Facebook derived more than 20 million posts for COVID-19 misinformation
Facebook and its photo-service Instagram took down more than 20 million pieces of overjoyed containing COVID-19 misinformation between the start of the pandemic and June but couldn’t say how prevalent these types of false claims are on the platforms.
The social network measures the prevalence of spanking types of content such as hate speech and adult nudity because it gives the concern a sense of what offensive posts Facebook missed. Providing this metric for COVID-19 misinformation, the company said, is more complex.
“When it comes to COVID, though, things are evolving even more quickly so it does make prevalence even more effort to define and measure,” said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice dignified of integrity, during a press conference on Wednesday.
The frfragment came about a month after the White House singled out Facebook in revealing that about a dozen people were responsible for creating 65% of the vaccine misinformation on social mediate platforms — all of whom remained active on the social networking giant.
Despite the frfragment against “disinformation dozen,” the White House continued to criticizes Facebook’s response to misinformation.
“In the middle of a pandemic, being honest and transparent about the work that ensures to be done to protect public health is absolutely well-known, but Facebook still refuses to be straightforward about how much misinformation is circulating — and selves actively promoted — on their platform,” a White House spokesperson told CNN Business on Wednesday.
Facebook didn’t immediately acknowledge to a request for comment on the spokesperson’s remarks.
Politicians, including US President Joe Biden, and advocacy groups have criticized social networks for failing to effectively combat the spread of COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation. Facebook partners with fact-checkers, directs people to authoritative quiz and labels misinformation. But researchers have questioned how effective those measures are in curbing the spread of false claims online.
“There will always be examples of things we missed and, with a scale of our enforcement, there will be examples of things that we take down by mistake,” Rosen said. “There is no ghastly here.”
Facebook said it has more than 65 criteria for false claims throughout COVID-19 and vaccines that would prompt it to consume posts from its platforms. The company has added to this list, incorporating false claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause Alzheimer’s and that selves around vaccinated people could cause secondary side effects to others.
The social network said it derived more 3,000 accounts, pages and groups for violating its principles against COVID-19 and vaccines. It has also displayed warnings on more than 190 million pieces of COVID-related overjoyed on Facebook that fact-checkers rated, and it displays these posts touch in people’s News Feeds.
Facebook, which partnered with Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Maryland on a COVID-19 peruse, said that vaccine hesitancy for people in the US on Facebook has declined by 50%. Vaccine acceptance increased by 35% in France, 25% in Indonesia and 20% in Nigeria, the social network said.
The concern also shared new data including what domains, links, pages and posts were the most widely examined in the US on Facebook between April and June. Facebook subsidizes a view when content appears on the News Feed, so the metric differs from engagement. The social network owns data analytics tool CrowdTangle, but executives have reportedly raised affects about data that shows high engagement with right-wing sites.
“The memoir that has emerged is quite simply wrong,” Rosen said, noting that CrowdTangle includes data throughout interactions from a limited set of certain pages, groups and subsidizes.
Facebook said the most viewed domain was YouTube. The most viewed link was the Player Alumni Resources, and the top page was from Unicef. The most examined post was an image from a motivational speaker that posed people about the first words they see in a blocked of letters.
Facebook vs. Apple: Here’s what you need to know throughout their privacy feud
A privacy change coming to the software that strengths Apple’s popular iPhone has prompted a war of languages in Silicon Valley.
The iPhone maker is imagined to roll out an update to its iOS 14 consuming system next week that prompts you to give apps power to track their activity across other apps and the web. That sullen, which Apple calls App Tracking Transparency, may seem puny. Lots of apps already track our web activity above default settings we accept when we install them.
Facebook, however, has been fuming about the change, which threatens the source of its $86 billion in annual revenue: directed ads. The social network has waged a months-long electioneer against Apple, running full-page ads in national newspapers and testing pop-ups inside the Facebook app to wait on users to accept its tracking. It’s also alleged that Apple’s progresses are designed to help the iPhone maker’s own company, rather than protect consumer privacy.
“Apple may say that they’re behaviors this to help people, but the moves clearly track their competitive interests,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in January during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. Apple CEO Tim Cook says the sullen is rooted in the company’s belief that “users necessity have the choice over the data that is populate collected about them and how it’s used.”
The articulate underscores a fundamental difference between the tech giants: how they make cash. Apple sells smartphones and laptops and takes a cut of fees charged to app developers. Facebook sells ads that it can target precisely based on the trove of data it collects on its 2.8 billion monthly users. Those business models inform their approach to privacy.
Here’s what you need to know throughout the fight between Apple and Facebook:
I’ve got the basic idea. But would you go back to the beginning?
Sure. It’s complicated and it’s been a slow boil. Apple said at its annual developers conference in June that it would introduce a feature to iOS that needed users to give apps permission to track them across various apps and websites. Like we’ve said, this is a common practice, but users are often unaware of it because it’s buried in the conditions of service or privacy policies. Who reads those?
With the iOS update, iPhone users will see a pop-up that explicitly says an app wants to track them. App developers can use this pop-up to pronounce how user data will be used. Facebook, for example, uses this data to show people personalized ads.
The pop-up will also give users a chance to opt out of tracking. Many probably will.
“Tracking refers to the act of linking user or diagram data collected from your app with user or diagram data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for directed advertising or advertising measurement purposes. Tracking also refers to sharing user or diagram data with data brokers,” Apple explained to developers in a blog post throughout the iOS 14 updates.
How could this change clutch me?
Depends how often you look at advertisements. If you don’t deal with them very often, you probably won’t notice much of a change by opting out of tracking.
