Meta earnings beat market expectations as ads revive

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook parent Meta on Wednesday beat market expectations for quarterly earnings, powered by a reviving digital ad business.

Meta reported a profit of $7.8 billion on $32 billion in revenue during the recently ended quarter, as the number of people using Facebook monthly rose to 3.03 billion.

"We had a good quarter," Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings call.

"We continue to see strong engagement across our apps and we have the most exciting roadmap I've seen in a while..."

Meta had suffered a rough 2022 amid a souring economic climate, which forced advertisers to cut back on spending, and Apple's data privacy changes, which allowed users to block ad targeting, the pillar of Meta's business.

But like the other big US tech companies, Meta's share price has had a stellar 2023 that Zuckerberg in January said would be the "year of efficiency".

"With two straight quarters of positive revenue growth and the first quarter of double-digit revenue growth since late 2021, Meta’s year of efficiency is off to a strong start," said Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

"There's a lot to feel good about when it comes to Meta right now," Williamson added.

Meta shares were up more than seven percent $320.32 in after-market trades.

In its earnings release, the company said that the number of ads on its various applications rose by 34 percent year-on-year in the second quarter.

Analysts noted the greater interest from advertisers in Reels, the video format copied from TikTok, and a less gloomy economic context conducive to marketing spending.

Meta is seeing "good progress" in bringing in money from Reels, with the video snippets played more than 200 billion times daily across Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg said.

VR costs

Meta's vow of austerity on spending brought an unprecedented round of cost-cutting that has seen the company lay off tens of thousands of workers since last November.

Meta said it had 71,469 employees at the end of June, a decrease of 14 percent from the same time a year earlier.

The company has faced criticism over its gamble on the metaverse, the world of virtual reality that Meta believes will be the next frontier online and led it to change its name from Facebook in 2021.

This to date has proved to be a bad bet with customers so far unenthused by the technology, even though Apple will enter the space sometime next year with the release of its expensive VisionPro headset.

Zuckerberg referred to the lackluster rate at which people are embracing the metaverse as a "somewhat sobering signal" but he remained confident it is a computing platform of the future.

The metaverse and AI remain priorities at Meta, according to Zuckerberg.

Meta said in the earnings report that it expects its operating losses at the unit responsible for VR to "increase meaningfully" in the year ahead.

The company has also jumped to take advantage of the chaos at Twitter, which has now been renamed to X.

Earlier this month Meta rushed out the release of Threads, a text-only app that saw more than 100 million downloads in just days, though the users' longterm interest remains unproven.

"We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and, more importantly, we're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected," Zuckerberg said of Threads.

"Now we're focused on retention and improving the basics; I'm really happy with the path that we're on here."

On AI, Zuckerberg has chosen a different track than Microsoft and its partnership with OpenAI.

Meta instead has endorsed a more "open source" approach and made its Llama generative AI technology available to researchers and companies to adapt to their own needs.

Investors are keen to see how Meta expands use of generative AI in its products, questions on the earnings call showed.

Zuckerberg indicated in a recent podcast that his company is working on an AI platform that would allow creators and advertisers to more efficiently work together.

Agence France-Presse

Meta rolls out parental supervision tools on Instagram

Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc will allow parents to track how much time their children are spending on Instagram and will soon roll out parental supervision features on Quest virtual reality headsets, the company said.

The new parental controls are part of Meta's promise to protect children using its social media apps, after a whistleblower leaked internal documents that showed the company was aware that Instagram caused body image problems for some teenage girls.

The uproar resulting from the leaked documents led to Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testifying before Congress in December, where he was grilled about children's safety online. 

The Instagram supervision tools will be available in the United States beginning Wednesday and will roll out globally over the coming months, Meta said.

Parents will be able to view what accounts their children follow and can set time limits for how long their kids spend on the app.

In May, Meta will launch a dashboard that includes supervision tools for its Quest headsets and will automatically block teens from downloading age-inappropriate apps on Quest.

Parental supervision on both Instagram and Quest will require consent from teens, Meta said in a blog post.

The company added it plans to eventually allow parents to oversee their kids' activities across all of Meta's services from one central place.

-reuters

Facebook, Twitter highlight security steps for users in Ukraine

Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc has set up a special operations center to monitor the conflict in Ukraine, and it launched a feature so users in the country can lock their social media profiles for security, a company official said in Twitter posts on Thursday.

Twitter Inc on Wednesday posted tips on how users can secure their accounts against hacking, make sure their tweets are private and deactivate their accounts. The company tweeted the safety tips in English, Russian and Ukrainian.

Both social media platforms are often used by political activists and researchers to disseminate information during times of crisis. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday also raised concerns about the spread of disinformation about the conflict on social media.

With one click, users in Ukraine can lock their profile to prevent users who are not their friends from downloading or sharing their profile picture, or seeing posts on their timeline, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, said on Twitter.

On Wednesday, Twitter also shared information on how users can deactivate their accounts.

As the conflict in Ukraine escalated on Thursday, social media users took to platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter to post videos of evacuation lines, helicopters in the sky and anti-war protests in Russia.

On short-form video app TikTok, the hashtags "Russia" and "Ukraine" had 37.2 billion and 8.5 billion views, respectively.

-reuters

Facebook tests paid subgroups in subscription push

Facebook is testing ways for creators to make money through Facebook Groups, such as users paying fees for exclusive access to content or conversations within subgroups, the company said on Thursday.

