City Pages: Behind the scenes at Facebook, the secret lives of extremists and a Silicon Valley memoir March 1, 2020 Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy Review by Emily Nicolle In the past four years, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s world has been turned upside down. From a simple social media platform he created while studying at Harvard university first blossomed a networking supersite, that later became a regulatory and ethical data minefield which holds [...]
Facebook and Google ad revenue to surpass TV for first time February 27, 2020 Brands are set to splash out more advertising dollars on tech titans Facebook and Google than the entire global TV sector this year, according to figures released today. Advertising revenue for Facebook and Google parent company Alphabet is forecast to reach $231.9bn (£185bn) in 2020, according to industry body Warc. TV ad spend is set [...]
Online harms laws will not harm free speech, vows Ofcom boss February 27, 2020 The rollout of new laws to tackle so-called online harms will not lead to censorship or damage free speech, a top Ofcom executive has said. Earlier this month the government said it would appoint Ofcom as Britain’s first internet watchdog, tasked with crackdown down on illegal and harmful material on social media sites. The beefed-up [...]
When it comes to influencer fraud, the buck stops with Facebook February 24, 2020 Influencer fraud is one of the biggest headaches facing marketers today. As an industry, influencer marketing was worth an estimated £6bn last year, and is forecast to reach £12bn by 2022. Its breakneck growth is largely due to the parallel rise in fortunes of social media giant Instagram. The Facebook-owned platform is home to most [...]
France warns of tech tax chaos if global deal not reached this year February 23, 2020 Failure to reach a global agreement on how to tax tech giants such as Google and Facebook would lead to a chaotic mix of different tax regimes, France’s finance minister has warned. Bruno Le Maire today called on international leaders to reach a consensus over tax reform by the end of the year or risk [...]
Mark Zuckerberg ‘accepts’ Facebook may have to pay more tax in Europe February 14, 2020 Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg says he recognises that tech giants may to have pay more tax in Europe in future. The social media giant’s founder said he understood the “frustration” surrounding the issue and backed plans from think tank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, to find a global solution. Facebook and other tech giants [...]
UK competition watchdog to push for tighter controls on US tech giants February 3, 2020 The UK’s competition watchdog will push for tougher powers to regulate companies such as Google and Facebook following the UK’s official departure from the EU, and will pursue antitrust investigations against tech giants independently of the bloc. “The upside [Brexit] is that you take back control — genuinely — of the decisions,” Competition and Markets [...]
As Vodafone quits, who’s left at Facebook’s Libra project? January 22, 2020 Vodafone has withdrawn from the organisation overseeing Facebook’s efforts to launch its Libra digital currency, making it the latest in a string of big companies to abandon the project. Facebook’s Libra project has faced intense scrutiny from regulators and politicians across the world over the social media giant’s plans for the launch of the stablecoin [...]
Facebook and Ebay pledge to combat trading of fake reviews, says competition watchdog January 8, 2020 The competition watchdog has announced that Facebook and Ebay have signed agreements committing to combat the sale of fake and misleading reviews on their platforms. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) raised concerns about the trade of fake and misleading reviews on tech giants’ platforms last summer, and has been pressing them to crack down [...]
Tech giants lobby EU not to hold them liable for illegal content January 7, 2020 The biggest tech companies have called on the EU not to hold them liable for all content on their platforms, but have accepted that their efforts to remove illegal or harmful content could be regulated by a new European watchdog. A lobby group that represents tech titans including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon has written [...]