Mark Zuckerberg said it was “extremely glib” to suggest that because the public did not pay to use Facebook that it did not care about them.

Last week, Apple’s Tim Cook said it was an “invasion of privacy” to traffic in users’ personal lives.

And when asked what he would do if he were Mr Zuckerberg, Mr Cook replied: “I wouldn’t be in that situation.”

Facebook has faced intense criticism after it emerged that it had known for years that Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from about 50 million of its users, but had relied on the political consultancy to self-certify that it had deleted the information.

Channel 4 News has since reported that at least some of the data in question is still in circulation despite Cambridge Analytica insisting it had destroyed the material.

Mr Zuckerberg was asked about Mr Cook’s comments during a lengthy interview given to news site Vox about the privacy scandal.

He also acknowledged that Facebook was still not transparent enough about some of the choices it had taken, and floated the idea of an independent panel being able to override some of its decisions.

‘Dire situation’

Mr Cook has spoken in public twice since Facebook’s data-mining controversy began.

On 23 March, he took part in the China Development Forum in Beijing.

“I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary,” news agency Bloomberg quoted him as saying in response to a question about the social network’s problems.

“The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life – from my own point of view it shouldn’t exist.”

Then in an interview with MSNBC and Recode on 28 March, Mr Cook said: “I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation. However, I think we’re beyond that here.”

During this second appearance – which has yet to be broadcast in full – he added: “We could make a tonne of money if we monetised our customer, if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that… Privacy to us is a human right.”

Apple makes most of its profits from selling smartphones, tablets and other computers, as well as associated services such as online storage and its various media stores.

This contrasts with other tech firms whose profits are largely derived from advertising, including Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Mr Zuckerberg had previously told CNN that he was “open” to new regulations.

But he defended his business model when questioned about Mr Cook’s views, although he mentioned neither Apple nor its leader by name.

“I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth,” he said.

“The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay.”

He added: “I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you, because that sounds ridiculous to me.”

Mr Zuckerberg also defended his leadership by invoking Amazon’s chief executive.

“I make all of our decisions based on what’s going to matter to our community and focus much less on the advertising side of the business,” he said.

“I thought Jeff Bezos had an excellent saying: “There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less.”

–

Source: BBC

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The Apple CEO has largely kept quiet on privacy issues since Facebook’s troubles sprung up last week. That’s when we learned that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica quietly, deceptively gathered data belonging to more than 50 million Facebook users in 2014.

“I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary,” Cook said. “The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life — from my own point of view it shouldn’t exist.”

He went on describe a long-held worry that people aren’t necessarily aware of what they’re giving away in terms of their personal data when they sign up for one online service or another.

“We’ve worried for a number of years that people in many countries were giving up data probably without knowing fully what they were doing and that these detailed profiles that were being built of them, that one day something would occur and people would be incredibly offended by what had been done without them being aware of it,” he said.

“Unfortunately that prediction has come true more than once.”

Cook didn’t specifically name the United States as one of those “many countries,” but he later pointed out “the countries that embrace openness do exceptional.”

Weak data privacy laws aren’t a uniquely American problem, but — as the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica situation illustrates — they are an American problem too. Especially when you look at something like the General Data Protection Regulation, an EU-wide initiative that puts more of the onus on business interests to protect their users in fair and common sense ways.

–

Source: Mashable.com

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Meanwhile, shares in the company have been taking a battering. And Facebook is now facing multiple shareholder and user lawsuits.

Pressed on why he didn’t inform users, in 2015, when Facebook says it found out about this policy breach, Zuckerberg avoided a direct answer — instead fixing on what the company did (asked Cambridge Analytica  and the developer whose app was used to suck out data to delete the data) — rather than explaining the thinking behind the thing it did not do (tell affected Facebook users their personal information had been misappropriated).

Essentially Facebook’s line is that it believed the data had been deleted — and presumably, therefore, it calculated (wrongly) that it didn’t need to inform users because it had made the leak problem go away via its own backchannels.

Except of course it hadn’t. Because people who want to do nefarious things with data rarely play exactly by your rules just because you ask them to.

