Facebook fixes bug that blocked coronavirus news coverage, restores posts

Facebook said a bug in its anti-spam system temporarily blocked the publication of links to news stories about the coronavirus. Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity, said on Twitter Tuesday that the company was working on a fix for the problem.

Users complained that links to news stories about school closings and other information related to the virus outbreak were blocked by the company's automated system.

Later on Tuesday, Rosen tweeted that Facebook had restored all the incorrectly deleted posts, which also covered topics beyond the coronavirus.

Rosen said the problems were unrelated to any changes in Facebook's content-moderator workforce. The company reportedly sent its human moderators home this week because of the coronavirus outbreak.

A representative for Facebook did not immediately respond to questions on the status of Facebook's content moderators, many of whom do not work directly for the company and are not always able to work from home.

Facebook to ban face mask ads to prevent exploiting of coronavirus fears

Facebook is temporarily banning advertisements for medical face masks as part of an effort to prevent use of its platform to exploit people's concerns about the new coronavirus.

The ban covers advertisements on the social media platform as well as commercial listings on Facebook Marketplace, the company said.

Facebook said it would begin to enforce the ban over the next few days.

Our teams are monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely and will make necessary updates to our policies if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency, Rob Leathern, Facebook's director of product management, said in a statement issued late Friday.

Facebook noted that it previously announced a ban on ads that make claims about the health benefits of a particular product or guaranteed that a product will prevent someone from contracting the disease.

Some public health officials have urged people to stop buying masks.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams noted in a tweet on February 29 that masks aren't effective in protecting the general public but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!"

In a separate development, Amtrak announced that it was cancelling its nonstop Acela passenger train service between Washington, D.C., and New York City through late May because of a sharp drop in demand.

That service will be cancelled starting Tuesday and through May 28, Amtrak said.

The cancellation does not affect Amtrak's other high-speed Acela service connecting Washington, New York and Boston, which runs several times per day with limited stops.

Coronavirus: Facebook cancels conference, Microsoft withdraws from another

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would cancel its annual developer conference due to fears over the coronavirus outbreak and Microsoft Corp followed suit by withdrawing from a gaming conference scheduled for next month.

"In place of the in-person F8 event, we're planning other ways for our community to get together through a combo of locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content," said Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook's director of platform partnership.

The conference, which attracted 5,000 people from around the world last year, was scheduled to be held on May 5 and 6 in San Jose, California.

Microsoft now has plans to hold a digital-only event from March 16-18. Facebook has earlier pulled out of the Game Developers Conference set to be held in San Francisco.

In California, a person was detected with coronavirus infection on Wednesday, bringing the total number of cases in the United States to 15, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency has warned of the possibility of a community spread of the coronavirus in the country.

Earlier this month, The Mobile World Congress (MWC), the annual telecoms industry gathering, was called off after a mass exodus by exhibitors due to fears over the coronavirus outbreak.

AT&T Inc , Verizon Communications Inc and International Business Machines Corp had earlier withdrawn from the RSA cyber security conference, set for Feb. 24 to 28 in San Francisco, due to coronavirus-related concerns.

Alphabet Inc's Google said its developer conference is still planned for May 12 to 14 as it monitors coronavirus developments.

Facebook makes its second bet in India with investment in Unacademy

Making its second bet in the Indian start-up space, social networking giant Facebook has participated in a $110 million investment round in edtech enterprise Unacademy.

The round, which was led by General Atlantic, also drew funding from Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital and Blume Ventures. Flipkart’s CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Udaan cofounder Sujeet Kumar also participated in the round, which according to sources, valued the company between $400-500 million.

Last June, Facebook had invested an undisclosed sum in social commerce platform Meesho, a start-up that connects resellers with customers via channels such as WhatsApp.

“With this investment in Unacademy, we are reinforcing our commitment to the Indian start-up ecosystem as well as investing in a company that is transforming learning in India,” said Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook India.

With the fresh inflow, Unacademy also provided exits to some of its early-stage investors. The company had so far raised $88.5 million in six rounds.

Founded in 2015, the Bengaluru-based start-up provides online lessons and specialised courses to crack various competitive examinations such as UPSC, CAT and JEE.

“Our goal from day one has been to democratise education and make quality education accessible to everyone. We do that by bringing the best educators and content on our platform and ensuring it is accessible to everyone across the country,” said Gaurav Munjal, Cofounder and CEO, Unacademy. Other two founders of the company are Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh.

The company will use the funding to penetrate deeper into the test preparation segment, launching more exam categories, and acquiring educators. It currently provides access to around 30 exam categories for learners with more than 700 educators who take classes for 90,000 active users.

