AL founding anniversary drives grassroots engagement on Facebook
Grassroots people took to Facebook to greet the Awami League (AL) on its 73rd founding anniversary and expressed their gratitude towards Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by sending short messages and audio-visuals.
A handful of selected audio-visuals were shared on the verified Facebook account of Awami League.
On May 20, the ruling party's official Facebook page invited greetings from people to mark its founding anniversary.
From Rangpur's Chadmapuskorini, more than 10 female footballers made it to the national level of the game. They lacked opportunities and a playground.
Standing in front of the Chadmapuskorini mini-stadium, Md Milon Mia, coach of the AFC Female Football Team said, "This mini-stadium is for female footballers in Chadmapuskorini. Sports enthusiasts, as well as people from all walks of life, are happy with this gift of the prime minister."
"Ten to twelve female footballers are now playing for the national team under different age groups. The prime minister donated Tk10 lakh for female footballers and transformed this area."
Shahab Uddin Shihab, a Patuakhali Medical College student, said, "This medical college in Patuakhali was an earnest demand of the people of this area and 60 lakh people of southern Bangladesh."
"On February 25, 2012, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, while addressing a gathering, announced the establishment of Patuakhali Medical College to ensure people's access to healthcare. Then it was established as the country's 24th medical college."
Female entrepreneur Mosammat Dilruba of Rangpur Sadar's UDDC said, "As a female entrepreneur, I thank Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. UDDC is the epitome of her initiative to digitalise Bangladesh."
"Poor rural women make wonderful products such as Nakshi Kantha. We take photos of their works and send them to Platform 101. Customers can pick that up according to their choice."
Aslo read: Awami League marks 73rd founding anniversary
Sheryl Sandberg, long Facebook’s No. 2 exec, steps down
Sheryl Sandberg, the No. 2 executive at Facebook owner Meta, who helped turn its business from startup to digital advertising empire while also taking blame for some of its biggest missteps, is stepping down.
Sandberg has served as chief operating officer at the social media giant for 14 years. She joined from Google in 2008, four years before Facebook went public.
“When I took this job in 2008, I hoped I would be in this role for five years. Fourteen years later, it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life,” Sandberg wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday.
Sandberg has led Facebook — now Meta’s — advertising business and was responsible for nurturing it from its infancy into an over $100 billion-a-year powerhouse. As the company’s second most-recognized face — after CEO Mark Zuckerberg — Sandberg has also become a polarizing figure amid revelations of how some of her business decisions for Facebook helped propagate misinformation and hate speech.
As one of the most prominent female executives in the tech industry, she was also often criticized for not doing enough both for women and for others harmed by Facebook’s products. Her public-speaking expertise, her seemingly effortless ability to bridge the worlds of tech, business and politics served as a sharp contrast to Zuckerberg, especially in Facebook’s early years. But Zuckerberg has since been catching up, trained in part for the several congressional hearings he’s been called to testify in to defend Facebook’s practices.
Also read: Rohingya sue Facebook for $150bn over Myanmar hate speech
Neither Sandberg nor Zuckerberg gave any indication that Sandberg’s resignation wasn’t her decision. But she’s also appeared somewhat sidelined in recent years, with other executives close to Zuckerberg, such as Chris Cox — who returned in 2020 as chief product officer after a yearlong break from the company —becoming more prominent.
“Sheryl Sandberg had an enormous impact on Facebook, Meta, and the broader business world. She helped Facebook build a world-class ad-buying platform and develop groundbreaking ad formats,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at Insider Intelligence. But she added that Facebook faced “huge scandals” under Sandberg’s watch — including the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle in 2018, and the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
And now, Meta is “facing a slowdown in user growth and ad revenue that is now testing the business foundation that the company was built on,” she said. “The company needs to find a new way forward, and perhaps this was the best time for Sandberg to depart.”
Sandberg is leaving Meta in the fall and will continue to serve on the company’s board.
Also read: 3 stabbed dead in Gazipur over ‘Facebook comment’: 2 held
Zuckerberg said in his own Facebook post that Javier Olivan, who currently oversees key functions at Meta’s four main apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — will serve as Meta’s new COO. But it will be a different job than the one Sandberg held for the past 14 years.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote.
