Facebook

If you woke up this morning and were inexplicably logged out of the Facebook app on your iPhone, you’re not alone. Facebook says that a “configuration change” affected people’s ability to access the Facebook app on their iPhone on Friday evening, but the issue appears to have since been resolved for most users.

Facebook today announced a major update to its Automatic Alt Text (AAT) system, which automatically generates photo descriptions for people with visual impairments. Based on AI, the system can now recognize 10 times more objects and scenes in photos shared on Facebook and also Instagram, providing detailed descriptions for screen readers like Apple’s VoiceOver.

WhatsApp has announced that it is delaying a controversial and confusing change to its privacy policy. A new WhatsApp privacy policy was slated to go into effect in February, but the Facebook-owned company now says it will delay the change for three months.

“There’s been a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help everyone understand our principles and the facts,” the company writes in the blog post.

Facebook has offered tools to download your information and understand what details the platform has about your for a while now. But now amid more privacy pressure than ever, the company is launching a redesigned “Access Your Information” tool for iOS and Android to make it easier to view and download all these details.

Facebook continues to panic about upcoming privacy changes in iOS 14. The company has sent a new email to businesses today informing them that it has no choice but to comply with the iOS 14 App Tracking Transparency feature. Otherwise, Apple could remove Facebook from the App Store completely.

Facebook is out today with a major update to Facebook Pages that includes removing “Likes,” an all-new layout for the UI, a dedicated News Feed, simpler navigation, refreshed admin controls for partial or full privileges, new insights as well as safety and integrity features.

WhatsApp will shortly start to share your data with Facebook as a condition of use of the app. This completes a U-turn which began when Facebook first acquired the app back in 2014.

At the time, WhatsApp assured users that their data would remain private, and not be shared with Facebook …

Facebook has been criticizing Apple after being forced to offer an option to disable user tracking on its iOS app. However, even Facebook employees don’t seem to agree with the company they work for as some of them have said that Facebook campaigns against Apple are “bordered on hypocrisy.”

Facebook has spent the last week publicly criticizing Apple’s plans to add new privacy features to iOS 14 in early 2021. While Facebook has slammed Apple’s planned changes, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has now come out on Apple’s side, saying Facebook’s criticisms are “laughable.”

As we covered here this week, Facebook criticized Apple with a full-page ad in US newspapers due to the new App Store guidelines, which will force apps to offer an option for users not to be tracked across the web. After Apple responded to Facebook, the company started warning iOS users in its official apps about the upcoming changes in advertisements.

The Apple versus Facebook battle escalated quickly this week! The two companies had been on opposite sides for some time when it came to ad-tracking, but Facebook dramatically upped the ante when it ran full-page newspaper ads attacking Apple – with more reportedly planned.

It’s a battle Facebook almost certainly cannot win. The risk to Apple, however, is that it is very possible both companies could lose …

Facebook and Apple started a sort of battle today due to the new App Store privacy guidelines that were announced earlier this year and are now being required for all developers. After running a full-page ad in US newspapers today, Facebook is now planning another similar ad for tomorrow that says Apple wants to “stop the internet from being free.”

After a barrage of criticism from Facebook today, Apple is yet again doubling down on its forthcoming App Tracking Transparency feature. The feature will launch to users in 2021, and Apple says it “does not require Facebook to change its approach to tracking users.”

We’ve seen Facebook attack Apple repeatedly of late, but the company is today really upping the ante by running full-page ads in at least three US newspapers.

The ads claim that Facebook is standing up to the iPhone maker on behalf of small businesses …

Update: Facebook has published a blog post with more details. It also says it will back Epic Games in its ongoing legal battle over the App Store.

Facebook is once again taking swipes at Apple, this time in regards to new legislation in the European Union that focuses on how Apple runs the App Store and its preinstalled, first-party apps. In a statement to Reuters, a Facebook spokesman said that the company “hopes” the new legislation will “set boundaries for Apple.”

After being available as a private beta, Facebook’s new ‘Collab’ app that lets musicians remotely record video and combine their parts is available to the public. The iOS app is a hybrid between short-form video like TikTok and social collaboration with a focus on music creation and allows users to create their own “Collabs” or join in with others on existing ones.

The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it is suing Facebook. The lawsuit accuses Facebook of “illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.” A separate lawsuit has also been filed by a coalition of 48 attorneys general led by New York AG Letitia James.

A new report from App Annie today highlights some of the mobile app trends of 2020. TikTok has booted Facebook from its reign as the most-downloaded app while iOS and Android downloads are expected to hit 130 billion with global spending forecasted to hit $112 billion this year.