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Facebook is the most popular social media service in the world with 2.32 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2018

Facebook is the most popular social media service in the world with 2.32 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2018. It also averages 1.52 billion daily active users as of December 2018.

Facebook was launched in February of 2004 (as The Facebook) for college students and then rapidly grew as it opened the service to more than those with a .edu email address. It was the subject of the 2010 movie called “The Social Network“.

In 2012, the social media giant offered its IPO and Facebook earned the title of the fastest company to grow to $250 billion market capitalization in the S&P 500.

In recent years, the company has been at the center of attention related to its role in the Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Since then, it’s been a continual stream of negative news for the company. They recently had all of their enterprise certificates for iOS revoked after it was discovered they had repackaged Onavo VPN as a ‘Research’ app and were paying teens $20/month to sneakily sideload it.

In early 2019, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a “privacy shift” for the company. He outlined a detailed vision for the future of the social media platform, specifically its messaging services. Notably, in contrast to how the company operates today, he says the future of the platform will be privacy-focused with features like end-to-end encryption, interoperability between its various apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, reducing how long it holds data, secure storage of personal data, and more.

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Trump's latest tariff threat could hit Apple hard

Facebook Oversight Board upholds Trump ban but ‘insists’ on a review and permanent decision

Facebook’s Oversight Board has officially given a verdict over the platform’s January decision to ban then-President Donald Trump. While the board ruled to keep the indeterminate ban in place, it also “insists” that Facebook review the matter within six months to make a permanent decision that is “consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.”

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New emails show Steve Jobs referred to Facebook as ‘Fecebook’ amid App Store conflict

New documents brought to light as part of the Apple vs. Epic legal battle offer interesting details on the history of the relationship between Facebook and Apple. The documents, revealed by Epic Games and first spotted by CNBC, show that the relationship between Apple and Facebook has been strained since as far back as 2011.

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Facebook encourages iOS 14.5 users to enable tracking so its apps remain ‘free of charge’

Now that iOS 14.5 has been released to the public, we’re starting to get a closer look at how various companies are implementing the new App Tracking Transparency privacy requirement. Perhaps most notably, the Verge has details on the popup message Facebook and Instagram are using to encourage users to choose the “Allow” option when prompted about tracking…

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Leaked Facebook memo reveals how advertisers will be impacted following iOS 14.5 release

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Apple finally introduced iOS 14.5 this week, which comes with the long-awaited App Tracking Transparency feature to prevent third-party apps from tracking users across the web. Since the announcement of this feature, Facebook has been complaining about the impact this option will have on its business model, and now a leaked company memo reveals how advertisers will be affected.

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NYTimes details how Apple’s privacy focus drove a wedge between Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

With iOS 14.5, which Apple will release today, iPhone owners will have the option to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps. A new profile from the New York Times today elaborates on how Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook became foes due to Apple’s privacy push.

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Facebook launches tool to export posts and notes to Google Docs and more

Facebook today announced a tool to export posts and notes to Google Docs, WordPress.com, and Blogger. This feature is part of the Data Transfer Project launched in 2018 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so all users across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.

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Facebook will tell you if a page is satire, but not if your data was leaked

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Facebook will tell you if a page is satire, as well as if it isn’t, in a new initiative. When a satirical page uses the name of a politician, for example, it will be labeled “Satire Page” to ensure that people don’t mistake it for the real person.

Conversely, posts by politicians will be labeled as “Public Official” …

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Tim Cook to talk Parler, Facebook, and more in Kara Swisher interview on Monday [update: now available]

Tim Cook Apple law Russia

Update: The full podcast interview with Tim Cook and Kara Swisher is now available.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook will give an interview to The New York Times’ Kara Swisher on Monday, according to a tweet by the journalist. In the interview, the two will discuss the right-wing social app Parler and Apple’s feud with Facebook.

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