WhatsApp will soon let you use the popular instant messaging app simultaneously on multiple devices, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said. The instant messaging app, used by more than 2 billion users, also plans to add more options to its disappearing messages feature, top executives said. TechCrunch reports: Zuckerberg confirmed to news outlet WaBetaInfo that multi-device support will be arriving on the instant messaging service "soon." WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said users will be able to connect up to four devices to one account. The messaging firm is also working to introduce a dedicated WhatsApp app for the iPad, he said. The instant messaging service, which last year introduced the ability to set a seven-day timer on messages (disappearing mode), is now planning to expand this feature to let users share pictures and videos that can only be viewed once. WhatsApp users will also get an option to enforce disappearing mode across the app for all new chats. Zuckerberg and Cathcart told the news outlet -- and it's indeed the two of them talking -- that these features will be available to users in public beta "in the next month or two."

Facebook announced Friday that former President Donald Trump's account will remain suspended for at least two years, setting a timetable for his potential return after its oversight board criticized the company's indefinite ban. From a report: "Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump's suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols," Facebook's vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post. "We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year." The social media giant said after that period it would evaluate whether "the risk to public safety has receded," and make a call on his possible reinstatement.

UK and EU regulators are investigating Facebook over whether it is abusing its dominance in digital advertising. From a report: It marks the first time the regulators have coordinated on a major inquiry since Brexit, and strikes at the core of Facebook's revenues, which rely heavily on selling advertising on its platform. The investigation will consider whether the social media giant has unfairly used its vast trove of data to compete with individuals and businesses that post adverts on Facebook Marketplace -- where people buy and sell goods daily -- or the Facebook Dating platform, which launched in Europe last year.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it would work "closely" with the European commission to determine whether Facebook might be stifling competition by "abusing a dominant position in the social media or digital advertising markets." Facebook, which could be fined by regulators depending on their findings, has said that the investigations were launched "without merit."

Facebook plans to end its controversial policy that shields politicians from the content moderation rules that apply to other users, a sharp reversal that could have global ramifications for how elected officials use the social network. From a report: The change, which Facebook is set to announce as soon as Friday, comes after the Oversight Board -- an independent group funded by Facebook to review its thorniest content rulings -- affirmed its decision to suspend former President Donald Trump but critiqued the special treatment it gives politicians, stating that the "same rules should apply to all users." The board gave Facebook till June 5th to respond to its policy recommendations.

Of the 150 disinformation campaigns that Facebook has caught and removed in the past four years, the U.S. has been the most frequent target by far, according to a new threat intelligence report from Facebook. Axios reports: "I think it's significant that while we saw a lot of foreign targeting of the U.S. ahead of 2020 election, there was also a lot of domestic targeting," says Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy. One campaign the company points to was the network operated by a U.S. based marketing firm, working on behalf of its clients, including a pro-Trump organization. In total, the company said there were 16 takedowns of coordinated inauthentic behavior networks, or disinformation campaigns, ahead of the 2020 elections. Of those 16 networks, five originated in Russia, five originated in Iran, and five originated in the the U.S. One originated in China.

theodp writes: The U.S. isn't producing nearly enough students trained in computer science to meet the future demands of the American workforce," lamented Amazon in a Friday press release, adding that it is "urging Congress and legislatures across the U.S. to support -- and fund -- computer science education in public schools." Well, the 'urging' seems to be working. On Friday, Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) reintroduced the Computer Science for All Act (Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all lobbied for the bill's predecessor, the CS for All Act of 2019), which provides $250 million in new grants to support a diverse 'tech pipeline' in pre-K through grade 12 education.

Amazon and Amazon-funded nonprofit Code.org were cited as the bill's 'supporting organizations' and quoted in Lee's accompanying press release for the legislation, which aims to improve equity in CS education. "We look forward to working with Representative Lee and the bill's cosponsors to meet these objectives," said Brian Huseman, VP of Public Policy for Amazon, which in 2017 curiously broke from other tech giants and stopped releasing the gender and racial data on its workforce it's required to report to the federal government. "Right now, there are over 400,000 open computing jobs in the United States," added Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi. "Frustratingly, only 47% of our public high schools teach computer science.

NBC News reports: Facebook is grappling with a reputation crisis in the Middle East, with plummeting approval rates and advertising sales in Arab countries, according to leaked documents obtained by NBC News.

The shift corresponds with the widespread belief by pro-Palestinian and free speech activists that the social media company has been disproportionately silencing Palestinian voices on its apps — which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — during this month's Israel-Hamas conflict... Instagram has taken the greatest reputational hit, according to a presentation authored by a Dubai-based Facebook employee that was leaked to NBC News, with its approval ratings among users falling to a historical low.