Facebook, which recently changed its name to Meta, said the test was part of its broader paid subscription effort. The social media company is one of many tech giants that have been working to woo social media creators and their large followings through payments and new tools.

Facebook, which has in recent years focused on building communities as a tactic to drive engagement on the site, said Group administrators will be able to run e-commerce shops to sell merchandise or create community fundraisers, which could offset the costs of running a Group.

On Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said that creators would be able to share custom links allowing them to accept payments directly, in a swipe at Apple's subscription fees. Facebook launched its subscriptions service last year.

The company announced a series of updates to its Groups product during its live-streamed Communities Summit. It said the subgroups feature, which can be free or paid, would allow members to break off within groups to focus on certain regions or topics.

Facebook Groups have been under scrutiny from lawmakers and researchers who argue that they provide closed spaces for health misinformation, violent rhetoric and extremism to proliferate without being properly policed.

A company spokesperson said Facebook was testing community fundraisers with select Groups and that Groups created in the last 30 days, violate its content rules or frequently share harmful content or misinformation were not eligible.

-reuters

Facebook halting facial recognition system over privacy fears

Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition system and deleting a billion faceprints, its parent company said Tuesday, in response to serious concerns over privacy.

The announcement from the leading social media network was made as it battles one of its worst crises ever, with reams of internal documents leaked to reporters, lawmakers and US regulators.

"There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use," parent company Meta said in a statement.

"Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate," it added.

It was not clear when the changes would take effect, but they will be widely felt with Facebook noting that more than a third of its daily users have opted in to using the facial recognition system.

Shutting down that system "will result in the deletion of more than a billion people's individual facial recognition templates," the statement said.

As the social media giant battles a whistleblower crisis, it has also changed its parent company name to "Meta" in an effort to move past being a scandal-plagued social network to its virtual reality vision for the future.

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp -- which are used by billions around the world -- will keep their names under the rebranding that critics have called an effort to distract from the platform's dysfunction.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook announces 10,000 EU jobs to build 'metaverse'

PARIS, France - Facebook on Monday announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the "metaverse", a virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice in Silicon Valley hype around the idea of the metaverse, which would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.

technology might, for example, allow someone to don virtual reality glasses that make it feel as if they're face-to-face with a friend -- when in fact they are thousands of miles apart and connected via the internet. 

"The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social, and economic opportunities. And Europeans will be shaping it right from the start," Facebook said in a blog post. 

"Today, we are announcing a plan to create 10,000 new high skilled jobs within the European Union (EU) over the next five years."

The European hires will include "highly specialised engineers", but the company otherwise gave few details of its plans for the new metaverse team. 

"The EU has a number of advantages that make it a great place for tech companies to invest -- a large consumer market, first class universities and, crucially, top quality talent," the blog post said. 

DISTRACTION FROM BAD NEWS?

The announcement comes as Facebook grapples with the fallout of a damaging scandal, major outages of its services, and rising calls for regulation to curb its vast influence. 

The company has faced a storm of criticism over the past month after former employee Frances Haugen leaked internal studies showing Facebook knew its sites could be harmful to young people's mental health.

The Washington Post last month suggested that Facebook's interest in the metaverse is "part of a broader push to rehabilitate the company's reputation with policymakers and reposition Facebook to shape the regulation of next-wave Internet technologies".

But Zuckerberg also appears to be a genuine evangelist for the advent of the metaverse era, predicting in July that Facebook will transition from "primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company" over the next five years. 

Facebook bought Oculus, a company that makes virtual reality headsets, for $2 billion in 2014 and has since been developing Horizon, a digital world where people can interact using VR technology. 

In August it unveiled Horizon Workrooms, a feature where co-workers wearing VR headsets can hold meetings in a virtual room where they all appear as cartoonish 3D versions of themselves. 

BLURRING THE LINES

Metaverse enthusiasts point out that the internet is already starting to blur the lines between virtual experiences and "real" ones. 

Stars such as pop diva Ariana Grande and the rapper Travis Scott have performed for huge audiences, watching at home, via the hit video game Fortnite. 

In Decentraland, another online platform widely seen as a forerunner to the metaverse, you can already get a job as a croupier in its virtual casino. 

"No one company will own and operate the metaverse. Like the internet, its key feature will be its openness and interoperability," Facebook said in its blog post. 

It is not the only company pouring millions into developing the technology that could turn a fully-fledged version of the metaverse into reality. 

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, announced earlier this year that it had raised $1 billion in new funding, with some of that money set to support its vision of the metaverse.

Agence France-Presse

TikTok tops Facebook as most downloaded app of 2020

TikTok was the world's most downloaded app last year, overtaking Facebook and its messaging platforms, market tracker App Annie said Tuesday.

The Chinese-owned video app surged in popularity despite efforts by former president Donald Trump to ban it or force a sale to US-based investors, according to the research firm.

TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, is believed to have one billion users worldwide including more than 100 million in the United States, and its short-form videos are especially popular with young smartphone users. 

US President Joe Biden in June revoked executive orders from his predecessor seeking to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat from US markets on national security concerns but ordered a review of the potential risks of foreign-owned internet services. 

While political debate about the video-snippet sharing sensation roiled, TikTok climbed from the fourth most downloaded app in 2019 to the top spot last year, according to App Annie data.

On the way, TikTok stepped over Facebook and two of the US internet giants texting apps Messenger and WhatsApp, the market tracker determined.

TikTok's popularity has prompted Facebook-owned Instagram to add video features to ride the hot trend.