There’s an interesting parallel here with Uber’s response to a 2016 data breach of its systems. In that case, instead of informing the ~57M affected users and drivers that their personal data had been compromised, Uber’s senior management also decided to try and make the problem go away — by asking (and in their case paying) hackers to delete the data.

Aka the trigger response for both tech companies to massive data protection fuck-ups was: Cover up; don’t disclose.

Facebook denies the Cambridge Analytica instance is a data breach — because, well, its systems were so laxly designed as to actively encourage vast amounts of data to be sucked out, via API, without the check and balance of those third parties having to gain individual level consent.

So in that sense Facebook is entirely right; technically what Cambridge Analytica did wasn’t a breach at all. It was a feature, not a bug.

Clearly that’s also the opposite of reassuring.

Yet Facebook and Uber are companies whose businesses rely entirely on users trusting them to safeguard personal data. The disconnect here is gapingly obvious.

What’s also crystal clear is that rules and systems designed to protect and control personal data, combined with active enforcement of those rules and robust security to safeguard systems, are absolutely essential to prevent people’s information being misused at scale in today’s hyperconnected era.

But before you say hindsight is 20/20 vision, the history of this epic Facebook privacy fail is even longer than the under-disclosed events of 2015 suggest — i.e. when Facebook claims it found out about the breach as a result of investigations by journalists.

What the company very clearly turned a blind eye to is the risk posed by its own system of loose app permissions that in turn enabled developers to suck out vast amounts of data without having to worry about pesky user consent. And, ultimately, for Cambridge Analytica to get its hands on the profiles of ~50M US Facebookers for dark ad political targeting purposes.

European privacy  campaigner and lawyer Max Schrems — a long time critic of Facebook — was actually raising concerns about the Facebook’s lax attitude to data protection and app permissions as long ago as 2011.

Indeed, in August 2011 Schrems filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission exactly flagging the app permissions data sinkhole (Ireland being the focal point for the complaint because that’s where Facebook’s European HQ is based).

“[T]his means that not the data subject but “friends” of the data subject are consenting to the use of personal data,” wrote Schrems in the 2011 complaint, fleshing out consent concerns with Facebook’s friends’ data API. “Since an average facebook user has 130 friends, it is very likely that only one of the user’s friends is installing some kind of spam or phishing application and is consenting to the use of all data of the data subject. There are many applications that do not need to access the users’ friends personal data (e.g. games, quizzes, apps that only post things on the user’s page) but Facebook Ireland does not offer a more limited level of access than “all the basic information of all friends”.

“The data subject is not given an unambiguous consent to the processing of personal data by applications (no opt-in). Even if a data subject is aware of this entire process, the data subject cannot foresee which application of which developer will be using which personal data in the future. Any form of consent can therefore never be specific,” he added.

As a result of Schrems’ complaint, the Irish DPC audited and re-auditedFacebook’s systems in 2011 and 2012. The result of those data audits included a recommendation that Facebook tighten app permissions on its platform, according to a spokesman for the Irish DPC, who we spoke to this week.

The spokesman said the DPC’s recommendation formed the basis of the major platform change Facebook announced in 2014 — aka shutting down the Friends data API — albeit too late to prevent Cambridge Analytica from being able to harvest millions of profiles’ worth of personal data via a survey app because Facebook only made the change gradually, finally closing the door in May 2015.

“Following the re-audit… one of the recommendations we made was in the area of the ability to use friends data through social media,” the DPC spokesman told us. “And that recommendation that we made in 2012, that was implemented by Facebook in 2014 as part of a wider platform change that they made. It’s that change that they made that means that the Cambridge Analytica thing cannot happen today.

“They made the platform change in 2014, their change was for anybody new coming onto the platform from 1st May 2014 they couldn’t do this. They gave a 12 month period for existing users to migrate across to their new platform… and it was in that period that… Cambridge Analytica’s use of the information for their data emerged.

“But from 2015 — for absolutely everybody — this issue with CA cannot happen now. And that was following our recommendation that we made in 2012.”

Given his 2011 complaint about Facebook’s expansive and abusive historical app permissions, Schrems has this week raised an eyebrow and expressed surprise at Zuckerberg’s claim to be “outraged” by the Cambridge Analytica revelations — now snowballing into a massive privacy scandal.

