Facebook

On a conference call after its earnings report Wednesday, Facebook CFO David Wehner spooked investors by talking up plans for "aggressive investment" in 2017 even as it expects sales growth to slow.

"We expect to see ad revenue growth rates come down meaningfully [in 2017]," Wehner said.

The reason: Facebook expects slower growth in "ad load," or the number of ads it can put in front of users.

Facebook director Patrick Walker was visiting Norway following a row about the banning of an iconic Vietnam War image on the grounds of nudity.

He said changes were being made but news images may still fall foul of its policies on appropriate material.

Espen Egil Hansen, of Aftenposten, said Facebook still had "a long way to go".

Facebook had originally said the "Napalm girl" photo breached its rules on nudity, when it was posted and then removed by a Norwegian author in September.

By Monday, hundreds of thousands of people had checked in at Standing Rock Indian Reservation on the social networking site.

But many of them weren't anywhere near the location where demonstrators have been picketing the controversial $3.7 billion pipeline.

A post circulating on Facebook gave one possible explanation for the surge in activity, claiming that the mass check-ins were organized to prevent local law enforcement from tracking protesters on social media.

The sheriff's department denied that accusation on Monday, calling it "absolutely false."

The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information said that the social network had not obtained effective approval from WhatsApp's 35 million German users.

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19bn (£14.6bn) in 2014 as a way to reach out to a younger audience.

It is to appeal against the order.

"We will work with the Hamburg DPA in an effort to address their questions and resolve any concerns," it said in a statement.

The data watchdog said that Facebook and WhatsApp were independent companies and should process their users' data as such.

The German chancellor said the secrecy around the algorithms used by online platforms threatened open debate.

Without greater scrutiny, many people could get a distorted or censored view of events, she said.

Google and Facebook told German paper Der Spiegel they gave the public a lot of information about how they worked.

Mrs Merkel's call for action follows work by German politicians to investigate how the software works.

'Informed citizens'

"We are already in an age where incredible amounts of people's personal data is online and that is rapidly increasing," says Joe Westby, a technology researcher for the human rights group.

Snapchat and Skype were much lower down the list and Westby warns that "there won't be any privacy in the future".

Part of the research looked at how open companies are to requests for data from governments.

Bereft of one, while it may win the military battle, it will ultimately lose the strategic war.

On Tuesday, the company introduced an endorsement feature, which means that users can now go to the Facebook page of any political official or candidate and endorse them.

This posts the endorsement on a user's profile page (as well as on the candidate's page if a user's account is fully public). People can opt to add an explanation about why they're making that endorsement.

No, Facebook hasn't changed its privacy settings.

No, what you post doesn't belong to Facebook now.

A note is doing the Facebook rounds, claiming -- yet again -- that you need to post a legal gobbledygook to your status or you'll lose copyright control of your pictures and other content you share with your family and friends.

Here's part of what you're supposed to post:

This first issue came into the limelight when Facebook promoted a false story about Megyn Kelly. Since then, very less has changed.