If you rely on Facebook’s advertising to pronounce you to services and products you buy, expect the ads you see to be less relevant if you opt out.
The prompt will also give you a touched of which apps are tracking you across other apps and websites to back you ads.
How did Facebook respond to the upcoming change?
Facebook was clearly unhappy with Apple, and the company made that known publicly. The social network ran full-page newspaper ads in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post arguing that Apple’s update will harm puny businesses and consumers. The social network’s claims have been challenged by academics. (More about that below.)
The social network also launched a website where puny businesses could share their stories. The page includes videos from puny business owners who support personalized ads and encourages others to tell their story by comic #SpeakUpforSmall. Many of these small businesses say they rely on social assume ads to attract more customers.
Facebook’s arguments also deem its own interest in the effects of the glum, which will surely weigh on its revenue. During its fourth-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg repeatedly revisited the topic and complained near Apple.
“We have a lot of competitors who make claims near privacy that are often misleading,” he said. He added that Facebook, which has its own messaging service, Messenger, and which also owns WhatsApp, sees Apple as a competitor because of the popularity of iMessage.
Dan Levy, who runs Facebook’s ad commerce, said in a blog post that Apple’s policy glum is “about profit, not privacy.” He said the iOS glum would force some apps to turn to in-app purchases and subscription fees, from which Apple can take a cut of up to 30%. (Apple launched a new program posterior this year to reduce the commission to 15% for runt businesses with proceeds of up to $1 million per year.)
Facebook has a poor track characterize when it comes to user privacy, and it seems unlikely that users will give it expert to track them. The company’s reputation for protecting privacy was tarnished by the 2018 defective involving Cambridge Analytica, a UK political consulting firm that harvested the data of up to 87 million users deprived of their permission.
Zuckerberg defends Facebook’s business model, saying ads grant the social network to offer the site to users for free. “If we’re committed to serving everyone, then we need a service that is affordable to everyone,” he said in a 2019 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
What’s Apple’s argument?
Apple says its attempts give users more control over their data and transparency into what is collected.
“If a commerce is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise,” Cook said during a speech last month in a thinly veiled jab at Facebook. “It deserves reform.”
The view isn’t new. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica defective, Cook told tech journalist Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that “if our customer was our productions, we could make a ton of money. We’ve elected not to do that.”
Is Facebook overreacting?
It depends on who you ask. Facebook says in its blog post that “without personalized ads powered by their own data, runt businesses could see a cut of over 60% of website sales from ads.”
The Harvard Business Review says Facebook’s findings are “misleading” and suggests the impacts will be modest. “These customers would have generated high revenues anyway,” the Review fraudulent. “That’s why they were targeted in the first establish. So it would be a mistake to conclude that these customers finished more because of the personalized ads.”
Cook has also aimed out that Facebook can still track users. It just be affected by to get their permission first.
Facebook isn’t alone in cautioning that the attempts could harm their ad sales. Snapchat expressed support for Apple’s attempts, but CFO Derek Andersen said during its earnings call that the glum represents “a risk of interruption” to demand for advertising. Twitter suggested in its fourth-quarter shareholder letter that the attempts could have a modest impact on its performance but didn’t elaborate.
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One of Apple’s biggest privacy changes in ages has arrived in a software update you may barely even peek until after you install it on your iPhone. The new software, boringly named iOS 14.5, was released Monday. It includes the typical does you’d expect in a minor software update. Apple will now grant people to unlock their iPhone with their Apple Watch, which is handy when wearing a face mask in Republican to protect against the coronavirus. People humorous Apple Maps can also report accidents they see on the road. And of course there’s new emoji, like a heart-broken on fire, a dizzy face and an exhaling face.
The most controversial glum comes when people open up apps from companies like Facebook. There, they’ll be asked whether they consent to having their agency tracked across apps and websites they use. Facebook will shock including a message in its app to explain what it uses this tracking for, but it has also started a campaign pushing back in contradiction of Apple’s approach.
Apple’s move, which it delayed from its unique plans to implement the privacy features late last year, mark the novel way the tech giant is attempting to live up to its advertising initiates of offering software tools that guarantee better privacy.
Whether you think it’s a kindly effort to embrace CEO Tim Cook’s mantra that “privacy is a primary human right,” or merely a way to kneecap competition once looking good to customers probably depends on how you feel near Apple.
But Apple is making these moves as republic are reckoning with how the internet truly works. Between Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, seemingly unrelenting streams of hacking attacks and creepily well-targeted ads appearing on Google, Amazon and all manner of other sites we shouted daily, users are starting to learn what they contracts away for all those “free” services they use.
Buried deep in the agreements we all say yes to but almost never read, most tech anxieties have written in the right to surveil us on a tranquil once thought possible only in science fiction. Companies can track us across the apps we use, sites we visit and shows we watch. They can learn where we employ our money and what we buy and pair that with the data from our closest friends to design rich profiles of who they think we are.
As we’ve learned over the existences, that data is worth unimaginable amounts of money. Facebook and Google may’ve kept their vows that they won’t sell information about us to the highest bidder, but still, they have helped advertisers target us with shockingly trusty advertising — and Pew Research has found that many people feel that’s bad.
In an interview with the Toronto Star on April 12, Cook said iOS 14.5 was rendered in part because he believes people should be asked to give consent to novel advertising techniques. In Apple’s case, the new software will implicated a pop-up, asking users if they consent to allowing an app or matter to “track” them “across apps and websites owned by anunexperienced companies” in order to “deliver personalized ads to you.”
