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User safety important, using AI tools to combat misinformation: Meta India

Meta, the parent company for popular apps like Facebook and WhatsApp, considers user safety as "super important" and is using AI in a big way to combat misinformation, the social media giant's India head Sandhya Devanathan has said. Meta will continue with its election integrity efforts, as India heads for Lok Sabha elections next year, she told PTI. Devanathan, who is the Vice President of Meta in India, said user safety is an area where the company has invested "a lot". Outlining strategy adopted by Meta to crackdown on misinformation and hateful speech on its platform, Devanathan said one of the ways is through use of technology. "So AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been a big tool that has been our friend in combating a lot of misinformation and preventing harm on our platforms. Almost 85 per cent of content that we can classify as harmful is removed by AI before it even hits a human being to moderate," she said, adding that this marks use of technology for good. She added: "W

India a priority market with limitless possibilities: Meta India head

Meta sees India as a "priority market" with "limitless" possibilities buoyed by macroeconomic growth, digital infrastructure and the popularity of its apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, the social media giant's India head Sandhya Devanathan said. In an interview with PTI, Devanathan, who took over the leadership role in January this year, said India's new Digital Personal Data Protection legislation has provided a framework and clarity for tech companies and marks a "great step in balancing user protection with innovation". Meta, she emphasised, "welcomes constructive regulations", and will wait to see the detailed rules. Devanathan, who is the Vice President of Meta in India, also spoke of the company's determination to crack down on misinformation on the platform and outlined how it is harnessing AI (Artificial Intelligence) to pro-actively curb hateful content. Meta will continue with its election integrity efforts, as India heads for Lok Sabha elections next year, she .

Canada tries to address news law concerns, Facebook not convinced

Both Google and Facebook have said the law is unworkable for their businesses, and Meta ended news sharing on its platforms in Canada last month

Meta's 'biggest single takedown' saw removal of 7,704 Facebook accounts

As per The New York Times, the posts were part of a Chinese influence campaign that stands out as the largest such operation to date, researchers at Meta said in a report on Tuesday

Tech giants to face 3% digital tax in New Zealand, will begin in 2025

It would be applied at 3% on gross taxable New Zealand digital services revenue, similar to the taxes adopted by other jurisdictions such as France and the UK

MediaTek chip with Meta's Llama 2 for on-device generative AI coming soon

MediaTek said it expects Llama 2-based AI applications to become available for smartphones powered by its system-on-chip, which is scheduled to hit the market by the end of the year

Meta, Kenya moderators agree to out of court settlement in $1.6 bn lawsuit

Meta, Facebook's parent company, and 184 of its content moderators who were based in Kenya agreed on Wednesday on a mediation attempt to settle out of court. Last year, the moderators from several African countries filed a lawsuit against the social media giant and its outsourcing firm, Sama, seeking USD 1.6 billion in compensation, alleging poor working conditions, including insufficient mental health support and low pay. The Employment and Labour Relations court said they have 21 days to reach a settlement and that former Kenyan chief justice, Willy Mutunga, and labour commissioner, Hellen Apiyo would co-mediate the dispute. The moderators were employed via Sama, a San Francisco subcontractor that describes itself as an ethical AI company, to work in its hub in the capital, Nairobi. Their job entailed screening user content in 12 African languages and removing any uploads deemed to breach Facebook's community standards and terms of service. Some of the moderators previously to

Thailand threatens to shut Facebook, alleging it doesn't screen ads well

A Thai Cabinet minister is threatening to try to shut down Facebook in the country, saying the social media platform does not do enough to screen the advertisements it runs, leaving people vulnerable to costly scams. Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, Thailand's minister of Digital Economy and Society, said in a statement Monday that he is ready to go to criminal court by the end of the month arguing for Facebook to be shut down in Thailand. He said Thai authorities have already appealed to Facebook parent company Meta to take down fraudulent ads, leading to more than 5,000 being blocked, but that the problem persists. He said ads or fake profiles on Facebook frequently purport to represent reputable financial and investment advisers offering high profits, luring people into scams in which they lose their money. Reached by phone on Tuesday, Meta in Thailand asked for queries to be sent by email to its press department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ministe

From NYT to Threads, Elon Musk's X throttled access to several websites

When contacted for comment, X confirmed the delay was removed but did not elaborate

Zuckerberg's real threat is still TikTok, rather than former Twitter

Threads, the simple, bare-bones text-based social network created by Facebook owner Meta, burst onto the scene during a particularly bad week for the rival then still known as Twitter. It quickly amassed 100 million signups a huge feat for a newcomer in the space and was dubbed as a Twitter killer. By week two, though, signups began to drop off. As of Aug 7, the number of people who used Threads daily hovered around 10 million on Android phones, down from 49 million when it launched a month earlier, according to research firm SimilarWeb. Is Mark Zuckerberg's latest venture just a flash in the pan? That depends on whether it can hold its own against its biggest rival. And no, that's not X, the former Twitter. It's TikTok. And the odds are not great. Mark Zuckerberg may have temporarily been distracted in his sparring with Elon Musk, but the real battle for Meta is with TikTok, said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. And Zuckerberg still really needs to watch his back. It

'Time to move on': Mark Zuckerberg calls off cage fight with Elon Musk

Musk vs Zuckerberg: Last week, Musk said that the fight would take place at an 'epic location' in Italy

HUL's Shikhar user interface made seamless as popular social media apps

Apart from making the B2B app user-friendly for retailers, the FMCG major is looking to expand Samadhan, which cuts delivery time to just a day

Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg cage fight confirmed, all you need to know

The cage fight is confirmed between two tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Musk has said the cage fight will be live-streamed on X

Meta's AudioCraft will allow users to generate music from text

AudrioCraft is a new generative AI tool unveiled by Meta that can generate audio and music from text prompts

Meta prepares AI-powered chatbots in attempt to retain users: Report

The report comes as Meta executives are focusing on boosting retention on its new text-based app Threads, after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its launch on July 5

Meta's instant messaging app WhatsApp gets 60-second video message feature

The video messaging feature will allow WhatsApp users to record and share short personal videos of up to 60-second directly in the chat

Meta has rare opportunity to seize momentum with Twitter rival 'Threads'

Threads could help bring the center of internet culture back to Meta, once again making it a place where things happen first

Analysis of Meta's algorithms shows that misinformation has no easy fix

The powerful algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram to deliver content to users have increasingly been blamed for amplifying misinformation and political polarisation. But a series of groundbreaking studies published Thursday suggest addressing these challenges is not as simple as tweaking the platforms' software. The four research papers, published in Science and Nature, also reveal the extent of political echo chambers on Facebook, where conservatives and liberals rely on divergent sources of information, interact with opposing groups and consume distinctly different amounts of misinformation. Algorithms are the automated systems that social media platforms use to suggest content for users by making assumptions based on the groups, friends, topics and headlines a user has clicked on in the past. While they excel at keeping users engaged, algorithms have been criticised for amplifying misinformation and ideological content that has worsened the country's political ...

Facebook parent Meta stock surges 8% on AI-powered ad sales booster

Meta's results were also supported by improving monetisation of Reels, a short-form video format that is the company's answer to TikTok

Kolkata police issues warning about WhatsApp hacking, says not to share OTP

Kolkata police issued a warning against fraudsters, who are hacking users' Facebook profiles and connecting with the people in their friend lists through Messenger and asking for money