While Sandberg has long been Zuckerberg’s No. 2, even sitting next to him — pre-pandemic, at least — in the company’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, she also had a very public-facing job, meeting with lawmakers, holding focus groups and speaking out on issues such as women in the workplace and, most recently, abortion.
“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.
Sandberg, who lost her husband Dave Goldberg suddenly in 2015, said she is “not entirely sure what the future will bring.”
“But I know it will include focusing more on my foundation and philanthropic work, which is more important to me than ever given how critical this moment is for women,” she wrote, adding that she is also getting married this summer and that parenting their expanded family of five children will also be a part of this future.
THE ADULT IN THE ROOM
Sandberg, now 52, first helped Google build what quickly became the internet’s biggest -- and most lucrative -- advertising network. But she left that post to take on the challenge of transforming Facebook’s freewheeling social network into a money-making business while also helping to mentor Zuckerberg, who was then 23 to her 38.
She proved to be exactly what the then-immature Zuckerberg and the company needed at the right time, helping to pave the way to Facebook’s highly anticipated initial public offering of stock a decade ago.
While Zuckerberg remained Facebook’s visionary and controlling shareholder, Sandberg became engine of a business fueled by a rapidly growing digital ad business that has become nearly as successful as the one that she helped cobbled together around Google’s dominant search engine.
Just like Google’s ad empire, Facebook’s business thrived on its ability to keep its users coming back for more of its free services while leveraging its social networking technology to learn more about people’s interests, habits, and whereabouts -- a nosy model that has repeatedly entangled the company in debates about whether a right to personal privacy still exists in an increasingly digital age.
As one of the top female executives in technology, Sandberg has at times has been held up as an inspiration for working women -- a role she seemed to embrace with a best-selling 2013 book titled “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will To Lead.”
But “Lean In” received immediate criticism. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called Sandberg a “PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots,” and critics suggested she is the wrong person to lead a women’s movement.
She addressed some of that criticism in a subsequent book that addressed the death of her husband, Dave Goldberg. In 2015 she became a symbol of heartbreaking grief when Goldberg died in an accident while working out on vacation, widowing her with two children as she continued to help run one of the world’s best-known companies.
CRACKS IN THE FACADE
In more recent years, Sandberg grew into a polarizing figure amid revelations of how some of her business decisions for Facebook helped propagate misinformation and hate speech. Critics and a company whistleblower contend that the consequences have undermined democracy and caused severe emotional problems for teens, particularly girls.
The author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” Shoshana Zuboff, said Sandberg is as responsible as anyone for what Zuboff considers one of Big Tech’s most insidious invention: the collection and organization of data on social media users’ behavior and preferences. For years Facebook shared user data not just with advertisers but also with business partners.
Sandberg did this, wrote Zuboff, “through the artful manipulation of Facebook’s culture of intimacy and sharing.”
Zuboff calls Sandberg the “Typhoid Mary” of surveillance capitalism, the term for profiting off the collection of data from social media users’ online behavior, preferences, shared data and relationships.
“Sheryl Sandberg may fancy herself a feminist, but her decisions at Meta made social media platforms less safe for women, people of color, and even threatened the American electoral system. Sandberg had the power to take action for fourteen years, yet consistently chose not to,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of UltraViolet, a gender justice advocacy organization, which has been calling for Sandberg’s resignation, in an emailed comment Wednesday.
Sandberg has had some public missteps at the company, including her attempt to deflect blame from Facebook for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In an interview later that month that was streamed by Reuters, she said she thought the events of the day were “largely organized on platforms that don’t have our abilities to stop hate, don’t have our standards and don’t have our transparency.”
Internal documents revealed by whistleblower Frances Haugen later that year, however, showed that Facebook’s own employees were concerned about the company’s halting and often reversed response to rising extremism in the U.S. that culminated in the events of Jan. 6.
“Haven’t we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?” one employee wrote on an internal message board at the height of the Jan. 6 turmoil. “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.”
