In one sense, this design feature gives social media companies and their apologists a convenient defense against critique: If certain stuff is going big on a platform, that’s because it’s what users like.

There were only two keys to the room, and for good reason: That’s where the Oculus team kept the Toybox demo.Yet all that change has made this week in particular a good time to take stock: It just happens to be the five-year anniversary of the Oculus Rift .

On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai testified before Congress for a hearing titled “Disinformation Nation: Social Media’s Role In Promoting Extremism And Misinformation.” By this point, it was far from their first rodeo.

Though the law doesn’t seem terribly specific about the issue, Australian lawmakers seem to have accepted the long-voiced Murdochian claim that Google and Facebook are stealing news content by linking to articles, sometimes even providing snippets.

Speaking as part of a conference convened for International Data Privacy Day, Cook excoriated the social media business model, which is based on monitoring people’s behavior in order to target ads to them.“The fact is that an interconnected ecosystem of companies and data brokers, of purveyors of fake news and peddlers of division, of trackers and hucksters just looking to make a quick buck, is more present in our lives than it has ever been,” he said.

Three and a half years ago, as the country came to understand the outsize role of social media manipulation in electing Donald Trump, you might have imagined that by the next time around the major platforms would have profoundly changed the way politics is conducted online and come to grips with essential design flaws.

Trump’s proposed executive order could face legal review, and TikTok has vowed that it’s “not planning on going anywhere.” But regardless of how this all shakes out, the president’s declaration stinks of rank hypocrisy.But it’s free and open, even in ways that other platforms aren’t.

And I’d suggest that steal-the-round strategizing has been crucial, too, for titans like Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, and Sundar Pichai to be judged by the public as victorious, or at least deserving of their enormous power, in the face of angry critics demanding they be taken down.

People who have studied or practiced remote work say leaders like Zuckerberg and their executives will have to tear themselves from their Bay Area roots—in some cases physically—if they are to avoid making their new legions of remote workers second-class employees.

It all started in 2017, when Knudsen cast a sphinx cat as a co-model in a beauty editorial.Meet the Sulfur Miners Risking Their Lives Inside a Volcano.“The owner said, ‘Oh my god, fox pee never comes off!’” Knudsen says.

Facebook would transform itself from a college student hangout to the dominant social media service, with a population bigger than that of any country in the world, and was on its way to having more members than any religion.To understand Facebook, you have to understand Zuckerberg.

“We’ve just introduced an easy way to tell friends that you like what they’re sharing on Facebook with one easy click,” the note says.We think of the new ‘Like’ feature to be the stars, and the comments to be the review.”.

After nearly two years, Facebook is almost done setting up its Oversight Board, an independent panel with the power to override Facebook’s most contentious decisions on controversial content.

Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an to his 100,000 or so employees, cutting back the company’s defining all-hands meeting known as TGIF.

So, for argument’s sake, let’s take Zuckerberg at his word when he says Facebook is taking inspiration from the First Amendment, and instead ask a different question: Does the decision to not fact-check politicians actually embody First Amendment values.

On Wednesday, Zuckerberg appeared on Capitol Hill in a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, where he faced deep criticism from lawmakers who worry that the social network now wields a difficult kind of influence—it's become too big even for itself.

Buttigieg connected with his important supporters when he was not quite a teenager, making friends at Harvard with Facebook’s early team and other soon-to-be Silicon Valley figures like Mylavarapu, who volunteered with Buttigieg as part of Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

But, unless grandstanding on other Facebook issues gets in the way, Wednesday’s hearing featuring Mark Zuckerberg at the House Financial Services Committee is mostly about Libra.What to Watch For. Zuckerberg’s defense starts with the company line on Libra so far, pitching the digital token as a tool for financial inclusion.

Among the features announced Monday were new interstitials—notices that appear in front of a post—that warn users when content in their Instagram or Facebook feeds has been flagged as false by outside fact-checkers.

Maybe the most powerful part of the speech was when he said, “I’m not going to be around forever,” and so he thinks it essential to deeply embed free speech values into Facebook so the company continues giving voice to people long after he’s gone.

A dangerous hacker group resurfaced, Mark Zuckerberg delivered a long-winded defense of Facebook, and Volvo is going green.You can sign up right here to make sure you get the news delivered fresh to your inbox every weekday!

To Trump and Facebook alike, any attempt to push back, whether from politicians or the press, is treated as an existential threat.

After mentioning Facebook's recent acquisition of brain-control interface company CTRL-Labs, Zuckerberg unveiled the other thing he seemed most excited about: a new form of social VR called Horizon.

Also, much as WhatsApp and Instagram employees and users might not like it, merging the three brands also allows Zuckerberg to say that he’s doing what the world is asking of him.

The FTC Takes On Mark Zuckerberg, Rutger Hauer Dies, and More News. The FTC took a shot at Mark Zuckerberg, actor Rutger Hauer died, and the comforts of in-game drudgery.

“Millions of Americans entrusted personal information to Facebook with the understanding that Facebook would respect the laws governing consumer privacy, but Facebook’s many privacy missteps made clear that it lacked a culture of compliance in this area,” FTC commissioner Christine Wilson said at a press conference announcing the settlement Wednesday.

“We exist in a society where people value and cherish free expression, and the ability to say things including satire,” Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday. It wasn’t long after Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival Wednesday that he was heckled by the audience.

Facebook’s last creative gasp was an effort called Creative Labs, which launched long-forgotten apps like Slingshot and Rooms, and was shuttered in 2015.Or consider the team I worked on while at Facebook, ads.

Facebook's annual F8 developer conference kicks off Tuesday, following three straight years of near constant crisis for the social networking giant. While the biggest news will come during Zuckerberg's keynote on Tuesday, videos of all the F8 sessions will be available on demand on the Facebook for Developers website.

Zuckerberg emerged from the experience with a belief that has guided Facebook in and out of trouble ever since: People want less online privacy than they think they do, and sometimes the only way to make them realize that is to push them to share more.