Meta Newsroom
about.fb.com · Company blog · on HN since 2012
Meta's corporate newsroom publishes announcements on products, layoffs, AI models, research, and policy and content moderation changes.
What HN saysHN links it for company announcements, and commenters question its framing, such as the response to the former employee's book and claims about data sharing.
888HN people shared it
424linked it in comments
746stories submitted
21Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Company info18 people · first shared 2014
- 2A new optional way to share and discover music tv and movies10 people · first shared 2014
- 3Facebook Does Not Use Your Phone’s Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories9 people · 47 points · first shared 2016 · 47 comments on HN
- 4Meta lays off 11,000 people7 people · 2.0K points · first shared 2022 · 2.0K comments on HN
- 5Why We Disagree with The New York Times7 people · 350 points · first shared 2018 · 304 comments on HN
- 6What our research says about teen well-being and Instagram7 people · 144 points · first shared 2021 · 173 comments on HN
- 7Security Update Facebook7 people · 16 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 8Facebook releases internal slide decks for research on teens on Instagram [pdf]7 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 9Open source AI is the path forward6 people · 2.4K points · first shared 2024 · 887 comments on HN
- 10Facebook’s Response to the New York Times6 people · 60 points · first shared 2018 · 20 comments on HN
- 11New Assistant: Meta AI, Built with Llama 36 people · 42 points · first shared 2024 · 6 comments on HN
- 12Keeping Passwords Secure6 people · 31 points · first shared 2019 · 11 comments on HN
- 13Facts About Facebook’s Messaging Partnerships6 people · 12 points · first shared 2018 · 2 comments on HN
- 14Myanmar hria6 people · first shared 2020
- 15Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model5 people · 870 points · first shared 2025 · 1.4K comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
minimaxir · 2019-03-29
It's worth noting that, for some reason, this is a Facebook-oriented post posted on Instagram's blog and not the official FB Newsroom: https://newsroom.fb.com/
threeseed · 2018-02-22
Well bookmark the following and be prepared. Because Facebook posts a lot about what they do.
https://newsroom.fb.com
https://code.facebook.com
jefftk · 2026-02-18
Really very sure that wasn't one of the conditions. I didn't remember that from 2012, and looking now it wasn't included in the merger agreement. They did write:
> We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.
>That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people. -- https://about.fb.com/news/2012/04/facebook-to-acquire-instagram/
That looks to me like what they've done?
demosthanos · 2025-06-20
If you can ask "Hey Meta, ..." while holding a golf club and unable to touch a button (which the promo video [0] shows you can) then the mic is always on. It may not always be beaming data to Meta, but that's a matter of trust, which I don't have much of for Meta given their history.
The camera may or may not be always on, but it can be turned on by software activated by the always-on mic (again, demonstrated by the promo video), so it would be best to treat it as though it is.
[0] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/06/introducing-oakley-meta-glasses-a-ne…
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 2025-03-17
The author still managed to give at least one interview before the arbitrator's decision.
For example,
https://www.thefp.com/p/meet-sarah-wynn-williams-facebooks
Meta published a response to the book that only alleges the author's claims are "old" and does not suggest they are false.
https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Wynn-Williams-Ne…
If the claims are false and defamatory, then why not sue the author for defamation.
In the book, the author suggests she was harassed by two famous Facebook managers and then terminated when she complained.
Apparently the book is a top seller on Amazon. Perhaps it does not need promotion by the author.
The author has also filed a whistleblower complaint at the SEC re: the China issue.
As a longtime HN reader I recall that Zuckerberg was a favorite of PG. The "ideal founder" or something like that.
side_up_down · 2024-05-01
Meta Reality Labs - Conversational AI | https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/2780884748740452/ | Research Engineer | Machine Learning Engineer | Redmond, WA; Menlo Park, CA | Full-time | ONSITE
I'm hiring Research Engineers and Machine Learning Engineers to bring Meta AI to Reality Labs devices, including RayBan Meta Smart Glasses. Build rich multi-modal experiences fully unlocking both the power of mixed-reality devices and Facebook personalization.
Research Engineers will push the boundaries of how to train and deploy Meta AI LLMs. Publish your work, and be a leader in industry best practices.
Machine Learning Engineers will help bring emerging technologies onto the next generations of Reality Labs hardware devices. Build systems to ensure Meta AI performance in constrained environments.