“Unacademy was the pioneer in taking video classes to the masses, even before the Jio launch. The team’s intense focus on the customer and being a pioneer in live classes has become wildly successful. We see the largest education company in the country being built at Unacademy,” said Karthik Reddy, co-founder and Managing Partner at Blume Ventures, which is one of the early backers of the start-up.

This is the fourth funding the edtech space has seen this month. Earlier, Byju’s, which is India’s only edtech unicorn, had received $200 million in fresh funding from General Atlantic. The deal valued the Bengaluru-based start-up at $8.2 billion, as it replaced ride-hailing firm Ola as the third-largest unicorn in the country, next only to digital payments company Paytm and hotel network Oyo.

Tiger Global-backed live online tutoring start-up Vedantu too had last week raised $24 million from a clutch of investors including global venture capital firm GGV Capital as part of their Series C extension round. Delhi-based edtech start-up Classplus had also raised $2.5 million from Blume Ventures and Sequoia Capital India’s Surge programme this month.

Facebook to remove Coronavirus fake news after WHO flags global emergency

Facebook Inc said on Thursday it will take down misinformation about China's fast-spreading coronavirus in a rare departure from its approach to health content, after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency.

The world's biggest social network said in a blog post that it would remove content about the virus "with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities," saying such content would violate its ban on misinformation leading to "physical harm."

The move is unusually aggressive for Facebook, which generally limits the distribution of content containing health misinformation through restrictions on search results and advertising, but allows the original posts to stay up.

That approach has angered critics who say the company has failed to curb the spread of inaccuracies that pose major global health threats.

In particular, misinformation about vaccination has spread far on social media in many countries in recent years, including during major vaccination campaigns to prevent polio in Pakistan and to immunize against yellow fever in South America.

Facebook, under fierce scrutiny worldwide in recent years over its privacy practices, has previously removed vaccine misinformation in Samoa, where a measles outbreak killed dozens late last year, after determining the situation was so severe that the inaccuracies were risks to physical harm, a spokeswoman told Reuters, calling the move an "extreme action." It also removed misinformation about polio vaccines in Pakistan, although the imminent harm in that case involved risks of violence against the health workers carrying out the immunization campaigns, she said.

Facebook revenue grows 25% in Q4 as company warns of rising expenses

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday that growth would continue to slow as its business matured and reported a surge in quarterly expenses, disappointing Wall Street expectations that the costs of improving privacy would level off.

The news raised concerns that Facebook's best days were behind it, and shares of the world's biggest social network dropped 7.2% in extended trading.

Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said on a call with investors that the company's pace of expansion will slow further in the first quarter of 2020, with a percentage point decline in the low- to mid-single digits, citing its maturing business, the impact of global privacy regulation and concerns about ad targeting.

"We have experienced some modest impact from these headwinds to date. The majority of the impact lies in front of us," Wehner said.

He specifically noted changes made by Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, which have both announced new restrictions on browser cookies used to track users online.

Global scrutiny

Facebook, the world's second-biggest seller of online ads, has been under fierce scrutiny worldwide in recent years over its privacy practices. It is also facing heat over how its services have been manipulated to spread misinformation.

The company addressed those issues starting in mid-2018 following repeated scandals, causing growth in expenses to surge to more than 100% for several quarters as it hired new privacy staff and invested in content moderation.

That investment began coming down last year, leading analysts to believe Facebook was largely finished building out its new systems and beginning to find efficiencies that could whittle costs further.

But the company reported that its total costs and expenses increased 34% to $12.22 billion in the fourth quarter, more than double the 14% that analysts had forecast and dragging down operating margins to 42% from 46% a year earlier.

It also announced that it had reached a $550 million settlement in principle related to an Illinois lawsuit that claimed it illegally collected and stored biometric data for millions of users without their consent.

Revenue growth in the fourth quarter was Facebook's slowest-ever at 25%, although it beat analysts' expectations of a dip to 23%. This is the company's fourth straight quarter of revenue growth less than 30%, playing to concerns that Facebook is struggling to restore its pre-2018 momentum when sales regularly grew upwards of 40%.

Still, Facebook's shares were up more than 50% over the last year, raising pressure for a strong performance.

"FB stock had made a big run-up in anticipation of the report ...so the room for error was low," said Daniel Morgan, a portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co.

The company continued to add users, beating estimates.

Monthly users of Facebook's core social network climbed 8% to 2.5 billion, while 2.9 billion people used one of its apps—Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger—each month.

That unique reach keeps advertisers dependent on Facebook's apps and online ad network. Facebook has also been trying to build out e-commerce offerings in the last year like Instagram Checkout, which make shopping more convenient by allowing users to complete transactions from within Facebook's apps.

However, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged in the investor call that the company is moving "very slowly and very, very carefully" with those products.

Facebook appoints Avinash Pant as marketing director for India operations

Facebook on Friday said it has appointed Avinash Pant as Marketing Director for its India operations.

The role of marketing director will be a new one at Facebook India, with the mandate to drive the company's consumer marketing efforts across the family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the company said in a statement.

Pant comes with 22 years of experience working with consumer brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola, The Walt Disney Company, and most recently, Red Bull, it added.

In his last assignment as the India Marketing Director at Red Bull, he was responsible for building the brand in India, the statement said.

Pant, an alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad, will report to Ajit Mohan, Facebook's Vice President and Managing Director, India.

The announcement comes a year after Facebook announced a new leadership structure in India bringing the company's functions under Ajit Mohan, reporting directly to its headquarters in Menlo Park.

Over the last year, the company has undertaken many India-focused initiatives, and also made its first minority investment in social-commerce venture Meesho.

"We've been working towards deepening our mission to build empowered communities... Consumer marketing is a new strategic area of focus for Facebook and one where we will dramatically increase our investment in communicating directly to consumers," Mohan said.

From Facebook to Twitter: How social media platforms handle political ads

Online platforms including Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google face growing pressure to stop carrying political ads that contain false or misleading claims ahead of the US presidential election.

In the United States, the Communications Act prevents broadcast stations from rejecting or censoring ads from candidates for federal office once they have accepted advertising for that political race, although this does not apply to cable networks like CNN, or to social media sites, where leading presidential candidates are spending millions to target voters in the run-up to the November 2020 election.

The following is how social media platforms have decided to handle false or misleading claims in political ads:

Facebook

Facebook exempts politicians from its third-party fact-checking program, allowing them to run ads with false claims.

The policy has been attacked by regulators and lawmakers who say it could spread misinformation and cause voter suppression. Critics including Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren have also run intentionally false Facebook ads to highlight the issue.

Facebook's Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company's stance, arguing that it does not want to stifle political speech, but he also said the company was considering ways to refine the policy.

Facebook does fact-check content from political groups. The company also says it fact-checks politicians if they share previously debunked content and does not allow this content in ads.

The company recently said it is making some changes to its approach to political ads, including allowing users to turn off certain ad-targeting tools. In addition, it will also make more ad audience data publicly available.

The expanded ad audience data features will be rolled out in the first quarter of this year and Facebook plans to deploy the political ads control starting in the United States early this summer, eventually expanding this preference to more locations.

Another change will be to allow users to choose to stop seeing ads based on an advertiser's "Custom Audience" and that will apply to all types of advertising, not only political ads.

Twitter

Twitter Inc has banned political ads. In November, it said this will include ads that reference a political candidate, party, election or legislation, among other limits.

The company also said it will not allow ads that advocate for a specific outcome on political or social causes.

"We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a statement.

Some lawmakers praised the ban but critics said Twitter's decision would benefit incumbent and hurt less well-known candidates.

Officials from the Trump campaign, which is out-spending its Democratic rivals on Facebook and Google ads, called the ban "dumb" but also said it would have little effect on the president's strategy.

The overall political ad spend for the 2018 US midterm elections on Twitter was less than $3 million, Twitter's Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal said.

"Twitter from an advertising perspective is not a player at all. Facebook and Google are the giants in political ads," said Steve Passwaiter, vice president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media.

Google

Google said that it would limit audience targeting for election ads to age, gender and general location at a postal code level.

The change means political advertisers can no longer target ads using data such as public voter records and general political affiliations such as right-leaning, left-leaning or independent. Advertisers can still do contextual targeting, such as showing ads to users watching a certain video.

Google and its video-streaming service YouTube prohibit certain kinds of misrepresentation in ads, such as misinformation about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age or birthplace or incorrect claims that a public figure has died.

Google does not have a wholesale ban on politicians running false or misleading ads. In October, when former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign asked the company to take down a Trump campaign ad that it said contained false claims, a Google spokeswoman told Reuters it did not violate the site's policies.

Snap

Snap Inc allows political advertising unless the ads are misleading, deceptive or violate the terms of service on its disappearing message app Snapchat.

The company, which recently joined Facebook, Twitter and Google in launching a public database of its political ads, defines political ads as including electionsnap-related, advocacy and issue ads.

Snap does not ban "attack" ads in general, but its policy does prohibit attacks relating to a candidate's personal life.

Tiktok

The Chinese-owned video app popular with US teenagers does not permit political advertising on the platform.

In an October blog post, TikTok said that the company wants to make sure the platform continues to feel "light-hearted and irreverent."

"The nature of paid political ads is not something we believe fits the TikTok platform experience," wrote Blake Chandlee, TikTok's vice president of global business solutions.

