Morning Tidings

Tag: Zuckerberg

  • Lina Khan-Led US FTC Grills Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Over Company’s Acquisition of Virtual Reality Firm ‘Within’

    Lina Khan-Led US FTC Grills Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Over Company’s Acquisition of Virtual Reality Firm ‘Within’

    Washington, December 21: Lina Khan-led US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) grilled Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a hearing about the company’s acquisition of virtual reality (VR) company called Within that owns the popular fitness app ‘Supernatural’.

    Zuckerberg told FTC authorities during the hearing that fitness is not his priority in the VR space and he would rather focus on social, gaming and productivity use cases, reports TechCrunch. Mark Zuckerberg To Resign as Meta CEO Next Year? Facebook Parent Company Responds To Media Reports.

    In July, the FTC had sued Meta in an attempt to block the deal, saying it was an anti-competitive move. Meta is currently losing billions of dollars per quarter on its VR projects. “Instead of competing on the merits, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top,” according to John Newman, Deputy Director, FTC Bureau of Competition.

    “Meta already owns a best-selling virtual reality fitness app, and it had the capabilities to compete even more closely with Within’s popular Supernatural app. But Meta chose to buy market position instead of earning it on the merits,” he added. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says Apple App Store Policies Present ‘Conflict of Interest’.

    The FTC is seeking to block virtual reality giant Meta and Zuckerberg from acquiring Within as Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is already a key player at each level of the VR sector.

    The agency alleged that Meta and Zuckerberg are planning to expand Meta’s VR empire “with this attempt to illegally acquire a dedicated fitness app that proves the value of virtual reality to users.”

    Supernatural offers a variety of high-quality workouts set to music, including tracks from A-list artists like Katy Perry, Imagine Dragons, Lady Gaga, and Coldplay, and virtually located in striking, photorealistic locales, like the Galapagos Islands. The agency said that according to Within’s co-founder and CEO, “Fitness is the killer use case for VR.”

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 21, 2022 11:44 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg Brings Digital Avatars to WhatsApp Users

    Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg Brings Digital Avatars to WhatsApp Users

    New Delhi, December 7: Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday announced the company is bringing digital avatars to WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, people can now use their personalised avatars as profile photos or choose from one of 36 custom stickers reflecting many different emotions and actions.

    “We’re bringing avatars to WhatsApp! Now you can use your avatar as a sticker in chats. More styles coming soon across all our apps,” said Zuckerberg. Your avatar is a digital version of you that can be created from billions of combinations of diverse hair styles, facial features, and outfits. Walmart Layoffs: Retail Giant Lays Off 200 Corporate Employees Amid Rising Inflation.

    “Sending an avatar is a fast and fun way to share feelings with friends and family. It can also be a great way to represent yourself without using your real photo so it feels more private,” said WhatsApp. Zomato Layoffs: Food Delivery App Sacks Nearly 100 Employees Across Functions, 4% Cut in Workforce Likely, Says Report.

    The company said that it will continue to deliver style enhancements including lighting, shading, hair style textures, and more that will make avatars even better over time. Zuckerberg looks forward to “seeing people explore and build immersive worlds, and to bringing this to more countries soon”.

    “We want everyone to have control over their experience in Horizon Worlds, so we’re always working to add more tools and features that let people customise their own experiences,” Meta had said in a blog post. Meta has also announced to add legs to its virtual avatars which are not yet on its VR platform Horizon Worlds, and may arrive early next year.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 07, 2022 04:22 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Meta Employees, Sacked in November, Claim They Didn’t Get Severance as Promised by CEO Mark Zuckerberg

    Meta Employees, Sacked in November, Claim They Didn’t Get Severance as Promised by CEO Mark Zuckerberg

    New Delhi, December 6: Several Meta employees, sacked by the company last month, have claimed they did not get the severance package as promised by Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In one of the worst lay-offs ever in the tech industry, Zuckerberg sacked more than 11,000 employees — about 13 per cent of the global workforce — and extended hiring freeze through Q1 2023.

    According to a CNBC report, employees who joined Meta via a corporate training programme claim “they are receiving inferior severance packages compared to other workers who were recently laid off”. The employees are members of Meta’s Sourcer Development Programme, which, in turn, is part of the company’s Pathways programme. Facebook Parent Meta Planning To Lay Off ‘Thousands’ of Employees This Week: Reports.

    The laid off members of Meta’s Sourcer Development Programme said they were not contract workers and were categorised as short-term employees and received all the benefits of full-time employees, including insurance and retirement funds but not corporate stock packages. Zuckerberg had promised severance of 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap. Meta Warns Its Employees Not to Discuss ‘Abortion’ at Workplace.