Smart Glasses Press Release: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/09/new-ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses/
tsunamihippo · 2024-03-29
The article skips a lot of context to make it sound significantly worse than reality. Facebook didn't just randomly give Netflix access to everyone's messages. Specific user would need to purposefully log in to the Netflix app with their Facebook account in order to grant Netflix access to the chat functionality (intended to send movie recommendations to Facebook friends inside the Netflix app).
https://about.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-messaging-partnerships/
Disclaimer: I work at Facebook but not on messaging or anything related to this article.
nycdatasci · 2024-03-27
Exactly. Here's a great example of them criticizing NYU for researching political influence & advertising on the Meta platform: "Research Cannot Be the Justification for Compromising People’s Privacy" https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/research-cannot-be-the-justification…
nh23423fefe · 2024-03-11
Trump doesn't say things because they are true. Parsing his words is pointless.
The only reason he says this is because https://about.fb.com/news/2021/06/facebook-response-to-oversight-board…
FB hurt him so now he slanders them. That's it
lern_too_spel · 2023-01-26
Did they realize this two years ago when they said that the suspension would last two years? https://about.fb.com/news/2021/06/facebook-response-to-oversight-board…
If you got this wrong, consider if you got your medical knowledge wrong too. Try talking to your doctor for medical advice.
selwynii · 2022-10-21
FB shut down facial recognition last year. I'm waiting to see other companies follow suit. Apple?
https://about.fb.com/news/2021/11/update-on-use-of-face-recognition/
piggybox · 2022-02-09
1) In FB's own words: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/02/meta-is-absolutely-not-threatening-t… so mass media just put the word into FB's mouth
2) On "China didn't ban ...", that's the case for Google and Linkedin China, but it's actually a kind of "soft" ban that the cost to meet the regulatory requirements is too high to afford even for biggest companies in the world.
3) FB case was a bit different. It was never given any opportunity to operate in China, so FB didn't "chose" to leave. We would never know what FB would do if given the chance. Maybe leave all user data there inside the great wall, as Apple does in its special version of iCloud in China.
Manuel_D · 2022-01-09
Nowhere? I suspect few people actually read the report [1]. They asked teen girls (and boys) how Instagram made them feel. The most common response for girls was "no effect" 43%, followed by "somewhat better" 29%, then "somewhat worse" at 18%, then "much better" at 8%, and lastly "much worse" at 3%. The media conspicuously ignored that substantially more girls felt that Instagram made them feel better than worse.
1. https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Instagram-Teen-Annotat…
dredmorbius · 2021-12-14
The combined FB property (Facebook + Instagram) "community standards" (a/k/a "trust and safety" in industryterms) actions report.
At time of submission this links to the 2021Q3 report.
As a suggestion to FB: versioning these reports such that it's possible to link directly to a specific quarter would be greatly appreciated.
Among past submissions to HN is a link to the independent auditer's assessment of this report from about a year ago:
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/independent-audit-of-enforcement-rep…
mullingitover · 2021-10-15
I wonder if they actually implemented a single recommendation from their own report[1] since the last time they were instrumental in a genocide.
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/
ceejayoz · 2021-09-28
This always cracks me up about Facebook announcements.
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/07/removing-political-coordinated-inaut…
> We removed 38 Facebook accounts, 76 Pages, and 55 Instagram accounts for violating our policy against foreign interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity.
Wow, great work, now do the other billion or so.
shadowgovt · 2021-08-29
There are very online fora I am aware of that have any kind of arbitration or check on the execution of administrator or moderator authority.
Facebook is one (which is why they will be reinstating Trump's account in the future: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/06/facebook-response-to-oversight-board…
dane-pgp · 2021-07-20
I'm also glad to see that noyb are thinking about the GDPR right of Data Portability, and want to establish what the limits of "technically feasible" are.[0]
Surprisingly, Facebook is making some progress in this area, announcing[1] in April that:
"People can now directly transfer their notes and posts to Google Docs, Blogger and WordPress.com."
It would be nice if this was extended such that Facebook posts were automatically synched to a Fediverse account, so that your friends could follow your posts without a Facebook account.
[0] https://noyb.eu/en/project/data-portability-art-20-gdpr
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/04/transfer-your-facebook-posts-and-not…
tomjakubowski · 2021-05-27
Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts there which have posted about the lab leak theory.
