Facebook may leave Europe if Ireland enforces ban on data sharing with US

 Facebook may have to pull out of Europe if the Irish Data Protection Commission enforces a ban on sharing data with the US after the European Court of Justice found that the bloc's measures to protect its data from US intelligence agencies were insufficient, Head of Data Protection and Associate General Counsel at Facebook Ireland Yvonne Cunnane said in a court filing.

In July, the European Court of Justice invalidated the 2016 Privacy Shield, saying that EU digital privacy laws were at risk of being violated under the agreement, which allows for data to be transferred, stored, and processed in the United States.

"In the event that [Facebook] was subject to a complete prohibition on the transfer of user data to the United States, as appears to be what the DPC [Data Protection Commissioner] proposes, it is not clear to [Facebook] how, in such circumstances, it could continue to provide inter alia the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU," the document unveiled earlier this week said.

Facebook subsequently stated that the filing was not a threat but rather a simple reflection of the reality that the company along with other organizations and businesses rely on data transfers between the EU and the US in order to operate their services. According to Facebook's spokesperson, a lack of such safe data transfers would damage the economy and hamper the growth of data-driven businesses within the EU.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

FB neutral, non-partisan, says India chief; defends handling of hate speech

 Facebook India Head Ajit Mohan has defended the handling of alleged hate speeches by members of the ruling BJP saying the platform has remained true to its design of being neutral and non-partisan and acted based on inputs from various teams.

In an interview with PTI, Mohan rejected charges of Facebook India's decisions being influenced by political leanings of individuals, saying the process followed at the platform is designed to ensure no one person can influence outcomes, let alone take any unilateral decisions.

"The content policy of team that is at the centre of all the enforcement decisions (on hate speeches) is separate and independent in India from the public policy team (that handles government relations)," he said. "It's designed for independence."

And the content management team is guided by only community standards. "And enforcement of that has to be objective, has to be non-partisan and neutral. I think that goes to the heart of how the platform has been designed from day one," he asserted.

Individuals can have "points of views" or "leanings", the "system is designed to make sure no one person can influence the outcomes," he said.

"And so the answer is yes," he said replying to a question on whether Facebook is a non-partisan and politically neutral entity.

The comments come amid a political storm over a report published in the Wall Street Journal last month, alleging the social media giant ignored extremist posts by ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in order to protect its business interests in India.

According to the report, Facebook deleted anti-Muslim posts by BJP's Telangana MLA T Raja Singh and three other Hindu nationalists only after being questioned by the paper. Facebook's head of public policy Ankhi Das, the report said citing company employees, had opposed the deletion of the posts despite being flagged internally as breaching standards.

Facebook earlier this month banned the 42-year-old Telangana MLA, categorising him as a "dangerous individual".

Mohan said there are no limits to respectable standard for free speech within and outside the company.

While there are people from multiple political leanings and backgrounds in the company, Facebook values people of experience in government or in public service.

"But at the same time, I think it is important to call out to you that the content policy of a team that is at the centre of all of these enforcement decisions is separate and independent in India from the public policy team here. It's designed for independence. So the public policy team that engages with government, for example, central and state governments, is a part of my team. That is separate from the content policy team which is part of the global team," he said.

"So, I think the point is while people can have points of view, they can have leanings, the system is designed to make sure no one person can influence the outcomes, let alone have any unilateral decision making power on this aspect. The separation in India context tells you how design is meant for independence," he said.

Mohan said the content moderation is largely done through automated systems and human reviewers.

In dealing with complex issues such as designating individuals, especially elected officials, the content policy team comes into play.

"The public policy team does seek inputs from multiple functions and disciplines and teams including public policy team in India. That is not interference. That is the process, that is being designed to have enough local context from the local team," he said. "But finally the decision that is taken is not taken by the public policy team."

"So you have the opportunity in certain cases like designation, from multiple local and international teams, to provide a point of view that is by design. But it is not for them to take any unilateral decision. That still goes through the content policy team," he said.

Facebook has over 300 million users in India, while its associate WhatsApp is the leader in messaging with over 400 million users.

In April this year, Facebook invested $5.7 billion to buy a 9.9 per cent stake in Jio Platforms, the digital arm of energy-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd owned by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani.

Mohan said Facebook has an impartial approach to dealing with content and that this is governed strongly by its community standards. These policies are enforced globally without regard to anyone's political position, party affiliation or religious and cultural beliefs, he emphasised.

"That is the basis and enforcement of that has to be objective, has to be non-partisan and neutral. I think that goes to the heart of how the platform has been designed from day one. It goes to the heart of something all of us embrace, that we have to be neutral, we have to be non-partisan," he added.

Facebook seeks legal advice on $5.7-billion investment in Jio Platforms

Facebook (FB), ahead of its $5.7-billion investment in Jio Platforms, has sought legal advice pertaining to India’s new foreign direct investment (FDI) policy towards neighbouring countries, particularly China and Hong Kong. While the social media giant is founded and headquartered in the US, being a public-listed company it has investment from several funds based out of China and Hong Kong.
Sources say the Mark Zuckerberg-led company wants to ensure there are no issues in its investment in the subsidiary of Reliance Industries. It has roped in one of the Big Four consultancy ...