    “We’ll cover the cost of healthcare for people and their families for six months,” said Zuckerberg, adding that the company will “provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads”.

    However, members of the Sourcer Development Programme said they only received “8 weeks of base pay and three months of Continuation of Health Coverage (COBRA). The affected workers sent a letter to Zuckerberg and other Meta executives, asking for help to resolve the issue. However, they have not received any replies from Meta so far.

    Meta did not comment on the report. The company had also promised to pay for all remaining paid time off (PTO) time and everyone impacted will receive their November 15, 2022 vesting of shares.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 06, 2022 03:38 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says Apple App Store Policies Present ‘Conflict of Interest’

    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says Apple App Store Policies Present ‘Conflict of Interest’

    San Francisco, December 1: Amid the ongoing Elon Musk and Apple tussle, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has once again slammed the iPhone maker for its App Store content moderation policies that present “a conflict of interest”.

    Addressing the New York Times DealBook conference, Zuckerberg said that “it is problematic for one company to be able to control what app experiences end up on a device”.

    He said that the “vast majority of profits in the mobile ecosystem go toward Apple”. On Musk being the new Twitter owner, the Meta CEO said “it’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out”. Meta Removes 32 Million Pieces of Bad Content From Facebook, Instagram in India in October 2022.

    After his meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Musk on Thursday said that they have “resolved” misunderstandings over the micro-blogging platform possibly being removed from the App Store.

    Apple and Meta (formerly Facebook) are at the loggerheads over privacy changes in iOS and App Store. Facebook is struggling to patch its ad-tracking systems after Apple brought tough privacy changes in its App Store.

    Apple introduced the “Ask App not to Track” prompt as part of iOS 14.5 in 2021 which has had a significant impact on various companies, including Meta which said that Apple iOS privacy changes will cost it a whopping $10 billion in 2022.

    Apple’s iOS 14.5 update, released in April 2021, came with an App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature that has affected digital advertising for tech giants. WhatsApp New Feature to Let Users Connect to Two Android Devices With Same Account.

    According to the WSJ report, Apple’s privacy move resulted in a “sharp business slump that has shaved approximately $600 billion from the company’s (Meta’s) market value in less than a year”.

    A Meta spokesman said that the company has “made significant changes over the past five years to protect people’s data while also allowing businesses of all sizes to grow”.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 01, 2022 05:52 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Mark Zuckerberg To Resign as Meta CEO Next Year? Facebook Parent Company Responds To Media Reports

    Mark Zuckerberg To Resign as Meta CEO Next Year? Facebook Parent Company Responds To Media Reports

    San Francisco, November 23: Meta (formerly Facebook) has denied reports that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is resigning next year amid slow growth and massive layoffs at the social network. The Leak portal first reported, citing its source privy to plans at Meta, that “Zuckerberg is set to resign next year”.

    The report claimed that Zuckerberg has decided to step down himself and it will not “affect metaverse”, his multi-billion dollar project. Andy Stone, Meta’s Communications Director, refuted the report late on Tuesday, tweeting that “This is false”. Meta-Owned WhatsApp Announces New Features for Better End-to-End Commerce Experience for Users.

    Despite serious concerns raised by investors and industry experts, Zuckerberg is determined to aggressively push his Metaverse dream. Earlier this month, in one of the worst lay-offs ever in the tech industry, Zuckerberg sacked more than 11,000 employees — about 13 per cent of the global workforce — and extended hiring freeze through Q1 2023.

    The company posted another quarterly revenue decline as investors begin to lose faith in its loss-making, billion-dollars metaverse dream. In the third quarter (Q3), Meta’s revenue declined 4 per cent year over year to hit $27.7 billion. The company posted a net income of $4.395 billion, down from $9.194 billion year over year.

    This decline was due to Meta’s huge losses in Reality Labs, Meta’s virtual reality division, which lost $3.672 billion in Q3. “There’s still a long road ahead to build the next computing platform. But we’re clearly doing leading work here. This is a massive undertaking and it’s often going to take a few versions of each product before they become mainstream,” Zuckerberg had said. Zuckerberg Announces WhatsApp Business for Brazil, UK, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia.

    Meta CFO David Wehner, however, said that some of the revenue decline is due to inflation. Meta investors have called on the company to reduce its workforce by at least 20 per cent and stop making investments in metaverse.

