A newly filed lawsuit in Kenya seeks US$1.6 billion from social media giant Meta, in order to establish a victims compensation fund on behalf of people targeted for violence in Ethiopia because of widely shared Facebook posts. Amnesty International announced Wednesday that it filed the suit along with six other…
Social media giant Facebook announced Tuesday that it has shut down three different groups behind the spread of disinformation in African nations, including one network the company traced to “individuals associated with French military.” Facebook said the violations for “coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity”…
Social media giant Facebook announced Friday a new office in Lagos, Nigeria, meant to support operations in sub-Saharan Africa. It is expected to be operational next year. The office will be home to several teams for sales, partnerships and communication, as well as becoming the first Facebook office on the…
Social media giant Facebook says it has removed a network of accounts based in Egypt that targeted countries across North Africa and the Middle East with inauthentic political messages, including some of the same groups it took offline in August and October 2019. “Although the people behind this activity attempted…
South Africans were among the global citizens complaining Thursday that their access to Instagram was down, as a service outage for Facebook and the Facebook-owned platform popped up in dozens of countries. The Messenger service also appeared to be affected. “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing…
Both Twitter and Facebook made big announcements on Wednesday, as the social media companies seek to curb fake accounts, abuse in political ads, and the potential to spread fake news or incite violence through hate speech. Facebook announced it removed three Russia-linked networks of accounts, pages and groups that targeted…
Facebook’s latest move in seeking to address misinformation and political “fake news” on the African continent is to expand its efforts into 10 sub-Saharan countries, working in local languages – as well as with news outlets – to better monitor Facebook post content. The social media giant announced this week…
Egyptians were experiencing some Internet disruptions on Sunday as protests against President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi continued into the weekend, with service interruptions that appeared to target news sites and social media messaging. NetBlocks.org, an organization that tracks shutdowns and disruptions across the globe, reported that BBC News and other news…
The West African nation of Ghana hosted 40 young leaders from across sub-Saharan Africa this weekend, as they attended a two-day event sponsored by Facebook to focus on the continent’s digital future. The participants from 15 different countries were holding coding workshops for students in Accra and mentoring sessions for…
Social media giant Facebook says it has added new African language capabilities in its effort to curb misinformation and “fake news” on political issues. That means that posts shared on Facebook can now be checked for accuracy in Yoruba and Igbo in Nigeria, where Hausa fact-checking already exists. It also…
Facebook says that 265 accounts that created pages and posts originating in Israel but targeting African nations and politicians have been removed – and so has a company that’s behind much of the activity. “Although the individuals behind this network attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found that some…
Social media giant Facebook, with more than 1.5 billion active users across the planet each day, experienced a massive failure on Wednesday that was still unresolved early Thursday morning. The outage, affecting Instagram and WhatsApp too, affected North America, parts of Europe, Russia and beyond. In Africa, frustrated users from…
Social media giant Facebook has announced a new policy on how it will handle posts and pages that spread misinformation about vaccines and vaccinations. It is a growing problem particularly in the West, where parents are choosing to avoid once-routine vaccinations for their children because of fears stoked by unreliable…
Embattled social media company Facebook announced on Thursday it will open a new facility in Kenya to provide better content review services on the continent. Facebook is partnering with Samasource in Nairobi to open the center, a first in sub-Saharan Africa. It is expected to employ 100 people by the…
The social media giant Facebook has come under heavy fire for its admitted failures to protect user privacy, to prevent “fake news” on its platform that influences elections or hate speech that fuels unrest. That’s been true in the United States and Europe, and notably in Myanmar where misinformation has…