The social media company regularly polls users of Facebook and Instagram about how much they believe the company cares about them. Facebook converts the results into a 'Cares About Users' metric which acts as a bellwether for the apps' popularity. Since the start of the latest Israel-Hamas conflict, the metric among Instagram users in Facebook's Middle East and North Africa region is at its lowest in history, and fell almost 5 percentage points in a week, according to the research... Instagram's score measuring whether users think the app is good for the world, referred to as 'Good For World,' has also dropped in the region to its lowest level after losing more than 5 percentage points in a week...

The low approval ratings have been compounded by a campaign by pro-Palestinian and free speech activists to target Facebook with 1-star reviews on the Apple and Google app stores. The campaign tanked Facebook's average rating from above 4 out of 5 stars on both app stores to 2.2 on the App Store and 2.3 on Google Play as of Wednesday. According to leaked internal posts, the issue has been categorized internally as a "severity 1" problem for Facebook, which is the second highest priority issue after a "severity 0" incident, which is reserved for when the website is down. "Users are feeling that they are being censored, getting limited distribution, and ultimately silenced," one senior software engineer said in a post on Facebook's internal message board. "As a result, our users have started protesting by leaving 1 star reviews."

Internal documents connect the reputational damage to a decline in advertising sales in the Middle East. According to the leaked presentation, Facebook's ad sales in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq dropped at least 12 percent in the 10 days after May 7.
NBC adds that pro-Palestinian civil society group believe Israel is flooding Facebook with reports of violations. "The Israeli government is spending millions on digital tools and campaigns targeting social media content," said Mona Shtaya from 7amleh, a nonprofit that focuses on Palestinians' digital rights.

The article points out that Israel "also funds a program that pays students to post and report content on social media in what is described as 'online public diplomacy.'"

"Just days after violent conflict erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories, both Facebook and Twitter copped to major faux pas: The companies had wrongly blocked or restricted millions of mostly pro-Palestinian posts and accounts related to the crisis," reports the Washington Post: Activists around the world charged the companies with failing a critical test: whether their services would enable the world to watch an important global event unfold unfettered through the eyes of those affected. The companies blamed the errors on glitches in artificial intelligence software.

In Twitter's case, the company said its service mistakenly identified the rapid-firing tweeting during the confrontations as spam, resulting in hundreds of accounts being temporarily locked and the tweets not showing up when searched for. Facebook-owned Instagram gave several explanations for its problems, including a software bug that temporarily blocked video-sharing and saying its hate speech detection software misidentified a key hashtag as associated with a terrorist group.

The companies said the problems were quickly resolved and the accounts restored. But some activists say many posts are still being censored. Experts in free speech and technology said that's because the issues are connected to a broader problem: overzealous software algorithms that are designed to protect but end up wrongly penalizing marginalized groups that rely on social media to build support... Despite years of investment, many of the automated systems built by social media companies to stop spam, disinformation and terrorism are still not sophisticated enough to detect the difference between desirable forms of expression and harmful ones. They often overcorrect, as in the most recent errors during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or they under-enforce, allowing harmful misinformation and violent and hateful language to proliferate...

Jillian York, a director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that opposes government surveillance, has researched tech company practices in the Middle East. She said she doesn't believe that content moderation — human or algorithmic — can work at scale... Palestinian activists and experts who study social movements say it was another watershed historical moment in which social media helped alter the course of events...

Payment app Venmo also mistakenly suspended transactions of humanitarian aid to Palestinians during the war. The company said it was trying to comply with U.S. sanctions and had resolved the issues.

Twitter could be adding some new emojis to augment its formerly star-shaped, currently heart-shaped Like button, according to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong. The Verge reports: The assets Wong found -- which have been reliable predictions of future features in the past -- show "cheer," "hmm," "sad," and "haha" emoji reactions, though some currently only have a placeholder emoji. Facebook has had a similar set of reactions since 2016. But Wong's leak shows that Twitter could be taking a slightly different path when it comes to which moods it wants users to express: while it has laughing and sad expressions in common with Facebook, Twitter may also include a makes-you-think and cheer option. Twitter doesn't seem to have the "angry" expression that Facebook does, but that may be because anger on Twitter is already handled by the reply and quote tweet functions.

Since it was first announced in January, WhatsApp's new privacy policy has received a lot of criticism not only for sharing a significant amount of user data with Facebook but because the app threatened to cut functionality over time if users didn't accept it. Now, according to The Next Web, the Facebook-owned app says it won't restrict any functionality, even if you don't accept the policy for now. From the report: [WhatsApp said in statement:] "Given recent discussions with various authorities and privacy experts, we want to make clear that we currently have no plans to limit the functionality of how WhatsApp works for those who have not yet accepted the update. Instead, we will continue to remind users from time to time about the update as well as when people choose to use relevant optional features, like communicating with a business that is receiving support from Facebook."