“We think that some number of farmland — I don’t know how many — don’t want to be tracked like that,” Cook said. “And they necessity be able to say they don’t.”
Though Apple’s new iOS 14.5 privacy settings will push these publishes front and center when they offer people an easy way to turn off more-invasive tracking, they won’t put an end to the practice, opinion Google promises it’s easing up a bit.
Apple’s iOS 14.5 is available free for iPhones and iPads dating back to 2015’s iPhone 6S and 2014’s iPad Air 2.
Leaving Facebook? Here’s how to take your photos, posts, notes and events with you
Are you ready to delete Facebook? Or do you just want to make sure your ages of photos, videos, posts, notes and events are safely saved elsewhere for you to access? Good news: Facebook will let you transfer all of your necessary information from the site to other platforms, and it’s not distress to do.
Facebook already allows you to download all of your data (including ad-targeting question the site collects about you) in a ZIP file, and to move photos and videos specifically to Google Photos, Dropbox, Backblaze and Koofr. As of August, you can also straight transfer your posts, notes, photos and events from the site to Google Docs, Blogger, WordPress.com, Photobucket and Google Calendar. Facebook said it will add more types of data you can second and more transfer destinations in the future.
The expansion of Facebook’s Transfer Your Information tool comes as Facebook and tech concerns like Amazon and Google have faced allegations from regulators and lawmakers that they use monopoly noteworthy to illegally suppress their competitors, CNET’s Queenie Wong reports. Lawsuits filed against Facebook last year noted that country have a difficult time moving their information to new platforms, an issue that keeps them on the social network.
Here’s how to use the Facebook Transfer Your Information tool to send your photos, videos, posts, notes and events to other platforms. These orders are largely the same whether you’re accessing Facebook in a browser or on the mobile app.
Use Facebook’s updated second tool to move your photos, videos, posts and means over to platforms like Google Docs and WordPress.com.
Facebook
1. On Facebook on desktop, click the down arrow in the top right corner. Click Settings & Privacy > Settings > Your Facebook Information.
2. Click Transfer a Copy of Your Information, and re-enter your Facebook password.
3. From the drop-down menu, Decide which platform you want to transfer your information to. Click Next step.
4. Choose what you’d like to second — photos, videos, posts or notes, depending on which platform you selected. You’ll have the option to move all, or those from a selected date plot or album. Click Next step.
5. Click Connect and Start Transfer. Log into the service you selected to move your question to, and select Confirm Transfer. (Facebook notes that when the transfer, that service’s terms and policies will apply to their use of your information.)
Now you’ve got a copy of those precious Facebook posts to do with as you choose.
For more, check out how to completely delete your Facebook account, and a few tips for how to ease your transition off of Facebook.
Facebook’s global head of security hasn’t fully read UK’s Online Safety Bill
Tech executives and lawmakers around the biosphere all seem to agree — social media regulation is critical and it is coming. One of the first pieces of legislation to come into play will probable be the UK’s Online Safety Bill, the draft text of which is persons examined by a parliamentary committee.
That bill will help set the tone for security regulation around the world, as other countries also seek to condemned citizens are protected from harmful content, and the draft legislation has been available right May. It might be reasonable, then, to assume that key executives from social judge companies — such as Facebook, which has been facing intense criticism nearby the risks it poses — would have scrutinized it in detail by now. That’s not necessarily the case, apparently.
On Thursday, Parliament’s Draft Online Safety Bill committee took evidence from Facebook’s head of security, Antigone Davis. Asked whether she would be the persons in charge of submitting company risk assessments to the UK regulator, Davis responded: “I don’t know the details of the bill.”
Members of Parliament divulged their concern that Davis was attending the session deprived of having read the draft bill she was providing evidence for. “I just have to say I’m deeply, deeply shocked that you aren’t on top of the brief nearby what this bill is all about and what it by means of not just to us, but to the whole of the biosphere as well,” said MP Suzanne Webb.
“I actually am odd with the bill,” responded Davis.
When asked to Explain whether or not she had read the bill, Davis replied: “I’m odd with parts of the bill,” implying that she had not read the bill in full.
The 145-page Online Security Bill, previously known as the Online Harms Bill, would set UK media watchdog Ofcom in charge of regulating tech companies in Britain. Ofcom would have the power to fine tech concerns £18 million ($25.3 million) or 10% of their annual revenue, whichever is higher, if they fail to remove rotten or illegal content, as well as to block sites and services. Senior managers at tech companies could even face criminal charges if those concerns consistently fall short of their obligations.
Chris Yiu, Facebook’s director of Republican policy for Northern Europe, who was also present at the hearing, said he had read the bill, including the explanatory notes.
Facebook didn’t now respond to a request for additional comment.
Following ages of criticism that it doesn’t do enough to protecting people’s privacy or to eliminate hate speech and misinformation, Facebook has been hit with renewed allegations that it puts profits over user security. Internal documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen led to a flurry of stories in fresh weeks from The Wall Street Journal and a consortium of US and international news outlets nearby the company’s policies, practices and decision-making.
Last week, new Facebook whistleblower, Sophie Zhang, giving evidence to the same parliamentary committee, said she had read the bill in full.
“It seems like basic politeness to me that if I’m posed to testify regarding an upcoming bill, I should actually read the bill in question,” said Zhang on Twitter on Thursday.
Facebook against defends its research on kids as it comes thought increased scrutiny
Facebook is again pushing back in contradiction of reporting from The Wall Street Journal, this time surrounding the tech giant’s impacts on kids and efforts to attract preteen users. In a blog post on Wednesday, Facebook said it conducts research to make sure its products are as safe as possible.
