Today I am at F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference. We were expecting a big announcement, but FB May appears to have accidentally scooped itself by publishing a blog post early. The post is now deleted, but you can read my story about it here! telegraph.co.uk/technology/201…
First surprise of the day: F8 has a live band?
Old habits die hard at FB's parallel F8 East conference in New York City. The full motto was "move fast and break things" - a mantra FB has repeatedly tried to disavow but which critics have never ceased to hold over its head
It begins. First up is a very heartwarming trailer about a young woman who moves to New York City and finds the right people for her. Notably, she uses the full suite of FB products - Whatsapp, Insta and FB itself - fully integrated, as they will soon be when FB merges them.
It’s ya boy Zuck
Zuck explains his "privacy-focused vision" (see Telegraphs past).
"Now look, I get that a lot of people aren't sure that we're serious about this," he says, laughing. "I know that we dont' exactly have the strongest reputation on privacy right now, to put it lightly."
"Now look, I get that a lot of people aren't sure that we're serious about this," he says, laughing. "I know that we dont' exactly have the strongest reputation on privacy right now, to put it lightly."
When FB Messenger gains encryption by default, it is "going to enable more than 2bn people around the world" to have fully private conversations. "So I believe this is going to be a historically important step for privacy around the world."
And to recentre Facebook around private groups, rather than feeds, Facebook is launching its biggest redesign in five years - dispensing completely with the big blue bar. "It's not even blue anymore!" he laughs 
The idea is to put groups front and centre. FB says 400m users are members of groups "that they find meaningful" (though this is a weirdly small number for a site with 2.3bn users!). New vers will have a feed of all group activity plus "improved" algorithmic group recommendations
Regular readers will feel their ears pricking up at any talk of algorithmic recommendations. Facebook has been under fire recently for automatically recommending anti-vax groups to users who search "vaccines", and for activity within those groups theguardian.com/technology/201…
Fear not, algo-fans. Says Zuck:
"While we're recommending people groups they can join we're very focused on making sure our recommendation services aren't recommending groups that are sharing misinformation and sharing harmful content."
"While we're recommending people groups they can join we're very focused on making sure our recommendation services aren't recommending groups that are sharing misinformation and sharing harmful content."
I am now being ushered out of the room so that concldues my thread (pending links to our full story). BUT I just want to name the absolute best thing about FB's announcements today
Sellers on Facebook Marketplace will now be able to hawk their products and answer user questions in live broadcasts.
You know what that means?
HOMEBREW.
SHOPPING.
CHANNELS.
brb starting my own version of QVC on Tiktok
You know what that means?
HOMEBREW.
SHOPPING.
CHANNELS.
brb starting my own version of QVC on Tiktok