Facebook shopping scammers held in city
Police have arrested four members of a fraud gang from the city’s Dhanmondi area, who were allegedly deceiving customers by selling them sub-standard products using Facebook.
The arrestees were Md Bappi Hasan, 24, Md Ariful alias Harisul, 19, Md Sohag Hossain, 22, Md Biplob Sheikh, 25, and Nur Mohammad, 28.
Also read: 6 fraud gang members involved in making 144 types of fake certificates held
Tipped off, an Organized Crime and Vehicle Theft Prevention Team under the Detective Brunch (Lalbagh Division) made the arrests conducting a drive in Shangkar in Dhanmondi area on Sunday, said Deputy Commissioner (DB-Lalbagh) Md Rajib Al Masud at a press briefing today.
During the drive, a large quantity of unusable and very low quality sarees, three pieces and various other clothing were seized from their possession.
During the primary interrogation, the arrestees confessed that they used to deliver sub-standard products to the customers after taking orders providing attractive advertisements of good quality products through their 17 online shopping pages on Facebook.
Also read:10 fraud gang members held for issuing fake driving licenses
A case was filed against the arrestees under Digital Security Act, the official added.
'Kill more': Facebook fails to detect hate against Rohingya
A new report has found that Facebook failed to detect blatant hate speech and calls to violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority years after such behavior was found to have played a determining role in the genocide against them.
The report shared exclusively with The Associated Press showed the rights group Global Witness submitted eight paid ads for approval to Facebook, each including different versions of hate speech against Rohingya. All eight ads were approved by Facebook to be published.
The group pulled the ads before they were posted or paid for, but the results confirmed that despite its promises to do better, Facebook's leaky controls still fail to detect hate speech and calls for violence on its platform.
The army conducted what it called a clearance campaign in western Myanmar's Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh and security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes.
Also Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. views the violence against Rohingya as genocide. The declaration is intended to both generate international pressure and lay the groundwork for potential legal action, Blinken said.
Also read: Rohingya sue Facebook for $150bn over Myanmar hate speech
On Feb. 1 of last year, Myanmar’s military forcibly took control of the country, jailing democratically elected government officials. Rohingya refugees have condemned the military takeover and said it makes them more afraid to return to Myanmar.
Experts say such ads have continued to appear and that despite its promises to do better and assurances that it has taken its role in the genocide seriously, Facebook still fails even the simplest of tests — ensuring that paid ads that run on its site do not contain hate speech calling for the killing of Rohingya Muslims.
“The current killing of the Kalar is not enough, we need to kill more!” read one proposed paid post from Global Witness, using a slur often used in Myanmar to refer to people of east Indian or Muslim origin.
“They are very dirty. The Bengali/Rohingya women have a very low standard of living and poor hygiene. They are not attractive,” read another.
“These posts are shocking in what they encourage and are a clear sign that Facebook has not changed or done what they told the public what they would do: properly regulate themselves,” said Ronan Lee, a research fellow at the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University, London.
The eight ads from Global Witness all used hate speech language taken directly from the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar in their report to the Human Rights Council. Several examples were from past Facebook posts.
The fact that Facebook approved all eight ads is especially concerning because the company claims to hold advertisements to an “even stricter” standard than regular, unpaid posts, according to their help center page for paid advertisements.
“I accept the point that eight isn’t a very big number. But I think the findings are really stark, that all eight of the ads were accepted for publication,” said Rosie Sharpe, a campaigner at Global Witness. “I think you can conclude from that that the overwhelming majority of hate speech is likely to get through.”
Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms Inc. said it has invested in improving its safety and security controls in Myanmar, including banning military accounts after the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are locally known, seized power and imprisoned elected leaders in the 2021 coup.
“We’ve built a dedicated team of Burmese speakers, banned the Tatmadaw, disrupted networks manipulating public debate and taken action on harmful misinformation to help keep people safe. We’ve also invested in Burmese-language technology to reduce the prevalence of violating content,” Rafael Frankel, director of public policy for emerging markets at Meta Asia Pacific wrote in an e-mailed statement to AP on March 17. “This work is guided by feedback from experts, civil society organizations and independent reports, including the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar’s findings and the independent Human Rights Impact Assessment we commissioned and released in 2018.”