Meanwhile TikTok last month began letting users post videos up to three minutes in length, tripling the prior cap to stay ahead of competitors.

Facebook has argued that the surge in TikTok's popularity undercuts claims from antitrust enforcers in the United States that the California group dominates social networking.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook bans content promoting ‘conversion therapy’

Facebook on Friday said it is banning content that promotes “conversion therapy,” which is based on the unfounded notion that gays can change their sexual orientation through psychological or spiritual intervention.

Facebook and its image-centric social network Instagram are updating policies to require removal of content that directly promotes conversion therapy when such posts are flagged by users, according to the California-based internet giant.


The move is an extension of an existing ban on ads that promote the tactic, which medical experts consider ineffective and often harmful.


“We don’t allow attacks against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity and are updating our policies to ban the promotion of conversion therapy services,” a Facebook spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry.


“We are always reviewing our policies and will continue to consult with experts and people with personal experiences to inform our approach.”

Conversion therapy “interventions” include electric shock, food deprivation and chemically-induced nausea, the American Medical Association has said in a report.


Empirical evidence demonstrates that sexuality and gender identities in people vary naturally, with the idea of “conversion” a misconception, the report said.

Such “sexual orientation change efforts” not only don’t work, but they may also cause significant distress, the AMA said, citing a study showing they caused depression, anxiety, alienation, and other ill effects.

Another study cited by the AMA found that nearly 30 percent of people who underwent conversion therapy reported suicide attempts.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook buys animated graphics startup GIPHY

Facebook said Friday it had acquired the animated graphics startup GIPHY and would integrate the company in its Instagram visual social network.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the news site Axios said the California-based tech giant was paying $400 million (P20.29 billion).


GIPHY is a platform and search engine for “stickers” and other products using the graphics interchange format or GIFs.

“GIPHY, a leader in visual expression and creation, is joining the Facebook company today as part of the Instagram team,” Facebook said in a statement.

“GIPHY makes everyday conversations more entertaining, and so we plan to further integrate their GIF library into Instagram and our other apps so that people can find just the right way to express themselves.”

GIPHY was created in 2013 “with a simple goal in mind: to make communication more fun,” a blog from the GIPHY team said.


“That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that GIPHY has been acquired by Facebook and is joining the team at Instagram.


“Instagram has revolutionized self-expression. More than one billion people use Instagram to communicate how they’re feeling and what they’re passionate about—we can’t wait to help those people become even more animated.”

The news comes with social networks seeing usage grow as a result of billions of people sheltering in place due to coronavirus lockdowns.

At the same time, tech critics have warned about the pandemic boosting the power of top Silicon Valley firms, and some lawmakers have called for a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions involving the large companies.

Facebook said it has partnered with GIPHY for years and that the company would continue to operate its library.


“We’re looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content,” said Instagram vice president of product Vishal Shah.

“GIFs and stickers give people meaningful and creative ways to express themselves. We see the positivity in how people use GIPHY in our products today, and we know that bringing the GIPHY team’s creativity and talent together with ours will only accelerate how people use visual communication to connect with each other.”

Associated Press

Facebook bans deepfakes in fight against online manipulation

LONDON — Facebook says it is banning “deepfake” videos, the false but realistic clips created with artificial intelligence and sophisticated tools, as it steps up efforts to fight online manipulation. But the policy leaves plenty of loopholes.

The social network said late Monday that it’s beefing up its policies for removing videos edited or synthesized in ways that aren’t apparent to the average person, and which could dupe someone into thinking the video’s subject said something he or she didn’t actually say.

Created by artificial intelligence or machine learning, deepfakes combine or replace content to create images that can be almost impossible to tell are not authentic.

“While these videos are still rare on the internet, they present a significant challenge for our industry and society as their use increases,” Facebook’s vice president of global policy management, Monika Bickert, said in a blog post.

However, she said the new rules won’t include parody or satire, or clips edited just to change the order of words. The exceptions underscore the balancing act Facebook and other social media services face in their struggle to stop the spread of online misinformation and “fake news,” while also respecting free speech and fending off allegations of censorship.

The U.S. tech company has been grappling with how to handle the rise of deepfakes after facing criticism last year for refusing to remove a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words, which was viewed more than 3 million times. Experts said the crudely edited clip was more of a “cheap fake” than a deepfake.

Then, a pair of artists posted fake footage of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showing him gloating over his one-man domination of the world. Facebook also left that clip online. The company said at the time that neither video violated its policies.

The problem of altered videos is taking on increasing urgency as experts and lawmakers try to figure out how to prevent deepfakes from being used to interfere with the U.S. presidential election in November.

The new policy is a “strong starting point,” but doesn’t address broader problems, said Sam Gregory, program director at Witness, a nonprofit working on using video technology for human rights.

“The reality is there aren’t that many political deepfakes at the moment,” he said. “They’re mainly nonconsensual sexual images.”


The bigger problem is videos that are either shown without context or lightly edited, which some have dubbed “shallow fakes,” Gregory said. These include the Pelosi clip or one that made the rounds last week of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that was selectively edited to make it appear he made racist remarks.

Gregory, whose group was among those that gave feedback to Facebook for the policy, said that while the new rules look strong on paper, there are questions around how effective the company will be at uncovering synthetic videos.

Facebook has built deepfake-detecting algorithms and can also look at an account’s behavior to get an idea of whether it’s intention is to spread disinformation. That will give the company an edge over users or journalists in sniffing them out, Gregory said.

