Tag • #meta

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Meet Mercy and Anita – the African workers driving the AI revolution, for just over a dollar an hour

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 6 July - 15:00 · 1 minute

Social media content and AI training data are processed in outsource centres in the global south, where long hours, low pay and exposure to disturbing material are the norm

James Muldoon, Mark Graham and Callum Cant: ‘AI feeds off the work of human beings’

Mercy craned forward, took a deep breath and loaded another task on her computer. One after another, disturbing images and videos appeared on her screen. As a Meta content moderator working at an outsourced office in Nairobi, Mercy was expected to action one “ticket” every 55 seconds during her 10-hour shift. This particular video was of a fatal car crash. Someone had filmed the scene and uploaded it to Facebook, where it had been flagged by a user. Mercy’s job was to determine whether it had breached any of the company’s guidelines that prohibit particularly violent or graphic content. She looked closer at the video as the person filming zoomed in on the crash. She began to recognise one of the faces on the screen just before it snapped into focus: the victim was her grandfather.

Mercy pushed her chair back and ran towards the exit, past rows of colleagues who looked on in concern. She was crying. Outside, she started calling relatives. There was disbelief – nobody else had heard the news yet. Her supervisor came out to comfort her, but also to remind her that she would need to return to her desk if she wanted to make her targets for the day. She could have a day off tomorrow in light of the incident – but given that she was already at work, he pointed out, she may as well finish her shift.

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Facebook se calme avec l’IA, pour éviter de futurs ennuis

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Saturday, 15 June - 05:01

Facebook baisse d'un ton avec l'IA générative. Le réseau social revoit pour l'heure à la baisse ses projets : il n'y aura pas d'entraînement de son IA à partir des données de ses membres.

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Meta halts plans to train AI on Facebook, Instagram posts in EU

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 14 June - 18:44

Meta halts plans to train AI on Facebook, Instagram posts in EU

Enlarge (credit: GreyParrot | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

Meta has apparently paused plans to process mounds of user data to bring new AI experiences to Europe.

The decision comes after data regulators rebuffed the tech giant's claims that it had "legitimate interests" in processing European Union- and European Economic Area (EEA)-based Facebook and Instagram users' data—including personal posts and pictures—to train future AI tools.

There's not much information available yet on Meta's decision. But Meta's EU regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), posted a statement confirming that Meta made the move after ongoing discussions with the DPC about compliance with the EU's strict data privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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If you really want kids to spend less time online, make space for them in the real world | Gaby Hinsliff

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 2 April - 05:00

Tech firms can do more, but it’s the government’s job to ensure children have safe places to play – and it’s not doing it

Three-quarters of children want to spend more time in nature. Having spent the Easter weekend trying to force four resistant teenagers off their phones and out for a nice walk over the Yorkshire Dales, admittedly I’ll have to take the National Trust’s word for this. But that’s what its survey of children aged between seven and 14 finds, anyway.

Kids don’t necessarily want to spend every waking minute hunched over a screen, however strongly they give that impression; even though retreating online satisfies the developmentally important desire to escape their annoying parents, even teenagers still want to run wild in the real world occasionally. Their relationship with phones is complex and maddening, but not a million miles off adults’ own love-hate relationship with social media; a greasy sugar-rush we crave but rarely feel better for indulging. Yet lately, longstanding parental unease over children’s screen habits has been hardening into something more like revolt.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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Wearable AI: will it put our smartphones out of fashion?

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 31 March - 11:00 · 1 minute

Portable AI-powered devices that connect directly to a chatbot without the need for apps or a touchscreen are set to hit the market. Are they the emperor’s new clothes or a gamechanger?

Imagine it: you’re on the bus or walking in the park, when you remember some important task has slipped your mind. You were meant to send an email, catch up on a meeting, or arrange to grab lunch with a friend. Without missing a beat, you simply say aloud what you’ve forgotten and the small device that’s pinned to your chest, or resting on the bridge of your nose, sends the message, summarises the meeting, or pings your buddy a lunch invitation. The work has been taken care of, without you ever having to prod the screen of your smartphone.