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/
room500 · 2020-09-28
Their algorithm is their speech.
If users had to address their videos to each other and they were delivered FIFO without priority, I would agree that they would be neutral.
But TikTok (and all social networks) are using algorithms to promote some content and demote others. This algorithm is an extremely powerful voice.
In 2016-2018, everyone was concerned about foreign countries influencing the election by running bots/ads on Facebook. Following the election, there were many policies put into place to try to prevent this bad behavior [1]. Fast forward to 2020 and there is documented proof of a foreign country controlling a social media algorithm and we aren't concerned?
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/12/inside-feed-coordinated-inauthentic-…
guy_ro · 2020-05-27
Hi! I am really here, not a bot :)
If we're talking metrics, the 64% stat cited in the article turns out not to be a good way to measure impact of recommendations on an extremist group. We internally think about things like prevalence of bad recommendations. More on prevalence here - https://about.fb.com/news/2019/05/measuring-prevalence/. I don't have a metric I can share on recommendations specifically but you can see the areas we've shared it for so far here: https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement
gitgud · 2020-05-26
It's the funny that Facebook were pitching advertising to investors in 2004, and they didn't have any ads until 2007.
It's also interesting that there's no information on sources or anything to explain these pitch decks. I'm pretty sure the original would not start with "Facebook's original pitch deck", so how much each pitch has been altered?
Also survivor-ship bias... these are all highly sucessful companies with amazing products. It would also be great to see how failed businesses still got funding, e.g; "Juicero" or "Theranos"...
https://starthouse.xyz/facebook
https://about.fb.com/news/2007/11/facebook-unveils-facebook-ads/
dlivingston · 2019-10-30
For what it's worth, Mark wrote those comments in 2004, shortly after "The Facebook" was created. They didn't start monetizing until late 2007 [0].
[0]: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2007/11/facebook-unveils-facebook-ads/
bhelkey · 2019-04-18
Edit: The following is correct but misleading. The Muller report was reported to be released before the Facebook security update.
Facebook announced this before the Muller report was released.
The Facebook security post was updated April 18, 2019 at 7AM PT [1].
The Muller report was released "Thursday morning, shortly after 11 am [EDT]" [2]
[1] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/keeping-passwords-secure/
[2] https://www.vox.com/2019/4/18/18411966/mueller-report-release-time-tru…
Disclosure: I work for a big tech company but not Facebook. All opinions are my own.
deathhand · 2019-04-10
I am sorry but thanks to our love of social media being a 'platform of all' they are able to dictate what is a 'credible/trusted source'
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/trusted-sources/
This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
dang · 2019-03-14
I've tentatively switched to that URL from https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/a-note-from-mark-zuckerberg/. If someone can suggest a better article, we'll happily change it again.
It's just that generally, press releases don't make for great HN stories. This is a bit of an exception to the original-sources rule in the site guidelines.
mandevil · 2018-12-05
Facebook has released a statement[1] that accuses Six4Three of "cherrypicked" document dump, that is mostly just denials with no supporting evidence. If only they hadn't undermined their own trustworthiness by, a few weeks ago, denying that senior executives were culpable in their relationship with Definers and then doing a news dump right before a major US holiday admitting that they had lied in their first response, then people might believe their unsupported assertions.
[1]: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to-six4three-documents/
AznHisoka · 2018-05-07
The article mentioned ClearBit, which does a clever (too clever?) way of showing you the Facebook profile, Linkedin profiles, etc given just an email address.
I've tried it with an email address I've never publicly disclosed anywhere, and amazingly it works. It found the FB profile linked to that email.
I always wondered how ClearBit knew that information. Were they the "malicious actors" Facebook was referring to in their announcement last month?[1]
[1] "Malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery": https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/
sanxiyn · 2018-03-20
I agree. I find https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analytica/ accurate about facts.
On the other hand, in Facebook's own words, "In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies". If Facebook learned this in 2015, why are they suspending violators in 2018? That part is blameworthy. But I agree the primary blame lies at Kogan, CA, SCL, etc.
somidscr21 · 2017-06-08
1.28 billion daily active users on average for March 2017 [https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/]
would greatly disagree with your statement. It may not be the answer for everyone, but it could be that tool for a large chunk of the world's population.