In a statement reflecting on developments he writes: “Facebook has millions of times illegally distributed data of its users to various dodgy apps — without the consent of those affected. In 2011 we sent a legal complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner on this. Facebook argued that this data transfer is perfectly legal and no changes were made. Now after the outrage surrounding Cambridge Analytica the Internet giant suddenly feels betrayed seven years later. Our records show: Facebook knew about this betrayal for years and previously argues that these practices are perfectly legal.”

So why did it take Facebook from September 2012 — when the DPC made its recommendations — until May 2014 and May 2015 to implement the changes and tighten app permissions?

The regulator’s spokesman told us it was “engaging” with Facebook over that period of time “to ensure that the change was made”. But he also said Facebook spent some time pushing back — questioning why changes to app permissions were necessary and dragging its feet on shuttering the friends’ data API.

“I think the reality is Facebook had questions as to whether they felt there was a need for them to make the changes that we were recommending,” said the spokesman. “And that was, I suppose, the level of engagement that we had with them. Because we were relatively strong that we felt yes we made the recommendation because we felt the change needed to be made. And that was the nature of the discussion. And as I say ultimately, ultimately the reality is that the change has been made. And it’s been made to an extent that such an issue couldn’t occur today.”

“That is a matter for Facebook themselves to answer as to why they took that period of time,” he added.

Of course we asked Facebook why it pushed back against the DPC’s recommendation in September 2012 — and whether it regrets not acting more swiftly to implement the changes to its APIs, given the crisis its business is now faced having breached user trust by failing to safeguard people’s data.

We also asked why Facebook users should trust Zuckerberg’s claim, also made in the CNN interview, that it’s now ‘open to being regulated’ — when its historical playbook is packed with examples of the polar opposite behavior, including ongoing attempts to circumvent existing EU privacy rules.

A Facebook spokeswoman acknowledged receipt of our questions this week — but the company has not responded to any of them.

The Irish DPC chief, Helen Dixon, also went on CNN this week to give her response to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data misuse crisis — calling for assurances from Facebook that it will properly police its own data protection policies in future.

“Even where Facebook have terms and policies in place for app developers, it doesn’t necessarily give us the assurance that those app developers are abiding by the policies Facebook have set, and that Facebook is active in terms of overseeing that there’s no leakage of personal data. And that conditions, such as the prohibition on selling on data to further third parties is being adhered to by app developers,” said Dixon.

“So I suppose what we want to see change and what we want to oversee with Facebook now and what we’re demanding answers from Facebook in relation to, is first of all what pre-clearance and what pre-authorization do they do before permitting app developers onto their platform. And secondly, once those app developers are operative and have apps collecting personal data what kind of follow up and active oversight steps does Facebook take to give us all reassurance that the type of issue that appears to have occurred in relation to Cambridge Analytica won’t happen again.”

Firefighting the raging privacy crisis, Zuckerberg has committed to conducting a historical audit of every app that had access to “a large amount” of user data around the time that Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest so much data.

So it remains to be seen what other data misuses Facebook will unearth — and have to confess to now, long after the fact.

But any other embarrassing data leaks will sit within the same unfortunate context — which is to say that Facebook could have prevented these problems if it had listened to the very valid concerns data protection experts were raising more than six years ago.

Instead, it chose to drag its feet. And the list of awkward questions for the Facebook CEO keeps getting longer.

–

Source: Techcrunch

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Cambridge Analytica is accused of improperly using the data on behalf of political clients.

In a statement, Mr Zuckerberg said a “breach of trust” had occurred.

In a later interview with CNN he said he was “really sorry”, and pledged to take action against “rogue apps”.

He added that he was “happy” to testify before Congress “if it’s the right thing to do”.

In his statement posted on Facebook, he promised to make it far harder for apps to “harvest” user information.

“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Mr Zuckerberg said.

What has Zuckerberg pledged to do?