It’s the sort of utopian convenience that a growing wave of tech companies are hoping to realise through artificial intelligence. Generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT exploded in popularity last year, as search engines like Google, messaging apps such as Slack and social media services like Snapchat raced to integrate the tech into their systems. Yet while AI add-ons have become a familiar sight across apps and software, the same generative tech is now making an attempt to join the realm of hardware, as the first AI-powered consumer devices rear their heads and jostle for space with our smartphones.

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Facebook let Netflix see user DMs, quit streaming to keep Netflix happy: Lawsuit

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 28 March - 20:40 · 1 minute

A promotional image for Sorry for Your Loss, with Elizabeth Olsen

Enlarge / A promotional image for Sorry for Your Loss , which was a Facebook Watch original scripted series. (credit: Facebook )

Last April, Meta revealed that it would no longer support original shows, like Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk talk show, on Facebook Watch. Meta's streaming business that was once viewed as competition for the likes of YouTube and Netflix is effectively dead now; Facebook doesn't produce original series, and Facebook Watch is no longer available as a video-streaming app.

The streaming business' demise has seemed related to cost cuts at Meta that have also included layoffs. However, recently unsealed court documents in an antitrust suit against Meta [ PDF ] claim that Meta has squashed its streaming dreams in order to appease one of its biggest ad customers: Netflix.

Facebook allegedly gave Netflix creepy privileges

As spotted via Gizmodo , a letter was filed on April 14 in relation to a class-action antitrust suit that was filed by Meta customers, accusing Meta of anti-competitive practices that harm social media competition and consumers. The letter, made public Saturday, asks a court to have Reed Hastings, Netflix's founder and former CEO, respond to a subpoena for documents that plaintiffs claim are relevant to the case. The original complaint filed in December 2020 [ PDF ] doesn’t mention Netflix beyond stating that Facebook “secretly signed Whitelist and Data sharing agreements” with Netflix, along with “dozens” of other third-party app developers. The case is still ongoing.

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Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 27 March - 20:25

Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

Unsealed court documents have revealed more details about a secret Facebook project initially called "Ghostbusters," designed to sneakily access encrypted Snapchat usage data to give Facebook a leg up on its rival, just when Snapchat was experiencing rapid growth in 2016.

The documents were filed in a class-action lawsuit from consumers and advertisers, accusing Meta of anticompetitive behavior that blocks rivals from competing in the social media ads market.

"Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted, we have no analytics about them," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who has since rebranded his company as Meta) wrote in a 2016 email to Javier Olivan.

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Meta and Google accused of restricting reproductive health information

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 27 March - 14:41

Report claims posts on abortion and contraception have been deleted while misinformation on the feeds of social media users in Africa, Latin America and Asia has not been tackled

Meta and Google are accused in a new report of obstructing information on abortion and reproductive healthcare across Africa, Latin America and Asia.

MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International) and the Center for Countering Digital Hate claim the platforms are restricting local abortion providers from advertising, but failing to tackle misinformation that undermines public access to reproductive healthcare.

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Meta sues FTC, hoping to block ban on monetizing kids’ Facebook data

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 30 November, 2023 - 18:50

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Chesnot)

Meta sued the Federal Trade Commission yesterday in a lawsuit that challenges the FTC's authority to impose new privacy obligations on the social media firm.

The complaint stems from the FTC's May 2023 allegation that Meta-owned Facebook violated a 2020 privacy settlement and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The FTC proposed changes to the 2020 privacy order that would, among other things, prohibit Facebook from monetizing data it collects from users under 18.

Meta's lawsuit against the FTC challenges what it calls "the structurally unconstitutional authority exercised by the FTC through its Commissioners in an administrative reopening proceeding against Meta." It was filed against the FTC, Chair Lina Khan, and other commissioners in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Meta is seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the FTC proceeding pending resolution of the lawsuit.

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