The app, owned by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance, has recently come under scrutiny from US lawmakers concerned the company may be censoring politically sensitive content, and raising questions about how it stores personal data.

Reddit

Social network Reddit allows ads related to political issues and ads from political candidates at the federal level, but not for state or local elections.

It also does not allow ads about political issues, elections or candidates outside of the United States.

The company says all political ads must abide by its policies that forbid "deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising" and that prohibit "content that depicts intolerant or overly contentious political or cultural topics or views."

LinedIn

LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft Corp, does not allow political ads. It defines political ads as including "ads advocating for or against a particular candidate or ballot proposition or otherwise intended to influence an election outcome."

Search engine Bing, which is also owned by Microsoft, does not allow ads with political- or election-related content.

Pinterest

Photo-sharing site Pinterest Inc also bans political campaign ads.

This includes advertising for political candidates, political action committees (PACs), legislation, or political issues with the intent to influence an election, according to the site's ads policy.

"We want to create a positive, welcoming environment for our Pinners and political campaign ads are divisive by nature," said Pinterest spokeswoman Jamie Favazza, who told Reuters the decision was also part of the company's strategy to address misinformation.

Twitch

A spokeswoman for Twitch told Reuters the live-streaming gaming network does not allow political advertising.

The site does not strictly ban all issue-based advertising but the company considers whether an ad could be seen as "political" when it is reviewed, the spokeswoman said.

Twitch, which is owned by Amazon.com Inc, is primarily a video gaming platform but also has channels focused on sports, music and politics. In recent months, political candidates such as US President Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders have joined the platform ahead of the 2020 election.

How Facebook's Libra prodded central banks to study digital currencies

The challenge posed by Facebook Libra cryptocurrency likely prodded major central banks to set up a new group to study the potential for issuing their own digital currencies, a former Bank of Japan executive said on Wednesday.

The central banks of Britain, the euro zone, Japan, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland on Tuesday announced a plan to share experiences to look at the case for issuing digital currencies, amid a growing debate over the future of money.

Hiromi Yamaoka, former head of the BOJ's division overseeing payment and settlement systems, said the decision was a sign of how Libra has triggered a global competition among central banks to make their currencies more appealing.

"The latest decision (by the six central banks) is not just about sharing information. It's also an effort to keep something like Libra in check," said Yamaoka who, during his stint at the BOJ, was directly in charge of negotiations on new technology.

"Something like Libra would make transactions costs much cheaper. Major central banks need to appeal that they, too, are making efforts to make settlement more efficient with better use of digital technology," he told Reuters.

Currently a board member at IT consulting firm Future Corp, Yamaoka oversaw the BOJ's research into digital currencies and retains close contact with global central bank policymakers.

Central banks across the world have quickened the pace at which they are looking at issuing their own digital currencies, also known as CBDCs. Facebook's push to launch its Libra cryptocurrency has added fuel to questions over whether nation states will continue to control money in the decades ahead.

Of the major central banks, China's has emerged as the frontrunner in the drive to create its own digitised money, though details of its project are still scarce.

The BOJ has undertaken a joint research project with the European Central Bank, but has said it has no plan to issue CBDCs in the near-term horizon.

Yamaoka said the creation of the joint study group could speed up moves by the central banks to use blockchain technology for large-scale, wholesale settlement.

But the hurdle for central banks issuing digital currencies for small, retail settlement remains "very high," as doing so would stifle private-sector competition, he said.

Yamaoka also countered the view, held by some academics, that central banks could deepen negative interest rates more easily by issuing digital currencies.

"In the world of central bankers, the idea of using CBDCs to enhance the effect of monetary policy seems to have subsided somewhat," he said.

"There are increasing doubts about the effect of negative interest rates as a policy tool," Yamaoka said. "If so, do you want to issue CBDCs for the sake of deploying a policy with questionable effects?"

The more imminent factor driving central banks into studying CBDCs is the need to boost their currencies' convenience so they survive in an age of diversifying settlement means, he said.

That is why the Federal Reserve, which issues the world's most-used currency, isn't interested in CBDCs, Yamaoka said.

"If you want to make monetary policy effective, you need to ensure people keep using the currency you issue."

IT happens: Facebook sorry for Jinping's name gaffe, cites technical glitch

Facebook apologised on Saturday for a distasteful mistranslation of Chinese President Xi Jinping's name from Burmese language posts during his much-touted visit to Myanmar. His two-day visit to Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw was the first made by a Chinese leader in almost two decades. But the historic moment was dimmed by the automatic translation feature on Myanmar's Facebook page -- which rendered Xi Jinping's name from Burmese into English as "Mr Shithole".

