Hasta La Gadget!

Facebook and Germany have been going back and forth for years, but the most recent development was the disagreement between the two entities as far as using real names or pseudonyms. Facebook wants its users to use their real names, but Germany insisted otherwise. However, Facebook just won the court battle that will force Europeans to use their real names.

After a German court initially ruled that Facebook couldn’t force people to use their real names, a successful appeal in another German court has ruled otherwise. However, the ruling will yet again be appealed by the Schleswig-Holstein state’s data protection body, who say that using real names “breaches German privacy laws and European rules designed to protect free speech online.”

The administrative court in northern German Schleswig argued that Germany’s privacy laws weren’t applicable because Facebook has its entire European headquarters in Ireland, which is a country with different sets of laws and rules associated with privacy and using real names online. However, it doesn’t seem likely that the ruling will be overturned yet again.

Facebook argues that its real-name policy protects users, rather than invading their privacy on the internet. This really only seems like a huge deal if you’re pretending to be someone else on the internet, whether it’d be for parody purposes or to stalk someone else online (both of which are unnecessary), but it seems a lot of Germans are into that kind of thing. However, it won’t last much longer.

Facebook wins court battle that forces Europeans to use real names is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Facebook has announced a new feature that people very keen on privacy may not like. The new feature allows your friends to promote your posts even if you don’t give them permission. The new option will allow your friends to pay to promote your posts and have the post seen by more people. The idea is that if you’re trying to raise money for a worthy cause or have another important announcement your friend can get it in front of more people that you know.

Apparently, there are some privacy considerations taken into account when allowing your friends to promote your posts without your permission. The feature allows your posts to be promoted to people who like your page or people who like your page and their friends. Like the existing Promoted Posts feature, this allows your friends to put your posts into the timeline feeds the people that might not have seen them otherwise.

The price to promote a post varies depending on your area and how many people might see it. The price seems to average somewhere in the area of $7-$10. Facebook is beginning a gradual rollout of the new feature this week. There are some caveats on who the feature will be available to.

Facebook users must have less than 5000 total friends and subscribers to access the feature. If your friend or page meets that condition, the drop-down arrow next to a post will have the option to sponsor it. The way that privacy settings work is if the page for the person whose post you want to promote is set to only allow friends to view it, only more of their friends will be able to view it when you promote the post, in other words no strangers.

[via TechCrunch]

Facebook now allows friends to promote your posts is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

After a German privacy watchdog ordered Facebook to allow the use of fake usernames “immediately,” an appeals court has said nein. While the protection body in the tiny state of Schleswig-Holstein argued that Facebook’s ban on pseudonyms breached the nation’s privacy laws, an administrative court in the region ruled that those laws don’t apply to the company, since its European HQ is located in less-stringent Ireland. Facebook argued that requiring the use of real names protects its users, but the regulator said it’ll appeal the decision all the same — thus prolonging the social network’s long-running German headache.

Filed under: Internet, Facebook

Comments

Via: Techmeme

Source: Associated Press

You can already pay to promote your own Facebook posts, and now you can cough up the cash to promote the content your friends are posting, too. More »

Dan Rose, vice president of Partnerships at Facebook, just took the stage with host Mike Issac here at D:Dive Into Media 2013. In a nutshell, Rose is responsible for relationships with the myriad developers that end up in News Feeds in some way — regardless of whether the program is built for Facebook, or simply a program that shows interactions on Facebook. Right out of the gate, Issac asked about the ever-changing News Feed, and what users can expect from that in the future.

Rose noted that Facebook is constantly “trying to find that perfect equilibrium between a great user experience, while still being enticing to developers. We listen to users on Feedback who tell us if something is valuable. Hiding a post is negative, while Liking or commenting on a post would be positive — sometimes our algorithms don’t hear the user signal fast enough. In those cases, we work closely with our partners so that they understand why we’re making those changes. We want people to continue using Facebook, and the only way we do that is if we keep things interesting and we respond to user input.” In other words, it’s a constant battle between users who don’t want to be spammed by pitches in their feeds, and developers who want to get as much visibility as possible by getting into those very feeds.

He continued: “If a developer says ‘What’s the one thing I should focus on?’, the answer is simple: create great content. We’re spending a lot more time focusing on that, particularly on media content. Recently, we increased the size of photos for news sites — that’s a much better experience. That image needs to be large so that it captures the essence of the brand, rather than a thumbnail. With those larger images, people click more often (around 15 percent more). It does a better job of honoring their content.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Facebook

Comments