Unriddled: Facebook's 2018, a Snapchat Challenge, and More Tech News You Need

"Unriddled" is HubSpot's weekly digest of the tech headlines you need to know. We give you the top tech stories in a quick, scannable way and break it all down. It's tech news: explained.

1. A Year of Facebook Headlines

If keeping up with all the news about Facebook in 2018 has seemed like a tall order, you're not alone. That's why BuzzFeed News published "Literally Just A Big List Of Facebook’s 2018 Scandals," which is, frankly, exactly what it sounds like. The list starts with Facebook's major January News Feed algorithm change and extends to the Washington, D.C. attorney general filing a lawsuit against the company for allowing a voter profiling firm to improperly harvest personal user data. BuzzFeed News's timeline provides a comprehensive guide to Facebook's 2018. Read full story >>

2. Meanwhile, in Recent Facebook Headlines

The Deal With Data

The New York Times last week published a report that sheds more light on how Facebook uses data, and how it allegedly grants "intrusive" access to it for companies like Netflix and Microsoft. That data sharing may, according to some, be rooted in a vision to create a highly personalized experience across the entirety of the web -- that is, the more companies and sites have access to personal Facebook user data, the more they can personalize content and the overall browsing experience.

But Facebook allowed that data to be misused in some cases (see above), and much of the time, users weren't even aware of how data was being used even when that access was categorized as "proper." Facebook published its own response to the report, saying that "this work [the data access] was about helping people." Read full story >>

Location, Location, Location

A recent report from Gizmodo says that turning off all location-tracking options in Facebook -- this includes shutting off location history in the Facebook app, adjusting mobile device settings, and never allowing the app to access to location -- doesn't actually stop the social network from tracking users' location data.

This discovery came from USC assistant professor Aleksandra Korolova, who observed that she was still seeing personalized Facebook ads appearing to be based on where, geographically, she was at a given time (e.g., ads that are targeted to “people who live or were recently near Los Angeles”). Facebook responded by indicating that, despite certain settings, location data is indeed collected via "IP [address] and other information such as check-ins and current city from your profile," going on to point out that "we explain this to people, including in our Privacy Basics site and on the About Facebook Ads site.” Read full story >>

3. The Snapchat Lens Challenge

Snapchat Lens is a library of augmented reality (AR) overlays -- essentially, three-dimensional visual effects that people can place on top of the physical environment being viewed or captured through a mobile device's camera (read more about AR here). In Instagram, similar effects are known as filters.

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