But those algorithms haven’t been used widely for deepfakes in the wild. “So it is an open question how effective detection will be,” he said. “This is an algorithmic kind of game of cat and mouse, where the forgeries will get better alongside the detection.”

Facebook said any videos, deepfake or not, will also be removed if they violate existing standards for nudity, graphic violence or hate speech. Those that aren’t removed can still be reviewed by independent third-party fact-checkers and any deemed false will be flagged as such to people trying to share or view them, which Bickert said was a better approach than just taking them down.

“If we simply removed all manipulated videos flagged by fact-checkers as false, the videos would still be available elsewhere on the internet or social media ecosystem,” Bickert said. “By leaving them up and labeling them as false, we’re providing people with important information and context.”

Twitter, which has been another hotbed for misinformation and altered videos, said it’s in the process of creating a policy for “synthetic and manipulated media,” which would include deepfakes and other doctored videos. The company has asked for public feedback on the issue. The responses it’s considering include putting a notice next to tweets that include manipulated material. The tweets might also be removed if they’re misleading and could cause serious harm to someone.

YouTube, meanwhile, has a policy against “deceptive practices” that the company says includes the “deceptive uses of manipulated media” that may pose serious risk of harm. For instance, the company removed the Pelosi video last year. Google, which owns YouTube, is also researching how to better detect deepfakes and other manipulated media.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Google Hired Human Contractors to Listen to Your Conversations

Google is restarting a practice in which human contractors listen to and transcribe some voice commands people give to the company’s artificial intelligence system, Assistant.

But this time Google is taking steps to make sure people know what they are agreeing to.

The company suspended its transcription practices after more than 1,000 Dutch-language recordings were leaked to the media in Belgium this summer.

Google required users to opt-in to the service before audio transcriptions were recorded.

But critics have said people didn’t fully understand they were agreeing to allow human transcribers to listen in because the company’s language was unclear.

Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook have all used similar practices.

The companies say it helps make their AI systems more accurate.

Now Google will require users to agree again to voice transcription and make it clear human transcribers might listen to recordings.

People don’t have to opt-in to the service, but certain Assistant features won’t be available if they don’t.

The company also said it will delete most recordings after a few months, and people can review their recordings and delete them manually at any time.

source: usa.inquirer.net

Facebook Oversight Panel Members to Be Announced

Facebook said Tuesday that it expects to name the first members of a new quasi-independent oversight board by year-end.

The oversight panel is intended to rule on thorny content issues, such as when Facebook or Instagram posts constitute hate speech.
It will be empowered to make binding rulings on whether posts or ads violate the company’s standards.

Any other findings it makes will be considered “guidance” by Facebook.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to establish the board last November after Facebook came under intense scrutiny for failures to protect user privacy and for its inability to quickly and effectively remove disinformation, hate speech and malign influence campaigns on its platform.

“Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own,” he wrote at the time.

Critics call the oversight board a bid by Facebook to forestall regulation or even an eventual breakup.


The company faces antitrust investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, Congress and a group of state attorneys general.

“Facebook is attempting to normalize an approach to containing hate speech internally,”

Said Dipayan Ghosh, a former Facebook policy adviser and a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

“If it can illustrate that this approach can work, it can pacify the public itch to regulate the business model behind Facebook.”

Luigi Zingales, a University of Chicago professor of finance, called the board’s creation “a clever move” that’s more about appearance than substance.

“It’s hard to imagine that this board will not be completely captured by Facebook,” said Zingales, who co-chaired a committee of more than two dozen prominent academics that published a report Tuesday on how to rein in digital platforms.

To avoid that, at least some of its members would need to be chosen by outsiders, he said.

The multinational board will eventually comprise 40 members, who will collectively decide a few dozen cases a year.

Company executives told reporters in a conference call.

It will at first hear only cases initiated by Facebook but will begin hearing appeals initiated by users in the first half of 2020, the company said.

It will get to work as soon as 11 members are named.

Priority cases will involve content that “threatens someone else’s voice, safety, privacy, dignity or equality” and affects a large number of people, Facebook said in a blog post-Tuesday.

Experts say the panel will have a limited range for decision-making, however.

Local laws or directives from repressive governments might clash with its rulings, and Facebook might heed them for business reasons.

“How to deal with authoritarian regimes is a deep issue for the platform, and for the world really,” said Harvard law student Evelyn Douek, an Australian expert on content moderation.

Douek says the group’s charter, also released Tuesday, should insulate board members from public pressure and Facebook’s commercial imperatives.

But she believes the conditions under which members could be removed are still too vague.

The first few board members will be directly chosen by Facebook; they will then choose additional members.

Facebook will also name the administrators of the trust that manages the Oversight Board and pays its members’ salaries.

Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of governance, told reporters the company had not yet decided how much board members would be paid.

He did not respond when asked how many hours a week would be expected of them in a part-time job.

Facebook expects panelists will include former judges, editors, publishers, and journalists, he said.

The board members’ access to Facebook data will also be limited.

“The board will have access to data that’s pertinent to the case but no more,” said Harris.

Oversight board members are to serve three-year terms with a maximum of three terms.

They can be removed by trustees for violations of a code of conduct that has yet to be drawn up.

Panels of five will convene to review individual cases and decisions will be public, though data and privacy restrictions could apply.

Harris said the board will have a staff that will initially consist of Facebook employees seconded from their jobs.

