Controversies

Company response

• Apology — Facebook

  Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, virtually met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in a virtual meeting on Tuesday, where he apologized for the company mistakenly labeling some posts as incitement to violence.

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• The groups say the decisions of Facebook and other tech firms amount to “censorship” of Palestinians

• Nearly 500 removals on Instagram and Facebook were documented by 7amleh, a Palestinian digital rights non-profit, between 6 and 19 May.

• Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, virtually met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in a virtual meeting on Tuesday, where he apologized for the company mistakenly labeling some posts as incitement to violence.

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• The same day, the court fined another IT giant, Facebook, a total of 26 million rubles following eight complaints concerning violations of the same administrative code article — failure to delete content banned in Russia.

• That case involved eight reports about material posted on Facebook that Russian authorities wanted Facebook to remove.

• The charges concern posts that Russia says encouraged minors to join unsanctioned protests in January, when people across the country took to the streets to support Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny after he was detained.

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• Facebook Inc. lost a bid to block a European Union privacy decision that could suspend its ability to send information about European users to U.S. computer servers, opening a pathway toward a precedent-setting interruption of its data flows.

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• On Friday, West Virginia newspaper publishing company HD Media Company filed a complaint in the Southern District of West Virginia against Google and Facebook for purported antitrust violations in the digital advertising market, such that “the existence of the newspaper industry is threatened.”

• The defendants are accused of violating Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and West Virginia law for this purported monopolization, contract, and conspiracy to restrain trade.

• A US-based news organisation has filed a lawsuit against Facebook and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, alleging that the tech giants with their dominance over the digital advertising market adversely affected an important revenue source.

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• The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based email security vendor was hit Jan. 25 with a decision from an arbitrator ordering the transfer of five lookalike domain names from Proofpoint to Facebook within ten business days.

• Security company Proofpoint has sued Facebook in order to keep hold of several typo domains that are deliberately intended to look like its Facebook and Instagram brands.

• Proofpoint wants an Arizona court to declare that facbook-login.com, facbook-login.net, instagrarn.ai, instagrarn.net and instagrarn.org are not cases of cybersquatting because they were not registered in bad faith.

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• Facebook announced on Monday that it would remove posts that contain incorrect claims about vaccines, including the conspiracy theory that they cause autism.

• Facebook's old policy on misleading vaccine information was to down-rank posts, pushing them further down the newsfeed, but now they will be removed entirely.

• The new changes follow a ruling from the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body that evaluates decisions made by the company.

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• On Thursday, social media giant Facebook, as well as its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp (together referred to as Facebook), filed a complaint in the Middle District of Pennsylvania against defendant New Ventures Services, Corp. as well as some unknown individuals

• The plaintiffs alleged that the Infringing Domain Names “either incorporate Plaintiffs’ Trademarks or are confusingly similar misspellings of Plaintiffs’ Trademarks”

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• According to a Western District of Washington complaint filed on Monday, Robinson Communications Inc. is taking two tech giants for conduct it argues crippled the country’s newspaper industry.

• The filing both accuses Google LLC of exercising monopoly power of the digital advertising market and both Google and Facebook Inc. of unlawfully conspiring to engage in anticompetitive conduct per the so-called “Jedi Blue” agreement, constituting an automatic violation of the Sherman Act.

• The publisher claims the social media giants have violated federal antitrust and monopoly laws to an extent that "threatens the extinction of local newspapers across the country."

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• Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed a lawsuit against Facebook in France over hate speech and false information, the global media watchdog said in a statement on Tuesday.

• RSF said that in a lawsuit filed with the public prosecutor in Paris on Monday, it accuses Facebook of allowing large-scale proliferation of hate speech - notably against journalists - and false information despite promises to provide a safe online environment.

• It added that the suit concerned Facebook France and Facebook Ireland and is based on the French consumer code, under which companies using deceptive commercial practices can be liable to fines of up to 10% of annual turnover.

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• Facebook on Wednesday blocked users in Australia from viewing or sharing news content after Australia moved towards enacting a new law that requires social media companies to share advertising revenue they generate from news stories with publishers.

• Social media platform Facebook faced a chorus of voices calling for a boycott after it blocked all news content in Australia amid a legal dispute with the government there.

