Google Health was a project by Google designed as an attempt to create a repository of health records and data in order to connect doctors, hospitals and pharmacies directly. The project was introduced in 2008 and discontinued in 2012. Google Health was restarted in 2018, but appeared to be discontinued in 2021 and was officially called an "effort" rather than a separate division as of 2022.
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old, except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023, Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world, with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.
Corporate censorship is censorship by corporations. It is when a spokesperson, employer, or business associate sanctions a speaker's speech by threat of monetary loss, employment loss, or loss of access to the marketplace. It is present in many different kinds of industries.
Facebook has been the subject of criticism and legal action since it was founded in 2004. Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Facebook's influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread "like" button on third-party websites tracking users, possible indefinite records of user information, automatic facial recognition software, and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure. The use of Facebook can have negative psychological and physiological effects that include feelings of sexual jealousy, stress, lack of attention, and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.
WhatsApp is an instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.
Google+ was a social network that was owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google products like Google Drive, Blogger and YouTube. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics varied, depending on how the service was defined. Three Google executives oversaw the service, which underwent substantial changes that led to a redesign in November 2015.
Google Nest is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks.
Take This Lollipop is a 2011 interactive horror short film and Facebook app written and directed by Jason Zada. Developer Jason Nickel used Facebook Connect to bring viewers themselves into the film, through use of pictures and messages from their own Facebook profiles. Starring actor Bill Oberst Jr. as 'The Facebook Stalker', the film acts to personalize and underscore the dangers inherent in posting too much personal information about oneself on the internet. The information gathered from a viewer's Facebook profile by the film's app is used once and then deleted. The title is derived from the 1963 song "Please Little Girl Take This Lollipop", written and performed by singer-songwriter Bobby Jameson, which is used in the film.
Reality Labs, originally Oculus VR, is a business and research unit of Meta Platforms that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as Quest, and online platforms such as Horizon Worlds. In June 2022, several artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives that were previously a part of Meta AI were transitioned to Reality Labs. This also includes Meta's fundamental AI Research laboratory FAIR which is now part of the Reality Labs - Research (RLR) division.
Onavo, Inc. was an Israeli mobile web analytics company owned by Meta Platforms. The company primarily performed its activities via consumer mobile apps, including the virtual private network (VPN) service Onavo Protect, which analysed web traffic sent through the VPN to provide statistics on the usage of other apps.
The Center for Humane Technology (CHT) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to radically reimagining the digital infrastructure. Its mission is to drive a comprehensive shift toward humane technology that supports the collective well-being, democracy and shared information environment. CHT has diagnosed the systemic harms of the attention economy, which it says include internet addiction, mental health issues, political extremism, political polarization, and misinformation. The Center for Humane Technology's work focuses on alerting people to technology's impacts on individuals, institutions, and society; identifying ways to address the consequences of technology; encouraging leaders to take action; and providing resources for those interested in humane technology.
Deepfakes are synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person's likeness convincingly with that of another. It can also refer to computer-generated images of human subjects that do not exist in real life. While the act of creating fake content is not new, deepfakes leverage tools and techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence, including facial recognition algorithms and artificial neural networks such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs). In turn the field of image forensics develops techniques to detect manipulated images.
Deplatforming, also known as no-platforming, is a boycott on an individual or group by removing the platforms used to share their information or ideas. The term is commonly associated with social media.
Account verification is the process of verifying that a new or existing account is owned and operated by a specified real individual or organization. A number of websites, for example social media websites, offer account verification services. Verified accounts are often visually distinguished by check mark icons or badges next to the names of individuals or organizations.
Tristan Harris is an American technology ethicist. He is the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
Meta Portal is a discontinued brand of smart displays and videophones released in 2018 by Meta. The product line consists of four models: Portal, Portal+, Portal TV, and Portal Go. These models provide video chat via Messenger and WhatsApp, augmented by a camera that can automatically zoom and track people's movements. The devices are integrated with Amazon's voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa.
The Great Hack is a 2019 documentary film about the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, produced and directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, both previous documentary Academy Award nominees. The film's music was composed by Emmy-nominated film composer Gil Talmi. The Great Hack premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in the Documentary Premieres section and was released by Netflix on July 24, 2019.
The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama film directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis about the negative social effects of social media.
The Cleaners is a 2018 documentary film directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck. The documentary details the work experience of content moderators who have to decide which content needs to be removed by employing a moderation system for social media websites.