It’s unclear where the permanent staff will eventually be located and how often oversight board members would meet in person to decide cases.

source: usa.inquirer.net

Facebook’s new currency plan under scrutiny in Congress

WASHINGTON – Facebook’s ambitious plan to create a financial eco-system based on a digital currency faces questions from lawmakers, as it’s shadowed by negative comments from President Donald Trump, his treasury secretary and the head of the Federal Reserve.

Congress begins two days of hearings Tuesday on the currency planned by Facebook, to be called Libra, starting with the Senate Banking Committee.

Meanwhile, a House Judiciary subcommittee will extend its bipartisan investigation of the market power of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple.

Trump tweeted last week that the new currency, Libra, “will have little standing or dependability.” Both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chair Jerome Powell have expressed serious concerns recently that Libra could be used for illicit activity.

The Treasury Department has “very serious concerns that Libra could be misused by money launderers and terrorist financers,” Mnuchin told reporters at the White House on Monday. “This is indeed a national security issue.”

Facebook has “a lot of work to do before we get to the point where we’re comfortable with it,” Mnuchin said.



Already under intense scrutiny from regulators and Congress over privacy and market dominance, Facebook stirred anger on Capitol Hill last month with the unveiling of its plan to create a financial ecosystem based on a digital currency.

Senate and House hearings went on the calendar, and the Democratic head of the House Financial Services Committee, which is holding Wednesday’s hearing, called on Facebook to suspend the plan until Congress and regulators could review it.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said that Facebook, with some 2 billion users around the world, “is continuing its unchecked expansion and extending its reach into the lives of its users.”

She called Libra “a new Swiss-based financial system” that potentially is too big to fail and could require a taxpayer bailout.

David Marcus, the Facebook executive leading the project, says in his testimony prepared for Tuesday’s hearing by the Senate Banking Committee that Libra “is about developing a safe, secure and low-cost way for people to move money efficiently around the world.

We believe that Libra can make real progress toward building a more inclusive financial infrastructure.”

Facebook agrees with Powell’s view that the government’s review of Libra must be “patient and thorough, rather than a sprint to implementation,” Marcus’ statement says.

“The time between now and launch is designed to be an open process and subject to regulatory oversight and review. In fact, I expect that this will be the broadest, most extensive and most careful pre-launch oversight by regulators and central banks in FinTech’s history. We know we need to take the time to get this right.”

The planned digital currency is billed as a “stablecoin” backed by deposits in sovereign currencies such as the dollar, euro and Japanese yen — unlike bitcoin, ether or other digital currencies.

Promising low fees, it could open online commerce to millions of people around the world who lack access to bank accounts and make it cheaper to send money across borders.

But it also raises concerns over the privacy of users’ data and the potential for criminals to use it for money laundering and fraud.

To address privacy concerns, Facebook created a nonprofit oversight association, with dozens of partners including PayPal, Uber, Spotify, Visa and MasterCard, to govern Libra.

As one among many in the association, Facebook says it won’t have any special rights or privileges. It also created a “digital wallet” subsidiary, Calibra, to work on the technology, separately from its main social media business. While Facebook owns and controls Calibra, it won’t see financial data from it, the company says. /gsg

source: business.inquirer.net

Facebook’s digital currency may flourish where banks don’t

NEW YORK  — Europeans and Americans have their Visa and Mastercards. For everyone else, here comes … Libra?

Facebook’s new Libra digital currency is aimed at a huge potential market for financial services — the entire developing world, with billions of people in areas such as India and Sub-Saharan Africa, where financial services are often less sophisticated and many people don’t use traditional banking accounts.


Whether or not these billions will want to make the switch is anyone’s guess.

The U.S., Europe and most developed economies already have large, efficient payment systems. These allow people to buy and sell goods in real time and send money person-to-person through services like Zelle, PayPal and Venmo. That’s why the companies that joined Facebook’s Libra association, as well as nonprofits involved with similar projects, say Libra’s potential lies elsewhere.


In developing countries, many tens of millions still live far from a bank or money transfer center, or currently use a currency prone to inflation or volatility. Libra could address this issue by providing a universal, stable currency that is easily transferrable between persons or businesses without involving setting up an entire payment infrastructure. It also potentially could work at a lower cost.

In the last decade, citizens of developing countries have widely adopted cellphones as a way to store money, sending text message-based payments either to businesses or persons. It’s been a broadly heralded development among policymakers and nonprofits focused on poverty because bank accounts are hard to come by or are too expensive.

“The entire continent of Africa skipped right over cards and went straight into mobile payments,” said Sanjay Sakhrani, an industry analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, who covers Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union.

But these payment systems are often constrained by the type of cellphone carrier each person is using. It’s not uncommon in places like Africa to carry multiple cellphones in order to have the necessary access to the right money transfer system.

Libra could solve this problem by creating a universal currency that can be transferred across multiple cellphone networks and across borders. There’s also the issue of cost, which is cited by the World Bank as being the biggest issue with financial systems outside of developed markets. Facebook says Libra would have a near-zero cost attached to it.

The Colombian border city of Cucuta, is one of the places where Libra could make a difference.

Every day, thousands of needy Venezuelans cross into this sweltering town to buy food and medicines that are scarce at home. For many the first stop is Western Union, where they line up for hours to pick up cash sent by relatives living in abroad. The demand for cash remittances is so big in fact that migrants sometimes line up outside Western Unions the night before the branches open, sleeping on the sidewalk to keep their place in the queue.