Big tech's behind-the-scenes bets get bigger as Covid-19 slows economy

Even as Facebook grappled this month with an internal revolt and a cascade of criticism over its refusal to take action on President Trump’s inflammatory posts, the social network was actively making other bets behind the scenes.
Late one Tuesday, as attention was focused on how Facebook might handle Mr. Trump, the Silicon Valley company said in a brief blog post that it had invested in Gojek, a “super app” in Southeast Asia. The deal, which gave Facebook a bigger foothold in the rapidly growing region, followed a $5.7 billion investment it recently pumped into Reliance Jio, a telecom giant in India.
The moves were part of a spending spree by the social network, which also shelled out $400 million last month to buy an animated GIF company and which is spending millions of dollars to build a nearly 23,000-mile undersea fiber-optic cable encircling Africa. On Thursday, Facebook confirmed that it was also developing a venture capital fund to invest in promising start-ups.
ALSO READ: Facebook acquires animated graphics startup GIPHY
Other technology giants are engaging in similar behavior. Apple has bought at least four companies this year and released a new iPhone. Microsoft has purchased three cloud computing businesses. Amazon is in talks to acquire an autonomous vehicle start-up, has leased more airplanes for delivery and has hired an additional 175,000 people since March. Google has unveiled new messaging and video features.
Even with the global economy reeling from a pandemic-induced recession and dozens of businesses filing for bankruptcy, tech’s largest companies — still wildly profitable and flush with billions of dollars from years of corporate dominance — are deliberately laying the groundwork for a future where they will be bigger and more powerful than ever.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are aggressively placing new bets as the coronavirus pandemic has made them near-essential services, with people turning to them to shop online, entertain themselves and stay in touch with loved ones. The skyrocketing use has given the companies new fuel to invest as other industries retrench.
The expansion is unfolding as lawmakers and regulators in Washington and Europe are sounding the alarm over the tech giants’ concentration of power and how that may have hurt competitors and led to other issues, such as spreading disinformation. This week, European Union officials were preparing antitrust charges against Amazon for using its e-commerce dominance to box out smaller rivals, while Britain began an inquiry into Facebook’s purchase of the GIF company.
Some of the tech behemoths have made little secret of their intention to forge ahead in a recession that has put more than 44 million Americans out of work and that officials warn will be protracted.

ALSO READ: EU antitrust watchdog set to press charges against Amazon: Report
“I’ve always believed that in times of economic downturn, the right thing to do is keep investing in building the future,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said in an investor call last month. “When the world changes quickly, people have new needs, and that means there are more new things to build.”
In doubling down on growth in a time of economic pain, the largest tech companies are continuing a pattern. In previous recessions, those that invested while the economy was at its most vulnerable often emerged stronger. In the 1990s, IBM used a recession to reorient itself from a hardware company into a software and services company. Google and Facebook both rose out of the dot-com bust about 20 years ago.
Apple, whose iPhones now dominate computing, doubled its research and development budget for two years during the downturn in the early 2000s. That led the company, which nearly went bankrupt in the late 1990s, to create its iPod music player and iTunes music store — and eventually the iPhone, the App Store and an unbridled growth streak, said Jenny Chatman, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
ALSO READ: Apple WWDC20: Schedule, how to watch livestream, what to expect, and more
Ranjan Roy, a tech commentator for The Margins, an internet industry blog, said it was clear the tech behemoths were unafraid to get more aggressive now and that the power they were accruing should give people pause.
“Without any pushback from regulators, big tech companies would almost unquestionably come out of the pandemic more powerful,” he said. “So many additional parts of our daily lives are becoming dependent on their products, or they could just buy or copy the services they don’t yet deliver.”
Still, the companies are taking risks by spending in an uncertain period, said John Paul Rollert, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
“To double and even triple down when the casino is on fire is a remarkable move, because they may not even be able to cash in their chips later on,” he said.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, which declined to or did not respond to requests for comment, have plenty of cash. Combined, they are sitting atop about $557 billion, enabling them to maintain a pace of acquisitions and investments similar to last year’s, when the economy was humming, according to a tally of financial disclosures. They have been among the top corporate spenders on research and development for most of the last decade, according to PwC, the big accounting firm.
The companies have ramped up their activity since March, when shelter-in-place orders began. As Amazon, Facebook and others adapted to their employees working from home, they experienced a spike in use. Messaging and other teleconferencing software soared in popularity.
ALSO READ: Microsoft says it will invest in Skype despite success with Teams app
That created opportunities. Microsoft, for one, started promoting its Teams videoconferencing service, which allows people to talk and collaborate online. Microsoft also snapped up three cloud computing companies in the last few months — Affirmed Networks, Metaswitch Networks and Softomotive — to offer more technology to businesses.
Google, too, updated products that people can use to work from home. In April, it said that its video chat service, Google Meet, would be easily available inside people’s Gmail windows and free to anyone with a Google account. It also said it would start making listings in its shopping search results mostly free, instead of having merchants pay for all their products to appear in the results, to bolster e-commerce searches.
Amazon was initially overwhelmed with a surge of online orders and safety concerns over its warehouse workers. In response, the company added more than 175,000 jobs to keep up with demand.
Amazon has since invested further. While aviation all but ground to a halt in the pandemic, the company said this month that it was adding 12 Boeing 767s to its fleet of more than 70 delivery planes. It also discussed buying Zoox, an autonomous vehicle start-up valued at $2.7 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the talks. The discussions were earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Apple, with $193 billion in cash and debt, went on its own buying spree. This year, it bought DarkSky, a popular weather smartphone app; NextVR, a virtual reality company; Voysis, a digital assistant and speech recognition software company; and Xnor.ai, an artificial intelligence start-up.
The company will soon hold a developer conference virtually and is managing a surge in activity on FaceTime and iMessage as people use those services to communicate in quarantine.
Facebook’s activity has been the most pronounced. When the coronavirus swept through the United States in March, the social network was inundated with people flocking to its apps to use voice and video chat services. Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook was “just trying to keep the lights on.”
But the company soon capitalized on the momentum. Mr. Zuckerberg accelerated the building of some products, introducing Messenger Rooms, a group video chat service, in April.
That same month, Facebook said it was taking a $5.7 billion stake in India’s Reliance Jio. It was the company’s largest investment in an outside company, giving it more access to one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets.
“We are committed to connecting more people in India together with Jio,” Facebook said of the deal, noting that Jio had brought more than 388 million people online in less than four years.
ALSO READ: Facebook to acquire 9.9% stake in Jio Platforms via Jaadhu Holdings
Last month, Facebook bought the GIF company Giphy for an estimated $400 million. Giphy is to be integrated with Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook. And last week, the social network invested millions in Gojek. Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, Gojek makes an app for digital payments, transportation and other services that is used by more than 170 million people in Southeast Asia.
Facebook is now working on the new venture fund, which will help it spot new popular apps. The fund was reported earlier by Axios.
In driving the activity, Mr. Zuckerberg may be taking a cue from a Facebook board member, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. In April, Mr. Andreessen wrote a blog post titled “It’s Time To Build” and said, “We need to demand more of our political leaders, of our CEOs, our entrepreneurs, our investors.”
Less than two weeks later, Mr. Zuckerberg said on the investor call that he was doing exactly that: building.
He said he felt “a responsibility and duty to invest” and added, “We’re in a fortunate position to be able to do this.”