To address current and past problems, Mr Zuckerberg said his company would:

• investigate all Facebook apps that had access to large amounts of information before the platform was changed “to dramatically reduce data access” in 2014
• conduct a “full forensic audit” of any app with suspicious activity
• ban any developer that did not agree to a thorough audit
• ban developers that had misused personally identifiable information, and “tell everyone affected by those apps”

In future, he said Facebook would:

• restrict developers’ data access “even further” to prevent other kinds of abuse
• remove developers’ access to a user’s data if the user hadn’t activated the developer’s app for three months
• reduce the data that users give an app when they sign in to just name, profile photo, and email address
• require developers to obtain approval and also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data

Mr Zuckerberg added: “While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past.

“We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.”

–

Source: BBC

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Facebook disclosed the issue in a blog post on Friday, hours before media reports that conservative-leaning Cambridge Analytica, a data company known for its work on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was given access to the data and may not have deleted it.

The scrutiny presented a new threat to Facebook’s reputation, which was already under attack over Russians’ alleged use of Facebook tools to sway American voters before and after the 2016 U.S. elections.

“It’s clear these platforms can’t police themselves,” Democratic U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar tweeted.

“They say ‘trust us.’ Mark Zuckerberg needs to testify before Senate Judiciary,” she added, referring to Facebook’s CEO and a committee she sits on.

Facebook said the root of the problem was that researchers and Cambridge Analytica lied to it and abused its policies, but critics on Saturday threw blame at Facebook as well, demanding answers on behalf of users and calling for new regulation.

Facebook insisted the data was misused but not stolen, because users gave permission, sparking a debate about what constitutes a hack that must be disclosed to customers.

“The lid is being opened on the black box of Facebook’s data practices, and the picture is not pretty,” said Frank Pasquale, a University of Maryland law professor who has written about Silicon Valley’s use of data.

Pasquale said Facebook’s response that data had not technically been stolen seemed to obfuscate the central issue that data was apparently used in a way contrary to the expectations of users.

“It amazes me that they are trying to make this about nomenclature. I guess that’s all they have left,” he said.

Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner said the episode bolstered the need for new regulations about internet advertising, describing the industry as the “Wild West.”

“Whether it’s allowing Russians to purchase political ads, or extensive micro-targeting based on ill-gotten user data, it’s clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency,” he said.

With Republicans controlling the Senate’s majority, though, it was not clear if Klobuchar and Warner would prevail.

The New York Times and London’s Observer reported on Saturday that private information from more than 50 million Facebook users improperly ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica, and the information has not been deleted despite Facebook’s demands beginning in 2015.

Some 270,000 people allowed use of their data by a researcher, who scraped the data of all their friends as well, a move allowed by Facebook until 2015. The researcher sold the data to Cambridge, which was against Facebook rules, the newspapers said.

Cambridge Analytica worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign. A Trump campaign official said, though, that it used Republican data sources, not Cambridge Analytica, for its voter information.

Facebook, in a series of written statements beginning late on Friday, said its policies had been broken by Cambridge Analytica and researchers and that it was exploring legal action.

Cambridge Analytica in turn said it had deleted all the data and that the company supplying it had been responsible for obtaining it.

Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, hinted the company could make more changes to demonstrate it values privacy. “We must do better and will,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that “our business depends on it at every level.”

Facebook said it asked for the data to be deleted in 2015 and then relied on written certifications by those involved that they had complied.

Nuala O’Connor, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., said Facebook was relying on the good will of decent people rather than preparing for intentional misuse.

Moreover, she found it puzzling that Facebook knew about the abuse in 2015 but did not disclose it until Friday. “That’s a long time,” she said.

Britain’s data protection authority and the Massachusetts attorney general on Saturday said they were launching investigations into the use of Facebook data.

“It is important that the public are fully aware of how information is used and shared in modern political campaigns and the potential impact on their privacy,” UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said she wants to understand how the data was used, what policies if any were violated and what the legal implications are.

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Source: Reuters

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The social media company said the group had repeatedly violated its community standards.

Earlier this month, Britain First’s leader and deputy leader, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, were jailed after being found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment.

More than two million people had liked the group’s Facebook page.

The pages of Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen also had large followings.

Facebook says the decision to remove the pages was made after Britain First had ignored a final warning about the posting of material that broke its community standards.

The group will not be allowed to set up a replacement page.