In the future, this could change, but WhatsApp is trying to keep its user base, and governments around the world happy. After the policy was first introduced in January, a ton of users started shifting to other platforms such as Telegram and Signal. Last week, India asked WhatsApp to retract its privacy policy. It sent a notice to WhatsApp saying that the new policy is in violation of the country's laws.

Google, Facebook, Telegram, LinkedIn and Tiger Global-backed Indian startups ShareChat and Koo have either fully or partially complied with the South Asian nation's new IT rules, TechCrunch reported Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter and a government note. From a report: India's new IT rules, unveiled in February this year, require firms to appoint and share contact details of representatives tasked with compliance, nodal point of reference and grievance redressals to address on-ground concerns. The aforementioned firms have complied with this requirement, the government note and a person familiar with the matter said. The firms were required to comply with the new IT rules by this week. Twitter has yet to comply with the rules. "Twitter sent a communication late last night, sharing details of a lawyer working in a law firm in India as their Nodal Contact Person and Grievance Officer," a note prepared by New Delhi said, adding that the rules require the aforementioned officials to be direct employees.

Facebook has ended its ban on posts asserting Covid-19 was man-made or manufactured, a policy shift that reflects a deepening debate over the origins of the pandemic that was first identified in Wuhan, China, almost 18 months ago. An anonymous reader shares a report: The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report. "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps," Facebook said in a statement on its website Wednesday. President Biden on Wednesday ordered a U.S. intelligence inquiry into the origins of the virus. The White House has come under pressure to conduct its own investigation after China told the World Health Organization that it considered Beijing's part of the investigation complete, calling for efforts to trace the virus's origins to shift into other countries.

Facebook rejected two proposals intended to diminish Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's control over the company, an expected though disappointing outcome for those worried about the CEO's power. From a report: The board Wednesday turned down a proposal to replace Zuckerberg as chairman with an independent representative. Zuckerberg, who has served as chairman since 2012, controls about 58% of the voting shares, according to a regulatory filing. During Facebook's annual meeting, the board also rejected a proposal to eliminate the special class of super-voting shares that gives Zuckerberg a controlling stake in the company. Under the plan, investors would have been awarded one vote per share. The Zuckerberg-controlled board has rejected similar motions in years past. While not surprising, the votes are likely to frustrate shareholders who argue Zuckerberg has too much power at a time Facebook needs more independent oversight to address its regulatory threats, privacy scandals and public controversies.

The EU is said to be on the brink of opening a formal antitrust investigation into Facebook following complaints from rivals about the platform's classified ads business. From a report: Regulators have already sent questions to Facebook and its competitors asking whether the social media site distorted the classified ads market by promoting its Marketplace services for free to its 2bn users. Facebook Marketplace, which launched in 2016, allows users to buy and sell goods to each other without fees. It is used by 800m Facebook users in 70 countries. The European Commission first started looking at the platform in 2019, asking companies whether they considered Marketplace as a close rival and how many visits to their sites came from ads placed on Facebook's platform. Classified ads rivals are said to have complained that Facebook used its market power to gain an advantage.

New stricter European Union guidelines will push Facebook, Google and other big tech companies to commit not to make money from advertising linked to disinformation. From a report: The European Commission said on Wednesday that its strengthened non-binding guidelines, which confirmed a May 19 Reuters report, set out a robust monitoring framework and clear performance indicators for firms to comply with. read more Concerns about the impact of disinformation have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and after claims about election fraud in the United States, with some critics pointing to the role of social media and tech giants in spreading it.

"Disinformation cannot remain a source of revenue. We need to see stronger commitments by online platforms, the entire advertising ecosystem and networks of fact-checkers," EU industry chief Thierry Breton said in a statement. "We need online platforms and other players to address the systemic risks of their services and algorithmic amplification, stop policing themselves alone and stop allowing to make money on disinformation, while fully preserving the freedom of speech," she said. Signatories to the code, which was introduced in 2018, include Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla, TikTok and some advertising and tech lobbying groups.

Russia is increasingly pressuring Google, Twitter and Facebook to fall in line with Kremlin internet crackdown orders or risk restrictions inside the country, as more governments around the world challenge the companies' principles on online freedom. From a report: Russia's internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, recently ramped up its demands for the Silicon Valley companies to remove online content that it deems illegal or restore pro-Kremlin material that had been blocked. The warnings have come at least weekly since services from Facebook, Twitter and Google were used as tools for anti-Kremlin protests in January. If the companies do not comply, the regulator has said, they face fines or access to their products may be throttled.

