Facebook Inc has begun hiding the number of “likes” for posts in Australia, it said yesterday, a trial designed to ease social pressure that could be rolled out worldwide.
Account holders across the country are also blocked from viewing the number of reactions and video views on other people’s posts. but will still be able to see how people respond to their own.
“We don’t want Facebook to feel like a competition,” the company said in a statement. “This is a test to see how people engage with this new format.”
“We hope to learn from this over time in order to see if we will roll this out more broadly,” it added.
More than 1 billion people use Facebook worldwide, but the social media giant has come under pressure to combat the platform’s impact on mental health.
In Australia, one in five children report experiencing cyberbullying, the nation’s eSafety commissioner said.
The problem received national attention last year when a 14-year-old girl — who starred in advertisements for a well-known Australian hat brand — killed herself after being bullied online.
Facebook’s decision comes after it launched a trial in July to hide “likes” on the company’s other major social media platform, Instagram. What began as a test on Instagram in Canada was expanded to Australia, Brazil and several other major markets.
The Facebook trial was described as “a limited test in order for us to get some early learnings.”
“While this has been testing on Instagram, Facebook and [Instagram] are different surfaces and we will likely see different data come from this test,” it said.
The news was met with a mix of “skepticism and appreciation” from cyberpsychology researcher Jocelyn Brewer, who welcomed Facebook’s review of the impact of “vanity metrics” on people’s wellbeing.
However, users will find other means to express a reaction, she added.
“As with many behaviors, I believe it is likely that people will adapt from liking to commenting and other actions that achieve online recognition and identity signalling,” Brewer said.
Facebook did not confirm how long the trial would run.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained