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US lawsuit alleges tool used by hospitals shares patient data with Meta

Booking appointments and other interactions with hospital portals can lead to some medical details being shared for advertising, class action claims

Lindsay Clark Mon 20 Jun 2022 // 14:06 UTC

Social media megacorp Meta is the target of a class action suit which claims potentially thousands of medical details of hospital patients were shared with its Facebook brand.
The proposed class action [PDF], filed on Friday, centers on the use of Facebook Pixel, a tool for website marketing and analytics.
An anonymous hospital patient, named John Doe in court papers, is bringing the case — filed in the Northern District of California — alleging Facebook has received patient data from at least 664 hospital systems or medical providers, per the suit.

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Meta: We need 5x more GPUs to combat TikTok, stat

And 30% fewer new engineers this year

Dylan Martin Thu 30 Jun 2022 // 22:30 UTC

Comment Facebook parent Meta has reportedly said it needs to increase its fleet of datacenter GPUs fivefold to help it compete against short-form video app and perennial security concern TikTok.
The oft-controversial tech giant needs these hardware accelerators in its servers by the end of the year to power its so-called discovery engine that will become the center of future social media efforts, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters that was written by Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox.
Separately, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Meta staff on Thursday in a weekly Q&A the biz had planned to hire 10,000 engineers this year, and this has now been cut to between 6,000 and 7,000 in the shadow of an economic downturn. He also said some open positions would be removed, and pressure will be placed on the performance of those staying at the corporation.

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Alibaba spins out a biz to productize home-grown data tools

Business intelligence and analytics as a service, for marketers and techies

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Thu 30 Jun 2022 // 06:38 UTC

Chinese tech giant Alibaba has spun out a business called Lingyang Intelligent Service Company that aims to deliver "data-as-a-service."
Lingyang starts its life with assets adapted from tools developed for Alibaba’s own extensive operations, which span e-commerce, a public cloud, logistics, web portals, payments, and plenty more besides.
The Chinese company has over 1.3 billion annual active customers – more than a billion in China. Serving all those customers – and their many transactions – has necessitated development of some pretty slick tools.

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Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

As industry and governments push to get workers crammed into commuter trains, glass box edifices, tech boss says: 'Why?'

Lindsay Clark Fri 24 Jun 2022 // 13:30 UTC

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has doubled down on his company's stance on working from home and flexible working, that great pandemic debate.
Following widespread WFH enforced by global COVID-19-related lockdowns, opinion is divided between those welcoming the new normal of work-where-you-like and those who see numbers coming through the office door as a proxy for productivity.
Those in the latter camp include Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon – who has taken several opportunities to insist that his staff get back to the office full time – and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who insisted the temptation of coffee and cheese presented a serious threat to the nation's post-Brexit economic success.

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Meta agrees to tweak ad system after US govt brands it discriminatory

And pay the tiniest of fines, too

Katyanna Quach Thu 23 Jun 2022 // 01:27 UTC

Facebook parent Meta has settled a complaint brought by the US government, which alleged the internet giant's machine-learning algorithms broke the law by blocking certain users from seeing online real-estate adverts based on their nationality, race, religion, sex, and marital status.
Specifically, Meta violated America's Fair Housing Act, which protects people looking to buy or rent properties from discrimination, it was claimed; it is illegal for homeowners to refuse to sell or rent their houses or advertise homes to specific demographics, and to evict tenants based on their demographics.
This week, prosecutors sued Meta in New York City, alleging the mega-corp's algorithms discriminated against users on Facebook by unfairly targeting people with housing ads based on their "race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, and national origin."

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Metaverse progress update: Some VR headset prototypes nowhere near shipping

But when it does work, bet you'll fall over yourselves to blow ten large on designer clobber for your avy

Brandon Vigliarolo Mon 20 Jun 2022 // 18:24 UTC

Facebook owner Meta's pivot to the metaverse is drawing significant amounts of resources: not just billions in case, but time. The tech giant has demonstrated some prototype virtual-reality headsets that aren't close to shipping and highlight some of the challenges that must be overcome.
The metaverse is CEO Mark Zuckerberg's grand idea of connected virtual worlds in which people can interact, play, shop, and work. For instance, inhabitants will be able to create avatars to represent themselves, wearing clothes bought using actual money – with designer gear going for five figures.
Apropos of nothing, Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is leaving the biz.

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Consultant plays Metaverse MythBuster. Here's why they're wrong

Holograms, brands, NFTs, and a 1,000-consumer survey

Richard Currie Thu 16 Jun 2022 // 09:42 UTC

Opinion Consulting giant McKinsey & Company has been playing a round of MythBusters: Metaverse Edition.
Though its origins lie in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, the metaverse has been heavily talked about in business circles as if it's a real thing over the last year or so, peaking with Facebook's Earth-shattering rebrand to Meta in October 2021.
The metaverse, in all but name, is already here and has been for some time in the realm of online video games. However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vision of it is not.

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Meta mostly fails in appeal against order from UK watchdog to sell Giphy

Might have been a good idea to mention that Snap was sniffing around GIF biz, too, judges note, though

Katyanna Quach Wed 15 Jun 2022 // 08:45 UTC

Judges in the UK have dismissed the majority of an appeal made by Facebook parent Meta to overturn a watchdog's decision to order the social media giant to sell Giphy for antitrust reasons.
Facebook acquired GIF-sharing biz Giphy in May 2020. But Blighty's Competition Markets Authority (CMA) wasn't happy with the $400 million deal, arguing it gave Mark Zuckerberg's empire way too much control over the distribution of a lot of GIFs. After the CMA launched an official probe investigating the acquisition last June, it ordered Meta to sell Giphy to prevent Facebook from potentially monopolizing access to the animated images.
Meta appealed the decision to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), arguing six grounds. All but one of them – known as Ground 4 – were dismissed by the tribunal's judges this week. And even then only one part of Ground 4 was upheld: the second element.

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Microsoft CRM tool to pull sales data from email, Teams calls, Office 365

Out-of-the-box integration with Salesforce and Dynamics: SAP, Oracle CRM customers must wait

Lindsay Clark Thu 16 Jun 2022 // 12:30 UTC

Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, and Teams are set to automatically load data in Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRMs using a product launched by the Redmond-based software and cloud giant today.
Dubbed Viva Sales, the product is built on the employee experience platform Microsoft Viva — launched last year — and is designed to let sales teams tag customers in Outlook, Teams or Office applications to allow data to be captured as a customer record in the CRM system.
Currently available on preview, the product syncs with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamic CRM out of the box, but customers of Oracle and SAP CRM product will have to wait for sufficient customer demand before Microsoft integrates the system with their sales software, Emily He, Microsoft corporate VP for business applications marketing, told The Register.

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Cisco dials back on hiring, cool winds blow through economy

'I think it is a time for everyone to be prudent' says networking giant's CFO

Paul Kunert Thu 16 Jun 2022 // 13:01 UTC

Networking kingpin Cisco is hiring more cautiously to indicate that it, like many peers, is taking note of macroeconomic red flags.
"It's a time to be prudent," Richard Scott Herren, Cisco senior veep and chief financial officer told the Nasdaq Investor Conference. "I think it is a time for everyone to be prudent… so we're doing the same."
The hot spots – or the "highest priority items for us" – including security, will continue to see investments in headcount, he said.

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