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What you need to know about the Facebook Papers
Facebook is now undergoing what may be the tech giant’s biggest crisis in its 17-year history. In October, The Washington Post reported that a second Facebook whistleblower came forward to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that the company prioritises growth over combating hate speech, disinformation, and other threats to the public. The whistleblower’s testimony follows that of former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, whose legal counsel released what’s known as the Facebook Papers — a 10,000-page collection of internal reports, memos, and chat logs leaked to more than a dozen major news outlets.
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Platform Regulation: Key takeways from Haugen’s hearing
On 8 November 2021, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, participated in a hearing of the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO). While her testimony brought extremely important insights into Facebook’s opaque operations, it also showed that Haugen’s thinking of what the digital world in Europe should look like is influenced by her expertise in data science rather than public policy, as well as by her professional experience working with Silicon Valley’s centralised mega-platforms.
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Facebook deleting facial recognition: Five reasons to take it with a pinch of salt
Voluntary self-regulation from tech giants is superficial and no replacement for actual legislation
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noyb publishes the draft decision by the DPC in the case against Facebook
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has sent a draft decision to EDRi's member noyb - European Center for Digital Rights and informed noyb that the draft decision would be shared with the other European Data Protection Authorities for consultation. The case concerns Facebook's reliance on contracts for serving advertising to its users - the legal trick Facebook applied in May 2018 to bypass the GDPR.
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Facebook Files: How a ban on surveillance advertising can fix Facebook
Facebook is engulfed in the biggest crisis to hit the company since the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The explosive revelations by whistle-blower Frances Haugen, is that Facebook’s leadership refused to make changes that would make their platforms safer because they “put their immense profits before people”.
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Why you shouldn’t buy Facebook Ray-Ban smart glasses
Imagine that you are strolling along a tranquil beach in your swimsuit. Suddenly, a stranger walking toward you takes out their phone and starts recording you. You might work up the courage to ask how they dared to invade your privacy, and demand they delete the footage.
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Algorithms of trauma: New case study shows that Facebook doesn’t give users real control over disturbing surveillance ads
A case study examined by Panoptykon Foundation, EDRi’s member in Poland, and showcased by the Financial Times, demonstrates how Facebook uses algorithms to deliver personalised ads that may exploit users’ mental vulnerabilities.
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Facebook’s dominance makes it difficult to question the truth
What we as a society understand as true is changeable, and questioning the truth can only be done with a healthy public debate. But the dominance of the platforms that facilitate our public debate makes difficult.
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Move fast and break Big Tech’s power
The surveillance-based business model of the dominant technology companies is based on extracting as much personal information and profiling as possible to target individuals, on- and offline. Over time, Big Tech corporations build a frighteningly detailed picture about billions of individuals—and that knowledge directly translates into (market) power.
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How one word took an entire organization off the air
EDRi's member Bits of Freedom cannot share this blog post with their supporters on Facebook. The reason for this: the word "QAnon" appears in it. This single word was all it took to have the Facebook page of The Hmm and that of its three administrators removed.
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Thousands Expected to Sue Facebook in Mass Action Against Privacy Breach
EDRi's member Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) will sue Facebook to recover damages for those affected by the recent breach of personal data by Facebook, a first for legal actions against tech companies in Europe. See how you can join the lawsuit if you were affected.
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Why Facebook’s proposed hate speech policy on Zionism would only add fuel to the fire
Pressured to combat surging hate speech and anti-Semitism on its platform, Facebook is looking into how it should moderate the use of the word “Zionist,” and whether to add the term as a protected category under its hate speech policy. EDRi's member Access Now doesn’t think that is a good idea, particularly given Facebook’s inability to strictly adhere to human rights principles in its content moderation practices.
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