It is understood that Facebook judged the videos and photos to be designed to incite hatred against Muslims.

Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons that she welcomed the move and hoped other tech companies would follow.

London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan has also issued a statement.

“Britain First is a vile and hate-fuelled group,” he said.

“Their sick intentions to incite hatred within our society via social media are reprehensible, and Facebook’s decision to remove their content is welcome.”
In a blog, Facebook said it was an open platform for all ideas but that political views should be expressed without hate.

“People can express robust and controversial opinions without needing to denigrate others on the basis of who they are.”

There has been pressure for some time on Facebook to act against Britain First.

The social media company says it removes hate speech against people based on their race, religion, gender and other characteristics.

Its community standards document states: “Organisations and people dedicated to promoting hatred against these protected groups are not allowed a presence on Facebook.”

Twitter suspended the accounts of Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, after its new anti-abuse rules came into force last December.

US President Donald Trump had retweeted anti-Islamic videos posted by Fransen the previous month.

–

Source: BBC

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One of the team probing possible acts of genocide said Facebook had “turned into a beast.”

About 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Myanmar’s military launched an operation in August against “insurgents” in Rakhine state.

Facebook has said there is “no place for hate speech” on its platform.

“We take this incredibly seriously and have worked with experts in Myanmar for several years to develop safety resources and counter-speech campaigns,” a Facebook spokeswoman told the BBC.

“This work includes a dedicated Safety Page for Myanmar, a locally illustrated version of our Community Standards, and regular training sessions for civil society and local community groups across the country.

“Of course, there is always more we can do and we will continue to work with local experts to help keep our community safe.”

‘Incitement to violence’
The UN’s Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar announced the interim findings of its investigation on Monday.

During a press conference the chairman of the mission, Marzuki Darusman, said that social media had “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony” amongst the wider public, against Rohingya Muslims.

“Hate speech is certainly, of course, a part of that,” he added.

“As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook and Facebook is social media.”

A colleague acknowledged that the service had helped people in the country communicate with each other.

But Yanghee Lee, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, added: “We know that the ultra-nationalist Buddhists have their own Facebooks and are really inciting a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya or other ethnic minorities.

“I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not what it originally intended.”

The interim report is based on more than 600 interviews with human rights abuse victims and witnesses, which were carried out in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand.

In addition the team has analysed satellite imagery, photographs and video footage taken within Myanmar.

“People died from gunshot wounds, often due to indiscriminate shooting at fleeing villagers,” the report said.

“Some were burned alive in their homes – often the elderly, disabled and young children. Others were hacked to death.”

The government of Myanmar has previously said the UN needs to provide “clear evidence” to support allegations of crimes against Rohingya.

Officials have claimed that “clearance operations” against militants responsible for attacks on police stations ended in September, but that has been disputed.

Refugees and human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, have accused the military of carrying out executions, rapes and the burning and bulldozing of hundreds of villages.

The UN has said that the government has attempted to block its efforts to carry out an independent investigation.

Facebook has previously discussed the problems it has faced trying to tackle hate speech in the country.

Last July, it gave the example of policing use of the word “kalar”, which it said could be used both innocuously and as a slur against Muslims.

“We looked at the way the word’s use was evolving, and decided our policy should be to remove it as hate speech when used to attack a person or group, but not in the other harmless use cases,” it explained.

“We’ve had trouble enforcing this policy correctly recently, mainly due to the challenges of understanding the context; after further examination, we’ve been able to get it right. But we expect this to be a long-term challenge.”

A final report from the UN team is due to be published in September.

–

Source: BBC

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Oculus failed to renew a security certificate for some software, meaning headsets would not run key code.

Security certificates are often used to authenticate software, and many computers refuse to run code lacking valid credentials.

Oculus issued a software update early on Thursday, which it said would fix the problem.

Critical time

The issue first came to light via social media when headset owners reported that the Oculus PC application was not working.

An error message said that the program could not reach Oculus’s runtime service.

Soon after these reports started circulating, Oculus took to Twitter to acknowledge the problem.

It also posted a message to its support forum, apologising for the inconvenience and asking people to be patient while it worked on a fix.

The company was criticised for taking too long to respond to queries and posting too little information about the problem.