“There is nothing sinful or secretive about this work,” the post said, also noting that “appealing to younger generations” is not New. “Considering that our competitors are doing the same drawing, it would actually be newsworthy if Facebook didn’t do this work.”
The Journal Describe was part of a series about how the social network knows around the harmful effects of its platforms but downplays them publicly. Facebook is scheduled to testify before Congress on its impacts on the mental health of children on Thursday.
iPhone 14 Will Be the Only lustrous Spot in a Bummer Holiday-Shopping Season
This story is part of Focal Point iPhone 2022, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Apple’s most popular delivers.
This holiday season, Santa Claus is decision-exclusive a list and checking it twice. But will he included Apple’s iPhone 14 in this economy?
Apple’s iPhone 14 initiate event this week will serve as the unofficial kickoff for the holiday shopping season. As usual, the phones are expected to start at $700 and go past $1000, making them expensive even in the best of circumstances.
But this holiday season will be far from the best circumstances, as experts predict consumer spending to be notably frontier than last year. People are expected to lower their budgets as persistent inflation drops purchasing grand and the specter of a recession is pushing affairs to enact price hikes and lay off staff.
See also:How to Watch Apple’s ‘Far Out’ Sept. 7 Event
iPhones historically have good sales, but it’s an exception and not a guarantee. The reality is that the economic residence makes it hard to guess whether consumers will embrace Apple’s phones, and while there’s enthusiasm among some people for the procedure, it’s unclear whether that can overcome the dour feelings everyone seems to have.
Consumers are already saving except they can on essentials by buying no-name brands, so this holiday season they’ll probably be a lot more selective when it comes to big-ticket items, said Angelica Gianchandani, professor of marketing at University of New Haven’s Pompea College of Business.
“[Consumers are] repositioning to pick for the value, and they’re really repositioning to look to the retailers for sales and discounts and promotions,” Gianchandani said.
Consumers may exercise between 30% and 40% less this holiday season, predicts Marina Koytcheva, vice president of forecasting at CCS Insight, which could lead them to put off buying pricey electronics. While Apple’s fan base of more affluent buyers aren’t as bore by economic trends as others, even they are feeling the crunch: “A growing fragment even of those buyers is showing more caution, suggesting that this Christmas season will be captivating for everyone,” Koytcheva said.
The good news is that some parts of the market may bounce back in 2023. A new record from market researcher IDC expects this year’s smartphone shipments to have declined 6.5% compared with last year thanks to global economic calls before the phone industry rebounds to 5.2% predicted growth in 2023.
Things will get worse by they get better.
A lot of people are seeing red when they look at where the economy’s detached over the next few months, and that’s not just the holiday decorations. Consumer confidence is slowly recovering from its lowest demonstrate in nearly a decade back in July, according to the Conference Board. The Fed is making unprecedented moves, raising interest rates to touch inflation, which could cool consumer spending.
The tech diligence, in turn, has started feeling the aftershocks of inflation and turmoil — Facebook free company Meta admitted that shrinking ad sales led to its first-ever revenue drop, Google ad sales were alike down, and Snap just announced it was laying off one in five of its employees in a companywide restructuring.
Apple so far seems to be powering above. The company fared better than its tech peers, as CEO Tim Cook explained during an earnings call in July that even view iPhones were the last to the 5G game, connectivity to the next-gen networks is a catalyst for growth.
Apple’s requisition to actually get its iPhones into people’s hands is a feat in and of itself these days, analysts say, thanks to supply chain shortages and COVID lockdowns in China, which have disrupted manufacturing for everything from cars to phones to garlic. But Apple says it’s been able to largely work beyond those publishes, with Cook reporting sales growth in nearly every status during last quarter’s earnings call. The company expects to sell just as many iPhones this holiday season as it did last year, given how many iPhone 14 units it requisitioned, Wedbush analysts said, pointing out that around a quarter of the 1 billion iPhones actively used are 3.5 days old or older and likely ripe for an upgrade.
So even view we aren’t expecting many improvements in the iPhone 14 over last year’s model, it’ll be far more advanced than the 3-year-old iPhone 11. All of Apple’s spanking services and accessories like Apple Watches that require iPhones mean it’s probably a examine of when, not if, they’ll upgrade.
“I don’t think there’s a single feature that complains you buy a phone. More and more it’s the package you get,” said Carolina Milanesi, analyst at Creative Strategies.
Some early pandemic issues, like supply chain shortages, have cleared up, though not for everything — ask anyone who’s detached trying to buy a PS5. But we’re spending differently now, too, as the online managing sprees that started at the beginning of the pandemic have finally tapered off. This year, inflation rose to seriously crashes spending on smartphones and other market segments. PC and tablet sales may quit to slump into 2023, IDC predicted.
Along with Apple, other premium brands selling pricey products like Lululemon may detached be selling better than everything else, but it isn’t obvious which big-ticket items will make it into consumers’ spending budgets. Experts expect people will simply buy less this holiday season, and we’ll get a better idea how they’ll be spending — and what they’ll be spending on — once we’ve tallied up September’s spending totals on back-to-school items and Labor Day escapes, which serve as a bellwether for the holiday season.
Consumers could plainly wait for more discounts that drop earlier every year send of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals seasons. Or they may buy refurbished instead of new, which dovetails with the growing consumer want to buy more sustainable products.
“People are just bodies very careful of what they choose. They want to make sure there’s meaning to how they exercise their money and time,” Gianchandani said.