The latest clashes flared up this week, when Roskomnadzor told Google on Monday to block thousands of unspecified pieces of illegal content or it would slow access to the company's services. On Tuesday, a Russian court fined Google 6 million rubles, or about $81,000, for not taking down another piece of content. On Wednesday, the government ordered Facebook and Twitter to store all data on Russian users within the country by July 1 or face fines. In March, the authorities had made it harder for people to see and send posts on Twitter after the company did not take down content that the government considered illegal. Twitter has since removed roughly 6,000 posts to comply with the orders, according to Roskomnadzor. The regulator has threatened similar penalties against Facebook.

WhatsApp has sued the Indian government challenging the second largest internet market's new regulations that could allow authorities to make people's private messages "traceable," and conduct mass surveillance. From a report: The Facebook-owned instant messaging service, which identifies India as its biggest market by users, said it filed the lawsuit in the High Court of Delhi on Wednesday. It said New Delhi's "traceability" requirement -- which would require WhatsApp to help New Delhi identify the originator of a particular message -- violated citizens' constitutional right to privacy.

"Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to 'trace' private messages would break end-to-end encryption and lead to real abuse. WhatsApp is committed to protecting the privacy of people's personal messages and we will continue to do all we can within the laws of India to do so," WhatsApp said in a statement. India first proposed WhatsApp to make software changes to make the originator of a message traceable in 2018. The suggestion came at a time when WhatsApp was grappling with containing spread of false information in India, where circulation of such information had resulted in multiple real-life casualties. But its suggestion didn't become the law until this year. Traceability requirement is part of New Delhi's sweeping IT rules that also require social media firms to appoint several officers in India to address on-ground concerns, and also gives authorities greater power over taking down posts it deems offensive. Further reading: India says WhatsApp's lawsuit over new regulations a clear act of defiance.

Florida on Monday became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates in the state. From a report: The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook's and Twitter's bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories. Mr. DeSantis said signing the bill meant that Floridians would be "guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites."

"If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable," he said in a statement. The bill is part of a broader push among conservative state legislatures to crack down on the ability of tech companies to manage posts on their platforms. The political efforts took off after Mr. Trump was barred after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers around the country have echoed Mr. Trump's accusations that the companies are biased against conservative personalities and publications, even though those accounts often thrive online. More than a hundred bills targeting the companies' moderation practices have been filed nationwide this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of the bills have died, but a proposal is still being debated in Texas.

Apple refused a request from Facebook to remove negative reviews in the App store after pro-Palestinian protesters coordinated an effort to tank ratings because of censorship of Palestinian content, NBC News reported. From a report: On Saturday, the Facebook app had a 2.3 out of five-star rating in the App store compared to a more than four-star rating last week. The largest category of ratings is one-star reviews, with many comments saying their rating is due to Facebook censoring hashtags like #FreePalestine or #GazaUnderAttack.

"User trust is dropping considerably with the recent escalations between Israel and Palestine," said one senior software engineer in a post on Facebook's internal message board, NBC reported. "Our users are upset with our handling of the situation. Users are feeling that they are being censored, getting limited distribution, and ultimately silenced. As a result, our users have started protesting by leaving 1 star reviews." An internal message reviewed by NBC showed that the company was very concerned about the coordinated effort to tank ratings, categorizing the issue as an SEV1, which stands for "severity 1."

Snap's new Spectacles glasses are its most ambitious yet. But there's a big catch: you can't buy them. From a report: On Thursday, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel unveiled the company's first true augmented reality glasses, technology that he and rivals like Facebook think will one day be as ubiquitous as mobile phones. A demo showed virtual butterflies fluttering over colorful plants and landing in Spiegel's extended hand. The new Spectacles have dual waveguide displays capable of superimposing AR effects made with Snapchat's software tools. The frame features four built-in microphones, two stereo speakers, and a built-in touchpad. Front-facing cameras help the glasses detect objects and surfaces you're looking at so that graphics more naturally interact with the world around you.

[...] The idea is to encourage a small portion of the 200,000 people who already make AR effects in Snapchat to experiment with creating experiences for the new Spectacles, according to Spiegel. Like the bright yellow vending machines Snap used to sell the first version of Spectacles several years ago, the approach could end up being a clever way to build buzz for the glasses ahead of their wide release. Spiegel has said that AR glasses will take roughly a decade to reach mainstream adoption. "I don't believe the phone is going away," he told The Verge in an interview this week. "I just think that the next generation of Spectacles can help unlock a new way to use AR hands-free, and the ability to really roam around with your eyes looking up at the horizon, out at the world."