A $1.4 Billion Victory for Texans' Privacy Rights

So, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just totally owned Facebook’s parent company, Meta. He won a huge lawsuit against them for a billion and a half bucks! The whole thing was about this creepy feature on Facebook where they’d secretly scan people’s faces without telling them. Yeah, not cool.

The Unseen Invasion

Back in 2011, when Meta was still known as Facebook, the company rolled out its "tag" feature. This seemingly innocuous tool allowed software to recognize and sort faces in photos. However, what most Texans didn't realize was that it automatically activated without clear explanations. For over a decade, Meta quietly ran facial recognition software on virtually every uploaded photo, collecting records of people's facial geometry.

Violations and Accountability

Paxton's legal team argued that this violated a 2009 state statute governing biometric data usage and ran afoul of Texas' deceptive trade practices act. The $1.4 billion settlement, the largest ever obtained by a single state against a business, will be paid out over five years. Paxton emphasized that this historic victory demonstrates their commitment to holding tech giants accountable for privacy breaches.

Paxton: A Maverick in the Legal Arena

Ken Paxton, an outspoken conservative, has long criticized large tech companies. His alignment with right-leaning figures like Elon Musk has fueled speculation about his potential role in a second Trump Administration. Despite facing a federal investigation, Paxton's tenacity in pursuing justice remains unwavering.

In the end, this settlement serves as a powerful reminder: even the mightiest corporations must respect Texans' privacy rights. Meta's misstep has cost them dearly, and Paxton's victory reverberates far beyond the courtroom.

In a bold move that provoked controversy and curiosity, the U.S. surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy stood up against the digital giants who rule our lives this week. His plea? To place warning labels on social media platforms, much like the ones we find on cigarette boxes. But why you might ask? And what does this mean for our mental well-being? Let's dive in.

The Mental Health Crisis

Incidentally, Dr. General Murthy calls for social media to be the perfect sunshine and rainbow for the youth. A lot of kids these days are glued to their phones, and it’s bumming them out. They feel anxious, depressed and lonely even though they are constantly connected. This is a serious problem that cannot be ignored.

The Evidence

Those scary warnings on cigarettes, like "smoking kills," aren't there just to freak people out. Turns out, they actually work! They get people thinking twice and can help them quit. That's what Dr. Murthy is saying about social media. Just like warnings protect our lungs, labels on social media could help us stay mentally healthy.

The Proposal

Imagine going on TikTok or Instagram and being greeted with this message: "Warning: This platform is associated with significant mental health issues for teens." It’s a wake-up call, a push to pause and reflect. Such labels won't magically make social media safer, Dr. Murthy argues, but they are a necessary step. They remind us that the digital world isn't all rainbows and filters.

Personal Story: The Scroll of Doom

Let me share a personal anecdote. Last summer, my teenage niece, Lily, fell into the social media rabbit hole. Late nights turned into early mornings as she swiped through curated lives, flawless selfies, and unattainable standards. Her laughter faded, replaced by a quiet sadness. When Dr. Murthy's proposal hit the news, I thought of Lily. Maybe those labels could have nudged her toward healthier choices.

If you are a fan of Instagram then you already know you can find goods and services via this social networking website. Many business owners advertise their products here and they have excellent reasons to do this. With over 500 million visitors daily, Instagram has the potential to bring serious business to your site. It gets even better. According to reliable statistics, over 130 million Instagram users engage with shopping posts. These are some big numbers right there.

In the past, Instagram users had to leave the site then log on to the seller's website in order to buy goods and services online. Now, this is an inconvenience and a waste of valuable time. The good news is that customers can now buy goods and services directly from Instagram without leaving the site or navigating to the seller's website. BigCommerce has teamed up with Facebook to unlock checkout on Instagram. In simple English, this means that if you are just looking at Instagram pages and you see any product you like, you can buy it immediately without having to log out of Instagram and log on to the seller's website. Below are three advantages of this innovative development.

Meet Customers Where They Are

One of the best things about shopping online is that the seller offers goods and services to the customers in real time. You do not have to commute to some offline shop somewhere and waste valuable time in traffic. Now, checkout on Instagram offers online shoppers instant availability of products. For the 130 million shoppers on Instagram, this feature means that the seller meets the customer where they are. In effect, you have a safe, fast and convenient shopping alternative right here on Instagram.