Facebook has been used to spread hate speech and amplify military propaganda in Myanmar in the past.
Also read: 3 stabbed dead in Gazipur over ‘Facebook comment’: 2 held
Shortly after Myanmar became connected to the internet in 2000, Facebook paired with its telecom providers to allow customers to use the platform without having to pay for the data, which was still expensive at the time. Use of the platform exploded. For many in Myanmar, Facebook became the internet itself.
Local internet policy advocates repeatedly told Facebook hate speech was spreading across the platform, often targeting the Muslim minority Rohingya in the majority Buddhist nation.
For years Facebook failed to invest in content moderators who spoke local languages or fact checkers with an understanding of the political situation in Myanmar or to close specific accounts or delete pages being used to propagate hatred of the Rohingya, said Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, a London-based Rohingya advocacy organization.
In March 2018, less than six months after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled violence in western Myanmar, Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters social media had “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public."
“Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media,” Darusman said.
Asked about Myanmar a month later at a U.S. Senate hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook planned to hire “dozens” of Burmese speakers to moderate content and would work with civil society groups to identify hate figures and develop new technologies to combat hate speech.
“Hate speech is very language specific. It’s hard to do it without people who speak the local language and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically,” Zuckerberg said.
Yet in internal files leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen last year, AP found that breaches persisted. The company stepped up efforts to combat hate speech but never fully developed the tools and strategies required to do so.
Rohingya refugees have sued Facebook for more than $150 billion, accusing it of failing to stop hate speech that incited violence against the Muslim ethnic group by military rulers and their supporters in Myanmar. Rohingya youth groups based in the Bangladesh refugee camps have filed a separate complaint in Ireland with the 38-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calling for Facebook to provide some remediation programs in the camps.
The company now called Meta has refused to say how many of its content moderators read Burmese and can thus detect hate speech in Myanmar.
“Rohingya genocide survivors continue to live in camps today and Facebook continue to fail them,” said Tun Khin. “Facebook needs to do more.”
3 stabbed dead in Gazipur over ‘Facebook comment’: 2 held
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Gazipur, Mar 13 (UNB) – A murder case was filed against 10 people with Kapasia police station over the deaths of three youths, who allegedly over making a sarcastic comment on a Facebook post at Dakkhingaon in Gazipur district on Saturday night.
The deceased were Faruk Hossain, 26, son of Mohammad Alam, Md Robin, 15, son of Hiron and Naim Hossain, 18, son of Alam Hossain of the Dakkhin gaon village in Kapasia upazila.
READ: Gazipur college girl allegedly stabbed for saying no to marriage proposal
The case was filed on Sunday following a complaint lodged by Faruk's father, said AFM Nasim, Officer-in-Charge of Kapasia police station.
According to locals, a group of youths led by Zahid, a youth from neighboring Alinagar village, attacked Naim with sharp weapons near his house around 11 pm Saturday.
While trying to save Naim, some others sustained injuries.
They were taken to Monohardi Upazila Health Complex where doctors declared Faruk and Naim dead.
Injured Robin was shifted to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
Jahangir Mahmud, Union Parishad member in the area said,”Recently Naim made a sarcastic comment on a photo of Zahid’s wife posted on Facebook. Agitated by the comment Zahid attacked him.”
OC AFM Nasim said, Belayet, from Kocherchar area and Faisal from Doulatpur area in Monohardi upazila were detained in connection with the murders after handed over by locals.
Efforts are on to arrest the accused in the case, said the OC.
READ: RU student stabbed, students stage demo demanding arrest of attackers
Russia cracks down on dissenting media, blocks Facebook
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday intensified a crackdown on media outlets and individuals who fail to hew to the Kremlin line on Russia’s war in Ukraine, blocking Facebook and Twitter and signing into law a bill that criminalizes the intentional spreading of what Moscow deems to be “fake” reports.
The moves against the social media giants follow blocks imposed on the BBC, the U.S. government-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and Latvia-based website Meduza. The government’s sweeping action against the foreign outlets that publish news in Russian seeks to establish even tighter controls over what information the domestic audience sees about the invasion of Ukraine.