Digital currencies could make it easier to transfer funds to these migrants with no bank accounts, and save them hours of their time. Using them is also safer, says Typson Sanchez, a local software developer, because it prevents robberies.

But despites its obvious benefits, merchants in Cucuta have been slow to adopt digital currencies, and only a handful currently accept it.

“Merchants worry about the volatility” of currencies like bitcoin, says Sanchez, a software developer and co-founder of Panda Exchange, a digital payments start up. Other merchants find existing digital wallets difficult to use, and worry about its legality.

Sanchez hopes that Facebook’s Libra could help to overcome some of those obstacles. “They already have a very powerful platform with lots of users” Sanchez says. “They will be able to reach everyday people who are not into technology. And that’s something that many companies haven’t been able to do yet.”

Vodaphone, the Europe-based cell carrier, has a large presence in Africa and other developing countries and operates its own mobile wallet system known as M-Pesa. Already a dominant carrier in Africa, Vodaphone sees the potential in Libra to enable customers to send money across borders at a much lower cost.

There’s a lot of room for improvement. The average fee on a cross-border remittance is around 7%, according to the World Bank, with places in Sub-Saharan Africa charging as much as 10% to send a money transfer.

Companies like Vodaphone and organizations involved with Libra like Mercy Corp and Women’s World Banking said they’ve joined at least in part to make sure they have a “seat at the table” in case Libra does take off as a payment method. Libra’s real-life use cases are still at least a year off, and much likely longer.

Some would argue that Facebook’s Libra is the wrong solution to the issue of accessing financial services in developing countries. In China, the dominant way to pay are WeChat and AliPay, two mobile apps that use messaging to send money either to a business or another person, at extremely low cost. Both apps are used by more than a billion people.

“That to me is the simplest solution for developing countries,” said Nicholas Economides, a professor of economics at the Stern School of Business, an expert in electronic commerce and payment systems. “You don’t need to create a whole new currency. You just need the right app.”

There’s a “well, why not?” factor into these companies’ involvement. Facebook asked for a minimum $10 million investment in Libra from its for-profit partners. For a company like Visa, which made more than $20 billion in revenue last year, the Libra investment is pocket change. In exchange Visa gets insider access to Libra and its potential technologies, as well as a seat at the table.

Visa declined a request for an interview regarding its involvement in the project, but a spokesman pointed to a blog post one of its executives published Tuesday, in which the company’s interest is described as reflecting “a spirit of openness and curiosity.”

Mastercard has been looking into technology that underpins bitcoin and other digital technologies for some time, said Jorn Lambert, executive vice president of digital solutions at Mastercard. The company was attracted to Libra because it’s private, unlike bitcoin which operates on an open network, and it’s backed by reserve currencies.

“This is a thing that could provide real consumer benefits, particularly in the developing world,” Lambert said.

Women’s World Banking, a nonprofit focused on financial inclusion for women particularly in developing countries, also joined the association. WWB wanted to make sure the issues of women in developing countries — who are often less technologically literate than their male counterparts — were addressed.

“Women are more than half of the unbanked population in the world. We wanted to be at the table to address women’s needs,” said Karen Miller, vice president of knowledge and communications.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook plans its own currency for 2 billion-plus users

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook already rules daily communication for more than two billion people around the world. Now it wants its own currency, too.

The social network unveiled an ambitious plan Tuesday to create a new digital currency similar to Bitcoin for global use, one that could drive more e-commerce on its services and boost ads on its platforms.

But the effort, which Facebook is launching with partners including PayPal, Uber, Spotify, Visa and Mastercard, could also complicate matters for the beleaguered social network. Facebook is currently under federal investigation over its privacy practices, and along with other technology giants also faces a new antitrust probe in Congress .

Creating its own globe-spanning currency — one that could conceivably threaten banks, national currencies and the privacy of users — isn’t likely to dampen regulators’ interest in Facebook.

The digital currency, called Libra, is scheduled to launch sometime in the next six to 12 months.

Facebook is taking the lead on building Libra and its underlying technology; its more than two dozen partners will help fund, build and govern the system. Facebook hopes to raise as much as $1 billion from existing and future partners to support the effort.

Company officials emphasized Libra as a way of sending money across borders without incurring significant fees, such as those charged by Western Union and other international money-transfer services. Libra could also open up online commerce to huge numbers of people around the world who currently don’t have bank accounts or credit cards.

“If you fast forward a number of years, consumers all over the world will have the ability to access the world economy,” Facebook executive David Marcus said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Facebook also could use its own currency to drive more people to make purchases from ads on its social media sites, said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan, who based her comments on press reports about Libra that preceded Facebook’s formal announcement. “This is about fostering more sales within an ad to get more business from advertisers to make ads more interesting on Facebook,” she said.

Backing by familiar corporations might also make Libra the first Bitcoin-like currency with mass appeal. Such “cryptocurrencies” have generally failed to catch on despite a devout following among curious investors and innovators. Bitcoin itself remains shrouded in secrecy and fraud concerns, not to mention wild value fluctuations, making it unappealing for the average shopper.

Libra will be different, Facebook says, in part because its value will be pegged to a basket of established currencies such as the U.S. dollar, the euro, the yen and others. Each purchase of Libra will be backed by a reserve fund of equal value held in real-world currencies to stabilize Libra’s value.

To be sure, recent history reminds us that many big Facebook announcements never really take off.

Two years ago, for instance, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised that “augmented reality ,” in which phones and other devices project digital images into real-world surroundings, would be a major focus for the company. Such AR applications remain all but invisible today. Same goes for the online shopping chatbots that Zuckerberg unveiled a year earlier, saying they would revolutionize e-commerce in its Messenger app.

