Facebook

It has quietly built a censorship tool that would keep certain posts out of people's news feeds, according to The New York Times.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made no secret of his desire to get the giant social network unblocked in the world's most populous nation.

The social network refused to confirm or deny the software's existence, but said in a statement it was "spending time understanding and learning more" about China.

No decisions about the company's approach in the country had yet been made, a spokeswoman said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group which campaigns for better privacy online, told the BBC the project sounded "extremely disturbing".

"Kudos to the Facebook employees who brought this to the attention of the New York Times," said the EFF's global policy analyst Eva Galperin.

It will hire 500 additional employees, including engineers, marketers, project managers and sales staff.

"The UK remains one of the best places to be a tech company," said its London-based executive, Nicola Mendelsohn.

Facebook's new headquarters will be in Fitzrovia at a site that is currently undergoing redevelopment.

The majority of the new staff will be based there.

Ms Mendelsohn will announce the expansion at the Confederation of British Industry conference later.

'High-skilled jobs'

It seems so simple, but if everyone knew that, Facebook and Google wouldn't have to pull bogus news sites from their advertising algorithms and people wouldn't breathlessly share stories that claim Donald Trump is a secret lizard person or Hillary Clinton is an android in a pantsuit.

It doesn't have to be this way. Fake news is actually really easy to spot -- if you know how. Consider this your New Media Literacy Guide.

Benji Shomair, Facebook’s global head of Pages, described the new functionality as “one of our most frequent requests.”

Previously, if a businesses wanted to respond to customers on Facebook and Instagram, they had to open separate apps — an increasing challenge as more and more of their communication is happening on social media. (Facebook says Pages alone are seeing “nearly 5 billion comments, messages and visitor posts” each month.)

“There were some people even carrying multiple phones so that they can quickly respond to all the different things coming in,” he added.

Something about a picture of him celebrating his 60th birthday this month caught the attention of Facebook's monitors.

The image was removed from the social media site two times after Gustavson's friend posted it.

Amid widespread backlash, the social media site has apologized for taking down the picture, saying it was "removed in error."

"We have corrected the problem and notified the person who posted it to let them know and apologize," the company said.

In a post on his personal profile, he said he was "cautious" not to make Facebook an "arbiter of truth" but said the company was testing new tools to flag hoax content.

So, what's the problem?

"Facebook's algorithm prioritises the popular, it doesn't know how to distinguish between real and not real," said Kate Bevan, a technology writer and broadcaster.

Its size and scope also make it one of the top targets of the notorious hackers who keep looking for any opportunity to breach data. To avoid such mishaps and scandals, Facebook tries to take every possible measure.

At the Web Summit 2016 tech conference in Portugal, the blue network’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, told how safety is bigger than security. In the wake of the recent data breaches and hacks, he said, “It turns out that we can build perfectly secure software and yet people can still get hurt.”

The error on Friday caused the social network to show a memorial banner on user profiles for people who were still alive.

Users posted status updates to reassure friends and family they were not dead, despite Facebook's message.

"This was a terrible error that we have now fixed," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We are very sorry that this happened."

The message, intended for "memorialised profiles", erroneously appeared on the profile pages of a large number of users - including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaking on stage at Techonomy, a technology conference in California, Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook should not be held responsible.

"The idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea," he said.

"If you believe that then I don't think you have internalized the message Trump supporters are trying to send in this election."