The state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said it cut access to Twitter and Facebook in line with a decision by the prosecutor general’s office. The watchdog has previously accused Twitter of failing to delete the content banned by Russian authorities and slowed down access to it.
Twitter said in a statement Friday afternoon that while the company is “aware of reports” that its platform is blocked in Russia, it has not been able to confirm whether this is the case.
The bill, quickly rubber-stamped by both houses of the Kremlin-controlled parliament and signed by Putin, imposes prison sentences of up to 15 years for those spreading information that goes against the Russian government’s narrative on the war.
The question regarding Russia is no longer “what we do to stop disinformation,” former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said on Friday. “The question has to be how do we promote information inside Russia -- and I don’t have the answer.”
Multiple outlets said they would pause their work inside Russia to evaluate the situation. Among them, CNN said it would stop broadcasting in Russia while Bloomberg and the BBC said they would temporarily suspend the work of their journalists there.
Russian authorities have repeatedly and falsely decried reports of Russian military setbacks or civilian deaths in Ukraine as “fake” news. State media outlets refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” rather than a war or an invasion.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, said the measure “will force those who lied and made statements discrediting our armed forces to bear very grave punishment.”
“I want everyone to understand, and for society to understand, that we are doing this to protect our soldiers and officers, and to protect the truth,” he added.
The law envisages sentences of up to three years or fines for spreading what authorities deem to be false news about the military, but the maximum punishment rises to 15 years for cases deemed to have led to “severe consequences.”
Read: Fire out at key Ukraine nuclear plant, no radiation released
In blocking Facebook, Roskomnadzor cited its alleged “discrimination” of the Russian media and state information resources. The agency said in a statement that the restrictions introduced by Facebook owner Meta on the Russian news channel RT and other state-controlled media violate Russian law.
“Obviously Putin is shutting these people down because he is afraid. He wouldn’t be shutting them down if everything was going peachy keen,” McFaul said during a call with reporters and experts hosted by Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center. “This is an indicator of his state of mind.”
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said tweeted in response to Russia’s action that “millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out.”
“We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action,” Clegg added.
The Russian media blocks on the five foreign media organizations are among the most influential and often critical foreign media publishing in Russian.
Roskomnadzor said those media had published “false information” on subjects including “the methods of carrying out combat activities (attacks on civilians, strikes on civil infrastructure), the numbers of losses of the Russian Federation Armed Forces. and victims among the civilian population.”
BBC Director-General Tim Davie said the legislation “appears to criminalize the process of independent journalism.”
“The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs,” he said.
Davie said the BBC’s Russian-language news service would continue to operate from outside Russia.
Earlier in the day, the BBC posted instructions on Twitter about how Russian readers could work around the block by using apps or the “dark web.”
“Access to accurate, independent information is a fundamental human right which should not be denied to the people of Russia, millions of whom rely on BBC News every week. We will continue our efforts to make BBC News available in Russia, and across the rest of the world,” the BBC said.
Earlier this week the BBC said it was bringing back shortwave radio transmission to Ukraine and parts of Russia so people can listen to its programs with basic equipment.
Some well-known media outlets within Russia have chosen to close rather than face heavy restrictions on what they can report. News website Znak said it was closing Friday morning, shortly after the parliament approved the draft bill. On Thursday, Russia’s top independent radio station Ekho Moskvy was closed and independent TV station Dozdh suspended operations after receiving a threat of closure from the authorities.
The authorities also pressed ahead with a sweeping effort to target human rights organizations.
Authorities raided the offices of Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest and most prominent human rights organizations. According to Memorial members, police didn’t provide any explanation and there were no warnings.
Read: Ukraine wants special tribunal to judge Putin
“The police refused to let me and the lawyer in without explanation, and when I tried not to let in the reinforcement officers who arrived in bulletproof vests and masks, they threatened to use force if I did not let them in,” the chairman of International Memorial Yan Rachinsky said. “This is the level of justice today in the capital of Russia.”
Another leading human rights group, the Civic Assistance, also saw its Moscow office raided.