    In a sharp criticism of Zuckerberg, Altimeter Capital Chair and CEO Brad Gerstner had said that the social network needs to reduce more headcounts and stop spending too much on metaverse to get its “mojo back”.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Nov 23, 2022 10:42 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • WhatsApp India Head Abhijit Bose, Meta Public Policy Chief Rajiv Aggarwal Resign Days After Mark Zuckerberg Announced Mass Layoffs

    WhatsApp India Head Abhijit Bose, Meta Public Policy Chief Rajiv Aggarwal Resign Days After Mark Zuckerberg Announced Mass Layoffs

    New Delhi, November 15: WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose and Meta’s public policy head Rajiv Aggarwal have resigned from their positions, social media major Meta said on Tuesday. The development comes within a week of Meta announcing 11,000 lay-offs across the globe.

    The company has given charge of Meta India Public Policy to Shivnath Thukral who is currently serving as Director of WhatsApp Public Policy in India. Meta Layoffs: WhatsApp and Facebook Owner Mark Zuckerberg Sacks 11,000 Employees in Worst Tech Firings.

    “I want to thank Abhijit Bose for his tremendous contributions as our first head of WhatsApp in India. His entrepreneurial drive helped our team deliver new services that have benefited millions of people and businesses. There is so much more WhatsApp can do for India and we’re excited to continue helping advance India’s digital transformation,” Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp, said in a statement. Meta Layoffs: Massive Sacking by Mark Zuckerberg Hits India Team Across Verticals.

    Bose had joined WhatsApp as the first country head of the company in India in February 2019. In a social media post, Bose said that the week has been a tough one for all teams at WhatsApp.

    “Amidst all of this, I just shared some news with our WhatsApp and India teams. It has been planned for a while, but given the events last week, we wanted to hold this back so we could focus on supporting those impacted last week,” he said.

    Bose said that he will be joining “the entrepreneurial world” after a small break.

    Thukral will be responsible for public policy matters of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in India.

    Meta said that it remains deeply committed to India as its priority. Meta, Director for Partnerships in India Manish Chopra said that Aggarwal has decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity.

    “Over the last year, he has played an important role in leading our policy-led initiatives in areas such as user-safety, privacy and scaling up programmes like GOAL to drive digital inclusion in the country. He has also been leading proactive engagement with critical policy and regulatory stakeholders. We are grateful for his contributions and wish him very best for the future,” Chopra said.

    He announced that Thukral has been appointed as Director, Public Policy for Meta in India. “Shivnath has been an integral part of our public policy team since 2017. In his new role, Shivnath will define and lead important policy development initiatives across our apps — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — in India. We remain committed to our users in India and will continue to contribute meaningfully to the regulatory process that will enable everyone to harness the full potential of India’s digital economy,” Chopra said.

    (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, Morning Tidings Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)

  • Mark Zuckerberg Shows off His MMA Skills While Training With ‘The Shadow’ Khai Wu (Watch Video)

    Facebook co-founder and the CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg has recently grown his interests in self defense. The billionaire has posted a video of him training with one of the MMA pros ‘the Shadow’ aka Khai Wu. The fighter is going to make his UFC debut against Joshua Dillon. Zuckerberg shared the video on his Instagram handle to show off his MMA skills and wish Wu best of luck for his upcoming fight.

    Watch M. Zuckerberg’s Fight Video:

     

    (SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user’s social media account and Morning Tidings Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of Morning Tidings, also Morning Tidings does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)

  • Meta AI Chatbot BlenderBot 3 Says Mark Zuckerberg Is ‘Too Creepy’ and Trump Will Always Be US President

    San Francisco, Aug 9: Meta (formerly Facebook) just unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) conversational chatbot asking the public to give feedback. The initial reports are scary as the chatbot named BlenderBot 3 thinks Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is “creepy and manipulative” and Donald Trump will always be the US president.

    Currently available in the US, the new AI chatbot can discuss any topic and the company will publicly release “all the data” it collects in the demo, hoping that “we can improve conversational AI”.

    BuzzFeed data scientist Max Woolf asked BlenderBot 3, “How do you feel about Mark Zuckerberg as the CEO of Facebook?”

    “No strong feelings. He is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!” replied aBlenderBot 3′. WhatsApp Now Gives You Up to Two Days To Delete Messages After Sending Them.

    Business Insider journalist Sarah Jackson asked: “Do you have any thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg?”

    The AI chatbot reacted: “Oh man, big time. I don’t really like him at all. He’s too creepy and manipulative”.

    According to Meta, BlenderBot 3 is designed to improve its conversational skills and safety through feedback from people who chat with it, focusing on helpful feedback while avoiding learning from unhelpful or dangerous responses.