FB keen on buying 10% stake in Jio; Covid-19 may delay the deal: Report

US tech giant Facebook is looking to buy a multibillion-dollar stake in Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio, reports Financial Times. India's fastest-growing network, Jio, has over 370 million subscribers.
According to the report, Facebook is keen on picking up a 10 per cent stake in Indian telecommunication behemoth, however, the outspread of coronavirus could alter the schedule of signing the deal. Jio is the only company that can possibly take on US tech giants. RIL poured in huge sums of money to expand Reliance Jio and make it the biggest telecom player in the country. This, however, increased the debt burden of Reliance and this deal could help the company to achieve its goal of cutting net debt to zero by March 2021.

To do so, Reliance sought to sell off stakes in its refining business to Saudi Aramco and a $3.3 billion investment by Brookfield in its tower business.
Facebook, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, will get a significant footing in the Indian telecom market if this deal goes through. It will be crucial for Facebook as it has more users in India than any other single country. But the Indian telecom market has not been easy for the foreign players of late due to the adjusted gross revenue issue, which nearly forced the Vodafone group out of the country.
Moreover, the Personal Data Protection Bill will not make things easier for Facebook. The number of internet users in India is expected to rise to about 850 million in 2022, up from 450m in 2017, according to a PwC.
According to the report in FT, Google was also involved in talks with Jio for the purchase of stake. These developments have come to light after last Microsoft announced plans to partner Jio to offer cloud computing.

Facebook corrects user's post after Singapore invokes fake news law

Facebooksaid on Saturday it had issued a correction notice on a user's post at the request of the Singapore government, but called for a measured approach to the implementation of a new "fake news" law in the city-state.
"Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information," said the notice, which is visible only to Singapore users.

The correction label was embedded at the bottom of the original post without any alterations to the text.
The Singapore government said on Friday it had instructed Facebook "to publish a correction notice" on a Nov. 23 post which contained accusations about the arrest of a supposed whistleblower and election rigging.
Singapore, which is expected to call a general elections within months, said the allegations were "false" and "scurrilous" and initially ordered user Alex Tan, who runs the States Times Review blog, to issue the correction notice on the post.
Tan, who does not live in Singapore and says he is an Australian citizen, refused and authorities said he is now under investigation. Reuters could not immediately reach Tan for comment.
"As required by Singapore law, Facebook applied a label to these posts, which were determined by the Singapore government to contain false information," a spokesman for Facebook said in an emailed statement.
"As it is early days of the law coming into effect, we hope the Singapore government's assurances that it will not impact free expression will lead to a measured and transparent approach to implementation."
Some Singapore users however said that they could not see the correction notice. Facebook could not immediately explain why the notice was unavailable to some users.
Facebook often blocks content that governments allege violate local laws, with nearly 18,000 cases globally in the year to June, according to the company's "transparency report." Two years in the making and implemented only last month, Singapore's law is the first to demand that Facebook publish corrections when directed to do so by the government.
The Asia Internet Coalition, an association of internet and technology companies, called the law the "most far-reaching legislation of its kind to date", while rights groups have said it could undermine internet freedoms, not just in Singapore, but elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
In the only other case under the law, which covers statements that are communicated in the country even if they originate elsewhere, opposition political figure Brad Bowyer swiftly complied with a correction request.

'Not a fan': Facebook's Libra under fire, from crypto community to Trump

Facebook's planned virtual unit Libra, already under heavy attack from US President Donald Trump and global regulators, faces scepticism among the wider cryptocurrency community as well.
One theme -- besides Brexit -- dominated discussion among the movers and shakers from London's financial technology or FinTech industry as gathered for their annual get-together: the future of virtual currencies.

"Can I just ask you to raise your hand if you would not be willing to use Libra?" asked the moderator at an event at London's recent 'FinTech Week'.
In the room, filled with about 100 experts and media who closely track the sector, about two-thirds of participants raised their hand to express distrust at the upstart currency.
Helen Disney, founder and boss of Unblocked Events, which promotes the blockchain technology that powers many cryptocurrencies, acknowledged growing doubts over who exactly would oversee and regulate Libra's operation.
People are "concerned about how the governance... would work", Disney told AFP.
"The cryptocurrency community is very libertarian in thinking," its "about giving power to the people, democratisation of finance, keeping away from big banks and companies who control (the) economy," she said Last week's gathering came one month after Facebook announced to the world its plans for the virtual currency.
Libra, which is widely regarded as a challenger to dominant global player Bitcoin, is expected to launch in the first half of 2020.
Whereas Bitcoin is decentralised, Libra will be co-managed by 100 partner firms, including Facebook's newly-minted financial services division Calibra.
The companies behind Libra -- which will be backed with a basket of real-world currencies -- include payment giants Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, as well as taxi-hailing services Lyft and Uber.
To access Libra on smartphones, users will go through a virtual wallet that will also be named Calibra.
While Facebook boasts an enormous customer base dotted across the globe that should facilitate Libra's uptake, it firm also been plagued by privacy concerns that could make users hesitate.
"Can't wait for a cryptocurrency with the ethics of Uber, the censorship resistance of Paypal, and the centralisation of Visa, all tied together under the proven privacy of Facebook," said Sarah Jamie Lewis, head of non-profit research organisation Open Privacy.
Libra has meanwhile raised eyebrows among the world's financial regulators, including the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve.
But Disney believes that Libra will finally force regulators to present clear regulation guidelines, as demanded by the cryptocurrency community itself.
"We have been waiting for a long time for a clearer signal (regarding) the regulation of cryptocurrencies and digital assets," she said.
But James Bennett, head of cryptocurrency research firm Bitassist, argues that Libra should not be seen in the same light as Bitcoin.
"In the long run, people may realise that Libra is not a cryptocurrency," Bennett said at the FinTech Week event.
"A true cryptocurrency should be resistant to attacks by all parties, from sovereign states to global corporations," he said, adding that "cryptocurrency is a type of money used to transfer value over the internet that cannot be stopped, confiscated or destroyed by any single entity".
Trump has meanwhile unleashed a vicious attack on virtual currencies, slamming them for their alleged shadowy nature and arguing that Libra had no standing nor dependability -- unlike the dollar.
"I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air," Trump tweeted Thursday.

