Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Meta after 14 years

Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down as Chief Operating Officer of Meta after 14 years as one of Mark Zuckerberg’s top lieutenants at the company. She will remain on the company’s board of directors. 

In a post on Facebook, she said she plans to depart Meta in the fall and that “over the next few months, Mark and I will transition my direct reports.” Javier Olivan, currently Meta’s Chief Growth Officer, will take on the COO role, but his role “will be different from what Sheryl has done,” according to a post from Zuckerberg. “It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous.”

Sandberg first joined Facebook in 2008 to help build the company’s now-multibillion-dollar advertising business. During that time, she became one of the most recognizable executives at the social network, first, as the author of best-seller Lean In, which she described as a “sort-of feminist manifesto.” Later, she also became the face of many of Facebook’s biggest scandals, including Cambridge Analytica and the company’s handling of election interference and misinformation. 

“The debate around social media has changed beyond recognition since those early days,” Sandberg wrote on Facebook. “To say it hasn’t always been easy is an understatement.” 

Sandberg said she will spend more time on her foundation and philanthropic work. “I am not entirely sure what the future will bring – I have learned no one ever is,” she wrote.

Sandberg’s departure isn’t the only major shakeup at the top of Meta in recent months. The company’s longtime CTO left last fall, and Zuckerberg elevated Nick Clegg to President of Global Affairs in February. Zuckerberg announced that he is reshuffling several other executives as part of a reorganization to coincide with Sandberg’s departure, and Olivan’s more limited COO role. 

“I think Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more closely integrated, rather than having all the business and operations functions organized separately from our products,” Zuckerberg wrote. 

Instagram will push Amber Alerts to users’ feeds

Instagram will start pushing Amber Alerts to users’ feeds to notify them about missing children in their area. The company says the feature will start rolling out tomorrow and it will be live in 25 countries over “the next couple of weeks.” 

Even so, Instagram users shouldn’t expect to see them very often. The company notes that the alerts are meant to be “rare and specific to the search area.” Instagram will use factors like IP addresses and location data (if enabled) in order to determine which accounts to push the notices too.

When they do appear, the alerts will crop up in users feeds, not as in-app notifications. Unlike the mobile notifications that are often pushed via wireless carriers for Amber Alerts, Instagram’s version will include a photo and description of the missing child, as well other relevant details, like where they were last seen. There will also be a phone number to report sightings or other tips to law enforcement.

While not the first time Meta has added Amber Alerts — Facebook started surfacing them to users in 2015 — the company notes Instagram could be particularly impactful as it’s a “visual-first” platform that is already widely used by teens.

FTC fines Twitter $150 million for ‘deceptive’ ad targeting

Twitter has paid a $150 million fine to the FTC over its”deceptive” use of user data for targeted advertising. The fine stems from the company’s admission in 2019 that it had for years used Twitter users’ phone numbers and email addresses provided for two-factor authentication to also serve targeted ads. 

The company said at the time that its use of the phone numbers for ads was “an error,” and that it wasn’t certain how many users were affected. In a statement, FTC Chair Lina Khan said that more than 140 million users were affected by the practice, which persisted between 2014 and 2019. It was also in violation of a previous agreement Twitter had with the FTC, dating back to 2011, which “prohibited the company from misrepresenting its privacy and security practices.”

In a statement, Twitter’s Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran said the company has “cooperated with the FTC every step of the way.” 

“This issue was addressed as of September 17, 2019, and today we want to reiterate the work we’ll continue to do to protect the privacy and security of the people who use Twitter,” Kieran wrote. “In reaching this settlement, we have paid a $150M USD penalty, and we have aligned with the agency on operational updates and program enhancements to ensure that people’s personal data remains secure and their privacy protected.”

In addition to the fine, the FTC order stipulates that Twitter notify all users whose phone number and emails were originally collected for “account security” that were also used for ads. It also requires Twitter to make two-factor authentication available via methods other than phone numbers, which the company adopted in 2019. Twitter will also create a new “comprehensive privacy and information security program” to review new products for potential privacy and security risks.

