TWEAKS AND UPDATES

SecurityWeek: Meta Offers Rewards for Flaws Allowing Attackers to Bypass Integrity Checks. “Facebook parent company Meta today announced that its bug bounty program will cover vulnerabilities that can be exploited to bypass integrity safeguards. The program expansion, the company says, is meant to steer researchers’ attention to security issues that attackers may exploit to bypass specific integrity checks meant to limit abuse behaviors.”

Bloomberg: Facebook Is Pulling Back From Its Foray Into Podcasting. “Facebook’s waning interest in podcasting is a disappointment for some in the growing industry because the scale of its platform offers a large potential audience, and with it, the possibility of more advertising revenue. Instead, parent company Meta Platforms Inc. is turning its attention to the metaverse and short-video projects amid increasing competition and a precipitous drop in its stock price.”

CNET: Meta Begins Monetizing Its Metaverse. “Magic butterfly wings that give you the power of floating across your favorite meditative VR world? Those can be had, at a price. Meta’s starting to unlock monetization in its open-world metaverse VR app, Horizon Worlds, beginning with items you’ll be able to buy in individual worlds. But these items won’t be things you can take with you to other worlds… at least, not yet.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Facebook ‘lacks willpower’ to tackle misinformation in Africa. “Facebook has been accused of failing to invest sufficiently to combat misinformation as it pursues rapid growth in Africa, where the Covid pandemic has highlighted the outsize role played by social media in online discourse. Traditional media and governments have an increasingly limited ability to control information flows on the continent, as social media platforms including Facebook seek to expand rapidly, though largely without fanfare.”

The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg’s Augmented Reality. “Zuckerberg may have big hopes for smart glasses, but the near-term reality of the technology is far less lofty. The demonstrations during Zuckerberg’s Meta presentation, such as playing virtual chess on a real table with someone’s avatar, weren’t based on any functioning hardware or software. And Meta doesn’t yet have a working, wearable prototype of its planned AR glasses but rather a stationary demonstration that sits on a table.”

Gizmodo: Job Ad for Bureau of Prisons Touts Amazing Number of Mental Illnesses in U.S. Prison System. “The U.S. Bureau of Prisons purchased a number of Facebook ads recently in an attempt to hire new people in a variety of roles throughout the country. But one ad in particular is catching attention on social media for how bleak it seems. The Bureau of Prisons seems to be using the number of mental illnesses in the U.S. prison system as a career opportunity for any psychologists who happen to be job hunting right now.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Advocate: He livestreamed a killing. Facebook alerted police, deleted the video, but duplicates spread.. “One of the videos was viewed 16,000 times and shared 191 more. Another logged 56,000 views and 2,300 shares. There were at least 10, all showing Janice David being stabbed to death…. despite Meta’s efforts to stop the footage from circulating, clips of the video reposted by other users remained on Facebook for at least 24 hours after [Earl Lee] Johnson’s arrest. They ranged in length from 23 seconds to nearly two minutes.”

Times of Malta: Hackers target politicians’ social media accounts, police issue warning. “The police said they had received reports of fake social media accounts pretending to belong to politicians on Saturday, days after advising users to take extra precautions online. Politicians and individuals who are in the public eye have fallen victim to hackers, and fake Instagram and Facebook accounts have been set up to emulate them, the police said. No further details were given.”

TechCrunch: Meta subpoenaed tiny rival Dispo to prove it isn’t a monopoly. “On a quest to show the FTC that it isn’t a monopoly, Meta flooded a wide swath of major tech companies with subpoenas last month. But the company is apparently demanding documents from much smaller ‘rivals’ too.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Coda: How Silicon Valley is helping Putin and other tyrants win the information war. “From Afghanistan to Ukraine, and much of the rest of the non-English speaking world, journalists are losing their voice. Not only because of the increasingly oppressive governments that target them, but also because policies created in Silicon Valley are helping oppressors of free speech peddle disinformation.”

The Guardian: A barrage of assault, racism and rape jokes: my nightmare trip into the metaverse. “Before I went into the metaverse, I’d read a few articles on it and people didn’t have the nicest things to say. But I wanted to see if that was true, or whether people were just trying to find negativity. I’m a heavy user of social media, so a 3D virtual space where you can interact with other people – where artists are doing concerts and fashion houses are doing shows? That’s exciting to me! But within the first 10 minutes of putting on a VR headset and entering a chat room, I saw underage kids simulating oral sex on each other. I experienced sexual harassment, racism and rape jokes. At one point, I heard someone say ‘I like little girls from the age of nine to 12: that’s just my thing.'”

BuzzFeed News: Toxic Pro–Eating Disorder Accounts On Instagram Could Be Reaching Nearly 20 Million Users, A Report Says. “Instagram’s recommendation algorithms push pro-anorexia and disordered eating content to millions of users, including those whose bios identify them as under 13 years old, according to a new report by Fairplay, an advocacy organization focused on children’s digital wellness.”

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