Just a tap on the wrist? Facebook $5-bn privacy settlement approved by FTC

US officials approved a record $5 billion privacy settlement with Facebook Inc. to resolve the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, people said, prompting an immediate outcry from lawmakers and privacy advocates who said it didn’t go far enough.
Although details of the settlement with the US federal trade commission (FTC) weren’t announced, the fine is steep but far from devastating for Facebook. The company, which reported revenue of almost $56 billion in 2018, had set aside $3 billion in anticipation of the fine.

“This reported $5 billion penalty is barely a tap on the wrist, not even a slap,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat , who called for a hearing on the agreement. “Such a financial punishment for purposeful, blatant illegality is chump change for a company that makes tens of billions of dollars every year,” Blumenthal said.
The FTC’s settlement was approved by a vote of 3-2, according to two people who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the decision. The agreement still needs approval from the Justice Department.
The resolution caps a probe that opened in March 2018 after news that Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm hired by President Donald Trump’s campaign, obtained user data from a researcher who created a personality quiz app on the social network.
The settlement is the largest privacy fine in the FTC’s history and also marks the most significant action yet against Facebook over a series of mishaps that have compromised users’ data and sent the company reeling from one crisis to another. The agency’s two Democratic commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Rohit Chopra, voted against it, according to one of the people.
Slaughter, Chopra, Facebook and the FTC declined to comment.
Democratic Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Warner of Virginia also criticized the settlement, as did House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who is conducting an antitrust investigation of Facebook and other technology giants.
The job of defending the settlement will fall to FTC Chairman Joe Simons, who has tried to avoid split enforcement decisions as head of the agency.
While Facebook had agreed to give its board oversight of its privacy policies, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is the controlling board member with nearly 58 per cent of the voting power. The board also includes Facebook’s other top executive, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. The two already have power over the company’s privacy policies.
Public interest groups including Public Knowledge, Public Citizen and the Open Markets Institute said any deal with the FTC should impose remedies that would rein in Facebook’s data collection practices in addition to a fine.
“Something clearly has to be done to strengthen the data protection practices of that company,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed a complaint against Facebook that led to the FTC’s 2011 consent decree with the social-media company that addressed a litany of deceptive practices.
Tech industry group NetChoice praised the fine, saying it would motivate companies to improve their privacy practices.
The Cambridge Analytica incident stems from a personality-quiz app offered to Facebook users by a Cambridge University researcher. About 270,000 people downloaded the app, allowing the researcher to access data about those individuals and their friends. The information was subsequently sold to Cambridge Analytica.
Even as it resolves the FTC privacy inquiry, Facebook is still grappling with regulatory scrutiny on several other fronts -- including the prospect of a new investigation by the FTC’s antitrust section under an agreement with the Justice Department that divided oversight of four of the biggest tech companies. One area of focus is likely to be the company’s acquisitions of the photo-sharing app Instagram and the Whatsapp messaging service.
Elsewhere in the US, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened investigations related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Separately, the attorney general for Washington, DC, has sued the company, claiming it failed to safeguard users’ data. Other state attorneys general are also investigating.
Facebook declined to comment on the status of those probes.
The settlement ranks among the highest at the FTC, which reached a $10 billion settlement with Volkswagen AG in 2016 for deceptive advertising in the emission-cheating scandal involving diesel models. The agency’s previous record fine in a privacy action came in 2012, when Alphabet Inc.’s Google paid $22.5 million to settle claims it misrepresented its privacy assurances to Apple Inc.’s Safari users.

Nadella retains spot, Aditya Puri out in Barron's 30 Best CEOs of the world

It’s not a popularity contest; you can make a standout chief executive and still face widespread criticism.

Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet Inc.’s Larry Page, for example, made the annual list of top 30 CEOs compiled by Barron’s.
Some of the leaders with top track records of revenue growth, earnings and shareholder returns are new this year.
About a third of the names typically rotate and the rest -- think Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink, Bob Iger and Satya Nadella -- come back year after year.
Female newcomers include Mary Dillon of Ulta Beauty Inc., praised for leading the cosmetic chain to nearly double the S&P 500’s yearly return since taking over in 2013; Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin Corp. for what was termed her savvy direction; and Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. for giving Intel Corp. a run for its money.
More fresh faces making the roster were Bank of America Corp.’s Brian Moynihan for turning a loss-maker into the second most profitable bank behind JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Costco Wholesale Corp.’s Craig Jelinek for expert merchandising and raising minimum pay for workers.
Steve Easterbrook was cited for speeding up drive-through service at McDonald’s Corp. while also ramping up same-store sales and the stock price.
Stephen Schwarzman, who founded Blackstone Group LP in 1985, was also new to the list as profits keep piling up for the private equity giant.
CEOs to fall off the list this year include:
Bernard Arnault of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE
James Gorman of Morgan Stanley
Jensen Huang of Nvidia Corp.
Hubert Joly of Best Buy Co. (He became executive chairman in June)
Phebe Novakovic of General Dynamics Corp.
Aditya Puri of HDFC Bank Ltd
Robert Sands Constellation Brands Inc. (He became executive chair in March)
Frederick Smith of FedEx Corp.
Carlos Tavares of Groupe PSA
James Whitehurst of Red Hat Inc. (International Business Machines Corp. is buying Red Hat)
Andrew Wilson of Electronic Arts Inc.