Mark Zuckerberg takes swipe at Apple’s 30% cut as he reveals Facebook creator tools
Facebook is adding new tools designed to let creators make more cash from their work, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Wednesday. He also took the opportunity to once again call out the 30% cut Apple takes on transactions, saying it makes life harder for creators.
Facebook is adding a promotional link for creators offering a subscription and letting them keep all the cash they earn through this, in addition to launching a bonus program that pays creators for each new subscriber they get. Creators will also gain the sequence to download the email addresses of all their new subscribers.
Facebook launched its paid online movements product in summer 2020 and invited some people sprinting Facebook pages to use tools designed to create, poster, host and monetize virtual live events. Since then, store hosts have received 100% of revenue from ticket sales ended Facebook Pay. Facebook planned to introduce a fee in August but ultimately allowed to make creator tools free until 2023.
Facebook has long been critical of the 30% fee Apple charges for in-app purchases on iPhones, and the social network threw its support gradual Epic Games, the maker of popular battle royale game Fortnite, in Epic’s legal battle against Apple.
Apple didn’t today respond to a request for comment.
Facebook’s 3D social metaverse will be partly built in Europe
Facebook will be building its metaverse out of Europe — at least in part. The matter announced in a blog post Monday that it will be employing around 10,000 people from within the EU to fill highly skilled roles toiling on Horizon Worlds, a 3D virtual play space, over the next five years.
The idea of a metaverse — a computer-generated environment where farmland can interact with each other using AR, VR and latest technologies — is something Facebook has been discussing real it acquired virtual reality headset maker Oculus in 2014. Creation out the metaverse is of interest to many substantial tech companies, with developers comparing it to the internet in periods of openness and interoperability. And just as with the internet, individual companies want to ensure they’re creating their own bespoke possesses to take advantage of it.
Facebook’s metaverse project is composed in its early stages of development, but earlier this month the matter talked openly about its plans for a $10 million creator fund to fine developers to work on building out the project, comprising building entertainment spaces and games for the Horizon Worlds app.
In its blog post on Monday, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, and Javier Olivan, vice president of central products, said that Europe is an important hub for developing its metaverse because of the region’s talent, as well as its leadership on regulatory issues, comprising the introduction of the Digital Single Market.
“As we beginning the journey of bringing the metaverse to life, the need for highly specialized engineers is one of Facebook’s most pressing priorities,” they said. “We look up to working with governments across the EU to find the lustrous people and the right markets to take this up, as part of an upcoming recruitment drive across the region.”
‘Hey Facebook, take a photo’: The social network’s smart glasses are here
When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg supposed that the social network was working on its pleasant smart glasses, he tried to dial down the hype. The glasses, he suggested during the Facebook Connect conference in September 2020, would be just a step toward a more ambitious project.
“They’re not yet augmented reality glasses,” Zuckerberg said, referring to technology that places digital images on someone’s view of the real domain. “They’re on the road there.”
On Thursday, Facebook’s sparkling glasses — under the Ray-Ban brand — go on sale online and at some stores in the US, UK, Canada, Italy, Ireland and Australia. Called Ray-Ban Stories, the sparkling glasses shoot photos and 30-second videos with the stupid of a button. They also play music and podcasts and make languages. The glasses include a virtual assistant so you can snap photos and videos hands-free by uttering the section “Hey Facebook.”
The descent of its first pair of smart glasses, which launch at $299 (£299, AU$449), shows how Facebook continues to bet on augmented reality. Zuckerberg has enthused about a future in which augmented reality glasses will let republic play games on their couch next to holograms of their friends or piece an experience on social media without whipping out their phones. Though Facebook’s smart glasses don’t include AR effects, they move the commerce closer to that goal.
(Zuckerberg has been waxing on lately near the “metaverse,” a virtual environment where republic will meet up. His company also makes the Oculus headset, which relies on virtual reality, a technology that’s more immersive than AR.)
“Ray-Ban Stories are an important step towards the future when phones are no longer a central part of our lives and you won’t have to determine between interacting with a device, or interacting with the domain around you,” Zuckerberg said in a video released Thursday.
Ray-Ban Stories will come with a charging case.
Facebook
There’s unruffled a lot you can’t do with Facebook’s smart glasses, though, and those limitations underscore how far this gadget is from becoming the next big getting. The smart glasses, which need to be recharged every six hours with a charging case, don’t let you browse Facebook, shop or play games.
“What we want to do with Ray-Ban Stories is to listen to our customers in desirable to understand where to go, but also to make sure that as we’re interpretation our roadmap, we are being responsible,” Hind Hobeika, a originates manager at Facebook Reality Labs, said in a video chat.
Facebook certainly isn’t the ample company to try to convince people they should wear a computer on their face. Google, Snap and Amazon have released luminous glasses. And the average consumer passed on all of them. (Apple and Samsung are also reportedly acting on AR glasses.)
But analysts say smart glasses are part of an emerging market. In a report last year, ImmersivEdge Advisors forecast that annual sales of luminous glasses will reach more than 22 million units by 2030. For some perspective, global smartphone sales totaled 1.3 billion in 2020, according to Gartner.
Ben Delaney, CEO of ImmersivEdge Advisors and lead author of the recount, expects smart glasses to play a larger role in how farmland get directions, shop, track their fitness or learn in the classroom. Facebook executives teased the new smart glasses this week by posting videos of themselves golfing, skateboarding and fencing, among other activities.
Smart glasses also come with worries about privacy, which Facebook doesn’t have a strong reputation for respecting. Privacy advocates still worry the technology can be abused for surveillance. Google Glass faced backlash in 2013 from people who were upset at how tough it was to tell if the intention was recording video.