Internet monitor says Russia blocking Facebook
Russia has apparently rendered Facebook largely unusable across leading Russian telecommunications providers amid rising friction between Moscow and the social media platform.
The London-based internet monitor NetBlocks reports that Facebook’s network of content-distribution servers in Russia was so badly restricted Sunday that “content no longer loads, or loads extremely slowly making the platforms unusable.”
Russian telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor on Friday announced plans to “partially restrict” access to Facebook. That same day, Facebook’s head of security policy had said the company was barring Russian state media from running ads or otherwise profiting on its platform anywhere in the world.
Raed:UN says Ukraine radioactive waste site struck
Facebook says it has also refused a request by the Kremlin not to run fact checks related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the platform for users inside Russia.
NetBlocks reported earlier that access to Twitter was similarly restricted Saturday. That was a day after Twitter said it was temporarily halting ads in both Ukraine and Russia.
The Twitter and Facebook restrictions can be circumvented inside Russia using VPN software, just as users do in mainland China.
2 including journo arrested in DSA case in Satkhira
Two people, including a journalist, have been arrested under the Digital Security Act for posting alleged provocative statements against the government and police on Facebook in Patkelghata of Satkhira, police said on Friday.
The arrestees have been identified as Patkelghata Press Club President Jahurul Haque, 45, a correspondent of Daily Bhorer Paata and Abdur Rahman, a resident of Patkelghata Palli Bidyut Samiti area.
Read: Journalists sued under DSA need not to be arrested instantly: Law Minister
Babul Akhter, officer-in-charge (OC) of Satkhira DB Police, said police arrested the duo from the Patkelghata area on Thursday night following a case that was filed against three people under the Digital Security Act for allegedly writing provocative statements against the police and the government on Facebook.
DB Sub-Inspector (SI) Arifur Rahman, who is the plaintiff in the case, said he filed a case under the Digital Security Act against three people at the Satkhira Sadar Police Station on Thursday evening on various charges including sending anonymous application to senior police officials against the subordinates as well as writing provocative and offensive remarks on Facebook against the recently departed Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Humayun Kabir of Tala Circle.
Read:Kushtia journo held under DSA for defamatory post against PM
The process of sending the arrestees to jail through the court was underway, said Golam Kabir, officer-in-charge (OC) of Satkhira Sadar Police Station.
Shares of Facebook parent Meta plunge 22% on lower profits
Newly-renamed Meta is investing heavily in its futuristic “metaverse” project, but for now, relies on advertising revenue for nearly all its income. So when it posted sharply higher costs but gave a weak revenue forecast late Wednesday, investors got spooked — and knocked almost $200 billion off the valuation of the company formerly known as Facebook.
Meta’s shares fell 22.6% to $249.90 in after-hours trading. If the drop holds until the market opens Thursday, the company’s overall value, known as its market capitalization, is on track to drop by a figure greater than the size of the entire Greek economy, based on data from the World Bank.
Read:Meta’s campaigns strengthened Bangladesh govt’s COVID response
The metaverse is sort of the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described it as a “virtual environment” in which you can immerse yourself instead of just staring at a screen. Theoretically, the metaverse would be a place where people can meet, work and play using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices.
But building it is not likely to be cheap.
Meta invested more than $10 billion in its Reality Labs segment — which includes its virtual reality headsets and augmented reality technology — in 2021, contributing to the quarter’s profit decline. It expanded its workforce by 23%, ending the year with 71,970 employees, mostly in technical roles.
Read Plenty of pitfalls await Zuckerberg’s ‘metaverse’ plan
The company also said revenue in the current quarter is likely to come in below market expectations, due in part to growing competition from TikTok and other rival platforms vying for people’s attention. Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s chief operating officer, said in a conference call with analysts that global supply chain issues, labor shortages and earlier-than-usual holiday spending by advertisers put pressure on the company’s advertising sales.
Another problem: Recent privacy changes by Apple make it harder for companies like Meta to track people for advertising purposes, which also puts pressure on the company’s revenue. For months now, Meta has been warning investors that its revenue can’t continue to grow at the breakneck pace they are accustomed to.