Simple and Secure Platform

This innovation creates a wonderful social media shopping experience for Instagram users. You probably had some favorite products already but you could not access these products directly in the past. Now, BigCommerce has just given you the opportunity to shop for all your favorite brands directly from your Instagram page. You can even store payment credentials and make future purchases seamlessly on Instagram. This gives you fast, secure and simple transactions all the time. 

We are being used by Facebook. It is giving out our personal information freely. It is establishing a dangerous precedent under the guise of helping us connect. It facilitates divisive attitudes and runs contrary to the true reason we started using social networks in the beginning -- human interaction.

It's a disease, so #deletefacebook today.

I have started the gradual process of using the platform less and less, by systemically operating a script which will remove my content. And there is much to remove. There are shares and likes. There are lengthy posts I posted to impress people. There are countless WordPress notifications which inform people what I am doing. Actually, I would bet that I use Facebook to stroke my ego more than engage with other people. I would hazard a guess that this also applies to many other users.

The executive chairman for News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, is asking for Facebook, Twitter, and even Google to subsidize the news websites that show up on people's newsfeeds. Essentially, Murdoch wants someone to pay him for the news that his company, and others like his, would put out on people's feeds.

This change comes right after the announcement of Facebook's updated newsfeed policies that prioritize friends and family first over the likes of news sites and advertisement pages.

This effectively puts news corporations at an extreme disadvantage for having their news seen at all. As anticipated, Wall Street did not take well to the news at all. They expect users will spend less money overall making their market shares decrease over time.

Newsfeed Chief for Facebook, Adam Mosseri, did not really have much to offer in the way of a compromising solution. He was quoted in the press announcement as telling news and advertisement companies to "experiment" and see what "content gets more likes." A very shunted answer when announcing that they are basically cutting off the toes of news companies.

Fake news sites dot the landscape on platforms like Facebook and Google. Unfortunately, such sites play a dangerous game of misinformation. They've even proved lucrative for the perpetrators. Facebook and Google recently took efforts to ban fake news sites, though. With these efforts, perhaps the flood of fake news will lessen in a noticeable way.

On social media, fake news rose to popularity with the US election more so than ever before. Such sites found their way into Google search results and Google News. This type of news spreads inaccurate information on purpose rather than pushing a particular opinion or belief.

Google's policies now state that sites cannot misstate or misrepresent information. If a site breaks the policy, then it could lose Google AdSense privileges. Of course, fake news sites depend upon Google AdSense revenue in order to turn a profit from misinformation.

Recruitment drives through LinkedIn now face competition as Facebook creates a new job opening feature.

Pages have always been an important part of Facebook's ecosystem, and now they've added a new twist: job listings. Companies who currently market their products via their Facebook news feeds may now also have a new reason to funnel traffic that way; driving traffic for Facebook and paying for the privilege.

At present, it is only an experiment, first spotted by TechCrunch, and part of a wider drive to address the burgeoning social recruitment market. It is, in part, a response to behaviour that Facebook confirm they have already noticed: small businesses offering jobs through their existing Facebook pages.

There are already others participating in this market -- LinkedIn, Work4 and Jobscore to name but a few -- so there is clearly demand to be addressed. These services can already be embedded in Facebook pages, so it is a natural follow-on for Facebook to launch their own service. Speculation online is that Facebook already did some preparation work when it tested Profile Tags in 2015.

In December, Facebook started testing classified ads and now you can search across groups (public and subscribed to) and within categories. This feature should be released in the next few weeks with an a sales group link in the left pane. Users can post items by going into groups and selecting on 'Sale and Item' next to 'Write a Post'. Users will need to enter some information similar to an eBay auction to list their item for sale to the group.

If you have ever posted something on Facebook that you would not want the public to see, a new improved search function of the social network might bring that old post up from your timeline. The changes will be part of the desktop interface and the iOS app rolled out this week. The amount that gets shared is based on your privacy settings, but if you allow the public to see your timeline, then the new search will be better able to find the old stuff that would embarrass you today.

On your Android phone, the popular messaging app WhatsApp now is providing end-to-end encryption. The Open Whisper Systems technology will move to iOS soon also. Whisper Systems was purchased by Twitter four years and the Open Whisper Systems is the open source off-shoot. With over 600 million users, keeping messages and pictures save from hackers has become more important every month with the NSA and hackers getting ahold of celebrity photos from Apple cloud services.