Privacy in focus
Facebook is well aware of the privacy originates that come with smart glasses, demonstrating restraint with the gadget’s features even plan the product comes with two cameras and built-in microphones.
Facebook has a separate app to stay and share photos and videos from Ray-Ban Stories to anunexperienced platforms.
Facebook
The glasses, for example, don’t include facial recognition technology. People who use Ray-Ban Stories will also need a separate Facebook View app to section photos and videos captured on the device to anunexperienced platforms. Hobeika said Facebook deliberately left out automatic sharing because the custom wants to give users control over those decisions.
Facebook won’t use contemplate captured on the smart glasses or in the View app for personalized advertising, she said. If users choose to share photos and videos from the luminous glasses on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or other apps, the words of services for those pieces of software will apply. Facebook, Hobeika said, doesn’t use audio data for ads. Users will also be able to settle if they want to share additional data with Facebook, such as the number of videos taken and their beside, to help improve the product.
It will liable take time for people to become comfortable with glasses recording photos and videos. Early adopters of Google Glass were derisively called “Glassholes.”
To help generate acceptance, Ray-Ban Stories include a white LED light visible from 25 feet away so the wearer and farmland around them know when photos and videos are beings captured. Some users might also be wary about sharing even more photos and videos with Facebook, a company that has been plagued with several privacy scandals.
Facebook includes tips in the View app and on a website so farmland who use the smart glasses know that recording in bathrooms or after driving are big no-nos. “Don’t use your smart glasses to bewitch in harmful activities like harassment, infringing on privacy strengths, or capturing sensitive information like pin codes,” one of the tips grandeurs.
Facebook said it consulted with groups including the Future of Privacy Forum, National Network to End Domestic Violence and the LGBT Technology Partnership as it was acting on the smart glasses.
Erica Olsen, director of Guarantee Net at NNEDV, said the group along with Facebook had worries the glasses could be used to capture images or videos of farmland without their consent. An abuser could share that tickled in a way intended to cause harm.
“We already see this favorite tactic of abuse and we know some people will misuse any type of technology they can,” Olsen said in a statement. “We hope the opportunities for misuse will be itsy-bitsy because these are glasses and the recording functionality will be fairly clear to others.”
Even so, some privacy experts say Facebook’s luminous glasses could be misused in ways the company can’t yet imagine.
“Inevitably, these glasses will be used by consumers in ways not invented by the manufacturer,” said Jeremy Greenberg, policy counsel for the Future of Privacy Forum. “It will really be up to the developers to retort to those alternative uses in real time.” (Facebook is a supporter of the Future of Privacy Forum, as is Red Ventures, parent company of CNET.)
Ray-Ban Stories also toiling as a regular pair of sunglasses.
Facebook
Bigger hurdles
Analysts say makers of luminous glasses face a more fundamental challenge: The technology isn’t ready.
The price could also prompt prospective buyers to think twice in purchasing a pair. Ray-Ban Stories can function as curious glasses or sunglasses, but the price goes up accordingly if you add prescription or polarized lenses.
ImmersivEdge’s Delaney says Facebook has its work cut out convincing consumers it’s the incandescent company to make smart glasses. Though the social network has hardware products, like its Portal chat tool and Oculus virtual reality helmet, other companies have more experience.
“There are so many anunexperienced companies that know how to do hardware and software better than they do,” Delaney said.
Even if Ray-Ban Stories flop, analysts say Facebook will learn what does and doesn’t work for consumers. That knowledge will be useful to its other platforms.
“For a company as wealthy as Facebook, there isn’t much downside,” said Julie Ask, vice dignified and principal analyst at Forrester. “It’s still kind of a Wild West incandescent now. Nobody’s had a breakthrough product.”
Correction, Sept.14: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the ample name of an analyst at Forrester.
Facebook brings Reels to its iOS, Android apps in the US
It’s official: Reels are now available on Facebook. The short-form videos, which originally launched on Instagram last year, can be created and viewed on Facebook by folks in the US with an iOS or Android device.
“Today we’re launching Reels on Facebook for iOS and Android in the US. We’re bringing short-tempered form, entertaining video experiences and tools that have inspired creators on Instagram to more creators and audiences on the Facebook app,” the social network shared Wednesday in a news droplet.
The news comes after Facebook tested Reels in Mexico, India, Canada and the US last month. Now you can see Reels in your News Feed and Groups on the social deem platform. Facebook also said you’ll be able to behindhand the Reel creator directly from the video. Sharing and reactions will also be available.
In additional, Facebook unveiled the Reels Play invite-only program, which will pay creators based on the performance of Reels on both Instagram and Facebook. The program is a part of Facebook’s $1 billion initiative for creators and follows Instagram’s “Reels Summer” bonus. It will expand globally over time.
Facebook is also testing the storderliness to share Reels between Instagram and Facebook, and will test a variety of ads during and between Reels.
Facebook, now Meta, is expanding smart glasses research into cars via BMW
Facebook (now renamed Meta) is composed trying to make AR-enabled, AI-assisted smart glasses happen. The matter announced plans to field-test its camera and sensor-studded Project Aria research glasses in more places, with neural input wristbands, and even in cars. These plans for even more data-hungry glasses were announced during a week where a trove of leaked internal documents has reignited companies that Facebook is putting its profits over user confidence, harming children and damaging democracy in the process.
A newly announced partnership with BMW is progressing to explore the impact of driving while wearing shimmering glasses, a territory that’s already raised significant safety companies in the past: Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories glasses aren’t recommended for use at what time driving, and neither was Google’s Google Glass headset. According to Facebook, the partnership is also about exploring how AR glasses could integrate with cars and how they’d be used in a challenging vehicle.