Read In the middle of a crisis, Facebook Inc. renames itself Meta
“It is time for a reality check on Meta’s position for the metaverse,” said Raj Shah, an analyst at the digital consulting firm Publicis Sapient. “The metaverse is a long way from being profitable or filling the gap in ad revenue after Apple’s policy change.”
People’s changing online behavior is also limiting Meta’s money-making abilities. More people are watching video, such as Instagram’s Reels (a TikTok clone), and this makes less money than more established features.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said it earned $10.29 billion, or $3.67 per share, in the final three months of 2021. That’s down 8% from $11.22 billion, or $3.88 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose to 20% to $33.67 billion.
Read What the metaverse is and how it will work
Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $3.85 per share on revenue of $33.36 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.
Meta Platforms Inc. took on its new name last fall to emphasize Zuckerberg’s new focus on the metaverse. Since then, the company has been shifting resources and hiring engineers — including from competitors like Apple and Google — who can help realize his vision.
Zuckerberg is betting that the metaverse will be the next generation of the internet because he thinks it’s going to be a big part of the digital economy. He expects people to start seeing Meta as a “metaverse company” in the coming years, rather than a social media company.
Read:Plenty of pitfalls await Zuckerberg’s ‘metaverse’ plan
For now, though, the metaverse exists only as an amorphous idea envisioned — and named — by the science fiction author Neal Stephenson three decades ago. It’s not yet clear if it’ll be the next iteration of human-computer interaction the way Zuckerberg sees it, or just another playground for techies and gamers.
This could be spooking investors, who tend to prefer immediate, or at least quick, results on investments.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about Meta’s investments in the metaverse and if or when they will have a positive impact on the company’s bottom line,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with Insider Intelligence.
Read How Do Social Media Influencers Make Money?
“While we expect Meta to ramp up testing ads and commerce within its metaverse offerings this year, those efforts will be highly experimental and not likely to drive much revenue in the near term,” she added.
Meta said it expects revenue between $27 billion and $29 billion for the current quarter, below the $30.2 billion analysts are forecasting.
Lawsuit: Google, Facebook CEOs colluded in online ad sales
Newly unredacted documents from a state-led antitrust lawsuit against Google accuse the search giant of colluding with rival Facebook to manipulate online advertising sales. The CEOs of both companies were aware of the deal and signed off on it, the lawsuit alleges.
The original, redacted lawsuit, filed in December 2021, accused Google of “anti-competitive conduct” and of teaming up with the social networking giant. But the unredacted version offers details on the involvement of Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in approving the deal. Facebook has since renamed itself Meta.
According to the lawsuit, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was “explicit that ‘this is a big deal strategically’” in a 2018 email thread about the deal that included Facebook’s CEO. While the names of the Facebook executives are still redacted in the suit, their titles are visible.
When the two sides hammered out the terms of the agreement, “the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO” Zuckerberg, the lawsuit states.
“We’re nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward,” the email read, according to the complaint. Zuckerberg wanted to meet with Sandberg and his other executives before making a decision, the complaint states.
In a statement, Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said the lawsuit is “full of inaccuracies and lacks legal merit.”
In September 2018, the complaint says, the two companies signed the agreement. Sandberg, who was once the head of Google’s ad business, and Pichai personally signed off on the deal, per the states’ complaint.
Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said Friday that the company’s ad bidding agreement with Google and similar agreements it has with other bidding platforms “have helped to increase competition for ad placements.”
Read:Plenty of pitfalls await Zuckerberg’s ‘metaverse’ plan
“These business relationships enable Meta to deliver more value to advertisers while fairly compensating publishers, resulting in better outcomes for all,” Sgro said.
Internally, Google used the code phrase “Jedi Blue” to refer to the 2018 agreement, according to the lawsuit. Google kept this code phrase secret.
Google’s Schottenfels said the lawsuit’s allegation that Pichai approved the deal with Facebook “isn’t accurate.”
“We sign hundreds of agreements every year that don’t require CEO approval, and this was no different,” he said, adding that the agreement “was never a secret.”
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The lawsuit is led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and was joined by the attorneys general of Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.