Internet & Websites News - Page 22

Facebook is taking a swipe at Tinder with the announcement of its new dating feature, since so many people find their partners online, why leave Facebook to do it?

Robot overlord and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that the new dating feature was designed from the ground up with privacy and safety in mind, and I'm seriously sure he meant that, except probably not. The dating feature won't suggest any of your Facebook friends as a match, and if you do use the feature none of your FB friends will see your dating profile.

Facebook users will be able to set up a dating profile that is completely separate to their normal FB profile, with nothing connected between the two parts of Facebook showing up in your News Feed. Once you're in the new dating feature, you can slide through groups and events to see who you're compatible with.

Facebook is standing on a dumpster fire of trouble right now, with CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg at the center of it all. All of this drama was kicked off with the Cambridge Analytica news, and has truly snowballed since.

It has been reported that Facebook deleted Zuckerberg's messages from users' inboxes, which is insane, considering Facebook users are the only ones that have the ability to delete messages from their inboxes. Facebook has obviously got super admin powers to delete peasants' messages, or in this case, messages sent by Facebook execs.

In the midst of the world finding this out, Facebook not-so-surprisingly said they are planning to launch a new "unsend" features in the coming months. TechCrunch talked to three sources that wanted to remain anonymous "out of fear of angering Zuckerberg or burning bridges with the company" that the messages send by Zuckerberg to both former employees and non-employees were deleted.

Facebook are in some deep doo doo right now, with the full skinny on that in my article about the social networking giant losing $50 billion over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Now we have WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton taking to Twitter of all social networking platforms tweeting: "It's time. #deletefacebook". Both Acton and WhatsApp have declined to comment reports The Verge, and remember... Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for a huge $16 billion. Acton is now worth $6.5 billion and in the middle of a $50 billion stock drop for Facebook, its CEO and COO have been reportedly missing from a recent staff meet to discuss the CA scandal.

Acton isn't the first ex-Facebook executive to talk dirt on the social networking giant, with head of growth for Facebook Chamath Palihapitiya admitting "we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works." Crazy things are happening for FB right now, and I don't see how they're going to get out of this one short of a larger scandal breaking out and fanning these flames.

Facebook is getting hammered from all directions right now, and right off the news that Cambridge Analytica has been using Facebook data to influence elections around the world, Facebook stock has dipped by a huge $50 billion in just two days.

Cambridge Analytica had data on some 50 million Facebook users and since the news emerged, the social networking giant has experienced its largest two-day stock price decline, ever. Facebook stock was steady at $185 before the CA news broke, dipping down to $168 at the time of writing, wiping away $50 billion. 129 million shares of Facebook shares were circulated in these two days, which is massive.

There has been a steady ramp up to this news, with Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg making an announcement of yet more changes to Facebook's News Feed. Zuckerberg announced that the changes to the News Feed would turn more people away from advertisement and more with connecting people together again. The algorithm change was huge, affecting everyone... including TweakTown.

There has been some pretty large news hit the internet regarding Twitter and its 'creepy Big Brother' behavior behind closed doors, with Project Veritas' latest expose on one of the largest social media networks in the world.

Clay Haynes, a senior network security engineer at Twitter said that the social networking giant "disturbs him", and called it "creepy Big Brother" during a secretly recorded video by Project Veritas and their investigation into Twitter.

Haynes said: "It is creepy Big Brother. I mean it's like a level... I don't want to say it freaks me out, but it disturbs me. I get to look at all of the reported tweets, which means I've seen a lot of dick pics. It's ridiculous... We can actually read your DMs... I've seen way more penises than I've ever wanted to see in my life".

There's a new plan being hatched between the Canadian government and AI firm Advanced Symbolics, where they have announced a new partnership that will work on predicting the rise of regional suicide risk by monitoring social media posts.

Advanced Symbolics will use their AI technology to predict which areas in Canada might see rises in suicidal behavior, something that includes in their contract documentation: "ideation (i.e., thoughts), behaviors (i.e., suicide attempts, self-harm, suicide) and communications (i.e., suicidal threats, plans)".

The Canadian government can then use this to spend more money on mental health resources in the right places, when needed. The project will start later this month, ending in June, with the AI firm monitoring social media accounts for three months during this trial period. After which, the Canadian government will see how successful the pilot was, and continue.

'Fake news' has become an abundant term used throughout modern-day society, Facebook being the largest social media network in the world has had fake news spread across its platform. To combat this third-party "fact checkers" were implemented to flag articles that fell under the fake news category but now Facebook has decided to announce the discontinuing of the flagging of articles.

Accused of posting 'fake news' articles throughout the Presidential campaigns in 2016, Facebook waged war against 'fake news' but now a new study from Yale University has suggested that the flagging of specific news articles that have been classified as 'fake news' holds no value at all and can actually "can backfire and further entrench someone's beliefs."

The study suggests that the flagging of specific articles only caused 3.7% of people to identify the flagged article as 'fake news' which has made Facebook question its implication of the third-party fact checkers which has now resulted in a decision to remove them.

Netflix on PC is about to get a major update as Netflix has taken to their blog to announce that Netflix now supports HDR on Windows 10. The update designed for the Edge browser and the Netflix app will be available to Netflix premium customers, and there is already 200 hours of HDR content available.

Unfortunately this update won't be available to everyone as only Intel's 7th-generation or higher processors will support HDR10 encoded content. Those that have older generation CPU are not cut out just yet, if you have decided to upgrade your graphics card to anything above NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1050, Netflix HDR will be also be supported.

"We are thrilled to announce the addition of High Dynamic Range (HDR) support on Windows 10 for both the Edge browser and the Netflix app. With this update, Netflix members who have a supported device and a premium plan can enjoy amazing Netflix movies and shows in HDR."

Anyone that listens to music online knows there is already a variety of choices for a streaming websites or apps that make available a very large percentage of what most people want to listen to. Services such as Google Play Music or YouTube Music are some of choices but now Google is set to release their third streaming service called 'YouTube Remix.'

Reported by Bloomberg, YouTube has signed a deal with two new record labels; Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. This deal will allow for YouTube to host songs from each of the labels in hopes to bring more content to the streaming service and sway more people to turn towards YouTube instead of Spotify or Pandora.

Since YouTube has been battling with copyright laws with music for quite some time now, the launch of this new service YouTube Remix and the label deal now in effect YouTube will no doubt convert this new service into a paid subscription to then not only strengthen the already made relationships with labels but also to attract new ones.

Project Loon is an initiative to connect as many of the planets population to the internet as possible through massive balloon technology that will use beams of light to deliver high-speed connectivity to remote places of the planet, such as some areas in India.

Currently over 53 million Indians are living in a state called Andhra Pradesh and less than 20% of the states population have access to standard broadband. To fix this issue the states government has decided to take action and has committed to providing the rest of residents that do not have access to the Internet a stable connection, to do this the Loon team partnered with Ap State FiberNet a telecom company in Andhra Pradesh to create Free Space Optimal Communications, or FSOC for short.

FSOC is basically optic-fiber speeds of internet just without the use of the cable, this was tested by Project Loon by sending a copy of the movie Real Genius between two balloons in the stratosphere 100 kilometers apart. Instead of laying optic-fiber cable to connect the state of Andhra Pradesh FSOC technology will be implemented by placing node boxes on roof tops or building towers.