Facebook

6 entries between September 2016 and November 2021, 1 turning point.

Turning points

  1. Reporting reveals Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data

    The Observer and The New York Times reported on 17 March 2018 that Cambridge Analytica had obtained data from up to 50 million Facebook profiles, collected through a personality-quiz app and used to build voter-targeting models. Facebook had suspended the firm a day earlier.

Every entry

  1. Meta shuts down Facebook’s face recognition system

    Meta said on 2 November 2021 that it would shut down Facebook’s face recognition system, which suggested photo tags and told people when they appeared in others’ uploads, and delete the templates of more than a billion people who had opted in.

  2. Frances Haugen testifies to Congress on Facebook’s algorithms

    Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, told a United States Senate subcommittee on 5 October 2021 that the company’s content-ranking systems were dangerous and that its own research showed as much.

  3. FTC fines Facebook $5 billion over privacy violations

    The Federal Trade Commission announced on 24 July 2019 that Facebook would pay what it called a record-breaking $5 billion penalty and submit to new privacy restrictions and a modified corporate structure, settling the inquiry opened after the Cambridge Analytica disclosures.

  4. Altered Pelosi video draws Congress to manipulated media

    A video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, slowed so her words sounded slurred, spread online in May 2019. YouTube removed it; Facebook kept it up but showed it to fewer people. President Trump tweeted a different edited clip. The House Intelligence Committee held a hearing on deepfakes.

  5. Reporting reveals Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data

    The Observer and The New York Times reported on 17 March 2018 that Cambridge Analytica had obtained data from up to 50 million Facebook profiles, collected through a personality-quiz app and used to build voter-targeting models. Facebook had suspended the firm a day earlier.

  6. Five companies found the Partnership on AI

    Amazon, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Google’s DeepMind announced the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, a non-profit for best practice and public understanding, open to academic and civil-society members. Apple joined in January 2017.