The error most notably appeared on the official Facebook page of Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

"Mr Shithole, President of China arrives at 4 PM," said a translated announcement posted earlier Saturday.

"President of China, Mr Shithole, signed a guest record of the house of representatives," it continued.

Facebook said it was sorry and blamed a technical glitch.

"We fixed a technical issue that caused incorrect translations from Burmese to English on Facebook. This should not have happened and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. We sincerely apologise for the offense this has caused," a Facebook spokesperson said.

Facebook said it did not have Xi's name in its Burmese translations data. In cases such as those, Facebook's system guesses and replaces them with words that have similar syllables. The company tested similar words in Burmese, and other words that start with "xi" and "shi" in Burmese, which use the same character, were also translated as "shithole," Facebook said. Tech-nascent Myanmar loves Facebook.

The platform is the most popular site for news, entertainment and chat -- many even see it as synonymous with the internet.

Politicians and government agencies also use it for official statements and announcements. The site -- which has more than two billion users globally -- is restricted in China.

Even if you don't share you location, Facebook can track you down: Know how

Facebook can determine where users are even if they opt out of having their whereabouts tracked, the company revealed in a letter sent to US senators.

In the missive, which was widely shared on social media Tuesday, Facebook explained ways it can still figure out where people are after they have selected not to share precise location data with the company.

The social network, which was responding to a request for information by two senators, contended that knowing a user's whereabouts has benefits ranging from showing ads for nearby shops to fighting hackers and battling misinformation.

"There is no opting out. No control over your personal information," Republican Senator Josh Hawley said in a tweet.

"That's Big Tech. And that's why Congress needs to take action."

Facebook said that clues for figuring out a user's location include being tagged in a photo at a specific place or a check-in at a location such as at a restaurant during a dinner with friends.

People may share an address for purchases at a shopping section at Facebook, or simply include it in their profile information.

Along with location information shared in posts by users, devices connecting to the internet are given IP addresses and a user's whereabouts can then be noted.

Those addresses include locations, albeit a bit imprecise when it comes to mobile devices linking through telecom services that might only note a town or city.

Facebook said knowing a user's general location helps it and other internet firms protect accounts by detecting when suspicious login behaviour occurs, such as by someone in South America when a user lives in Europe.

IP addresses also help companies such as Facebook battle misinformation by showing the general origin of potentially nefarious activity, such as a stream of politically oriented posts which might be aimed at a particular country.

Facebook said recently that it is ready for a data privacy law that is to go into effect in its home state of California at the start of next year.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will give internet users the right to see what data big tech companies collect and with whom it is shared.

Encryption to stay, won't give 'backdoor' access: Facebook tells US govt

 Facebook has clearly told US Attorney General William Barr that the social networking giant will neither remove encryption from its messaging apps nor will provide law enforcement agencies access to its encrypted services.

"As a company that supports 2.7 billion users around the world, it is our responsibility to use the very best technology available to protect their privacy. Encrypted messaging is the leading form of online communication and the vast majority of the billions of online messages that are sent daily, including on WhatsApp, iMessage, and Signal, are already protected with end-to-end encryption," said WhatsApp head Will Cathcart and Facebook Messenger's chief Stan Chudnovsky, in a letter to Barr on Tuesday.

"The 'backdoor' access you are demanding for law enforcement would be a gift to criminals, hackers and repressive regimes, creating a way for them to enter our systems and leaving every person on our platforms more vulnerable to real-life harm," they wrote.

"People's private messages would be less secure and the real winners would be anyone seeking to take advantage of that weakened security. That is not something we are prepared to do".

Facebook's letter came ahead of a Senate Judiciary hearing on encryption.

The company said that it has more than doubled the number of people working in the area of security and privacy to over 35,000.

"WhatsApp detects and bans 2 million accounts every month based on abuse patterns and scans unencrypted information, such as profile and group information for abusive content, like child exploitative imagery," said the company.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in October defended his decision to encrypt the company's messaging services.

Zuckerberg said child exploitation risks weighed "most heavily" on him when he was making the decision and pledged steps to minimise harm.

Facebook testing tool that allows users transfer pics to Google Photos

Facebook started testing a tool on Monday that lets users move their images more easily to other online services, as it faces pressure from regulators to loosen its grip on data.

The social network's new tool will allow people to transfer their photos and videos directly to competing platforms, starting with Google Photos.

The company said it will first be available to people in Ireland and will be refined based on user feedback.

The tool will then be rolled out worldwide in the first half of 2020.

US and European regulators have been examining Facebook's control of personal data such as images as they look into whether the tech giant's dominance is stifling competition and limiting choice for consumers.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reacted by calling for new rules to address "data portability" and other issues.

