URL | https://Persagen.com/docs/meta_platforms_inc.html | |
Sources | Persagen.com | Wikipedia | other sources (cited in situ) | |
Source URL | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta,_Inc. | |
Date published | 2021-10-28 | |
Curation date | 2021-10-28 | |
Curator | Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D. | |
Modified | ||
Editorial practice | Refer here | Date format: yyyy-mm-dd | |
Summary | Meta Platforms, Inc. - formerly known as Facebook, Inc. until 2021-10-28 - is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company based in Menlo Park, California. It is the parent organization of Facebook and its subsidiaries. It is one of the world's most valuable companies and is considered one of the Big Five companies in U.S. information technology, alongside Amazon.com, Alphabet [subsidiary: Google], Apple, and Microsoft. | |
Self-reported summary |
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Meta Platforms Inc. ["Meta"]
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Website | About.Facebook.com |
Meta Platforms, Inc., - formerly known as Facebook, Inc. until October 28, 2021-10-28 - is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company based in Menlo Park, California. It is the parent organization of Facebook and its subsidiaries. It is one of the world's most valuable companies and is considered one of the Big Five [Big Tech] companies in U.S. information technology, alongside Amazon.com, Alphabet [subsidiary: Google], Apple, and Microsoft. Meta, Inc. generates the vast majority of its revenue by selling advertisement placements to marketers.
Meta, Inc. offers other products and services, including Facebook Messenger, Facebook Watch, and Facebook Portal. Meta, Inc. has also acquired Giphy and Mapillary, and has a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms.
In October 2021, following significant negative coverage of Facebook [Wikipedia entry] for the way its social media platform of the same name operates, media outlets reported that the parent company planned to change its name to "reflect its focus on building the metaverse", it was rebranded as Meta later that month on 2021-10-28. The name "Meta" comes from the Greek language and means "beyond", indicating the futuristic motive.
[NPR.org, 2022-02-15] Texas sues Meta, saying it misused facial recognition data. | Discussion: Hacker News: 2022-02-15
A
Texas filed suit on Monday [2022-02-14] in a state district court in the small city of
[Axios.com, 2021-11-30] U.K. regulators order Facebook-owner Meta to sell Giphy. | Discussion: Hacker News: 2021-11-30
Regulators in the U.K. on Tuesday [2021-11-30] said they have directed Facebook parent company Meta to sell Giphy after finding "the takeover could reduce competition between social
Why it matters: Facebook agreed to buy Giphy in May of last year [2020] for an estimated price of $400 million. The deal almost immediately invited
Details: In a statement, the U.K.'s
Regulators also determined that the deal was
As a result,
Facebook did not immediately return a request for comment.
Be smart: GIFs, or
Google acquired GIF startup Tenor in 2018. That deal was presumably much smaller in scale, which is perhaps why it didn't receive as much regulatory scrutiny.
The big picture: The decision comes amid a period of
[CTVNews.ca, 2021-11-07] Plenty of pitfalls await Zuckerberg's 'metaverse' plan.
[Vox.com, 2021-11-03] Facebook is backing away from facial recognition. Meta isn't. The social network is scaling back facial recognition, but similar technology could show up in the metaverse.
Facebook says it will stop using facial recognition for photo-tagging. In 2021-11-02 blog post [local copy], Meta Platforms, Inc. - the social network, Facebook's new parent company - announced that the platform will delete the facial templates of more than a billion people and shut off its facial recognition software, which uses an algorithm to identify people in photos they upload to Facebook. This decision represents a major step for the movement against facial recognition, which experts and activists have warned is plagued with bias and privacy problems.
But Meta's announcement comes with a couple of big caveats. While Meta says that facial recognition isn't a feature on Instagram and its Portal devices, the company's new commitment doesn't apply to its metaverse products, Meta spokesperson Jason Grosse told Recode. In fact, Meta is already exploring ways to incorporate biometrics into its emerging metaverse business, which aims to build a virtual, internet-based simulation where people can interact as avatars. Meta is also keeping DeepFace [Wikipedia entry], the sophisticated algorithm that powers its photo-tagging facial recognition feature.
"We believe this technology has the potential to enable positive use cases in the future that maintain privacy, control, and transparency, and it's an approach we'll continue to explore as we consider how our future computing platforms and devices can best serve people's needs," Jason Grosse told Recode. "For any potential future applications of technologies like this, we'll continue to be public about intended use, how people can have control over these systems and their personal data, and how we're living up to our responsible innovation framework."
That facial recognition for photo-tagging is leaving Facebook, also known as the "big blue app," is certainly significant. Facebook originally launched this tool in 2010 to make its photo-tagging feature more popular. The idea was that letting an algorithm automatically suggest tagging a particular person in a photo would make it easier than manually tagging them and, perhaps, encourage more people to tag their friends. The software is informed by the photos people post of themselves, which Facebook uses to create unique facial templates tied to their profiles. The DeepFace artificial intelligence technology, which was developed from pictures uploaded by Facebook users, helps match people's facial templates to faces in different photos.
Privacy experts raised concerns immediately after the feature launched. Since then, pivotal studies from researchers like Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Deb Raji have also shown that facial recognition can have baked-in racial and gender bias, and is particularly less accurate for women with darker skin. In response to growing opposition to the technology, Facebook made the facial recognition feature opt-in in 2019. The social media network also agreed to pay a $650 million settlement last year [2020] after a lawsuit claimed the tagging tool violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act.
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[Reuters.com, 2021-11-02] Facebook will shut down facial recognition system.
Meta Platforms, Inc.nbsp; [formerly; Facebook, Inc.] announced on Tuesday [2021-11-02] it is shutting down its facial recognition system, which automatically identifies users in photos and videos, citing growing societal concerns about the use of such technology. "Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use," Jérôme Pesenti [Anglicized: Jerome Pesenti | local copy] Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Meta, wrote in a 2021-11-02 blog post [local copy]. "Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate."
The removal of face recognition by the world's largest social media platform comes as the tech industry has faced a reckoning over the past few years over the ethics of using the technology. Critics say facial recognition technology - which is popular among retailers, hospitals and other businesses for security purposes - could compromise privacy, target marginalized groups and normalize intrusive surveillance. IBM has permanently ended facial recognition product sales, and Microsoft Corporation and Amazon.com, Inc. have suspended sales to police indefinitely.
The news also comes as https://www.reuters.com/technology/changing-facebooks-name-will-not-deter-lawmaker-or-regulatory-scrutiny-experts-2021-10-20 has been under intense scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers over user safety and a wide range of abuses on its platforms. The company, which last week renamed itself Meta Platforms, Inc., said more than one-third of https://www.reuters.com/technology/changing-facebooks-name-will-not-deter-lawmaker-or-regulatory-scrutiny-experts-2021-10-20's daily active users have opted into the face recognition setting on the social media site, and the change will now delete the "facial recognition templates" of more than 1 billion people.
The removal will roll out globally and is expected to be complete by December 2021, a Facebook spokesperson said.
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