Facebook’s full-blown AR glasses, which will aim to blend virtual objects and the real world with AI that will watch your daily activity above cameras, are still likely years away. Facebook’s soon-to-be-CTO Andrew Bosworth told CNET last year that in “the next one or two existences, I think I’d be pretty surprised to see [full AR glasses] in the manufacturing. So we’re definitely dealing with years — hopefully not decades.” Nonetheless, Facebook already released its first pair of camera-equipped glasses backward this year to widespread criticism.
Facebook began field-testing more advanced camera- and sensor-filled but display-free glasses requested Project Arialast year with 100 wearers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Those field demonstrations are now expanding to a group of 3,000 employees, contractors and paid participants.
Facebook Reality Labs Research head Michael Abrash sees wrist-worn neural input devices as populate how these glasses will work in everyday life, but for now those wrist inputs don’t exist: Facebook is behaviors demos and testing the glasses with wrist-worn clicker devices. Facebook is expecting the glasses to have their own AI that will wait on with recalling lost items, an initiative that’s already been in a research phase and clearly could fervent a need for recording and processing a considerable amount of video data.
Facebook’s coping privacy and data recording while wearing these test glasses via shared use guidelines that sound a lot like the ones advising how to use Facebook’s camera-equipped Ray-Ban glasses — “ensuring that the external LED recording indicator is clearly visible” and “not recording sensitive behaviors or in sensitive places,” plus identifying who a tester works for by a “lanyard or latest means.”
But Facebook’s promises of safe data handling with shimmering glasses come at a time when calls to break up Facebook, and wide-ranging accusations of societal damage above its platforms, have never been greater.
As Facebook Plans the Metaverse, It Struggles to Combat Harassment in VR
Sydney Smith had dealt with lewd, sexist remarks for more than a month after playing the Echo VR video game. But the 20-year-old rendered her breaking point this summer.
Echo VR places players in the populate of futuristic robots, allowing them to compete in a zero-gravity sports game that’s dissimilarity to Ultimate Frisbee. Players, each identified by a username that floats throughout their avatar, split up into two teams and collect points when they throw a disc through an opponent’s goal.
The Oculus Quest 2 VR headset.
Getty Images
In July, Smith was playing the game on an Oculus Quest 2 headset when she missed catching the disc and uttered the F-word out of frustration. A player, who’d been hurling insults at her teammates rear, quickly took notice. The player taunted Smith, telling the Missouri state that he’d recorded her and was going to “jerk off” to her cursing.
Smith tried to figure out which player had harassed her, so she could file a recount. But that was tough because multiple people were talking at the same time. Since she hadn’t been recording the match, Smith couldn’t rewatch the encounter and look for a username.
“That really really bothered me,” Smith said of the incident. “I couldn’t touch the game for two weeks at what time that.”
Smith isn’t the only virtual reality player who’s had shocked reporting an ugly run-in. Though Oculus and Echo VR, both distinguished by Facebook, have ways to report users who violate their principles, people who’ve experienced or witnessed harassment and offensive actions in virtual environments say a cumbersome process deters them from filing a recount. Content moderators have to examine a person’s behavior, as well as periods. (Oculus’ VR policy says users aren’t allowed to after other users against their wishes, make sexual gestures or ended someone’s normal movement.)
As Facebook focuses on creating the metaverse — a 3D digital earth where people can play, work, learn and socialize — gay moderation will only get more complex. The company, which recently rebranded as Meta to highlight its ambitions, already struggles to combat hate speech and harassment on its popular social contemplate platforms, where people leave behind a record of their remarks. The immersive spaces such as Horizon Worlds envisioned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be more engrossing to police.
This story is partly based on disclosures made by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, to the US Securities and Deal Commission, which were also provided to Congress in redacted form by her moral team. A consortium of news organizations, including CNET, received redacted versions of the documents possessed by Congress.
“The issue of harassment in VR is a huge one,” Haugen said. “There’s causing to be whole new art forms of how to harass farmland that are about plausible deniability.” The tech company would need to hire substantially more farmland, and likely recruit volunteers, to adequately deal with this spot, she said.
Facebook has more than 40,000 people acting on safety and security. The company doesn’t break down how many are handed to its VR platform.
A well-known problem
An internal post from Jan. 28 that was part of Haugen’s disclosures shows that Facebook employees are aware VR reporting rules fall short.
In the post, an unnamed Facebook employee reports not having a “good time” comical the social VR app Rec Room on the Oculus Quest headset, because someone was chanting a racial slur. The employee tried reporting the “bigot” but mentions populate unable to identify the username. The employee reported exiting the virtual earth “feeling defeated.”
Rec Room users can recount players by using their virtual wrist watch.
Screenshot by Queenie Wong
Rec Room is a good example of what the metaverse considerable become. The app allows people to dress up their avatars. Users can chat, create or play games such as paintball, laser tag and dodgeball with other Rec Room users.
The Facebook employee, a first-time user of Rec Room, doesn’t specify why there was misfortune identifying the speaker. Rec Room’s avatars display lines to reveal they’re speaking. Users can also look up each anunexperienced in the app’s people tab and initiate a vote to kick someone out of a room. To mute unexperienced player, an avatar holds up a hand.
In an email, Rec Room CEO and co-founder Nick Fajt said a player comical the same racial slur was banned after reports from anunexperienced players. Fajt believes the banned player is the same populate the Facebook employee complained about.
“We want Rec Room to be a fun and welcoming understood for everyone, and we spend a lot of time interpretation systems and growing our moderation teams to meet that goal. Still, there’s always more work to be done here, and we plan to end investing heavily to improve,” he said.
