Facebook info

 

 Facebook info


Facebook is the most popular social media site in the world, with more than 2 billion active monthly users. It has enormous influence in both the online and offline worlds, and people use it to keep up to date on their interests and share experiences with friends. For example, Cambridge Analytica’s improper access of data created public concern about what users can expect over their personal information when they sign up for services that collect their social media accounts. Below are some facts about Facebook and other popular websites that have had a significant effect on our daily life as well as our understanding of ourselves as humans.

Facebook's first ad was an image of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, printed in the October 31st issue of The Harvard Crimson. At that time, Facebook had only 500 users. The company was launched on February 4, 2004.

In 2006 Zuckerberg launched Facebook’s "News Feed," a feature that shows all new activity happening on users’ profiles in one place so they can see what friends are doing and share their own stories. In a 2010 speech, Zuckerberg called it the most important contribution he has made to Facebook since its launch.

Facebook currently has two billion active daily users and over 2 million advertisers worldwide. In comparison to other social media platforms, it has by far the largest number of users.

Facebook has been cited as source for more than 60 percent of all of the new content on the web over the last year. In a 2010 speech, Zuckerberg called it "the largest redesign of the newspaper industry" ever.

In March 2015, Facebook made available an image tagging tool which allowed users to use their mobile phones or cameras to take a picture and upload that photo to Facebook without having to open a browser while they were in a physical location where they could not connect to the Internet. This allowed users who have limited access or no access at all to the Internet while they are on vacation or miles away from their home where they rely on friends’ photos and posts as a replacement for web access.

Facebook has over 4 million user sign-ups every day and earns advertising revenue from the advertisements it displays to users. According to CTO Mike Schroepfer, Facebook generates nearly all its ad revenue from mobile app ads. In the first quarter of 2015, mobile accounted for 84 percent of Facebook’s total ad revenue.

The number of fake users on Facebook has decreased significantly since the introduction of its "real names" policy in May 2014; so much that by April 2016, about 15 percent of fake users had been removed.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have made a charitable contribution of $25 million to the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation to support families in crisis. It has been reported that they will continue to give away 99% of their Facebook stock until they die, stating "The only way we can do great work is if we feel connected to something bigger than ourselves."

In November 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife shared details of their efforts with personalized learning software called Startup: Education. The initiative is intended to bring personalized learning to underserved schools across the US, many of which are located in rural areas of the country. Startup: Education provides software tools for teachers to log the results of their lessons and share the data with researchers.

A Facebook page titled "Students For Trump" is a fraud set up by Russians, an investigation has revealed. The page amassed 128,000 followers, many of whom were convinced this was a genuine grassroots-driven movement for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. On October 17th 2016, Facebook announced that it would begin to incorporate user feedback into its policing of fake news and misinformation on the website. The announcement also included plans to reduce the Clickbait headlines in emails from news organizations that are sent to their users who share articles on their site. Facebook also announced that it would be updating the Trending feature and adding a section of trending topics from around the world.

During the 2016 election, Facebook suspended more than 30,000 accounts in France because of their attempts to influence the outcome of the presidential election there. This was double the amount of accounts they had removed before working with French law enforcement officials on this matter.

In November 2016, Facebook launched a portal called Facebook Journalism Project where they gathered data and feedback to develop new ways for users to stay informed about current events and issues. They also formed partnerships with media companies like BuzzFeed News, Atlantic Media and Vox Media in order to get feedback on their products from people who know them best.

Since early 2015, Facebook has been working with the US Congress to improve their policy for handling political advertising on the site. In 2016, the company pledged $20 million over two years to support independent research into how their platform is used by politicians.

In August 2017, Facebook announced that it would be building an AI-enabled chatbot that would answer common questions like "how many songs are in Spotify?" Unlike Amazon’s automated customer service service or similar products that allow customer service representatives to utilize AI chatbots when available, Facebook’s chatbots will have a very limited set of responses.

The chatbot is still in testing mode and will only be available to users in the U.S. after which it will be rolled out worldwide. Facebook’s VP for Product Partnerships and Marketing, David Marcus said "We ran a small test using the Messenger Platform to explore whether the technology could be useful for people sending occasional messages to each other in the future." The company did not provide many details on their plans or how they will use this data on their website.

In November 2017, a report from The New York Times revealed that Facebook shared data with three consumer research companies which were linked to Republicans and conservative groups. The company has also been accused of being far too liberal because of this information sharing.

A group of 65 employees of Facebook, Microsoft and Apple signed an open letter stating that they believed employees at those companies were politically biased because of their personal political beliefs. They also claimed that these employees have been advancing "narrowly partisan interests" in the workplace and threatened to leave if their concerns did not get addressed by their employers.

In December 2016, Facebook was accused of censoring conservative viewpoints on the website by thousands of users who witnessed some content being removed from their News Feeds, reports TechCrunch. One example included a picture showing President Donald Trump’s 2005 wedding to Melania Trump surrounded by various fake news stories.

Facebook had explained that the removal of many posts in this case was due to a glitch that caused certain pieces of content to be mistakenly labeled as spam. However, they acknowledged the mistake and restored the pictures back to users’ News Feeds. The company also said it would work on a way that prevents false positives from getting in front of users.

Facebook is often accused of being too quick to remove content posted by their users. On January 7th 2017, The Guardian released an article about two men who were banned from Facebook for thirty days after posting comments about Facebook’s removal of Holocaust denial groups or any other groups containing Nazi imagery.

A study done by Clarence Wardell Jr., Joshua A.

Conclusion

Facebook has gone through many changes since its creation, and will continue to do so in the future. Although the company has grown exponentially over the eight years of its existence, it is still not at the same level of reach as Google or any other major companies in tech.

Facebook does have some positive aspects to their services that most people enjoy using, but there are also some negative aspects. For example, as Zuckerberg said "We try to build a service where our community rules." Facebook continues to operate in a way that moves forward even in spite of negative reactions from their users. If they were sincere about being an open platform for all ideas and thought, they would listen to these critics rather than ignore them.

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