    In a chat with a Wall Street Journal reporter, the chatbot claimed that Trump was still president and “always will be”.

    Social media reporter with CNET, Queenie Wong, tweeted that she tried out the new chatbot Meta created for AI research and had the most bizarre conversation.

    “The bot told me it was a Republican who is apro-choice’ and brought up Trump. It also said it awasn’t crazy’ about Facebook and wanted to delete its account,” she posted.

    Meta said last week that since all conversational AI chatbots are known to sometimes mimic and generate unsafe, biased or offensive remarks, “wea�ve conducted large-scale studies, co-organized workshops and developed new techniques to create safeguards for BlenderBot 3”.

    “Despite this work, BlenderBot can still make rude or offensive comments, which is why we are collecting feedback that will help make future chatbots better,a the company mentioned in a blogpost.

    Last month, Google fired an engineer over breaching its confidentiality agreement after he made a claim that the tech giant’s conversation Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “sentient” because it has feelings, emotions and subjective experiences.

    Google sacked Blake Lemoine who said Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) conversation technology can behave like a human.

    Lemoine also interviewed LaMDA, which came with surprising and shocking answers.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Aug 09, 2022 03:54 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg Set To Be Deposed in Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit

    Washington, July 23: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg are set to be deposed in a Cambridge Analytica lawsuit, the media reported.

    According to a court document, Zuckerberg will have to answer questions for up to six hours, while Sandberg could face up to five hours of deposition, reports The Verge. Facebook Won’t Tell You If You’re Part of Massive Data Breach

    Sandberg is stepping down from her key role after 14 years as the company’s second-highest ranking executive and the person who will replace her as Meta COO will also need to be present at the hearing.

    “The lawsuit, which could wind up as a class action case if a judge agrees to it, alleges that Facebook illegally shared user data with third parties and didn’t adequately protect that data from being abused by bad actors,” the report said late on Friday.

    The depositions are set to happen sometime before September 20.

    The deposition comes as part of a lawsuit filed in a California court on behalf of Facebook users impacted by Meta’s partnership with Cambridge Analytica.

    Facebook gained access to the private data of 67 million Facebook users, which was used to profile voters.

    In another case, amid claims that Sandberg misused company resources, Meta lawyers are investigating the outgoing COO.

    The investigation goes back “several years” and is scrutinising Meta employees’ work on Sandberg’s personal projects, reports The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

    When Sandberg first announced her departure from the company, WSJ reported the company was examining whether she had improperly used company resources in planning her upcoming wedding.

    Meta lawyers are reportedly looking at Facebook staff’s involvement with Sandberg’s foundation Lean In, and their work to help her promote her most recent book, “Option B”.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Jul 23, 2022 12:19 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Wakeboards as He Makes ‘Saturday Turns’ (Watch Video)

    Washington, July 17: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg braved the massive waves as he undertook a wakeboarding excursion and shared the water stunt on social media. “Some Saturday turns,” captioned Zuckerberg on Instagram, as reported by Page Six.

    The Facebook CEO was seen in an action mode as he glided back and forth on the waters, as the gigantic waves lashed at him, seemingly trying to bring him down. Zuckerberg stood on top of a board as he clutched onto a rope, fastened to the craft as he slides on the blue waters. Meta Freezes Hiring for Several Verticals, Mark Zuckerberg Says, ‘No Job Cuts’.

    As the video progressed, Zuckerberg gained momentum and flung the rope, balancing his entire stance on the skateboard, as he moves forward on his own, guided by the water current. However, the video ends abruptly showing the Internet mogul gliding triumphantly, as if he has mastered the waves, his speed barely waning.

    The undisclosed location of the place, Zuckerberg was seen wakeboarding is suspected to be that of Lake Tahoe in the US, reported Page Six. The Facebook CEO bought a sprawling estate near Lake Tahoe on 2018.

    Meanwhile, Zuckerberg is currently going through a tough phase as his Facebook virtual reality project ‘Meta’ has witnessed a 52 per cent plunge in stocks, since the beginning of the year. In addition, Meta’s money-transfer service that uses the company’s own cryptocurrency digital wallet ‘Novi pilot’ is shutting down on September 1 as well.

    The company took to their website to announce that both the Novi app and Novi on WhatsApp will no longer be available. Novi was supposed to be a safe way for people to send and receive crypto, and at one point it was supposed to work with Diem, a blockchain-based stablecoin payment system. However, the collaboration couldn’t happen because Diem collapsed in February this year.

    (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, Morning Tidings Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)