Facebook CEO says most of the social network’s users should assume their public data’s been compromised

If you thought things couldn’t get any worse for Facebook, here are a couple more things. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that all of its 2.2 billion users should assume their public information has been compromised by third-party scrapers. As he said in a call today, “I would assume if you had that setting turned on that someone at some point has access to your public information in some way.”

Zuckerberg is referring to a vulnerability in the social network’s search function, which lets anyone look up users using email addresses or phone numbers. Users would need to opt in to have their names show up in searches. He’s also said that they found a maximum of 87 million users potentially affected by the Cambridge Analytica fiasco.

Source: Facebook | Via: The Next Web

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan to pledge $3 billion to help fight disease

Aside from being the CEO of the biggest social media site, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are working on a bigger cause: helping cure all diseases. Through the couple’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, they plan to invest over US$3 billion over the next decade with an aim of curing all diseases by the end of the century. The three goals the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has include bringing scientists and engineers together, develop new tools and tech, as well as boost the movement to fund science needed to treat diseases. They plan to work with the top scientists from around the world to work on this

Chan, a pediatrician by profession, talked about this plan at an event hosted at the University of California, San Francisco, Mission Bay campus, which houses the school’s state-of-the-art hospital. Present at the event were well-known scientists, investors, and politicians like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (who is a partner of the Initiative), former US Secretary Janel Napolitano, and investor Ron Conway. The first investment by the initiative will be $600 million to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, an independent research center at Mission Bay where engineers, biologists, computer scientists, and the like can collaborate.

Source: CNET

Mark Zuckerberg talks VR’s role in Facebook’s future

“VR [virtual reality] is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at Samsung’s event at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain. VR has always been something Zuckerberg has been interested in and it’s helping guide him as he thinks about the future of his social media platform. He believes the future for Facebook will be immersive and it’ll bring people even closer together. And that this idea isn’t that far off. Facebook as we know is invested in virtual reality. They do own Oculus and they started working with Samsung to develop their own Gear VR headset, which uses technology from Oculus.

“Pretty soon, we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just right there in person,” Zuckerberg said. And with the new 360-degree cameras from the likes of Samsung and LG, it truly can happen sooner. Facebook already supports 360-degree videos on its platform. According to Facebook’s CEO, there are already 20,000 videos of that kind on his platform but work still has to be done. “One day soon, all of us will have the power to broadcast live. To do that, we’re going to have to solve a lot of really complex engineering problems.” But he reiterates that Facebook and Oculus are committed to VR “for the long term” and new VR games are expected to come out this year.

Source: PCWorld

Facebook reminisces with you on 10th anniversary

Facebook will be marking its 10^th anniversary tomorrow, February 4, and the social network hopes to share the milestone with you. The company is introducing “A Look Back” feature that will go live tomorrow. It shows you a personalized collection of photos or clips of the biggest moments you’ve had since you joined the site.

At the moment, there are over 1.2 billion monthly active users on the site with 19 million users from Canadians monthly and 14 million daily. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement that he the community continues to grow and develop in the coming years: “It's been amazing to see how people have used Facebook to build a real community and help each other in so many ways. In the next decade, we have the opportunity and responsibility to connect everyone and to keep serving the community as best we can.”