Like it? Facebook bumps up Groups feature, launches redesigned mobile app

Facebook Inc. unveiled updates to the Groups feature of its main social network, doubling down on a successful but controversial part of the big blue app--and another sign that Facebook is moving toward more private, intimate communication.
The changes, announced Tuesday at the company’s annual F8 conference in San Jose, California, make Groups a bigger part of the Facebook user experience. A new design for the Facebook mobile app highlights the Groups that users have joined, and now shows a personalized feed of activity across all the groups people are part of in a special tab.
Facebook has been pushing more aggressively into groups for the past two years as people shy away from posting things publicly and look for more intimate ways to connect with friends and family. Fast-growing meme and community groups have been a recent bright spot for Facebook amid a series of privacy scandals, and the company is also shifting its focus to deal with its own projections that people are spending less time on its namesake site.
"There are tens of millions of active groups on Facebook," the company said in a statement. "When people find the right one, it often becomes the most meaningful part of how they use Facebook. And today, more than 400 million people on Facebook belong to a group that they find meaningful."
ALSO READ: Dead may outnumber living on Facebook in 50 years: Who will own their data?
Groups, which can be public or private on the social network, can be used to help keep long-distance friends in touch, connect people with similar interests or passions, and organize events. Facebook is also making it easier to discover new Groups based on users’ interests, and will recommend relevant groups to people when they are in other parts of the app, like Marketplace, the Gaming tab and its Watch video service. People will also be able to share content directly to their Groups from the share button on the main News Feed, the same way they do with friends and family, Facebook said.
The company is even rolling out specific features for different types of groups. For example, members in health-related groups can ask the group admin to post on their behalf to better protect their privacy. Facebook is also adding more chat features for groups focused on gaming.
The growth of groups makes it more urgent for Facebook to reckon with the spammers, manipulators and hackers that exploit them to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories, among other things. In special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. election, several Facebook groups were cited as tools to support President Donald Trump’s campaign or oppose Hillary Clinton’s. More recently, Facebook groups have been blamed for amplifying anger and spreading misinformation during violent protests in France. On WhatsApp, an encrypted Facebook messaging service, private groups have been used to spread dangerous misinformation that has led to physical violence and even deaths.

ALSO READ: How a $5 bn fine could turn out to be a 'great Investment' for Facebook
In March, Zuckerberg said Facebook is undertaking a massive overhaul to focus on private, ephemeral and encrypted communication, saying that more people want to interact privately or in more intimate groups -- rather than the open-sharing model he built the company around. The company also aims to integrate Facebook’s different online properties, allowing users to send messages between WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
Facebook will unveil a slew of other new features on Tuesday. The company’s Dating service is getting a new feature called Secret Crush that lets people "express interest in" up to nine of their Facebook friends. If one of these users has opted into Facebook Dating, they will get a notification saying someone has a crush on them. If that person adds the original admirer to their Secret Crush list, Facebook makes a match -- digitally, at least. Facebook Dating, which was announced at last year’s F8, is still free to users.
Menlo Park, California-based Facebook is also trying to facilitate non-romantic relationships. A “Meet New Friends” feature will make recommendations based on some shared connection — like living in the same city or working at the same company. It’s opt-in, so users will only see other people who are open to meeting new friends, and vice versa, the company said. It will also be integrated into Facebook Groups.
The social network’s e-commerce service, called Marketplace, also got an upgrade. People who sell goods on Marketplace will soon be able to take payment directly through Facebook, including shipping costs, the company said. Today, people who sell goods have to arrange payment outside of Facebook, though they can do so via Facebook’s messaging app, Messenger.
PayPal Holdings Inc. will process payments for purchases made directly inside Marketplace, according to a company spokesperson. That’s the same payments partner Facebook’s Instagram is using to process in-app purchases. Facebook also says it is considering charging sellers a fee for facilitating these deals.
“We are evaluating a selling fee that is in line with competitive platforms to help cover payment processing and programs such as purchase protection,” a spokesperson said.

Facebook suffers third global outage in 2019, users mock social media giant

Facebook Inc. suffered its third major outage this year, with users across the world unable to access the social network or its suite of services such as Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook and Instagram were inaccessible on Sunday morning for several hours with both sites refusing to refresh, while messages were unable to be sent or received in WhatsApp or the Messenger app.

Downdetector, a site that tracks website outages, reported problems with Facebook starting as early as 6.30 am Sunday morning in New York (4 pm in India). The issues affected users in Asia, Europe and the U.S., according to the site. Facebook didn’t returned emails seeking comment on the outage.
The social media networks were back up and running in New York by 9.30.a.m (7pm in India), but irate users turned to Twitter to vent during the blackout.
“Ok... who broke #Facebook?” Dean Miller tweeted from New York. “What is wrong with Facebook,” Kularakkhita asked in a tweet from Thailand. “All Facebook services are down,” said Daniel Chernenkov in Israel.
In late January, the Instagram app crashed, and WhatsApp users worldwide were also unable to send or receive messages. Last month, Facebook faced its most widespread and persistent system outage, with users unable to access the social network for more than 12 hours.
The outages add to the woes of Facebook, already embattled by revelations it has failed to safeguard user data or stanch the spread of hate speech, fake news and other forms of disinformation.

Zuckerberg calls for global internet regulations to address harmful content

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg called for new global regulations governing the internet on Saturday, recommending overarching rules on hateful and violent content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.
In a statement that was also published as an op-ed in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg said the company is seeking regulations that would set baselines for prohibited content and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a minimum.