Facebook won’t run Libra directly; instead, the company and its partners are forming a nonprofit called the Libra Association, headquartered in Geneva, that will oversee the new currency and its use.

The association will be regulated by Swiss financial authorities, Facebook said.

“No single company should operate this,” Marcus said. “It should be a public good.”

The company has also created a new subsidiary, Calibra, that is developing a digital wallet to allow people to buy, send and use Libra. Calibra pledges that it won’t share transaction data from details of Libra user’s financials with Facebook unless compelled to do so in criminal cases. Still, if people are using Facebook products to buy things and send money, it’s possible Facebook will be able to track some data about shopping and money transferring habits.

Calibra won’t require users to have a Facebook account to make a free wallet. And it will allow people to send Libra back and forth on two of Facebook’s core messaging apps — WhatsApp and Messenger. Instagram messages won’t be included, at least at first.

Libra partners will create incentives to get people and merchants to use the coin. That could range from Uber discounts to a Libra bonus paid when users set up a Calibra wallet, although the companies haven’t laid out specifics.

Many privacy questions remain unanswered, though. Cryptocurrencies such as Libra store all transactions on a widely distributed, encrypted “ledger” known as the blockchain. That could make the Libra blockchain a permanent record of all purchases or cash transfers every individual makes, even if they’re stored under pseudonyms rather than real names.

Facebook said that if people use Calibra or similar wallets, their individual transactions won’t be visible on the Libra blockchain.

Earlier this year, Zuckerberg announced a new privacy-focused vision for the company after months of backlash for its treatment of personal customer information. Zuckerberg’s vision — which has mostly not been detailed publicly — will rely heavily on privacy-shielded messaging apps in an attempt to make the services more about private, one-to-one connections.

Many analysts believe Zuckerberg wants to create a US version of the Chinese service WeChat, which combines social networking, messaging and payments in a single app. Libra would take Facebook a step closer to that end. /ee

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook to file transparency reports every quarter starting 2020

MENLO PARK, California — Boasting how things have changed around Facebook as a company, Sheryl Sandberg, its chief operating operating officer, announced that the social media giant will come out with transparency reports every quarter starting next year from currently doing it biannually.

“We will put it out just like earnings with a press call because we think the content on our site is just as important as anything we could do to earn money or create growth,” Sandberg told journalists from over 30 countries at the Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, California on Wednesday.

Sandberg said that with a community of 2.7 billion people, Facebook sees some of the “very, very worst of humanity” along with all the good that comes with it. 

“What we are focused on right now is making sure we are running our company differently so we do everything we can to prevent the bad but that we are really allowing the good to continue,” Sandberg said.

“We are making massive investments to the tune of billions of dollars in safety and security. We are working very closely with governments around the world to do things like protect elections. We are working really hard with our internal teams, product teams, and other companies to find bad actors and take them down,” she added.

Admitting that they cannot get rid of all the bad actors on Facebook, Sandberg said that they are making progress, especially with the effort to come out with transparency reports more frequently.

Asked about a recent critical New York Times opinion piece by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, calling for the tech giant to be broken up, Sandberg dismissed it by saying that: “People have to pay attention to how much consumer choice there is.”

“You know anti-trust, which is what Chris (Hughes) is talking about, is really about consumer protection and making sure that consumers have a choice. If you look at our products and if you look at what we do, it is just pretty clear that there is a lot of choice,” Sandberg said.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook stops Huawei from pre-installing apps on phones

LONDON — Facebook has stopped letting its apps come pre-installed on smartphones sold by Huawei in order to comply with US restrictions, dealing a fresh blow to the Chinese tech giant.

The social network said Friday that it has suspended providing software for Huawei to put on its devices while it reviews recently introduced US sanctions.


Owners of existing Huawei smartphones that already have Facebook apps can continue using them and downloading updates.

It’s not clear if buyers of new Huawei devices will be able to install Facebook’s apps on their own.

Facebook’s move is the latest fallout in the escalating US-China tech feud.

The Commerce Department last month effectively barred US companies from selling their technology to Huawei and other Chinese firms without government approval.

Huawei declined to comment. /ee

source: technology.inquirer.net

Zuckerberg ‘optimistic’ on regulation after Macron meeting

PARIS — Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said he was “encouraged” and “optimistic” about the regulatory framework being suggested by France for the social media giant and other online platforms, after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The meeting followed the drawing up of a report by experts and top French civil servants proposing that each member state of the European Union set up its own regulatory authority to police social networks.

The report commissioned by the French government — for which the experts were given unprecedented access by social networks — slammed the online firms’ efforts to self-regulate and their “lack of credibility”.

Zuckerberg met Macron at the Elysee Palace amid pressure to crack down on the spread of disinformation as well as a call from a co-founder of Facebook for the California-based giant to be broken up.

“I am encouraged and optimistic about the regulatory framework that will be put in place,” Zuckerberg said after leaving the meeting.

“Overall I think in order for people to trust the internet…  there needs to be the right regulation put in place,” he said.

The report called “Creating a French Response to Make Social Media Responsible” has been submitted to France’s digital ministry.

It acknowledged the huge freedoms offered by social media in the modern world, but said that “the capacities offered by social media provoke unacceptable abuses of these liberties.”

“These abuses by individuals or groups have not yet received a satisfactory response from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or Snap, to name but some,” it said.

