We’ve rounded up some Facebook news for you.
Facebook is reportedly getting into health care, a field that’s also being explored by companies such as Google and Apple. Citing unidentified sources, Reuters reports that the social network is considering creating official online-support communities for people suffering from common ailments, and may develop health-related apps. This brings up inevitable privacy concerns, especially about a company that already has so much information on its users — and which has apologized time and again for privacy lapses. Reuters says the company is considering releasing its first health care app under a different name.
Speaking of privacy and Facebook: After a controversial study on the emotions of Facebook users — in which the company manipulated 700,000 users’ newsfeeds and tracked their reactions — Facebook on Thursday said it has established new guidelines and will scrutinize future research more closely. It also said its engineers would get research-ethics training. But the New York Times points out that Facebook did not say it would seek users’ permission, or whether it would disclose its research guidelines, or whether all its research would be made available to the outside world. “Are there different standards for research that won’t be published?” Zeynep Tufekci, a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, said to the Wall Street Journal.
Finally, the company received approval from European antitrust regulators for its $19 billion purchase of mobile messaging app WhatsApp. The EU said that even though Facebook already has its own messaging app, its combination with WhatsApp is OK because there is still plenty of competition in mobile messaging. The acquisition had already received the green light from U.S. antitrust authorities.
Photo from Reuters archives