In an alarming example of algorithmic bureaucracy with no option for appeal, a Python and Pandas instructor named Reuven Lerner was banned for life from advertising on Facebook.

Mystified as to why Facebook had banned him from advertising his programming course, he asked the company for an explanation and reconsideration. — Read the rest

Meta recently announced a new type of pointless use for AI-generated art: sticker reactions! As The Verge explains:

Powered by Meta's Llama 2 large language model — the company's ChatGPT rival — AI-generated stickers allow users to create "multiple unique, high-quality stickers in seconds" using text-based prompts.

In a TikTok video, Isabele Lomax shares a surprising discovery she made on Facebook. Lomax woke up to find a video of herself breastfeeding her baby at the beach, posted with a caption that attempted to shame her for not covering up. — Read the rest

Tax prep companies are often in the news for their peculiar ability to prevent the IRS promoting the same convenient, free online tax filing services enjoyed in other countries. Today they're in the news because they share your personal data with Google and Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, without your permission. — Read the rest

It's typically pretty cringe when corporations try to make their social media clever or funny, but there are definitely exceptions—the National Park Service twitter, for example, is awesome. I recently stumbled across the Wendy's Facebook page, and whoever runs that social media account should get a raise, because it's hilarious. — Read the rest

After Canada's Senate passed a law mandating that social media sites pay news sources a license fee whenever links to articles are posted there, Facebook has blocked users from doing so. The block, covering various Canadian news media, extends to Instagram. — Read the rest

In February, a Los Angeles man picked up a chair on Facebook Marketplace for $50. That same chair, made by Danish furniture designer Frits Henningsen, just sold in a Sotheby's auction for $85,000! — Read the rest

It's been getting worse for months, too. Today, I searched for something and the overwhelming majority of listings were comically fraudulent, each with the same price and description. The format is very regular: a price around $100 (not unrealistically low for many used items, but obviously too good to be true for recent-year computers) and identical description text that amounts to "buy this offsite at this hacked shopify URL." — Read the rest

Candace Chapman Scott, 36, pleaded not guilty to selling more than 20 boxes of human skulls, skin, hearts, arms, lungs, kidneys, penises, and a complete head to the owner of a private Facebook group called "Oddities." Apparently Scott worked for a commercial cremation company. — Read the rest

Mark Zuckerberg announced that another 10,000 workers will lose their jobs at Meta, joining the 15,000 laid off earlier this year. The "Year of Efficiency," as he hails it, proceeds apace.

Our efficiency work has several parallel workstreams to improve organizational efficiency, dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimize distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more.

Back in November, I wrote about YouTube woodworker, Dave Piccuito, ordering all the tools from sketchy-looking Facebook ads that he was served that day. He's baaaaack. This time, Dave orders 5 tools and waits for the frustration, disappointment, and rip-offs to arrive in the mail. — Read the rest

Facebook's gol' durn algorithm is acting up again, say humans working at Meta, who apparently have no control over the automated system that approved ads calling for the murder of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his children.

Fortunately, the ads were submitted by the nonprofit Global Witness, which wanted to test Facebook's filters against violent advertising. — Read the rest

Recommendations by Meta's oversight board may lead the social media titans to "free the nipple." Reviewing the case of a ban on images that contained breasts, with the nipples blocked, of a transgender, non-binary couple. In reviewing the ban the oversight committee realized the ban makes no sense and serves little purpose. — Read the rest

Thanks to the good folks at Arizona Mirror, we now know definitively that the Kyrsten Simena who is selling items on Facebook Marketplace is, in fact, the real Senator Sinema. AZ Mirror reporter Jim Small explains:

…I've been Facebook friends with Sinema on her personal account [and] as a result, I can see that the Kyrsten Sinema selling a $3,500 road bike frame is the same one I've been Facebook friends with for some 15 or so years, and the one with whom I share 143 friends — almost all of whom are from the world of Arizona politics and government.

This is one of the most engaging articles I've read lately—about a completely perplexing topic: Kyrsten Sinema's Facebook Marketplace presence. Christina Cauterucci, writing for Slate, provides a deep dive into the Facebook Marketplace activity of a user named "Kyrsten Sinema." Cauterucci starts with listing some of what's on offer:

The user is currently hawking—among other things—a $215 cycling ensemble, a $25 trucker hat, and a $150 stainless steel watch with a silicone strap.

Congress is about to pass a law that could ultimately force websites to pay news publishers just for linking to them—an attempt to shore up the news business by exempting it from antitrust law and establishing a government-approved content cartel. — Read the rest

Like all of us online, well-known woodworking YouTuber, David Picciuto, gets hit with a lot of targeted ads. Facebook's algorithms, knowing he's a woodworker, feed him a daily diet of too good to be true ads for tools. So that the rest of us don't have to, Dave decided to order every advertised tool that came across his feed for a day. — Read the rest

Rumored for weeks and coinciding with Twitter's own downsizing, Meta is expected to lay off thousands of workers today. The company, which has lost nearly three quarters of its market capitalization in recent months, is among those hardest-hit by the tech downturn—a malaise seemingly compounded by its expensive pivot to VR. — Read the rest

Facebook was a trillion-dollar company last year. Now it's worth $263b after another brutal day at the stock exchange. Mark Zuckerberg's effort to pivot the company from social media to virtual reality continues apace.

The company's travails raises questions about its all-in bet on the metaverse, as well as whether the social media company could suffer he fate of other major businesses whose gambles on the future failed to pay off.

Nick Clegg, Nicola Mendelsohn, and Cristian Perrella were identified in court papers as executives of Facebook (now Meta) who took bribes from OnlyFans to "blacklist" the accounts of adult entertainers who competed with it. Meta denies it, but as Dell Cameron writes for Gizmodo, the case now hinges "less on whether the allegations are false, and more on whether, even if true, the company would be legally liable." — Read the rest