Tag: Meta

EU targets Apple, Amazon, Meta and other Massive Tech in following section of digital crackdown

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LONDON (AP) — Six Significant Tech providers including Amazon, Apple and Microsoft confronted fresh tension Wednesday from the European Union, which moved to counter their digital dominance with much-achieving principles aimed at supplying end users much more choices and creating competitiveness fairer.

Google dad or mum Alphabet, Fb operator Meta and TikTok guardian ByteDance also were classified as on the web “gatekeepers” subject matter to the strictest necessities of the 27-nation EU’s Digital Marketplaces Act. The list of do’s and don’ts seeks to protect against tech giants from cornering digital marketplaces, with the danger of whopping fines or even forcing organizations to provide of areas of their enterprise to operate in Europe.

That signifies European people of Huge Tech social media or chat providers could quickly be able to ship messages to rival platforms, steer clear of acquiring their info utilized to exhibit personalized advertisements and select which lookup motor or browser they want rather than getting trapped with a default edition.

It’s aspect of a sweeping update to the EU’s electronic rulebook using power this year and arrives weeks soon after a companion package of guidelines aimed at maintaining world-wide-web people risk-free, the Electronic Companies Act, started off kicking in.

“The most impactful on-line organizations will now have to participate in by our EU procedures,” European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who’s in cost of the bloc’s digital policy, reported on X, beforehand regarded as Twitter. “DMA suggests more alternative for customers. Less road blocks for more compact competitors. Opening the gates to the World wide web.”

The European Fee, the EU’s government physique, reported electronic platforms can be detailed as gatekeepers if they act as key gateways concerning enterprises and people by giving “core platform solutions.”

Those people solutions involve Google’s Chrome browser, Microsoft’s Home windows working systems, chat applications like Meta’s WhatsApp, social networks like TikTok, and other people taking part in a intermediary purpose like Amazon’s Market and Apple’s App Keep.

The companies now have 6 months to start out complying with the Digital Marketplaces Act’s demands, which are spurring modifications in how Big Tech organizations operate.

Google reported the new regulation will require it and other organizations “to make numerous variations to the way their goods and companies work.”

Just one of the major targets is to crack up the “closed ecosystem where by you are in a way locked in and you simply cannot go elsewhere, ” claimed Alexandre de Streel, a professor of European law at the College of Namur and an tutorial director at CERRE, a consider tank in Brussels.

“Consumers will be far better off mainly because you will fork out a lot less and will be equipped to go far more effortlessly from one 1 platform to an additional,” de Streel explained. “So that’s the endgame.”

For illustration, less than the DMA, tech businesses just cannot end consumers from connecting with organizations outside the house their platforms.

That could set pressure on Apple to open its Application Retail outlet more.

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FTC proposes ban on Meta profiting from minors’ information

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The U.S. Federal Trade Fee on Wednesday accused Meta’s Facebook of misleading moms and dads about protections for youngsters and proposed tightening an existing settlement on privateness to involve a ban on generating dollars from minors’ information.

Exclusively, the FTC claimed Fb misled mothers and fathers about how significantly control they experienced above who their children experienced speak to with in the Messenger Children application and was misleading about how significantly accessibility app builders experienced to users’ non-public data, breaching a 2019 agreement on privateness.

The FTC’s proposed alterations contain barring Fb from generating revenue off facts collected on customers under age 18, which includes in its digital fact small business. It would also facial area expanded constraints on working with facial recognition technological innovation.

Meta shares fell as considerably as 2% on Wednesday but pared most of people losses and were being off .3% at $238.50.Meta, which also owns Instagram, relies on electronic advertisements specific on the basis of its users’ individual details for extra than 98% of its income.

The firm maintains the world’s major social networks, but is battling quick video clip application TikTok for youthful users’ focus following it soared to popularity with American teens several several years back.

In a assertion, Meta reported the FTC action was “a political stunt” and that the FTC unsuccessful to act versus “Chinese organizations, like TikTok.”

“We will vigorously battle this action and be expecting to prevail,” the corporation reported.

The FTC transfer on Wednesday is the initially action in the approach of altering the 2019 arrangement. Fb will have 30 days to react. The corporation also can appeal any commission choice to an appeals courtroom.

“This is a pretty significant statement from the FTC about whether or not or not Meta has fulfilled its responsibilities to shield youngsters,” claimed Debra Williamson of Insider Intelligence, including that “the earnings implications are not probable quite significant.

“Williamson explained that some 5.2% of Facebook’s month-to-month U.S. buyers are underneath 18, together with 12.6% of Instagram buyers.”

Facebook has frequently violated its privacy claims,” reported Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Customer Defense. “The company’s recklessness has set young customers at risk, and Fb requires to respond to for its failures.”

The FTC has 2 times right before settled with Facebook above privacy violations.

The initial was in 2012. Fb agreed in 2019 to pay a record $5 billion fantastic to resolve allegations it had violated the 2012 consent purchase by deceptive consumers about how significantly regulate they had above their own information. That order was finalized in 2020.