"We have a responsibility to keep people safe on our services," he said. "That means deciding what counts as terrorist propaganda, hate speech and more. We continually review our policies with experts, but at our scale we’ll always make mistakes and decisions that people disagree with."
Zuckerberg’s comments mark his most visible effort so far to shape the discourse around the way the company collects information, uses and disperses it around the world.
Government Probes
Facebook has been the target of probes by various governments after news broke about a year ago that it allowed the personal data of tens of millions of users to be shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Earlier this month, it came under fire for taking too long to take down a live video of a shooting in New Zealand and allowing it to be circulated across the internet. Millions of users also had personal information accessed via a recent breach.
Over the past year, lawmakers have focused greater scrutiny on the company and its immense influence, asking its executives -- including Zuckerberg -- to testify in front of Congress to explain the proliferation of misinformation, hate speech and election manipulation on the platform.
In his post, Zuckerberg proposes that "regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum." The tech industry has long said that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is vital to its ability to operate open platforms. The provision exempts companies from being liable for user-generated content.
Content Scanning
Facebook built a content-scanning system that over the years has added rules based on reactions to changes in user behavior or public uproar after an incident such as the New Zealand mass shooting. Last week, the company moved to ban content that references white nationalism or white separatism from the platform.
When the website’s users or computer systems report posts as problematic, they’re sent to one of the company’s 15,000 content moderators around the world, who are allowed to take content down only if it violates a rule.
But that process is not always precise. "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Zuckerberg wrote in Saturday’s post. "I’ve come to believe that we shouldn’t make so many important decisions about speech on our own."
Zuckerberg said Facebook would welcome common standards for verifying political actors, citing practices deployed by advertisers in many countries of verifying identities before buying political ads. He also suggested updating laws to include "divisive political issues" in addition to candidates and elections.
“Every day we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks,” he said. “But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask companies to make these judgments alone.”
The billionaire said it’d be good for the internet if more countries adopted rules such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as a common framework.
Facebook has an incentive to play a strong role in the debate around technology companies’ data regulation. The company’s rapid revenue growth and billions of dollars in profits are fueled by collecting numerous data points around its customers and making that easily available to advertisers.
Instagram Spinoff
Progressive groups have been urging the Federal Trade Commission to carve up Facebook and split off its popular services Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger into their own companies. In January, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is planning to integrate the chat tools of those products, making a breakup harder to accomplish if the services are more tightly intertwined. The move has also increased concerns about transparency into how Facebook’s data collection works.
Privacy regulations "should protect your right to choose how your information is used -- while enabling companies to use information for safety purposes and to provide services," he said. "It shouldn’t require data to be stored locally, which would make it more vulnerable to unwarranted access."
Zuckerberg also said there should also be rules guaranteeing portability of data that protects information when it moves between services.
The Facebook chief’s statement was in keeping with his efforts this year to frame the company’s more critical problems as part of broader issues for the internet at large. Zuckerberg’s willingness to embrace regulation could pave the way toward taking the thorniest problems about speech and privacy out of Facebook’s hands -- or at least give the company more time to solve them.

Lok Sabha polls: Over 30,000 political ads on Facebook since February

A total of 30,457 advertisements related to politics or issues of national importance have hit the world's largest social media network ahead of the general election. The expenditure on these advertisements was Rs 6.54 crore, shows the data from Facebook's Ad Library Report.
“This report is a weekly summary of the library and includes data for ads that have been viewed by people in India. Making this report available to the public is part of Facebook's efforts to increase transparency in advertising," according to a note on the social media giant's website.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to dominate the space. A page called ‘My First Vote For Modi’ accounts for the largest number of ads by number (2,765). Another one called ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ was second (2,429). ‘Namo Supporters’ was third with 2153 ads.
The ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ page was the highest spender on advertisements. It accounted for nearly one out of every six rupees spent so far on Facebook's political advertisement’s, according to the data. It was also the biggest spender for the latest week. ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ spent over Rs 20 lakh between March 10 and March 16, the latest week for which the data is available.
The Facebook data also provides information on the top search terms. The top search term was the BJP, followed by the Congress. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was third and Congress President Rahul Gandhi was fourth.
chart The data from Twitter shows that there have been no promoted tweets from the official Congress and BJP account in the past seven days.
Social media activity can be a major factor in elections, noted a July 2017 piece in the Journal of Political Marketing entitled, ‘Introduction: Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 US Election’.
“We can gauge the scale of social media's role in the 2016 presidential election from the data reported by the Pew Research Center (July 18, 2016). According to their survey, 44 per cent of US adults received information about the 2016 presidential election from social media. That is more than the percentage cited for either local or national print newspapers,” it said.
ALSO READ: BJP names 184 Lok Sabha candidates; Shah replaces Advani in Gandhinagar
It noted that the winning candidate, Donald Trump, had a greater presence on social media than his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
“Trump had almost 10 million Twitter followers to Clinton's 7 million, and his 9 million Facebook followers were about double her number,” it said.

Are your apps sending highly personal info to Facebook? What you must know

A news report Friday said many smartphone apps were sending highly personal information such as menstrual cycles and body weight to Facebook, without notifying users.
The Wall Street Journal report based on its own in-house tests showed that intimate data could be shared with Facebook using a tool designed to help target ads, even if app users were not members of the leading social network.
Information collected by apps included personal details regarding body weight, pregnancy status, ovulation, and home shopping, according to the Journal.
Facebook said data sharing across apps on iPhones or Android-powered devices is standard industry practice when it comes to how mobile advertising works.
Facebook spokeswoman Nissa Anklesaria said in response to an AFP inquiry: "We require app developers to be clear with their users about the information they are sharing with us, and we prohibit app developers from sending us sensitive data."
She added, "We also take steps to detect and remove data that should not be shared with us."

The Journal reported that its testing showed at least 11 popular apps that had, overall, been downloaded tens of millions of times share user information, often without disclosing the practice prominently or directly.
According to the report, California-based Facebook said that some of the shared data pinpointed appeared to violate business terms that direct app makers not to send the social network health, financial "or other categories of sensitive information."
App developers identified in the report were to get word from Facebook to stop sending data deemed sensitive, according to the Journal.

Despite privacy scams & data reaping charges, advertisers stick to Facebook

Observers around the world made a particular note that privacy scandals on Facebook, the risk of manipulation on the platform, and increasing scrutiny due to its sheer size and influence, will ultimately drag its growth and profits. It didn’t happen this time.
Facebook smashed those concerns out of the park on Wednesday, announcing December quarter earnings that beat market expectations. The social media giant posted a 30 per cent rise in revenue to $16.9 billion, while daily active users (DAUs) were up to 1.52 billion, from 1.4 billion last year.

