TECHY TECH WORLD

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has cultivated relationships with China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping. He has paid multiple visits to the country to meet its top internet executives. He has made an effort to learn Mandarin. Inside Facebook, the work to enter China runs far deeper. The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added. Facebook has restricted content in other countries before, such as Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, in keeping with the typical practice of American internet companies that generally comply with government requests to block certain content a...

The planned controls, which were announced in a late night Facebook post, follow accusations that a flood of fake news stories influenced the U.S. presidential election. "The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously," wrote Zuckerberg. "We take this responsibility seriously. We've made significant progress, but there is more work to be done." The CEO said that Facebook (FB, Tech30) is working to develop stronger fake news detection, a warning system, easier reporting and technical ways to classify misinformation. Facebook has also been in contact with fact checking organizations. For Zuckerberg, it's a sharp reversal in tone from comments made in the immediate aftermath of the election. "I think the idea that fake news on Facebook -- of which it's a small amount of content -- influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea," he said last week. Zuckerberg has come under pressure to do more to fight the fake news ...

Mark Zuckerberg had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The Facebook founder suffered a $3 billion loss in the value of his Facebook stock on Thursday, one of the largest single-day losses ever for an individual investor. Facebook (FB, Tech30) shares plunged 5.5% after the chief financial officer warned investors that the company expects revenue growth from advertising to "come down meaningfully." Zuckerberg holds 418 million shares of Facebook stock -- still good for about $50.2 billion. Bloomberg estimates Zuckerberg's total net worth at $52.2 billion, ranking him as the fifth-richest man in the world, just behind Warren Buffett. And despite Thursday's plunge, Facebook shares are up nearly 15% for the year, lifting Zuckerberg's net worth by $6.4 billion.

Facebook’s Messenger is one of the most used messaging apps on the planet. And while there are plenty GIFs, stickers and photos to throw into your messages, sometimes you might just want to goof off and play a quick game with your friends. To that end, Facebook (FB) has included a few hidden games in Messenger. I’m talking about games that let you play basketball, soccer and chess against your friends while you’re waiting for a dentist appointment or in line at the grocery store. Here’s how to play. Basketball I’m a New York Mets and New York Giants fan, and since the Mets have been eliminated from the playoffs and the Giants already look like they’re destined for anything but the playoffs, I’m already looking forward to basketball season. Ideally, that would consist of my trash-talking my friends’ favorite teams and shooting hoops with them after work. But since I don’t always have the time to hit the court, and I don’t own any console sports games, Facebook’s basketball app give...

Want to know what people in Australia are doing while you’re at work? Or what the weather’s like in Portugal? Or what the club scene is like in the Philippines? Well, you’re in luck: Facebook just made doing all of that a lot easier with its new Facebook Live video map. Available via Facebook’s desktop site, the Live Video map shows you where people around the world are streaming public (but not private) videos via Facebook Live. Streams are displayed as blue dots with larger dots indicating streams with the most viewers. Hovering over a dot instantly launches its corresponding stream and shows you where people around the world are watching. So, if you hover over a popular British Live stream like Sky Sports, you’ll see lines pointing to places like South America, Germany, Japan and a host of other countries. Both the locations of streamers and viewers, however, are kept vague enough to protect their privacy. In fact, If you want to see streams from large cities like New York, for ...