SAN FRANCISCO, US - Facebook owner Meta is working on a new "text sharing" social media platform, it said Friday, in a project seen as a potential rival to embattled Twitter.Since billionaire Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter in October, the influential website has suffered outages, layoffs and seen advertisers flee the...

Facing a drop in advertising revenues, parent company Meta is piloting a subscription in Australia and New Zealand before it appears in larger markets. But ahead of the launch, ordinary users seemed less than keen to hand over money to a company that already makes vast sums from their data.

And their posts, photos and videos will have a higher profile than those of non-subscribers by appearing atop search results, commentaries and recommendations. Meta is also promising new creative functionalities. Meta Verified will be rolled out in Australia and New Zealand this week before coming to markets in the United...

Google parent Alphabet's revenue of $76 billion in its fourth quarter and profit of $13.6 billion were below what it made in the same period a year earlier, with share prices falling more than 3 percent in after-market trade. The tech titans posted earnings as shares in Meta skyrocketed a...

The company formerly known as Facebook is facing increasing pressure and fines to curb its practice of delivering narrowly targeted ads to its users, a practice that brings in billions of dollars in revenue from advertisers every year.

Facebook parent Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running lawsuit that accused the social network of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access users' private data. The amount was disclosed in a court filing late on Thursday. Facebook has not admitted any wrongdoing as part...

The French regulator said that after investigations it found that "when users visited this site, cookies were deposited on their terminal without their consent, while these cookies were used, among others, for advertising purposes." It also "observed that there was no button allowing to refuse the deposit of cookies as...

US media have previously reported that the platform and its various branches will lay off about 10,000 employees. Amazon did not confirm the figure, but he said that the process had begun and would continue early next year. The first teams affected were those dealing with the brand's electronic devices...

The layoffs would follow an aggressive hiring spree. With business booming due to the coronavirus pandemic, as cooped up people turned in earnest to online shopping, Amazon doubled its workforce from the first quarter of 2020 to 1.62 million employees two years later.

Zuckerberg said the cuts represented 13 percent of Meta's workforce and would affect its research lab focusing on the metaverse as well as its apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and messaging platform Whatsapp.

Meta is planning to sack thousands of employees this week, becoming the latest tech firm to scale back its workforce. According to the Wall Street Journal the layoffs could impact "many thousands" of Meta employees. The company has about 87,000 employees worldwide working across its different platforms.

The tech giant's iPhone sales missed estimates

The biggest announcement from this week's Meta Connect event -- the company's giant's annual conference focused on virtual reality -- was the launch of the much anticipated Meta Quest Pro VR headset, targeted at professionals in creative fields. But there were also legs -- as in, legs for user avatars...

Meta said it is partnering with Microsoft and others to tune popular business and productivity software to virtual worlds using Quest Pro. Capabilities being worked on include using Quest Pro during virtual meetings on the Microsoft Teams platform, according to the two companies.

Netflix and Disney+ will launch an ad-supported subscription in the coming weeks thus biting into the revenue of traditional television channels as the streaming services look toward continued expansion. Netflix, after having long-shunned the notion of advertising on its platform, this year accelerated work on just such an offering.

The new Beyond the Screen nonprofit said that its first project will be to document ways big tech is failing in its "legal and ethical obligations to society" and help come up with ways to solve those problems. "We can have social media that brings out the best in us,...

After a Washington Post report revealed that Facebook and Twitter have shut down a number of fake accounts suspected to be created by the US military, promoting pro-West disinformation, the Pentagon has begun a review of its psychological warfare operations while denying that the military was behind fake accounts.

In the past few years, the EU has slapped eye-watering fines on Apple and Google in tax and competition cases, and drawn up a landmark law to curb the market dominance of Big Tech. Brussels has also toughened its code of conduct on disinformation and hate speech.

There was not yet talk of online life moving to virtual worlds when a "far-fetched" musing by Google co-founder Larry Page prompted Street View, which lets users of the company's free navigation service see imagery of map locations from the perspective of being there. Now the metaverse is a tech-world...

Facebook, since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, has removed access to its data from thousands of apps suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information available to developers, and made it easier for users to calibrate restrictions on personal data sharing.

Meta spokesperson Aaron Simpson told AFP that the group's accounts at Facebook and Instagram were shuttered on Wednesday. The ban came after repeated violations of Meta's misinformation rules. The anti-vaccine group has appealed a lower court ruling against it in the litigation, according to legal filings.