Growth was across the board but what was more heartening for investors was an uptick in the US and Canada— mature markets where Facebook is believed to have maxed out its growth. Revenue from the region grew 32 per cent to $8.4 billion, even as DAU count stood almost flat at 186 million.
Revenue from the Asia-Pacific region, which includes India, also grew 34 per cent to $2.7 billion, as it added 78 million more DAUs.
These numbers suggest that Facebook not only maintained a robust advertising business inflow, it was also able to grow user count and juice more out of those users. Facebook said overall average revenue per user (ARPU) was $7.37, up 19 per cent, and DAUs grew 8.7 per cent, year on year.
“Daily active users on Facebook reached 1.52 billion, up 9 per cent compared to 2017, led by growth in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. This number represents approximately 66 per cent of the 2.32 billion monthly active users in Q4. MAUs grew 191 million or 9 per cent compared to last year,” Facebook chief financial officer (CFO) David Wehner said on a post-earnings conference call.
Investors rewarded Facebook as the stock ended 4.3 per cent up on Nasdaq on Wednesday, but concerns still loomed over the future. Facebook’s market capitalisation, to be noted here, is still down from its peak $509 billion in July, when the company’s worth tanked $120 billion in a single day, the steepest in the corporate history, after Facebook had lowered growth guidance.
Facebook has committed to invest more resources in fighting fake news and manipulation of the platform, as it happened in the case of Russian meddling in US elections, and Cambridge Analytica unauthorisedly harvesting user information.
The platform is also working on a plan to integrate back-end tech for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, to gather richer data on users and target ads better.

Facebook discovers bug that may have affected up to 6.8 million users

Facebook Inc said on Friday it has discovered a bug that may have affected up to 6.8 million people who used Facebook login to grant permission to third-party apps to access photos.
The company said in a blog that the problem has been fixed but that it may have affected up to 1,500 apps built by 876 developers.

Facebook said some third-party apps may have gained access to broader set of photos than usual for 12 days between September 13 to September 25.
The bug is the latest in a string of privacy problems the tech giant disclosed this year, including the massive Cambridge Analytica data scandal in April and a data breach of nearly 30 million accounts in October.
Facebook shares were down 1.3 percent at $143.07 in early trading on Friday. The Nasdaq composite index fell 0.9 percent.

Facebook ties up with Business Standard as part of subscription programme

American social media giant Facebook has tied up with Business Standard as part of its subscription programme. Facebook on Friday announced that it had added a total of 28 such partners globally, Business Standard being the only one from India.
In November 2017, the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company had stated it was developing a paywall for subscription publishers to use in ‘Instant Articles’ with the goal of improving subscriber acquisition from the social media site. This newspaper is Facebook’s first India partner for the product.
Around the world, Facebook has partnered publications including Bild, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Hearst (The Houston Chronicle and The San Francisco Chronicle), La Repubblica, Le Parisien, Spiegel, The Telegraph, Tronc (The Baltimore Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Diego Union-Tribune), and The Washington Post.

“We have seen consistent, positive performance of paywall ever since our earliest results were announced in June and today we're announcing several updates to our subscription tools, and the addition of 28 publishers to the test,’’ Facebook said in a blog. To make the subscriptions tools more accessible to a wide range of publishers, the company has redesigned the implementation approach to cut the development time by 75 per cent to a maximum of two weeks, it said. Also, the social media major is testing the ability of a publisher to allow a reader to continue reading if he shares his email address.

