Just like its owner Facebook, Instagram will soon allow users to download all the data they've ever uploaded to the service. "We are building a new data portability tool. You’ll soon be able to download a copy of what you’ve shared on Instagram, including your photos, videos and messages," an Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch. It's a stark departure to the social network's closed ecosystem that doesn't make it easy to download images on desktop or mobile. Even if it's your own. How to download your Facebook data (and why you should) Memeburn breaks down the steps to download all your data from Facebook....
Brace yourselves if you plan to login to Facebook today, because you might be in for an uncomfortable surprise. The social network announced that it will today inform the 87-million users who were affected by the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The alert will be in the form of a message card at the top of users' news feeds. The company initially believed only 50-million Facebook users were affected by the data scandal. However, last week it boosted that figure by more than 30-million. Around 70-million of those users affected reside in the United States, a million from the Philippines, United Kingdom and...
What does WhatsApp's co-founder Brian Acton, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Playboy's CEO Cooper Hefner, and now Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak all have in common? They've all left Facebook in some capacity. Wozniak, speaking to USA Today, seemingly no longer wants to be the "product" that Facebook sells. "Users provide every detail of their life to Facebook and ... Facebook makes a lot of advertising money off this," he told the publication in an email this weekend. "The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back." "Apple makes its money off of...
If you're still using Facebook Messenger, you can now send 360 degree photos and videos -- in addition to 720p video -- from the Android and iOS app. "For 360 degree photos in Messenger, simply set your phone camera to panorama and snap a photo or capture a 360 degree photo using a 360 photo app or camera. Then share it in Messenger as you would a normal photo," the company explains in an update. As the 360 media you capture isn't reliant on Messenger but your phone's default camera app, this feature might not be supported by all phones. This...
Over the last few days, as the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica disaster continues to make waves, there has been a huge increase in deleted Facebook profiles. Elon Musk made waves when he deleted his company pages for both Tesla and SpaceX, after first claiming surprise that either of his companies was on Facebook in the first place. This move has given the #deletefacebook even more momentum. Is deleting Facebook really the answer to the latest data scandal, however? And, more importantly for brands using social media, is privacy even a real thing anymore? The concept of privacy has been hotly...
In what seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to its parent company's recent leaky-data woes, Instagram has restricted third-party developers from accessing its data pool. For users, this may sound like a welcome change, but it's a mixed bag. A report by TechCrunch suggests that the image-sharing social network reduced its API call limit -- essentially the total number of instances a third-party app or service can request information from Instagram in an hour -- from 5000 calls to just 200 calls. This means that services fundamentally requiring high update rates -- or simply services built with the original update rate in...
The sleeping social media giant has finally woken up. After offering users lip-service through its nightmarish past two weeks, Facebook is now physically addressing its data issues, beginning with a redesign its apps' privacy settings and the addition of a user info management section. "Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data," writes Erin Egan, the company's VP and CPO, and Ashlie Beringer, VP and deputy general counsel in a joint statement. Here's the extent of the company's latest...
Non-profit and creator of the Firefox web browser Mozilla this week announced a new addon that will separate your Facebook life from the rest of your browsing activity. Dubbed the Facebook Container Extension, the addon is a tweaked version of the "multi-account containers" addon, which allowed users to log in to a number of different accounts -- say two Google accounts -- simultaneously in the same browser. The Facebook Container Extension however, has a slightly different purpose. "This extension helps you control more of your web activity from Facebook by isolating your identity into a separate container. This makes it harder for...
Facebook wants you to forget about its woes just for a moment, and remind everyone that people do in fact still use it. Notably, not just people, local news outlets. After it announced in January 2018 that users across the US will see more local news in their timelines, the company has now extended this tweak globally. "With this update, we’re helping local publishers who cover multiple, nearby cities reach audiences in those cities," Alex Hardiman and Campbell Brown, Facebook's heads of news product and partnerships, respectively, clarified in a statement. "We’ll consider a publisher as local to multiple cities if the...
It's the F-word you've been hearing an awful lot of this week, and its one everyone should be using. Yes, Facebook. Please forgive me for swearing. The social network's still managing the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and recent suggestions that it has been gaining call and messaging data through its Android apps. But the question on everyone's lips is: what does the company know about me? There's a really, really easy way to find out. Here's how to download your Facebook data, step by step. How to download your Facebook data Log into Facebook. From the home page, click the downward-pointing...
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal piqued public panic last week, Facebook is again coming under fire for another user data issue. After the above news broke, Twitter user Dylan McKay published a screenshot detailing a particularly interesting set of data: a log of the outgoing, incoming and even missed calls he had received for two years. He made the discovery after downloading his Facebook data (You can download your own Facebook data right here). "Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file," McKay writes. "Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum." Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file Somehow...
WhatsApp rival Telegram now has 200-million monthly active users, the company revealed in a Thursday update. "Within the last 30 days, Telegram was used by 200 000 000 people," writes Pavel Duvov, the firm's Russia-born founder and CEO. "This is an insane number by any standards. If Telegram were a country, it would have been the sixth largest country in the world." In light of the recent Cambridge Analytica/Facebook saga, Duvov also took a moment to poke the big blue Menlo Park bear. "Unlike other popular apps, Telegram doesn’t have shareholders or advertisers to report to. We don’t do deals with marketers, data...
So people are talking about Facebook a lot this week. You know, that social network that only Baby Boomers seem to use now? It somehow has more than two-billion users at present, and that number for data collection firms is a goldmine just waiting to be ravaged. Speaking of which, one particular company through a series of ducks, dips, dives and dodges, has garnered a hefty slice of this information. Here's what you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data siphoning fiasco. What is Cambridge Analytica? Cambridge Analytica is a privately-owned firm based in London, England, but has satellite offices...
Facebook Lite, an Android version of the Facebook experience for lightweight devices and slower networks, will now launch in a gaggle of new countries. Users in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States can now download the app through the Google Play Store. Previously, users were required to download the APK on other app repositories. "To help make sure everyone can have a great Facebook experience regardless of where they connect, we rolled out Facebook Lite as a standalone, native app designed for lower end Android devices on spotty network connections to give people...
South Africa may celebrate National Women's Day on 8 August each year, but on 8 March the globe celebrates International Women's Day. "In 2017, International Women’s Day was the #1 most talked-about moment of the year," Facebook wrote in a post. "It was a moment that rallied the world around empowering women, and that was just the beginning of mounting energy for women’s movements that shows no signs of slowing down in 2018." Today, Facebook released some interesting stats about women on its social network and the impact International Women's Day has had on the site. According to the company, more than 40%...
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