Twitter is working toward ‘closing the transaction process’ with Elon Musk

If attendees at Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting were hoping to clear up confusion surrounding Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company, they likely left disappointed. Despite numerous questions about the future of Twitter, the company’s executives had little to say about Musk, who did not attend the meeting.

“We’re working through the transaction process,” CEO Parag Agrawal said during the meeting. The status of the deal has been somewhat unclear since Musk announced it was “on hold,” due to his concerns about bots on the platform. Twitter executives have maintained they are moving forward with their plans.

“Even as we work towards closing this transaction, our teams and I remain focused on the important work we do every day to serve the public conversation,” Agrawal said.

Twitter had said ahead of the meeting that it wouldn’t answer questions related to Musk’s acquisition of the company, which will need to be formally approved by Twitter stockholders at a later date. Even so, shareholders tried to get Twitter executives to address the issue. The very first question in the Q&A portion of the meeting asked what will happen to Twitter shareholders’ stock if “someone” buys the company and takes it private. “We aren’t able to address these questions today,” Sean Edgett, Twitter’s General Counsel, said, directing people to the company’s previous SEC filings.

Shareholders also raised questions about the future of the company’s content moderation policies. Agrawal said the company remains “focused” on existing its current policies and “decreasing our reliance on user reports.” Though he didn’t directly address comments Musk has made about loosening its rules, he said that “silencing political commentary is antithetical to our commitment to free speech.”

The meeting also marks the end of co-founder Jack Dorsey’s tenure with Twitter. He had stepped aside as CEO in November, but remained on the board of directors until the meeting. As with much of Twitter’s future, it was unclear who will succeed him.

Meta will share Facebook’s political ad targeting data with researchers

Meta is finally peeling back the curtain on how political and election ads are targeted on Facebook. The company is making information about how political and “social issue” ads are targeted available to researchers and the public, Meta said in an upda…

Facebook is still struggling to remove videos of the Buffalo mass shooting

Facebook is still struggling to contain the video of last weekend’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Now, not only are clips of the shooting accessible on the platform, reposted clips of the attack are sometimes appearing alongside Facebook…

Elon Musk was accused of sexual misconduct by a SpaceX flight attendant: report

SpaceX paid $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Elon Musk after a flight attendant on the company’s corporate jet accused the CEO of exposing himself to her mid-flight, Insider reports.

According to Insider, the incident happened in 2016 and the company settled with the unnamed flight attendant in 2018, according to a friend of the flight attendant who was told contemporaneously about the incident but is not bound by any non-disclosure agreements with the company. Musk allegedly asked for a “full body massage” and offered to buy the flight attendant a horse if she would “do more.” Insider also notes that the flight attendant was encouraged pay out of her own pocket for professional massage training so that she could better serve Musk during flights.

It was during a massage amid a flight to London when Musk allegedly exposed himself and “propositioned” her. “He touched her thigh and told her he would buy her a horse,” the friend said in describing the incident. “And he basically tried to bribe her to perform some sort of sexual favor.”

The flight attendant reportedly refused Musk’s advances, and later felt like she was being “punished” with fewer shifts at SpaceX. She settled with Musk in 2018 “after a session with a mediator that Musk personally attended,” Insider says.

According to the report, Musk responded to questions by saying there was “a lot more to this story,” but didn’t elaborate. “If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light,” he told the publication.

We’ve reached out to SpaceX for comment.

Update 5/20/22 1:06am ET: Musk has since taken to Twitter to respond to the allegations, calling them “utterly untrue” and referring to the friend of the unnamed SpaceX flight attendant a “liar.” This would not be the first time Musk has made potentially defamatory statements against his perceived enemies on the site. Notably, Musk’s tweets do not include any denial that SpaceX paid the former employee $250,000 to settle the alleged misconduct claim, or that she is currently under what Insider described as “restrictive non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses that bar the attendant from ever discussing the severance payment or disclosing any information of any kind about Musk and his businesses.”