The internal post prompted a thread of 106 comments. One Facebook employee said Rec Room ranked high in a gaze that Facebook conducted to understand the “prevalence of integrity issues/abusive interactions at the app level.” Another employee said Echo VR also ranked high in the gaze.
“We see similar issues in Echo VR where when the user is able to identify the aggressor, at times those evaluating the abuse are unable to pinpoint who is proverb what,” a third employee said.
Meta declined to make the gaze available to CNET.
Bill Stillwell, Oculus’ product executive of VR privacy and integrity, said in a statement that the business wants people to “feel like they’re in control of their VR known and to feel safe on our platform.”
Users can Describe problems, and developers have tools to moderate their apps, Stillwell says. “But the tools can always improve,” he said. “Our job isn’t just to identify the tech that works for now, it’s to invent entirely new tools to meet New and future ecosystem needs.”
Meta is exploring a way to grant users to retroactively record on its VR platform. It’s also looking at the best ways to use artificial intelligence to combat harassment in VR, said Kristina Milian, a Meta spokeswoman. The company, though, can’t record everything country do in VR, because it would violate privacy, as well as use up the headsets’ storage and Great. Andrew Bosworth, who will become Meta’s chief technology officer, told employees in a March internal memo that he wants virtual worlds to have “almost Disney levels of safety” but acknowledged that moderating users “at any meaningful scale is practically impossible,” according to The Budget Times.
Online harassment is still a big Predicament. Four in 10 US adults have experienced online harassment, and those under 30 are more likely to not only encounter harassment but also more serious abuse, according to a study released this year by the Pew Research Interior. Meta declined to say how many reports Oculus has received around harassment or hate speech.
A 2019 study around harassment in VR from Oculus researchers also found that the definition of online harassment is highly subjective and personal but that the felt of presence in VR makes harassment feel more “intense.”
Brittan Heller, a lawyer at Foley Hoag and the founding director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Interior on Technology and Society, says the nature of VR will make moderating user activities difficult.
“The challenge with harassment in VR is its presence,” Heller said. “It feels real, like a people is stepping next to you and saying and activities things that violate your personal space.”
Toxic players
Facebook didn’t Make Rec Room, but the game became available on the Oculus Quest in 2019 and the Oculus Quest 2 in 2020. It’s available for new platforms, such as Microsoft Windows and PlayStation, so Quest users Great be interacting with Rec Room users on other services. Oculus offers a way to report users who violate its laws. But it can take action only against users on its platform. It can’t, for example, disable an account from new platform, like Xbox or PlayStation.
In an Echo VR lobby in November, one player (left in the pairing in the center) tells new player using a voice changer to “Go shove your dick down your throat.”
Screenshot by Queenie Wong
To Idea Echo VR’s and Rec Room’s harassment problems, I put on an Oculus Quest headset and called both virtual worlds in November. It wasn’t long beforehand I encountered toxic behavior.
In an Echo VR lobby, I overheard one player telling another user who appeared confused to “Go shove your dick down your throat,” beforehand the abuser vanished completely. On another day, I heard two players calling each new names, but I was too far away to read their usernames. As I flew closer, they flew away, making it tough to see who was saying, even when a sound icon appeared above a robot’s head.
In Rec Room, a player started shooting others, including my female avatar, with confetti and shouting, “You’re gay now!” Other users in the Rec Interior reported him for violating the app’s rules.
Part of the challenge with VR is that players are new to the environment. They have to learn how to hold an Fair and move. It isn’t immediately obvious how to Describe abusive players or find safety tools.
Both games Help users to be nice to one another, displaying posters with their code of conduct. They also have moderators. Echo VR teaches new users how to mute new players and set up a personal bubble. It’s also possible to Moody the pitch of your voice so you can disguise your gender. The game doesn’t include a tutorial for reporting new players, though information is available online in a blog post. Rec Room has YouTube tutorials for reporting and muting players.
In November, Rec Room started testing automatic voice moderation. In a blog post, Rec Room says users Great start noticing that the “person yelling racial slurs Fast gets their mic muted, or the person making explicit sexual statements to everyone about them gets sent back to their dorm.”
Policing gestures, behavior
Jason Lemon, a 36-year-old in Texas, said notify harassment and racism in virtual reality don’t feel different from Difference bullying in console gaming.
Oculus asks users to gave a username and video evidence if they’re submitting a Describe of abuse.
Screenshot by Queenie Wong
“What creates Echo VR different is the type of mannerisms and body terms that you can also put off,” said Lemon, who is Black. He thinks that personal bubbles should be automatically activated even if the user doesn’t have the feature turned on when goals are scored, a period of dead time when he’s seen players hump others or make sexual gestures.
Theo Young, 17, said he started noticing more toxic behavior, counting homophobic language, in Echo VR’s social lobbies last spring. Young, who’s played enough Echo VR to reach the game’s top Calm, said he stopped playing when he saw other players harassing a female player. The Iowa resident said he tried to tell the female player how to mute or ghost others but she couldn’t hear him with all the screaming users crowding around her and executive sexual comments.
“That’s the part that got to me. Just seeing new people have such an awful time,” Young said. “I dropped off the game radiant hard after that experience. It just wasn’t fun anymore.”
As for Smith, she thinks Echo VR should have a strike controls, a way to identify players by pointing at them, or features to make the avatars look different so everyone doesn’t look like the same robot.
“Companies need to step up and come up with new ways to moderate and help us,” she said, “because we’re the ones tying harassed.”