• Politicians, news providers and civil society groups in the UK and US have rounded on Facebook and said the company’s decision to block all media content on its platform in Australia should hasten moves to bring its powers under control.

Company response

• Clarification — Facebook

  Facebook发言人在声明中表示，该公司期待向监管机构证明，这笔交易有利于市场竞争，能带来更多的选择和更好的服务。

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• 尽管如此，两名知情人士表示，2月中旬，美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）正在对这笔交易展开深入调查。

• The commission, the EU’s powerful antitrust authority, said its investigation came at the request of 10 national authorities, with Austria making the original demand.

• The EU commission has launched an investigation into a buyout by Facebook of a US startup over concerns that the social media giant could misuse personal data.

Company response

• Remediation — Facebook

• Clarification — Facebook

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• As well as conventional news outlets, government pages – including on bushfires, mental health, emergency services and even meteorology – were also blocked, as were community, women’s health and domestic violence support pages.

• In a step condemned as “an attempt to bully a democracy” and “threatening to bring an entire country to its knees”, Facebook stopped its 18 million Australian users from viewing or sharing news stories overnight in an escalating row over whether it should have to pay media companies for its content.

• Facebook’s action starkly demonstrates why allowing one company to exert such dominant power over our information ecosystem threatens human rights,

Company response

• Apology — Instagram

  Instagram has apologised for a “mistake” that meant it promoted weight-loss content to users with eating disorders.

• Remediation — Facebook

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• Instagram has apologised for a “mistake” that meant it promoted weight-loss content to users with eating disorders.

• But some people with eating disorders found the app was prompting them to search for terms like “appetite suppressant” instead, raising the risk of a relapse or worse.

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• The information of these users before 2019 was leaked due to a feature being abused and was recently published in a database.

• As of today, a Facebook spokesperson that the company had not notified more than 530 million users of the data breach. In fact, the company does not have any plans to notify these users.

• "We don't currently have plans to notify users individually," a Facebook spokesman told NPR.

Company response

• Apology — Facebook

  “This is a really hard thing to do. We’ve never done it before. We are sorry for the mistakes we made in some of the implementation,” Mr Milner said.

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• A senior Facebook executive involved in the decision to ban news content in Australia has apologised for accidentally wiping pages operated by charities, government organisations and state health departments at a critical stage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Company response

• Clarification — Facebook

  In response, Facebook said personal data taken from the social network was “scraped” using a now-fixed flaw rather than hacked from their systems.

• Remediation — Facebook

  Facebook said it was working to get the data set taken down

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• Facebook has defended its security following its latest data security breach, but has been criticised for failing to apologise to users.

• In recent days it has emerged that personal data linked to more than 500 million Facebook accounts had been posted freely on a hacking forum, including data from about 11 million UK users.

• Facebook said it was working to get the data set taken down and encouraged users to update the privacy settings around their accounts, including who can see certain information on their profile.

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• Italy's competition watchdog has fined social networking giant Facebook seven million euros ($8.45 million) for failing to comply with a previous order related to improper use of its subscribers' data.

• The most recent proceeding against Facebook was launched in January 2020, and the fine was decided in a meeting on February 9, according to the Italian watchdog.

• the two companies have not published the corrective statement and have not ceased the established unfair practice.

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• Italy's competition watchdog has fined Facebook 7 million euros ($8.5 million) for not complying with a request to correct improper commercial practices in its treatment of user data, the regulator said on Wednesday.

• The tech giant has been accused of not accurately and fairly informing its users when their data was being collected, the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) said.

• In November 2018, the antitrust body ruled that Facebook had not informed users properly about its collection and use of data.

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• Twitter, Google, Facebook each have three cases against them, with each violation punishable by a fine of up to 4 million roubles and cases have also been filed against TikTok and Telegram, the report said.

• Russian authorities are suing five social media platforms for allegedly failing to delete posts urging children to take part in illegal protests, the Interfax news agency cited a Moscow court as saying on Tuesday.

• Russian authorities are suing five social media platforms for allegedly failing to delete posts urging children to take part in illegal protests, the Interfax news agency cited a Moscow court as saying on Tuesday, foreign media reported.