Facebook head Tom Alison announced today that the company is testing the ability for users to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app. Back in 2016, Facebook removed messaging capabilities from its mobile web application to push people to the Messenger app, in a move that angered many users.
“Meta has failed over and over to protect young users,” Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts wrote in a tweet(Opens in a new window). “Now, they want to bring more kids as young as 13 onto the metaverse without ensuring their safety. They have to stop.”
Coming to the campuses of Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is a contraption that can block sound, shield workers from their peers and allow for heads-down, uninterrupted work. It’s a cubicle. That is, a noise-canceling cubicle designed using some of the same principles found in soundproof, echo-free anechoic chambers. “The Cube,” which the company is beginning to roll out to offices worldwide after months of development, absorbs sound from multiple directions, says John Tenanes, vice president of global real estate and facilities at Meta. “It’s like a self- cocoon.”
Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
“The EDPB binding decisions clarify that Meta unlawfully processed personal data for behavioural advertising. Such advertising is not necessary for the performance of an alleged contract with Facebook and Instagram users. These decisions may also have an important impact on other platforms that have behavioural ads at the centre of their business model,” said EDPB chair, Andrea Jelinek, in a statement.
It’s time for our annual look at the tech that died this year. Some services have been around for ages and we are just now saying farewell to the last vestiges of a once-great brand. Others went belly up in less than a month. Read on to see what the major companies—Amazon, Meta, and Google—kicked to the curb in 2022, as well as a month-by-month rundown of other products that ended up in the tech graveyard.
The penalty relates to an inquiry which was opened by the DPC on April 14, 2021, following media reports of more than 530M Facebook users’ personal data — including email addresses and mobile phone numbers — being exposed online.
At the time, Facebook tried to play down the breach — claiming the data that had been found floating around online was “old data” and that it had fixed the issue that led to the personal data being exposed.
The problem is, the Quest Pro isn’t very good. It’s a device seemingly launched without plan or purpose, highlighting VR’s persistent drawbacks without making good use of its strengths — and topped off with some irredeemably bad software. We might be seeing a roadmap for where Meta is going, but right now, it’s not a particularly fun place to be. And if Meta lingers there much longer, its metaverse is in trouble.
