TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: As Midterms Loom, Elections Are No Longer Top Priority for Meta C.E.O.. “Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, made securing the 2020 U.S. election a top priority. He met regularly with an election team, which included more than 300 people from across his company, to prevent misinformation from spreading on the social network. He asked civil rights leaders for advice on upholding voter rights. The core election team at Facebook, which was renamed Meta last year, has since been dispersed.”

CNET: Meta to Scrap Tool Researchers Use to Track Misinformation Online, Report Says. “CrowdTangle, a tool owned by Facebook parent Meta that monitors content on the internet, has played a vital role in disrupting misinformation on social media, but it reportedly won’t be around for much longer. Meta plans to shut down the platform, though no concrete date has been set, according to a Bloomberg report Thursday.”

WIRED: Meta Made Millions in Ads From Networks of Fake Accounts. “Between July 2018 and April 2022, Meta made at least $30.3 million in ad revenue from networks it removed from its own platforms for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB), data compiled by WIRED shows. Margarita Franklin, head of security communications at Meta, confirmed to WIRED that the company does not return the ad money if a network is taken down. Franklin clarified that some of the money came from adverts that didn’t break the company’s rules, but were published by the same public relations or marketing organizations later banned for participating in CIB operations.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Meta clamps down on internal discussion of Roe v. Wade’s overturning.. “Meta told its workers on Friday not to openly discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion on wide-reaching communication channels inside the company, people with knowledge of the situation said.”

Motherboard: Facebook Is Banning People Who Say They Will Mail Abortion Pills. “Facebook is removing the posts of users who share status updates that say abortion pills can be mailed and in some cases temporarily banning those users. When exactly Facebook started removing these and similar posts is unclear. But Motherboard confirmed Facebook removed such posts on the same day that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States.”

MIT Technology Review: Facebook is bombarding cancer patients with ads for unproven treatments. “Evidence from Facebook and Instagram users, medical researchers, and its own Ad Library suggests that Meta is rife with ads containing sensational health claims, which the company directly profits from. The misleading ads may remain unchallenged for months and even years. Some of the ads reviewed by MIT Technology Review promoted treatments that have been proved to cause acute physical harm in some cases. Other ads pointed users toward highly expensive treatments with dubious outcomes.”

CNET: How Meta Is Trying to Put an End to Fake Facebook Reviews. “People may see fewer reviews on Facebook that disingenuously bolster business on the platform, thanks to a new Community Feedback policy. The Community Feedback policy targets reviews on the social network that are fake, incentivized, fraudulent or offensive to ensure that real customers are writing real reviews, according to a blog post from parent company Meta on Monday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Facebook Settlement in Tracking Lawsuit Gets Preliminary OK From Court. “More than a decade after Facebook was accused of tracking users even after they logged off the social media platform, a district court in California has given preliminary approval for a $90 million class-action settlement.”

The Independent: Meta removes ‘large numbers’ of upskirting images found on Facebook. “Facebook owner Meta said it has removed a large number of groups and accounts which were sharing upskirting content following a BBC News investigation into the issue. The TV report found images and videos of upskirting being shared on the social media platform. It said some content which was reported to Facebook by the investigation was not immediately removed, with the site saying it did not appear to breach its community standards.”

CNET: Facebook Parent Meta Settles Lawsuit Alleging Discriminatory Housing Ads. “Facebook parent company Meta on Tuesday reached a settlement with the US Department of Justice over a lawsuit that alleged the social network allowed landlords and home sellers to run housing ads that excluded people based on race, sex, religion and other characteristics.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Facebook Oversight Board says company should be much more transparent. “More than a year after its creation, the Facebook Oversight Board argued in the first of what are to be annual reports that the social media company should be far more transparent about how it decides which posts and accounts to leave up and which to take down.”

The Atlantic: Sheryl Sandberg and the Crackling Hellfire of Corporate America. “During her 14 years at the company, she’s done so much damage to our society that we may never recover. The simple truth is that you cannot simultaneously dedicate yourself to making untold fortunes for a giant corporation and to championing a social good.”

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