Independently, the FTC sued to halt Meta from acquiring the virtual reality content maker In Endless but misplaced in court. The company also questioned a federal court in 2020 to purchase Facebook to provide Instagram, which it acquired for $1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp, which it bought for $19 billion in 2014. The case is underway.

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Programming languages: Rust just obtained a major improve from Facebook’s Meta

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Picture: Deagreez/GETTY

Facebook parent Meta now encourages its engineers to use C++ and Rust programming languages for coding superior-performance backend expert services. 

Rust, initially created inside Mozilla, is joining Meta as an formally endorsed server-aspect language. Incorporating Rust as a supported language was a “quite cautious and deliberate decision” to assist engineers decide the very best language for their jobs, according to Meta. 

“Meta is dedicated to offer extended-time period guidance for programming languages utilised by our developer, and this move indicators Meta’s lengthy-term commitment and support for the Rust language ecosystem,” it said.

Its status as a supported language is the next phase in Facebook’s adoption of Rust. It joined the Rust Basis in April 2021 as a platinum member with AWS, Google, Huawei, Microsoft and Mozilla. 

SEE: What is Coding and What is it Applied For? A Beginner’s Guideline

Fb has used Rust considering that 2016, a year following version 1. of the language arrived. Rust is the key language it used for the Diem (previously Libra) stablecoin blockchain, its Mononoke supply handle server, and Transfer, Meta’s “new, protected programming language to be used for the blockchain.”

Deciding upon Rust more than C++ was a large determination for Facebook considering the fact that most of its back-end code was written in C++, building it the evident choice. 

Rust adoption attained momentum soon after Mononoke was considered a good results, drawing engineers with Python and JavaScript backgrounds, in accordance to Fb. 

Now, Rust is a key supported server-side language alongside with Hack, C++, and Python. 

Rust is now advisable for composing command line interface (CLI) applications and “effectiveness-sensitive back-stop solutions”. 

“There is certainly a promptly growing Rust footprint in our products and solutions and companies, and we are committing to Rust long-phrase and welcome early adopters,” says Eric Garcia, a Meta application engineering supervisor. 

Hack is favored for organization logic and “reasonably stateless” purposes, whilst Python continues to be “the language of option” for info science, ML programs, and Instagram. 

Meta also supports Java, Erlang, Haskell, and Go for unique use instances. 

Meta suggests it thoroughly considers the concern of supporting a new language mainly because of the dangers it consists of to performance, efficiency and developer time. It prefers to preserve the checklist slim to lessen the variety of core libraries, lower complexity when developing stability and privacy functions, stay away from language fragmentation to lessen operational hazard, and developer tooling support.

Rust’s gain at Facebook is that it quickly interoperates with its C++ code for communicating with back again-end systems that expert services are created on. 

“We will need builders to be capable to use these libraries properly and easily without having sacrificing the rewards that Rust offers. Inversely, if we want to see Rust elements built-in with our much larger C++ binaries, we have to have clever runtime interoperability in asynchronous code. Facebook’s servers are remarkably distributed and greatly threaded. Rust duties require to perform properly on a C++ threadpool and properly share synchronization

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Meta slashes choosing ideas, girds for ‘fierce’ headwinds

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Facebook-proprietor Meta Platforms Inc has cut options to retain the services of engineers by at minimum 30% this yr, CEO Mark Zuckerberg advised workers on Thursday, as he warned them to brace for a deep financial downturn. “If I experienced to guess, I’d say that this may well be a person of the worst downturns that we’ve observed in recent background,” Zuckerberg told staff in a weekly personnel Q&A session, audio of which was listened to by Reuters.

Meta has lessened its concentrate on for hiring engineers in 2022 to around 6,000-7,000, down from an preliminary plan to employ about 10,000 new engineers, Zuckerberg stated.

Meta verified choosing pauses in wide conditions previous thirty day period, but specific figures have not previously been described.
In addition to minimizing selecting, he said, the company was leaving specific positions unfilled in reaction to attrition and “turning up the heat” on effectiveness management to weed out staffers not able to satisfy extra intense targets.

“Realistically, there are almost certainly a bunch of people at the business who shouldn’t be in this article,” Zuckerberg claimed. “Part of my hope by raising anticipations and getting a lot more aggressive objectives, and just form of turning up the warmth a small little bit, is that I think some of you might determine that this place is not for you, and that self-assortment is Okay with me,” he explained.

The social media and technologies firm is bracing for a leaner 2nd 50 percent of the calendar year, as it copes with macroeconomic pressures and data privateness hits to its advertisements small business, according to an inner memo seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The corporation ought to “prioritize more ruthlessly” and “operate leaner, meaner, better executing teams,” Chief Solution Officer Chris Cox wrote in the memo, which appeared on the company’s inside discussion discussion board Office before the Q&A.

“I have to underscore that we are in severe occasions right here and the headwinds are intense. We need to execute flawlessly in an atmosphere of slower expansion, where by groups ought to not anticipate vast influxes of new engineers and budgets,” Cox wrote.

