Supposedly, the internet mogul reneged on a promise that he "would help" Kanye and then decided to "look for aliens." We're not sure where that last part comes from, since Facebook's out-there projects are largely limited to Earthly concerns like solar-powered internet drones.
Recommended Reading: Fake news writer takes blame for Trump's win
Facebook Fake-news Writer: 'I Think Donald Trump Is in the White House Because of Me' Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post Facebook's struggle with fake news has been widely reported and the issue is still a hot topic in the days following the US presidential election. The Washington Post caught up with Paul Horner, a man who has made a living off of news hoaxes over the last few years, some of which got picked up by the media and the Trump campaign as legit stories. "His followers don't fact-check anything -- they'll post everything, believe anything," Horner said. "His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."
Mark Zuckerberg explains how Facebook is fighting fake news
Ever since the end of the presidential election, the spread of rumors, misinformation and outright fake news on social media has been in the spotlight. With even President Obama speaking out about social media's role in pushing propaganda, and some coders taking matters into their own hands with browser extensions, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted tonight about what his company is doing. According to Zuckerberg, "We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties."
Facebook employees are unofficially trying to defeat fake news
Ever since America opted to elect that guy to its highest office, a lot of accusatory fingers have been pointed toward Facebook. After all, the social network has the attention of hundreds of millions of voters and has a reputation for proliferating propaganda. Mark Zuckerberg has refuted the accusation that Facebook's laissez-faire attitude toward fake news contributed to Trump's win, but his employees disagree. BuzzFeed has spoken to several sources within the company that say dozens of workers are privately investigating the company's actions.
Mark Zuckerberg: over 99 percent of Facebook content is authentic
Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is clearly riled by allegations that his social network skewed the election by allowing fake news to propagate, and he isn't having any of it. The CEO has posted a defense of Facebook in which he argues that the low volume of bogus news made it "extremely unlikely" that it gave Trump his election win. According to Zuck, "more than 99%" of the Facebook content you see is authentic, and what fake news exists is neither limited to one side of the political spectrum nor always political. This isn't to say that Facebook is unconcerned with hoaxes, the exec says, but it has to tread "very carefully" before it purges anything.
A Facebook bug killed off people before they were dead
Well, this is awkward. Facebook incorrectly flagged some people's profile pages with a message saying that the person was deceased. And it looks like the glitch was pretty widespread: even founder Mark Zuckerberg had apparently ceased to be. A banner at the top of his profile page read, "We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the thing others share to remember and celebrate his life." A number of Engadget staffers had passed on as well; we weren't just pining.
Zuckerberg says Facebook didn't influence the election
If you controlled a media publishing platform that connected to millions of people, it'd make you a pretty powerful individual. Not so, according to Mark Zuckerberg, who has come out against the notion that Facebook helped win it for Trump. TechCrunch reports that the CEO was challenged about his social network's laissez-faire policy towards stopping the flood of fake, bubble-reinforcing propaganda. He thinks that the notion that the torrent of fabricated stories "influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea."
Facebook vows to fight fake news but won't say how
Facebook has a news problem. The algorithm powering its Newsfeed can't always distinguish an accurate story from a complete fabrication, which means misleading and false stories regularly circulate throughout the site. Following Donald Trump's win in the US presidential election this week, commentators are arguing that fake stories shared on Facebook's Newsfeed propelled his campaign, and executives at the site need to take responsibility for distributing accurate, vetted news.
Supporting Peter Thiel isn't embracing 'diversity'
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has had a rough week. After a tape was revealed of him bragging that he could grab women "by the pussy" and get away with it, several former female acquaintances have come forward accusing him of sexual assault. But that hasn't stopped venture capitalist Peter Thiel, an ardent Trump supporter, from giving him $1.25 million this past weekend. It so happens that Thiel is also a part-time partner of startup incubator Y Combinator and a longtime member of Facebook's board of directors. Yet neither entity has rescinded its support of Thiel. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's reason? To protect those with "different viewpoints" in the name of "diversity."
Facebook chief explains why Peter Thiel is still on the board
Ever since Peter Thiel drove Gawker Media to bankruptcy in a bid to silence unfavorable press, many have been wondering: why is Facebook keeping Thiel on its board of directors when he's antithetical to the company's emphasis on free speech, and is an ardent Trump supporter? Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has finally broken the silence... but it's not going to make everyone happy. In a leaked post (Facebook has since confirmed that it's authentic), Zuckerberg claims that it's all about upholding diversity. You can't just stick up for people you already agree with, he argues -- you have to also protect the rights of people with "different viewpoints."
