Block Party, a startup initially centered on curbing online harassment via Twitter’s API, has undergone a significant pivot in the wake of API changes on the platform now known as X. Privacy Party Tracy Chou, a prominent software engineer and tech diversity advocate, introduced the venture’s new focus at this year’s SXSW conference in Austin. The reinvented platform Privacy Party emerges as a solution to the complex challenge of managing privacy settings across various social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, and X. Originally, Block Party leveraged Twitter’s API to
Kenyan President William Ruto has announced that Meta has agreed to monetize content in Kenya, benefitting the country’s creators. Following a year-long negotiation with the Kenyan government, Facebook and Instagram content creators will begin earning from these Meta platforms. Paying Kenyan Content Creators The President revealed that Meta had run a pilot program with eligible Kenyan content creators. “I have good news for our creatives and those who imagine and produce content through Facebook and Instagram,” Ruto said during the Jamhuri Day celebrations at Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi. “Just yesterday, Meta committed
In a watershed moment for the global tech industry, more than 150 African content moderators—who have provided moderation services for AI tools used by Facebook, TikTok, and ChatGPT—have voted to unionize, TIME reports. At an event in Nairobi this week, content moderators employed by third-party outsourcing companies voted to establish the first African Content Moderators Union. A long time coming The union’s establishment is the culmination of a process that began in 2019 when former Facebook content moderator Daniel Motaung was fired after attempting to unionize workers at the outsourcing
Tech giant Meta is being sued by content moderators in Kenya, again. On Monday, 43 content moderators filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook’s parent company and two subcontractors, Sama and Majorel of ‘unlawful redundancy’ and discriminatory hiring practices. Meta had contracted Kenya-based firm Sama to moderate Facebook content in eastern and southern Africa. However, Sama closed its content moderation arm in January and announced it would be laying off 260 content moderators when its contract with Meta ends on March 31. The suit claims that redundancy notices were not issued and that Meta and Sama
Tech giant, Meta, has seen an unexpected increase in diverse hires since expanding its remote working options. Facebook, also known as Meta, is one of many companies that have introduced new remote working options for its employees following the pandemic. As a result, between 2021 and 2022, the tech company reported a slight increase in the share of Black, Hispanic, and Asian employees joining its US workforce, while the proportion of white workers dropped by 1.5%. According to Facebook’s Chief Diversity Officer, Maxine Williams, employees from underrepresented backgrounds and people
Social media giant Facebook is on a mission to create some of the most innovative forms of technology in society today. The platform recently announced the launch of its new AI translator, No Language Left Behind (NLLB-200), the first multilingual machine that can translate up to 200 languages without relying on English data. The NLLB-200 aims to help people better connect in society today by eliminating the language barrier. Meta’s AI model uses one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers and is already used to translate content on Facebook and Wikipedia.
District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has sued Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. Karl has accused the Facebook co-founder of direct knowledge of policies that allowed firm to gather data of millions of Americans. “This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct,” Racine said in a news release. “This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary, and sends a message that corporate leaders, including
Social media giant Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc., faces prosecution in South Africa for unfairly trying to block local startups from using its WhatsApp Business Application Programming Interface (API), a government agency said Monday. It comes after the country’s competition regulator, the Competition Commission, said in a statement that it has referred Meta Platforms and its subsidiaries WhatsApp Inc and Facebook South Africa to the Competition Tribunal for prosecution for abusing its market dominance. According to Anadolu Agency, the commission alleges that Facebook in July 2020 threatened to
With over 93,000 members, the Black Fathers group has grown into one of the largest groups of dads on Facebook. It was launched by Matt Prestbury in 2008 after he grew increasingly frustrated with the notion that ‘Black fathers weren’t around.’ He knew there were involved Black fathers across the US and the globe – so he set up a group so they could all connect with one another using Facebook. “When I got on Facebook, I figured that was the best opportunity for us to present positive images of black
Facebook is planning to shut down its face-recognition system and delete faceprints of more than 1 billion people. At the present moment – more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted to have their faces recognized by the social network’s system. That’s about 640 million people. But according to AP – it recently began scaling back its use of facial recognition after introducing it more than a decade ago. The move comes years after organizations and people of color complained about how problematic AI and facial recognition