The memo was “intended to create on what we’ve currently mentioned publicly in earnings about the difficulties we deal with and the possibilities we have, in which we’re placing far more of our vitality towards addressing,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

The steerage is the most up-to-date tough forecast to occur from Meta executives, who now moved to trim expenses across substantially of the company this yr in the experience of slowing advertisement profits and person growth.

Tech businesses throughout the board have scaled again their ambitions in anticipation of a achievable US economic downturn, whilst the slide in stock cost at Meta has been additional significant than at competition Apple and Google.

The world’s greatest social media firm shed about 50 percent its current market benefit this 12 months, soon after Meta documented that each day lively customers on its

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In the middle of a crisis, Facebook Inc. renames itself Meta

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OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Like many companies in trouble before it, Facebook is changing its name and logo.

Facebook Inc. is now called Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, to reflect what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday is its commitment to developing the new surround-yourself technology known as the “ metaverse.” But the social network itself will still be called Facebook.

Also unchanged, at least for now, are its chief executive and senior leadership, its corporate structure and the crisis that has enveloped the company.

Skeptics immediately accused the company of trying to change the subject from the Facebook Papers, the trove of leaked documents that have plunged it into the biggest crisis since it was founded in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room 17 years ago. The documents portray Facebook as putting profits ahead of ridding its platform of hate, political strife and misinformation around the world.

The move reminded marketing consultant Laura Ries of when energy company BP rebranded itself to “Beyond Petroleum” to escape criticism that the oil giant harmed the environment.

“Facebook is the world’s social media platform, and they are being accused of creating something that is harmful to people and society,” she said. “They can’t walk away from the social network with a new corporate name and talk of a future metaverse.”

Facebook the app is not changing its name. Nor are Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. The company’s corporate structure also won’t change. But on Dec. 1, its stock will start trading under a new ticker symbol, MVRS.

The metaverse is sort of the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. Zuckerberg has described it as a “virtual environment” you can go inside of, instead of just looking at on a screen. People can meet, work and play, using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices.

It also will incorporate other aspects of online life such as shopping and social media, according to Victoria Petrock, an analyst who follows emerging technologies.

Zuckerberg’s foray into virtual reality has drawn some comparisons to fellow tech billionaires’ outer space adventures and jokes that perhaps it’s understandable he would want to escape his current reality amid calls for his resignation and increasing scrutiny of the company.

On Monday, Zuckerberg announced a new segment for Facebook that will begin reporting its financial results separately from the company’s Family of Apps segment starting in the final quarter of this year. The entity, Reality Labs, will reduce Facebook’s overall operating profit by about $10 billion this year, the company said.

Other tech companies such as Microsoft, chipmaker Nvidia and Fortnite maker Epic Games have all been outlining their own visions of how the metaverse will work.

Zuckerberg said that he expects the metaverse to reach a billion people within the next decade and that he hopes the new technology will creates millions of jobs for creators.

The announcement comes amid heightened legislative and regulatory scrutiny of Facebook in many parts of the world because

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Facebook renames itself Meta amid controversy

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Facebook unveiled a new name.


Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Facebook said Thursday it’s rebranding itself as Meta to reflect the company’s focus on building the metaverse, a virtual world where people work, play, learn and connect with their friends and family.

Meta will be a new corporate brand that will preside over Facebook and its services including photo app Instagram, messaging app WhatsApp and its virtual and augmented reality efforts. Facebook says it will start trading under the new stock ticker MVRS on Dec. 1. 

“In our DNA, we are a company that builds technology to connect people and the metaverse is the next frontier, just like social networking was when we got started,” Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during Facebook Connect, the company’s annual VR and AR conference. Zuckerberg said that the word “meta” comes from the Greek word meaning “beyond” and that “it symbolizes that there is always more to build.”


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In a preview of the metaverse, avatars are playing chess, standing in a virtual concert, learning and working remotely. In the next five to 10 years, Zuckerberg believes, these virtual experiences will become mainstream. In the next decade, he hopes there will be a billion users in the metaverse. 

The widely rumored rebranding underscores how Facebook, founded in 2004, has grown beyond social networking. Facebook owns virtual reality headset maker Oculus, built Portal video chat devices and teamed up with Ray-Ban to release its first pair of smart glasses this year. It’s also the most high-profile rebranding of a tech company since 2015, when Google formed its parent company Alphabet.

A new corporate name, though, doesn’t fix Facebook’s seemingly endless list of problems. For years, the company has dealt with criticism that it doesn’t do enough to safeguard privacy, combat hate speech and stop the spread of misinformation. Now the social network is grappling with more allegations that it puts profits over user safety after former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal research to Congress and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The Wall Street Journal and then a consortium of US and international news outlets published stories based on some of those documents.

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Mark Zuckerberg showcases his avatar. 


Screenshot by Queenie Wong/CNET

Facebook has said its internal research is being mischaracterized to paint a “false picture” of the company. The social network says more than 40,000 people work on safety and security, and the company is on track to spend more than $5 billion on these issues this year.

“Some of you might be wondering why we’re doing this right now. The answer is that I believe that we’re put on this Earth to create. I believe that technology can make our lives better,” Zuckerberg said. 

Facebook’s new wave of controversy also hasn’t stopped the company from doubling down on

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