Many people could not wait for an official fix and traded tips on Reddit and other social-media sites about the best way to get around the problem.

One suggested solution involved turning a PC’s system clock backwards to make it appear as if the certificate had not expired.

However, some reported that this then caused problems with other programs on the same PC.

In a later update, Oculus said fixing the problem had proved tricky because the expired certificate meant many people could not download and install the update.

Early on Thursday, Oculus found a way round this obstacle and provided a further update that renewed the certificate and got the core application working again. Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell said it would give a $15 (£11) store credit to anyone “impacted” by the downtime.

The security certificates at the heart of the problem are widely used to guarantee the authenticity of the code in applications.

The certificates act like a passport for programs, and many machines refuse to run “unsigned” or uncertificated programs.

“Oculus are far from alone in experiencing these difficulties,” said Craig Stewart, a spokesman for certification company Venafi.

“The average business has around 17,000 undiscovered or forgotten certificates in their environment and occasionally one will be as important as this one.”

Mr Stewart said many companies still managed their certificates manually, which could leave them prey to similar “reputational crises”.

–

Source: BBC

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On Sunday, Facebook asked an unspecified number of users their thoughts on how child abuse images should be handled on the network.

It gave a scenario in which an “adult man” asks a 14-year-old girl for “sexual images”, and then a list of possible answers.

One option read: “This content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it.”

A follow-up question offered options on how policies should be enforced, such as “Facebook decides the rules on its own” or “external experts decide the rules and tell Facebook”.

As noted by the Guardian, none of the options allowed the user to suggest that the proper course of action in this scenario would be to inform child protection agencies or call the police.

“We run surveys to understand how the community thinks about how we set policies,” said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s head of product.

“But this kind of activity is and will always be completely unacceptable on FB. We regularly work with authorities if identified. It shouldn’t have been part of this survey.

“That was a mistake.”

Data set

The company is no longer running the survey.

The BBC understands Facebook’s team was instructed to find out how users felt was best appropriate to deal with illegal content on the network. The site is not, of course, considering changing how it deals with child abuse imagery.

Over the network’s head looms the prospect of more regulation.

By asking users if they feel more comfortable with Facebook determining the rules on how unacceptable content is handled could be an attempt to build data to back up its likely argument that it can regulate itself.

Another option, whereby experts advise the network, is also a possibility. In the past, Facebook has turned to outside experts when developing new technologies, particularly those aimed at younger users.

However, the site as criticised over its choice of experts – many of which it had funded, as reported by Wired magazine.

Facebook has had a tough time dealing with negative publicity recently. At an event for US conservatives last month, in the wake of another school shooting, the company demonstrated a virtual reality shooting game set in a train station.

It later pulled the demonstration, saying it regretted its inclusion on its stand.

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Source: BBC

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The closure of the female-focused publishing business will result in the loss of 100 jobs.

The company focused on a mix of “feel-good news” and videos. Since launching in 2014, it attracted 12 million followers on Facebook.

But the company said Facebook’s changes had been “catastrophic”.

Chief executive Joe Spieser told Business Insider that Facebook’s recent algorithm changes had wiped out roughly 75% of Little Things’ organic traffic and hit its income.

Little Things said it had been in talks to sell its business to another media company. However, in a memo to its staff, it revealed that the buyer had pulled out.

“The businesses looking to acquire Little Things got spooked and promptly exited the sale process, leaving us in jeopardy of our bank debt covenants and ultimately bringing an expedited end to our incredible story,” it said.

Little Things started as a content-marketing page for the online pet food retailer PetFlow, in 2014. Its Facebook page attracted 800,000 followers in June that year.

PetFlow was then spun off to become a standalone media company in September 2014.

The company had taken advantage of Facebook’s emphasis on video and produced its own lifestyle and cookery content.

“What happens to the Little Things brand, we all know and love, is uncertain at this point,” it said in a statement.

Gretchen Tibbits, president and chief operation officer for the firm, told the BBC the hardest thing is that “100 incredible people have been impacted”.

The company said it would continue to update its website for the time being but Ms Tibbits confirmed that “today is the last day” for the firm.

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Source: BBC

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