They’ve ruined democracy, now they’re ready to ruin your love life.
It’s difficult to imagine a company less qualified to keep your “secret crush” list secret.
Facebook Dating just launched in the U.S. as an opt-in feature that is integrated with Facebook-owned Instagram. It’s only for 18-and-over users and requires a separate profile.
Matches between users who opt in to Facebook Dating will be suggested by the algorithm based on users’ preferences, interests, and activity within Facebook and Instagram.
“Barely more than a month has passed since the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook a record $5 billion over its privacy lapses, and imposed a modified corporate structure to hold the company more accountable for its decisions over user privacy,” writes Sarah Perez at TechCrunch.
In the wake of this historic action, Facebook’s brand-new dating product is today launching to all in the U.S., promising to leverage the company’s deep insight into people’s personal data to deliver better matches than rival dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Match and others.
With its U.S. arrival, Facebook Dating will now also allow users to integrate their Instagram posts in their dating profile and add their Instagram followers to their “Secret Crush” list, in addition to Facebook friends.
By year-end, Facebook Dating users will be able to select which Facebook or Instagram Stories they want to add to their dating profile.
As others have noted on Facebook, apart from all the bonkers implications of getting more intimate with Facebook, what’s newsworthy about this announcement is the new ability for users to combine their Facebook and Instagram files in Facebook Dating. That’s the first time Facebook has munged the two platforms so closely together in pursuit of a product goal.
Remember, before you use this thing? It’s owned by Facebook. If you use it, so’s your most intimate imaginable personal data.
[via Techmeme]

Attorneys General from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, have initiated an antitrust investigation into Facebook, seeking to determine whether the company “endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.”
READ THE REST

Wow, this is really something, even for a company as awful as Facebook. “Facebook users who opted into voice-to-text in Messenger had NO warning about human transcribers.”
READ THE REST

Shadow-banning is a process that dates back to at least the 1980s, with Citadel BBS’s “twit bit,” which would allow users to post replies to forums that they could see, but no one else could see.
READ THE REST

If you don’t have a pressure cooker, prepare for some tough love – because there is absolutely no reason not to own one. They can cook almost anything with little to no effort, they save space and they’re super easy to clean. If you do have a pressure cooker, prepare to level up. There’s a […]
READ THE REST

Whether it’s chronic muscle stiffness or the soreness that comes from an epic workout, there are some pains that can’t be soothed by those automatic massage chairs. If you haven’t tried a handheld massager, they can be a lifesaver – and the Vortix Muscle Massager aims to be the go-to therapy tool no matter what […]
READ THE REST

The bad news: Summer – and the beach excuses that come with it – are coming to an end. The good news: Labor Day sales are here to soften the blow. Take advantage of the right deals, and you could be spending that extra day off breaking in a new household widget you’ve been pining […]