Iron Man volunteers to voice Zuckerberg's JARVIS assistant
Mark Zuckerberg famously set himself a New Year's goal to create an AI assistant to control his house, and now that it's almost ready, he needs a voice for it. Naturally, Zuck enlisted Facebook's billion-plus users, saying "it's time to give my AI JARVIS a voice. Who should I ask to do it?" Someone suggested "Robert Downey Jr. or Benedict Cumberbatch," and another suggested Paul Bettany, the actual actor who plays Iron Man's JARVIS AI. Much to everyone's surprise, Downey Jr. himself replied.
Facebook shows how you'll hang with friends in VR
Back at F8 earlier this year, we saw a demo of a couple of people interacting with each other via virtual reality -- sort of like VR Skype. Now, at the Oculus Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a much better version of the software. Instead of just a color outline of your face, you can have animated cartoon-like avatars, which are complete with facial expressions. You can even create draw-in-the-air swords and lightsabers, and then play around with them in VR.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to invest $3 billion to cure disease
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative last year with his wife, Priscilla Chan, in an effort to try to "advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation." The two pledged to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares -- which is worth upwards of $50 billion -- to the cause. Today, the couple held a press event in San Francisco to announce their next big project: curing diseases. Indeed, it has pledged $3 billion over the next decade to cure, prevent and manage all diseases by the end of the century.
Facebook bans, then reinstates, iconic 'napalm girl' photo
Facebook's policy on what constitutes as nudity is in the news again. This time, though, there's a reversal involving a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo from the Vietnam war, The Guardian reports. The Terror of War is a photograph of children running from a napalm attack with armed soldiers behind them, taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut. One of the kids, Kim Phúc, is naked. When Norwegian writer Tom Egeland posted it along with six others as a status concerning photos that "changed the history of warfare," the author's account was suspended.
Zuckerberg hopes to show off his home control AI next month
Remember that artificial intelligence Mark Zuckerberg said he was going to build to control his house? It sounds like he actually made it -- and he's almost ready to show it to the public. "I got it to the point where I can control the lights, I can control the gates, I can control the temperature," he said at a Facebook Q&A in Rome this week. "It's getting there."
Facebook is working on user-activated Safety Checks
Facebook's Safety Check has proven an invaluable tool for people to contact their friends and families in the immediate aftermath of large scale disasters. At a public Q&A session in Luiss University in Rome on Monday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the crowd that his company is also working on a means of letting any user activate the emergency system on their own.
Mark Zuckerberg comments on 'graphic and heartbreaking' video
Striking a much different tone this time, Mark Zuckerberg again commented on a Facebook livestream gone viral. Unlike the cheery Chewbacca Mom video, this was about a stream capturing the immediate aftermath of police shooting a black motorist in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, broadcast by the victim's fiancee from inside the car. The Facebook CEO did not comment on the glitch his company said was behind the video's temporary removal, but closed saying "While I hope we never have to see another video like Diamond's, it reminds us why coming together to build a more open and connected world is so important -- and how far we still have to go."
Facebook reveals open-source wireless platform, OpenCellular
OpenCellular is Facebook's open-source wireless access platform designed to provide internet to remote areas around the world. OpenCellular is roughly the size of a shoe box and it can support up to 1,500 people as far as 10 kilometers away with a range of connectivity options, including wireless services and everything from 2G to LTE. By the end of 2015, more than 4 billion people across the globe didn't have access to basic internet services and 700 million people lived outside the range of cellular connectivity -- making it difficult to log into Facebook, of course.
Tune in to watch President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg live at 1:45 PM ET
This afternoon, President Obama will meet with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a panel of other young entrepreneurs at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit on Stanford's campus in Palo Alto. While the discussion is scheduled to focus on business, Zuckerberg has recently been celebrating the power of live video to bring "more openness to the political process." Earlier this week, Facebook Live and its competitor Periscope proved invaluable for bringing a sit-in on the House floor to millions of people.
Facebook's board of directors re-elects Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel, the early Facebook investor and board member who admitted last month to secretly financing multiple lawsuits against Gawker Media, will officially remain on Facebook's executive board, Mashable reports today. COO Sheryl Sandberg had previously stated that Thiel would keep his position because he "did what he did on his own, not as a Facebook board member," but Monday's annual shareholder's meeting was the last chance for the board to acknowledge that his actions run counter to Facebook's own mission statement. During the vote, the shareholders voted to keep all board members who are up for re-election, including Thiel. Mark Zuckerberg, who has the overriding vote as founder and majority stakeholder, approved the decision.