In a separate tweet, Musk states that the “attacks against me should be viewed through a political lens” — though it’s unclear if this is meant to refer to Insider, the whistleblower, or both. 

Meta has nearly doubled the amount of violent content removed from Facebook

Meta has nearly doubled the amount of violent content it removes from Facebook. During the first quarter of 2022, the company took down 21.7 million pieces of content for breaking its rules around violence and incitement of violence, an increase from 12.4 million in the previous quarter.

Takedowns were also up for the quarter on Instagram, but only slightly. The company removed 2.7 million posts for breaking its rules around violence, up from 2.6 million during the last quarter of 2021.

The company shared the new metrics as part of its quarterly community standards enforcement report. In the report, Meta attributed the increase in takedowns to an “expansion of our proactive detection technology.” More than 98 percent of the posts it took down were removed before users reported them, according to the company.

The report comes at a moment when Meta is facing scrutiny for its response time following the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Live recordings of the shooting circulated on Facebook and other platforms and companies have been slow to take down all the new copies. One copy posted to Facebook was shared more than 46,000 times before it was removed more than nine hours after it was originally posted, according toThe Washington Post.

As with prior mass shootings like Christchurch, the ability for people to quickly download and make new copies of live recordings has tested Meta’s ability to enforce its policies.

“One of the challenges we see through events like this is people create new content, new versions, new external links to try to evade our policies [and] evade our enforcement,” Guy Rosen, Meta’s VP of Integrity, said during a call with reporters. “As in any incident, we’re going to continue to learn to refine our processes, refine our systems to ensure that we can detect we can take down violating content more quickly in the future.”

Meta also shared updated stats around content it mistakenly takes down. For violent content, the company said it eventually restored 756,000 Facebook posts that were appealed after they were initially removed. The company said it’s also “working on developing robust measurements around mistakes,” but didn’t explain what it would measure beyond restores of appealed content.

Updated to clarify that Meta shared updated numbers on takedowns that were appealed and subsequently reinstated.

Twitter CEO says he expects Musk deal to close but is ‘prepared for all scenarios’

Hours after Elon Musk said his Twitter buyout is temporarily on hold, Twitter’s CEO has said he still expects the deal to close, but “we need to be prepared for all scenarios.” In a series of tweets, Parag Agrawal didn’t directly address Musk’s earlier comments but he weighed in on yesterday’s leadership shakeup, which resulted in the firing of two senior Twitter executives.

The move had raised eyebrows not just because the two were popular longtime leaders at the company, but because many don’t expect Agrawal to keep the CEO job after the acquisition is finalized. (Musk has said he has no confidence in Twitter’s current leadership and reports suggest Musk intends to take over the CEO role at least temporarily.)

“Changes impacting people are always hard,” Agrawal said. “And some have been asking why a ‘lame-duck’ CEO would make these changes if we’re getting acquired anyway. The short answer is very simple: While I expect the deal to close, we need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what’s right for Twitter.”

Notably, Agrawal’s comments would seem to acknowledge the possibility that Musk’s buyout may not actually go through. The Tesla CEO, who has said ridding Twitter of bots is one of his top goals, stated earlier in the day that the deal was “temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” He later added that he was “still committed to the acquisition.”

Meanwhile, Twitter is also trying to navigate widespread uncertainty among employees, many of whom are uneasy about Musk’s plans for the company. In addition to cutting its top revenue and product executives Thursday, the company is also pausing all new hiring and rescinding some job offers, in an effort to cut costs.

Agrawal said Friday that he would continue “making hard decisions as needed.” “I won’t use the deal as an excuse to avoid making important decisions for the health of the company, nor will any leader at Twitter,” he tweeted.