The mustachioed 50-year-old with almost half a million Facebook followers posts weekly videos on topics such as protecting fruit trees, dealing with insects and helping people get more from their farms and gardens.

Facebook-parent Meta reported on Wednesday its first quarterly revenue drop and a plunging profit as the social media powerhouse battles a turbulent economy and the rising phenomenon of TikTok. Meta had long delivered seemingly endless upward growth but after this income miss and reporting earlier this year its first decline...

As a multidimensional world extending the physical realities of our current 4D world, it is rather a product of the different waves of digitization and internet development that started in the 90s, adds Blanchard.

Sada Social Center, a Ramallah-based social media monitoring group, said Facebook ranks first in suppressing Palestinian content, as 273 violations were documented on the social media giant, followed by WhatsApp.

The school's goal in its first year will be to train for free around 100 students in two roles, specialist immersive technology developers and support and assistance technicians.

TikTok on Monday said it will start letting some popular accounts at the video-snippet streaming star charge subscriptions for live streams. Similar money-making tools have been added to rivals such as Instagram and Facebook as the social media platforms compete for online personalities that attract audiences.

The likes of TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and even Apple now vie with Meta for people's online attention as Facebook social network is increasingly seen as a place for older people.

Listed on the New York Stock Exchange for just under nine years, Twitter has posted a net loss every year, except 2018 and 2019 when it made a profit of just over $1 billion.

Britain's competition authority had stopped the FB-Giphy merger.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will give content creators the opportunity to sell virtual items to users in Horizon Worlds, its main platform in the metaverse, the company said Monday. "For example, someone could make and sell attachable accessories for a fashion world or offer paid access...

Facebook's parent company Meta is exploring the potential of digital money referred to internally as "Zuck Bucks" in a play on the founder's name, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. "We continuously consider new product innovations for people, businesses, and creators," a Meta spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry.

FB said the bug affected ‘only a very small number of views’ of content.

The ads were for schemes apparently hailed by prominent figures.

The move comes after Facebook and Twitter were blocked in early March as part of sweeping efforts by Moscow to control information available to Russians.

The business model of the news media is ‘broken’ and with it, our fundamental right to information is at risk, a new UNESCO report examining global trends in freedom of expression warns. In the past five years, both news audiences and advertising revenues have moved in huge numbers to internet...

Facebook has temporarily eased its policy on violent speech after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, allowing statements like "death to Russian invaders" but not credible threats against civilians, the tech giant said Thursday. Moscow's internationally condemned attack on its neighbor has provoked unprecedented sanctions from Western governments and businesses, but also...

The Libyan city of Gharyan sculpted a reputation for ceramics generations ago, but fragile demand is forcing potters to seek new markets on Instagram and Facebook. Muayyad al-Shabani didn't even start out in the craft. He earned a physics degree but struggled to find a job in a country whose...

Telegram's founder Pavel Durov has accepted that "Telegram channels are increasingly becoming a source of unverified information related to Ukrainian events."

Since Russia's invasion 10 days ago, the economic and humanitarian toll of the war has spiraled, sending more than one million people fleeing Ukraine. Officials have reported hundreds of civilians killed.

Facebook's parent Meta said it would be restricting access in the European Union to RT and Sputnik.

The app is now letting users upload videos as long as 10 minutes.

Meta and The Entrepreneurial Nation program have launched ‘Boost with Facebook’ program in the Emirates that is aimed at attracting and supporting startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the country. The Entrepreneurial Nation, a project by the Ministry of Economy, aims to offer support through a series of...

US Senator Mark Warner wrote to Meta, Reddit, Telegram, TikTok, Twitter and other tech giants to stop Russian disinformation spreading online through their platform.

FB is accused of not stopping fact-checkers on its platform.

The metaverse is a 3D virtual world where people will be able to interact using sensors, head gear and other gadgets.

Zuckerberg shared his note to employees on his Facebook page, the revamped credo coming on the heels of the internet giant being renamed Meta in October.

At the heart of the issue is how much internet companies should know about people's online lives, which is key to how much Big Tech makes on ads.

Facebook-parent has agreed to pay $90 million.

Horizon's anti-harassment feature makes an avatar's hands vanish if it tries to inappropriately touch another virtual character.