Facebook said that as it worked on a new set of data portability tools, it had discussions with policymakers, regulators, and academics in the UK, Germany, Brazil and Singapore to learn about which data should be portable and how to protect privacy.

The company is developing products that "take into account the feedback we've received and will help drive data portability policies forward by giving people and experts a tool to assess," Steve Satterfield, director of privacy and public policy, said in a blog post.

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

Facebook said on Saturday it had issued a correction notice on a user's post at the request of the Singapore government, but urged for a measured approach to the implementation of a new "fake news" law to protect freedom of speech.

"Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information," the notice, which could be seen by some users in Singapore, said.

The correction notice was embedded at the bottom of the original post without any alterations to the text, but it could not be seen by other users inside and outside the country.

The Singapore government said on Friday it had instructed Facebook to publish a correction notice on a Nov. 23 post.

"As required by Singapore law, Facebook applied a label to these posts, which were determined by the Singapore Government to contain false information," a spokesperson 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."

Facebook-owned Oculus acquires maker of 'Beat Saber', plans expansion

Facebook-owned Oculus on Tuesday said it is buying the studio behind hit virtual reality game "Beat Saber" as it looks to expand VR technology to wider audiences.

Oculus, which makes Rift and Quest VR headgear, did not disclose financial terms of the deal to acquire Prague-based Beat Games.

"Beat Games is joining us in our quest to bring VR to more people around the world," Oculus director of augmented and virtual reality content Mike Verdu said in a blog post.

"Beat Games' accomplishments are already impressive, but Facebook and the Beat Games team know that there is so much more that can be done across VR, games, and music."

Verdu assured players that the studio would continue to ship content and updates for "Beat Saber" on platforms where it is already available.

In the virtual game, players use light sabers to slash oncoming, large cubes to the beat of music, sometimes twisting or ducking to avoid oncoming walls.

"VR reimagines old genres and invents new ones," Verdu said.

Oculus is exploring ways, including acquisitions, to accelerate the adoption of virtual reality technology, which Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has heralded as the next major computing platform.

"With the resources and know-how that we can offer, Beat Games will be able to accelerate, adding more music and more exciting features to 'Beat Saber' as well as bringing the game to more people," Verdu said.

Facebook is planning a virtual social community where users of its Oculus headgear can "explore new places" via its Horizon virtual world, which is set for a beta launch in 2020.

Oculus users will be able to choose an avatar and interact with others in the virtual community, Facebook said earlier this year.

Horizon will replace earlier versions of the social VR community Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms.

Oculus remains a small part of Facebook, whose core social network and other platforms reach more than two billion people worldwide.

Research reveals hardly anybody shares fake news on Facebook, Twitter

Some people are fuming at Facebook for allowing unfiltered political ads, while others are fuming at Twitter for banning them. There’s lots of confusion and speculation, but what we know is that these social media companies have fundamentally changed how people exchange information. What we need to figure out is whether they also change how people spread disinformation — and if so, how to fix it. It's a question researchers are actively investigating.

After “fake news” became the catchphrase of the 2016 election, experts in psychology, political science, computer science and networks stepped up research on disinformation, learning in more detail how it travels through social media and why some things stick in people’s heads.

There’s a good reason not to ban political ads on social media: People in democratic societies should be able to see and hear from candidates directly, not just through interview and debate formats. Social media ads are relatively cheap, so less well-funded candidates can still make themselves heard. The fear is that politicians might lie, mislead and manipulate on social media in ways that were impossible in the days of television and newsprint.

Some see a particular threat in the way Facebook allows advertisers to precisely target ads based on personal data. “Facebook profits partly by amplifying lies and selling dangerous targeting tools that allow political operatives to engage in a new level of information warfare,” writes former Facebook insider Yaël Eisenstat in the Washington Post.

How dangerous is this information warfare? Experiments show that people can be misled easily and that wrong ideas tend to stick. USC psychologist Norbert Schwarz says people tend to believe messages for many reasons that have nothing to do with credibility. People are more likely to believe messages when they’re presented simply, in an easy-to-read font or spoken without an accent, and repeated often. People are also more easily influenced by messages they think their friends also believe.

Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, says the extremely fine-grained targeting abilities of social media might interfere with a free marketplace of ideas. Rather than making claims in ads that anyone is free to see, politicians might tailor messages to individual social media users. The propaganda might never even be seen by fact-checkers or opponents who might challenge it. “My main concern is that we’re replacing public debate with manipulation,” he says.

There is still hope for democracy, however. There’s little evidence that targeted ads have the power to to change minds or votes, says Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, co-author of the book “Network Propaganda.” Belief in targeted ads in general is more faith-based than evidence-based, he says. Advertisers assume the targeting causes people to buy things — though this is far from proven.