“Hopefully this can become a model and not just a national model for France but can be worked into… a framework across the EU overall,” Zuckerberg added.

“I am very optimistic and grateful for the partnership and experimentation and the seriousness and diligence that the government put in this,” he said.

The report said that the response by big social media groups like Facebook to abuses and disinformation too often came after the fact and when damage was already done.

“(Self-regulation) lacks credibility,” it concluded, adding that the lack of transparency “arouses suspicion over the reality of the action by the platforms.”

Facebook has its European headquarters in low-tax Ireland, which under current rules would have responsibility for regulating it.

The report proposes a regulatory authority in each EU member state, rather than relying on regulation of them in the countries where they are based.

“Through the excesses that they enable, social networks create problems in other countries, (which are) difficult to see by the home country,” the report added.

Macron has been one of Europe’s most vocal critics of light-touch regulation of Zuckerberg’s empire which includes Facebook as well as the widely used Instagram and WhatsApp platforms.

Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, wrote in an editorial published in The New York Times on Thursday that the company should be dismantled.

“It’s time to break up Facebook,” wrote Hughes, who along with Zuckerberg founded the online network in their dorm room while both were students at Harvard University in 2004.

Hughes said Zuckerberg’s “focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks,” and warned that his global influence had become “staggering”.


Draft legislation in France to increase tax on digital giants had also been expected to feature in Macron’s meeting with Zuckerberg, after lawmakers gave initial approval last month despite warnings from US officials that the move was “discriminatory”.


source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook launches new Dating feature

MANILA, Philippines — When one says Facebook, what does this mean? Chatting with friends? Playing games? Sharing of photos?

This may begin to change as Facebook entered another social territory with the launching of Facebook Dating to 19 countries — including the Philippines — on Wednesday.


According to Charmaine Hung, Facebook Dating product manager, the feature is available within the Facebook application, which would allow people to match with other Facebook Dating users based on their preferences and interests.

“People in the Philippines already use the platform to connect and celebrate relationships, and we are excited to offer them new ways of doing so,” Hung said in a pre-launch press briefing.

How it works

Hung said Facebook users have to ensure that they have the updated version of the application to access the feature.

Within the Facebook app, users have to look for the Facebook Dating button and create an account separate from their own Facebook account.


Once the account has been set up, Facebook will look for possible matches depending on preferences and interests of the user.

The user will then have an option of expressing interest or passing on the possible match.

Users can also send a message to another user they are interested in even if they have yet to match. The user, however, can only send one message until the other party responds.

Facebook Dating has a separate messaging platform from Facebook Messenger where users can message each other.

Users also have the option include their preferences such as location, distance, gender, and age range for better matches.

Other information users can provide include religious views, height, job, educational background, and whether or not they want to have children in the future.

Similar to Facebook, users can also block and report other users who are being inappropriate in the application.

Hung, however, clarified that users have to be at least 18 years old and that Facebook friends could not match with each other.

Separating factors

Asked about the separating factor of Facebook Dating over other dating applications, Hung said they have the “Secret Crush” feature which allows users to anonymously let their “Facebook friend” know that they are interested in them.

“If you choose to use Secret Crush, you can select up to nine of your Facebook friends who you want to express interest in. If your crush has opted into Facebook Dating, they will get a notification saying that someone has a crush on them,” Hung said.

The “crush” will only be informed of the identity of the user once he or she has also expressed interest to the other party.

“If your crush adds you to their Secret Crush list, it’s a match. If there isn’t a match, then no one will know that you’ve entered a friend’s name,” Hung said.

Users can also retrieve other users who they have previously passed on through the “second look” feature. Other dating applications offer the same service by paying a certain amount. 



“Everything that you see [in Facebook Dating] are completely free so we are really proud to say that all of these things are free. We won’t be charging for any features even if they are considered premium somewhere else,” Hung said.

Hung said can also check possible matches in events, for instance, who is attending an event that the user will also be attending.

/atm

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook F8: What to expect

Despite Facebook’s growing list of scandals in recent years, the company remains a leader in the technology industry. At F8 this year, we can expect to learn just how Zuckerberg plans to position the company in the augmented reality (AR) market, develop Messenger to be more useful for businesses, and advance Facebook’s AI technology to offer more personalized and safer user experiences.

While Facebook has not explicitly announced what will be discussed at this year’s annual F8 developer conference, the event schedule gives us some insight as to what the company will focus on over the years to come: the development of virtual reality technology and hardware, the refinement and enhancement of Facebook Messenger, and the implementation of more advanced artificial intelligence.


The future of virtual and augmented reality

The conference opens with a presentation entitled “The Value of VR for the Enterprise,” which will be followed on both days with more sessions about how to develop and apply this technology. Specifically, discussions will be led about the implementation of AR on Instagram, in music, and even when shopping.

The future of Messenger

Over the two-day conference, eight sessions will be dedicated to Facebook Messenger and its usefulness within businesses. Presentations will be given on how to use the platform to drive business results, build a company, enhance customer support, and improve overall customer experience. Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that the company will focus on developing its e-commerce services, and here’s that promise in action.

The future of artificial intelligence

Also on the schedule are a series of AI-themed sessions focusing on the development of a mobile AI platform and the implementation of artificial intelligence to keep Facebook’s various social media platforms safe. The company will also host presentations outlining its intention to make AI more conversational and use it to offer more personalized experiences.

The F8 conference runs from April 30 to May 1. JB

source: technology.inquirer.net