Facebook saw plenty of occasions during the time 2019, as the organization reported another logo and a total overhaul of its web applications and cell phones, its new, its new digital currency, Libra, which will
launch in mid-2020, in addition to focusing on privacy-oriented features.
On the other hand, there were also a good number of failures
experienced by the company throughout the year, perhaps the most prominent of
them: its applications stopped working many times during the month besides the fails to sustain the privacy security of the users.
We will introduce what major things Facebook had provided to
the end-users during 2019:
1- New changes to pre-delete pages or groups:
Facebook announced changes to the way it
handles removing content from pages that violate community standards, as well
as when the pages post material that external verification services classify as
false.
The company announced that, with this step,
it would make it difficult for people whose pages were closed due to violations
to return to new pages displaying or duplicating the same content, by
proactively blocking pages or groups in some cases by adding a new tab to pages
called (Page Quality), Where it will highlight content that was removed due to
a violation of the standards, and what was classified as false news.
2- Acquisition of GrokStyle company:
On February 8, Facebook announced
the acquisition of GrokStyle, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to
help shoppers find the furniture and home décor that works for them.
It is noteworthy that Facebook's
acquisition of GrokStyle comes within the framework of its endeavor to enhance
its work in the field of computer vision and artificial intelligence, in light
of the tremendous development in relying on smartphone cameras in augmented reality, especially in the field of shopping.
3- Launching the Dark Mode feature in Messenger app:
On March 4, Facebook launched the
"Dark Mode" feature in its messaging app, Messenger, on Android and
iOS.
4- Launching a gaming tab on mobile devices:
On March 14, Facebook announced the
addition of a new games tab to its mobile application called Facebook Games in
the main navigation bar between the Notifications and Viewing tabs, to make it
easier for users to explore, play, watch and share their gaming content.
The Facebook Gaming tab allows
users to easily play favorite games, search for new games to enjoy with
friends, find and follow videos from game companies and publishers, as well as
easily follow updates from game groups and communicate with other group members, all in one place.
5- Launching a new group chat feature in Messenger:
On March 20, Facebook announced the
launch of a new feature in the Messenger app that allows users to reply to a
specific message in group chats.
The company explained that by long
pressing on any message, a new option appears to reply, whereby the way to
reply to that message can be chosen, whether in text, GIF, video, emoji or even
a normal image.
6- A new feature on Facebook stories:
On May 9, Facebook launched a new
feature in the stories features to celebrate birthdays. It was called a birthday
stories, which is a way for friends and family to add digital birthday cards,
photos or videos to a story that disappears after 24 hours.
7- Launch the Study application:
On June 11, Facebook launched a new
application called Study for Research Purposes, which collects user data for
smartphone applications, the features they use within these applications, and
the time they spend on them, for a fee.
The company has indicated that this
application is only intended for users over the age of 18 years, and they will
receive financial compensation for the use of the application, and they can
choose not to participate, and remove the application at any time.
8- Launching the Facebook Pay service:
On November 12, Facebook launched
its Facebook Pay financial service to provide people with a comfortable,
secure, and consistent payment experience via Facebook, Messenger, Instagram,
and WhatsApp.
The company explained that users
can set up Facebook Pay for each application separately, or choose to set it up
for use across various applications. This means that the user will not have to
set up the service on the applications he activates automatically unless he
chooses it
9- Launch the Whale app:
On November 14, Facebook launched a new beta app called Whale to create memes (comics), and quickly share them to
other Facebook apps, like Instagram and Messenger. But the app is only released
to iOS users.
10- Launch of Off-Facebook Activity feature:
On August 20, Facebook launched a new feature called (Off-Facebook Activity), which allows the user to view and
control data that applications and websites share about your activity with
Facebook.
Once you clear your activity
outside of Facebook, the platform will remove your identifying information from
the data that applications and websites send it to it, and this means that
Facebook will not know the websites that you visited, or what you searched for,
so you will not see any targeted ads from those sites on Your accounts on
Facebook and Instagram.
11- A new tool to remind the dates of medical exams:
On October 28, Facebook launched a
new tool called Preventive Health, which aims to remind users of the dates of
medical exams, in a new step in the field of personal digital healthcare tools,
taking advantage of the huge user database that you own.
It is worth noting that Facebook
has also experienced some failures throughout the year which include:
1- Stop Facebook Moments:
On January 25, Facebook announced
the shutdown of the Facebook Moments app by February 25, 2019, which is a
standalone photo and video sharing app that launched nearly four years ago.
The company has decided to close
the application due to the decrease in the utilization rate, in addition to
that the application was not one of the company's priorities, and Facebook did not encourage fans to use it by introducing new features.
2- Turn off Onavo VPN app:
On February 22, Facebook announced
the discontinuation of the Onavo VPN app on the Android operating system, and
withdrew it from the Google Play Store, a year and a half after it withdrew the
iOS version of Apple's App Store.
This is because Facebook uses the
Onavo app to collect user data, as it allowed to monitor the time people spend
on it, phone data, and the wireless network (Wi-Fi) they use when running the
app, as well as the websites they visit. The company also reached the country
and user device model, and used all this data in market research.
3- Vulnerability on Messanger that allows users to be targeted:
On March 7, a security researcher
released a report explaining that a messenger application with a bug allowed
hackers to target users through their web browser to find out who they were
talking to on Messenger, regardless of whether or not they were on the Friends
list.
A company the spokesperson pointed out that the problem stems from the way web browsers deal with content included in web pages and not specific to Facebook.
4- Facebook applications stopped working for 12 hours:
On March 14, Facebook apologized to
users for the longest service interruption ever, as a technical error made many
users unable to access Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp
applications for at least 12 hours in most regions of the world and the biggest impact was in North America and Europe, According to DownDetector
The company refused to rely on the problem as a result of DDoS attack, and made it clear in a
tweet that the problem was the result of a change in server settings, and that
all problems were resolved.
It is worth noting that this is not
the only time during the year that Facebook services stopped working as it came
to the fact that the layoff occurred more than once during one month.
5- Exposing hundreds of millions of passwords to danger:
Security researcher (Brian Krebs)
revealed on March 21 that Facebook has exposed hundreds of millions of
passwords to danger, by storing for years up to 600 million passwords to the
The company's internal
investigation revealed large amounts of passwords stored in plain text, some of
which date back to 2012, and could have been accessed by up to 20,000 Facebook
employees. But the company indicated that it had modified the codes for
encrypting passwords immediately after the flaw was discovered, and there is no
need to change passwords for any user, as this was not published outside the server platforms beside that it was not approved that any of the employees had accessed this data.
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