In 2018, there was outrage when it came out that the company Cambridge Analytica claimed it could use the seemingly superficial tastes of consumers to delve deep into their psyches, gain personality information that even their friends didn’t know, and, in theory, use it to manipulate their voting behavior. But in researching a 2018 column on the phenomenon, I learned that the evidence is thin to nonexistent that Cambridge Analytica was able to glean meaningful information or manipulate voting behavior.

Dr. Benkler says if he had access to enough Facebook data, he and other researchers could find out who saw which ads, and infer from other information if and how people voted. But it probably isn’t in Facebook’s interest to give out that kind of information. It might reveal that Facebook ads are suppressing voting, or that the ads don’t matter. Either way, it could look bad for the company.

Dr. Benkler points to a recent paper in the journal Marketing Science, which shows it’s not clear whether an ad causes people to buy a particular product, or whether the people who are targeted are already more likely to buy. Other research papers report on the limited power of fake news on Facebook and Twitter. For example, one study that looked at Twitter activity during the 2016 election concluded that 80% of fake news was shared by just 0.1% of users, making it a fringe activity.

People tend to focus on new threats, Benkler says, when there are known masters of manipulation out there. The ads, fake news, and other so-called content on social media have been getting a lot of attention, but their impact still pales in comparison to that of old-fashioned platforms like cable news and radio. In research reported in his book, he and his co-authors trace stories using of certain words or phrases — like the child sex ring rumor or the conspiracy theories surrounding the Seth Rich murder — from their origins on small-scale blogs and fringe publications to Fox News and conservative talk radio, where they blew up.

It’s true that there’s still a lot we don’t know about social media. But instead of giving Facebook more power — by encouraging it to police ads for misleading content — we should make rules to force the company to reveal its targeting practices.

If someone sees a Trump ad because she went to church and stopped at the liquor store on the way home, she has the right to know it, says Benkler. And the more information Facebook and others provide, the better scientists can understand how much social media is shaping the free marketplace of ideas, and whether we should be focused on other, more substantial threats to democracy.

Facebook says it removed 5.4 billion fake, abusive accounts this year

Facebook on Wednesday said it has nixed 5.4 billion fake accounts already this year, many within moments of being created at the leading social network.

"We have improved our ability to detect and block attempts to create fake, abusive accounts," the internet firm said in its latest transparency report.

"We can estimate that every day, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems." The detailed report also showed that government demands for user information hit a new high led by the US.

Facebook Pay launched; to be available on WhatsApp and Instagram later

Facebook has launched a new payments system that will work across its app ecosystem -- Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Appropriately named Facebook Pay, it will begin rolling out on Facebook and Messenger this week in the US for fundraisers, in-game purchases, event tickets, person-to-person payments on Messenger and purchases from select Pages and businesses on Facebook Marketplace.

"Over time, we plan to bring Facebook Pay to more people and places, including for use across Instagram and WhatsApp," Deborah Liu, Vice President, Marketplace and Commerce at Facebook, said in a statement late Tuesday.

Facebook Pay supports most major credit and debit cards as well as PayPal.

The social media giant said Facebook Pay is built on existing financial infrastructure and partnerships, and is separate from the Calibra wallet which will run on the Libra network, the company's digital currency.

You can start using Facebook Pay on Facebook or Messenger with just a few taps.

Go to "Settings," then "Facebook Pay" on the Facebook app or website, add a payment method and the next time you make a payment, use Facebook Pay.

Once Facebook Pay is available on WhatsApp and Instagram, you'll be able to set it up directly within each app.

Facebook said it has processed more than $2 billion in donations alone since it launched first fundraising tools in 2015.

"With Facebook Pay, we're continuing to invest in security. We designed Facebook Pay to securely store and encrypt your card and bank account numbers, perform anti-fraud monitoring on our systems to detect unauthorized activity and provide notifications for account activity,a said Liu.

The users can add a PIN or use device biometrics, such as touch or face ID recognition, for an extra layer of security when sending money or making a payment.

In India, Facebook is aiming to launch WhatsApp Pay, a peer-to-peer payment system.

Finance industry can earn extra $700 bn a year by focusing on women

Facebook Inc suffered a blow as a Dutch judge imposed a penalty payment for each time it fails to block cryptocurrency ads improperly using the image of the originator of the Big Brother television franchise.

The company must pay 10,000 euros ($11,000) each time the posts using the image of John de Mol appear, up to a maximum of 1 million euros, an Amsterdam court ruled Monday. Facebook said it is considering its options, including an appeal.

Facebook doesn’t have the technology to completely prevent fraudulent ads on its platforms, its attorney, Jens van den Brink, said at a hearing two weeks ago. Because webpages are constantly changing, the social media site argued, it’s hard to target individual advertisements. Similar scam ads have been on Linkedin Corp., eBay Inc. and Alphabet Inc’s Google, showing how difficult a ban would be, he added.

“De Mol seeks a perfecting filter that doesn’t exist,” van den Brink said.

While it might be hard to stop the ads, the court concluded that it is Facebook’s responsibility to take measures “even if that is not technically easy.” A filter could also lead to overblocking of real posts, the court said, but “the risk of any unwanted overblocking of legitimate advertisements does not outweigh the seriousness of the problem.”

Facebook said that the ads have no place on the social network “and we remove them when we find them.”

“We take this very seriously and will therefore make our scam ads reporting form available in the Netherlands in early December,” the Menlo Park, California-based company said in a statement. “It is in our interest to protect our users from fraudsters and when we find violators we will take action to stop their activity, up to and including taking legal action against them in court.”

De Mol’s demand added to a chorus of complaints over fake news and ads on Facebook’s platforms since revelations that Russian trolls had used them to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In the U.K., journalist and TV anchor Martin Lewis settled a case with Facebook after ads falsely claimed he backed several investment schemes. Facebook since then introduced a scam ads reporting button.

Europe’s highest court ruled in October individual countries can order Facebook to take down posts anywhere in the world if content was determined to be defamatory or otherwise illegal. In Germany, the law requires Facebook to remove content that contains hate speech or incite violence within 24 hours or face up to 50 million euros in fines.

Facebook’s lawyer said it made efforts to address De Mol’s complaints and removed the ads before the first hearing in June and no further proof of their appearance on the site was given. De Mol’s lawyer Jacqueline Schaap said Facebook’s platforms were continuing to feature fake ads displaying the Dutch billionaire stimulating people to invest in the cryptocurrency, resulting in new victims.

De Mol is co-founder of Dutch media company Endemol, which was sold to Telefonica SA in 2000 for 5.5 billion euros. It was behind the reality series ‘Big Brother,’ first aired in The Netherlands in 1999 with more than 50 countries following, including the U.K., Germany and the U.S.

Cognizant to exit Facebook content review contract, 6,000 jobs under threat

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp , one of Facebook Inc's content review contractors, said on Wednesday it would shut some content moderation business, including those focusing on identifying objectionable content, resulting in about 6,000 job cuts.

The information technology services provider will also eliminate up to 7,000 jobs in its other units to invest in growth areas such as cloud and internet of things to cushion the impact from a decline in spending by its financial customers.

The exit from some parts of the content moderation business will hurt financial performance in the coming year, Cognizant said.

Chief Executive Officer Brian Humphries said on a call with analysts the company had decided that work focused on determining whether content violated client standards was not part of its strategic vision. The work "can involve objectionable materials," he said.

Cognizant had about 500 workers in India's southern city of Hyderabad looking for sensitive topics or profane language in Facebook videos, Reuters reported in May. The Verge also reported that some Cognizant employees scouring potentially objectionable content for Facebook faced difficult conditions.

A Cognizant spokesman did not say whether the Verge story led to the decision described on Wednesday. The spokesman said the move reflected the company's new strategy and that Cognizant was not completely exiting content moderation.

"We'll work with our partners during this transition to ensure there's no impact on our ability to review content and keep people safe," said Arun Chandra, vice president of scaled operations at Facebook.

Facebook works with at least five outsourcing vendors in at least eight countries on content review, according to a Reuters tally.

In response to this change, Facebook will increase the number of reviewers at a review site in Texas, which is operated by a different partner, Chandra added.

Facebook's spokesperson said the company's current plan is to move some work to another content review site operated by Genpact Ltd in Texas.

The social network said in December it has about 15,000 people, a mix of contractors and employees, working on content review and had over 20 content review sites around the world.

Cognizant had come under pressure after activist investor Elliott urged the company to boost shareholder value after disclosing a more than 4% stake in November 2016. The hedge fund exited the stake last year.

The company said it expects to save between $500 million and $550 million in 2021 and record restructuring charges of between $150 million and $200 million by the end of next year.

The New Jersey-based company said revenue from its financial services segment rose 1.9% to $1.49 billion while that from healthcare services dropped 1.2% to $1.18 billion. The two segments make up more than half of the company's total revenue.

Cognizant has warned of lower spending by its banking sector clients in the second half of the year.

The company said it now expects full-year revenue growth of between 4.6% and 4.9%, compared with its earlier guidance of a growth of between 3.9% and 4.9%.

Excluding items, the company earned $1.08 per share, above estimates of $1.05 per share.