How Facebook, Twitter and Google can clean up their acts if they want to

Facebook is in crisis mode, but the company can take major steps to fix itself – and the global community it says it wants to promote. Facebook founder, CEO and majority shareholder Mark Zuckerberg need not wait for governments to impose regulations. If he and other industry leaders wanted to, they could make meaningful changes fairly quickly.
It wouldn’t be painless, but Facebook in particular is in a world of hurt already, facing criticism for contributing to civil unrest and sectarian turmoil around the world, delayed responses to disinformation campaigns, misleading users about data-handling policies, and efforts to discredit critics – not to mention a budding employee revolt.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social media companies are causing society-wide damage. But they tend to describe the problems as much smaller, resulting from rogue individuals and groups hijacking their systems for nefarious purposes. Our research into how social media can be exploited by manipulative political operatives, conducted with Joan Donovan at the Data & Society research institute, suggests the real problem is much larger than these companies admit.
We believe the roots lie in their extremely profitable advertising systems, which need a major overhaul. We have identified some key changes that these giant powerhouses could make right away. These moves could reduce opportunities for political manipulation and limit the harm to democratic societies around the world.
Users’ minds in the crosshairs
Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media companies have built an enormous digital influence machine powered by user tracking, targeting, testing and automated decision-making to make advertising more effective and efficient. While building this supercharged surveillance system, companies have promised users and regulators that targeted advertising is mutually beneficial for both consumers and advertisers.
In this bargain, users are supposed to receive more relevant ads. Facebook, for instance, explains that its “interest-based advertising” serves users who “want to see ads that relate to things they care about.” It’s true that these methods can identify ads that connect with users’ actual interests. But the very same data-driven techniques that tell a surfer about a new board design can also identify strategic points where people are most vulnerable to influence.
In particular, the leading social media advertising systems let political operatives experiment with different ads to see which are the most effective. They can use these tools not only to see if certain issues resonate with particular targets but also test for fears or prejudices that can be invoked to influence political behavior.
One key way to do this is to make people feel that someone else represents an emotionally charged threat to their identity. In 2016, for instance, Russia-linked operatives bought thousands of Facebook ads targeted to specific audiences suggesting Hillary Clinton had insulted their group’s dignity or threatened their safety. Some ads alleged Clinton espoused disrespect for specific occupations, like coal miners, or racial groups, like African-Americans. Others claimed she would confiscate guns or supported radical political movements seeking to overturn familiar ways of life.
Targeting political ads is not unique to online advertising, but the tools of digital ad systems are vastly more powerful than traditional mass media. Advertisers can try out several versions of an ad simultaneously and receive almost instant feedback on which ones most effectively drive specific audiences to share, like or comment on them. This digital feedback loop helps political operatives refine their tactics, probing for just the right images, words and emotions to influence very specific subgroups of citizens.
Move fast and fix things
Members of Congress and even some key Silicon Valley figures have begun discussing the need for tighter government oversight and greater accountability in digital advertising.
Change need not wait for politics.
Based on our analysis, here are some steps companies could take right away – on their own. These moves may hurt the firms’ finances, but would demonstrate serious and lasting commitment to limiting their platforms’ usefulness in political manipulation campaigns.
As their first move, social media companies could stop allowing their ad services to be used as freewheeling experimental laboratories for examining their users’ psyches. Just as marketers and academic researchers must obtain permission from their test subjects, political advertisers that run online ad experiments could get informed consent in advance from every user who is involved. Companies should ask for users’ consent in specific notifications about ad experiments and not penalize users for opting out by limiting their access to services. We suspect many users would opt out of these tests if given the choice, but in any case this policy would help draw public attention to the hidden manipulation tools that platforms offer to their real customers: the political and commercial advertisers who pay the bills.
Make targeted political advertising transparent
To increase transparency and limit the ability of special interests to secretly influence politics, social media companies could refuse to work with so-called dark money groups. All political advertisers should be required to disclose their major donors in a format users can easily access.
A new policy banning dark money ads would respond to evidence that political operatives have used impersonation and manipulative ad tactics to stir in-fighting or sow division among coalitions of their adversaries. Impersonation clearly work best when ad sponsors are able to hide their identities and motives. Anonymous ads are also more likely to violate ethical standards simply because no one fears being held responsible for them.
Make platforms more democratic
A more significant change social media companies could make would be to introduce democratic oversight of how they collect and use people’s data.
Facebook’s Zuckerberg recently took an initial step in this direction, announcing that he will create independent review panels to handle users’ appeals against the company’s removal of content it judges inappropriate. He explained that he wanted to ensure “these decisions are made in the best interests of our community and not for commercial reasons.”
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Whatever you think about this plan – and it has been greeted with plenty of skepticism – Zuckerberg’s reasoning acknowledges that because social platforms have become so central to democratic life, their own policies and design decisions require democratic accountability.
A more ambitious vision would let independent ethics panels representing diverse communities of users set enforceable policies for ethical political advertising. Similar sorts of groups are common in medicine and are emerging in artificial intelligence, among other fields. The details of how such committees operate will be critical to their success. If these committees are set up in partnership with nonprofit organizations with proven records of advocating for democratic communication and campaign finance transparency, perhaps they could help social media companies earn greater public trust by prioritizing democracy over maximizing their profits.
Anthony M. Nadler, Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies, Ursinus College and Matthew Crain, Assistant Professor of Media, Journalism and Film, Miami University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

SoftBank hires Facebook's Kirthiga Reddy to help manage $100 bn fund

SoftBank hired Facebook Inc. executive Kirthiga Reddy as a partner at its $100 billion Vision Fund, the first woman to join a group of just a dozen that oversees the world’s biggest pool of technology investments.
Reddy has joined SoftBank Investment Advisors, which manages the giant fund globally, to focus on frontier and enterprise technology globally, according to a SoftBank spokeswoman. She will work closely with Senior Managing Partner Deep Nishar, the spokeswoman added. Reddy had worked at Facebook in India and the US for eight years and serves as chair of the Stanford Business School Management Board, according to her LinkedIn page.

Reddy is joining a crew that’s helped SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son orchestrate an unprecedented wave of investment in Silicon Valley, China and beyond. The Vision Fund has committed more than $65 billion to acquire stakes in the likes of Uber Technologies Inc., WeWork Cos. and China’s Didi Chuxing. For perspective, in 2016, the entire U.S. venture capital industry invested $75.3 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
In an interview in September, Son was asked about the fact that all the Vision Fund partners were men and he said he has “no prejudice of any kind.” Vision Fund head Rajeev Misra had been leading an effort to hire more women, including at the managing partner level.
Reddy will become the fund’s first venture partner and will be investing. SoftBank said she may become what it calls an investing partner, depending in part on her desire to devote 100 percent of her time to such activity. SoftBank said that it intends to hire more female investors, particularly at the more senior levels, and it is “actively recruiting.”
Son plans to raise a new $100 billion fund every two or three years and will spend around $50 billion a year. To help oversee that money, he said that he wanted to increase the number of dealmakers from about 30 to 300 over the next few years.
Managing partners filter potential investment ideas and hold a weekly call to discuss progress. Once the prospects are vetted, they go to an internal investment committee that includes Son.

Facebook's morale, already hurt by share drop, suffers another setback

On Thursday, Facebook employees returned to work in the aftermath of yet another corporate scandal.
The night before, the New York Times had reported that Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer (COO), worked behind the scenes to prevent the company’s board and the public from understanding the full extent of Russia’s misinformation campaign on the social network.

The employees were used to the public microscope. But this time was different, employees said: The story brought readers into boardrooms and the halls of Congress where their top executives were making questionable decisions.
At lunch, workers shuffled through the staff cafeterias at the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters in quiet contemplation – more quiet than usual. But their phones were lighting up.
Most discussion at Facebook happens on the company’s workplace version of the social network, in various company groups.
But when the news is about Facebook’s leadership, some employees have found it easier to talk when they’re unnamed.
They used Blind, the anonymous employee chat app, to raise their concerns, according to screenshots obtained by Bloomberg.
ALSO READ: Facebook records a steep rise in data requests from Indian govt in 2018
On Thursday, the conversations were full of outrage. How could Sandberg – and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg – have failed to see the threat to the company? And how could they have managed all of this so poorly?
“Why does our company suck at having a moral compass?” one employee asked, in a message linked to the New York Times story.
“Zuckerberg defers too much to others on issues where he needs to make a call,’’ another said, also anonymously, in the same thread.
“I’m exhausted of cleaning up after the sloppy and careless mistakes that made so many of the people responsible for them so, so rich,” said a third.
Getting rich has been a sore subject inside Facebook recently, especially for those, like the third poster, who joined long after the 2012 IPO.