Facebook is the best way to stay connected with friends and family. It is also a great way to learn about the world around you. But there are some dangers to keep in mind while using the social media site. These risks include hackers and fake news.
Farmville
Farmville was one of the first ever Facebook games. It was a fun social game that allowed you to create your own cartoon farm and care for a variety of animals. You could move items around, “water” crops, and designate “Farm Helpers” who could help you.
When FarmVille launched in June 2009, it quickly became a hit. Its simple premise allowed players to grow and harvest crops, tend livestock, and even send and receive gifts from their neighbors.
FarmVille quickly grew into a game that reached more than 30 million players a month. Zynga’s parent company, Electronic Arts, took the game to Japan and announced a partnership with McDonald’s.
Although Facebook has made it clear that Flash-based games will no longer be supported after December 31, 2020, it’s still unclear when the original FarmVille will be shut down. However, the developer, Zynga, has announced that it will bring the venerable title to mobile devices.
Machine learning
In the first few months of 2019, Facebook began to openly discuss its use of machine learning. It started by launching its Moments photo-sharing service. This service leveraged Facebook’s image recognition models. The company has also developed its own translation models.
Facebook has built an internal platform for machine learning, FBLearner Flow. Last month, 750 engineers were using it. Currently, the team plans to expand to 1,000 engineers by June.
Machine learning is used to translate the News Feed posts of two billion users per day. Every fifteen to two hours, Facebook updates its learning models, which are trained from trillions of data points. By learning from the data, Facebook is able to make six million predictions per second.
Among the most useful applications of machine learning is product recommendation. For example, retailers can use machine learning to identify the products most popular among consumers. Using this data, retailers can more effectively manage inventory.
Ads linked to the Internet Research Agency
The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, also known as “Putin’s chef,” has a history of using deceptive political advertising techniques. For example, IRA ads disguise sponsors as Black American rights advocates to create the impression that they are supporting a particular cause.
According to the House Intelligence Committee, the Internet Research Agency has used a wide variety of social media to target United States audiences. They have also employed fake accounts on video hosting sites and discussion boards. During the election, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram were among the platforms used. These ads were bought in Russian rubles and promoted both sides of divisive social issues.
Some of the ads were targeted at people in specific cities. The ads alluded to Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and other political figures. Others were aimed at people living in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York City.
Fake news
A study conducted by New York University researchers showed that fake news is prevalent on Facebook. Their study surveyed a sample of 470 U.S. adults and found that 59 percent of them had encountered fake news.
The study also revealed that social media played a major role in the 2016 US presidential election. It reported that 55% of people said that they had used Facebook for news in the past month. But Facebook didn’t do a good job of checking political extremism. In addition, the study found that 80 percent of participants felt that fake news was a threat to democracy.
As a result, institutions, technology companies, and government officials have collaborated to develop tools to fight fake news. They have worked on developing algorithms to analyze user content, examine the context of news, and identify the occurrence of clickbaits.
Security
Facebook, one of the world’s most popular social networking sites, has recently been criticized for its security. Its recent data breaches have led some lawmakers to call for increased oversight.
The company has recently faced a series of scandals, including a data breach involving 87 million users of a British analytics firm. In the past year, disinformation has spread on the site and affected elections in several countries.
Amid these developments, Facebook has decided to put more resources into its security team. While previously, it operated as a stand-alone group, now it works closely with the product teams.
This week, Facebook revealed that it had been hit by an attack. After a security flaw was discovered, the company began an investigation. However, it did not say who was responsible or how many accounts were affected.
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