Instagram has notified some of its users that their password might have been exposed due to a security bug, according to The Information (via Engadget). A spokesperson for the company says that the issue was “discovered internally and affected a very small number of people.”

Sweet, wide-eyed Mark Zuckerberg swears he didn’t know anything. The Facebook CEO was shocked and appalled at the conduct of his company, he told reporters on a conference call Thursday, responding to a bombshell New York Times report that Facebook hired a D.C. opposition research firm called Definers Public Affairs which proceeded to undertake all manner of ethically fraught actions on its behalf.

Facebook hired a PR firm that attempted to discredit the company’s critics by claiming they were agents of the billionaire George Soros, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Soros is a Jewish philanthropist who is the frequent subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories. At the same time, the social media company urged the Anti-Defamation League to object to a cartoon used by anti-Facebook protesters over its resemblance to antisemitic tropes.

Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, has responded to the 6,000-word New York Times exposé on the company’s chaotic leadership. In a Facebook post on Thursday, Sandberg joined CEO Mark Zuckerberg in saying she had been unaware of Facebook’s involvement with a public-relations firm called Definers Public Affairs, which The Times said disseminated research to journalists linking the billionaire George Soros to anti-Facebook movements.

So by now most people have probably read the New York Times deep dive into what can only be described as Facebook's deep well of internal dysfunction and self delusion. While there's a lot of interesting bits in the piece, one portion that...

Facebook has endured scandal after scandal in the past two years. This one feels different. The New York Times published a jaw-dropping report Wednesday that laid out how the company sought to cover up knowledge of Russian meddling and discredit its critics; the paper said COO Sheryl Sandberg oversaw a campaign of dirty tricks while CEO Mark Zuckerberg ignored problems or deflected responsibility. And in short order, once-implausible questions about whether Zuckerberg would fire Sandberg or policy VP Joel Kaplan have become plausible.

For more than a year, Facebook has endured cascading crises — over Russian misinformation, data privacy and abusive content — that transformed the Silicon Valley icon into an embattled giant accused of corporate overreach and negligence. An investigation by The New York Times revealed how Facebook fought back against its critics: with delays, denials and a full-bore campaign in Washington. Here are six takeaways.

Facebook is, once again, a political piñata. In the aftermath of a New York Times story that meticulously revealed Facebook’s cloddish response to the disinformation and hacking campaigns around the 2016 election, the company is battling renewed criticism from Washington, D.C. It’s not like Facebook has had much of a break — though after both Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg testified extensively before Congress, you might think that the...

Russian meddling, data sharing, hate speech — the social network faced one scandal after another. This is how Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg responded.

Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of Reddit and Initialized Capital, talks to CNN's Samuel Burke about concerns facing the tech industry - including sexual harassment, hate speech and gender equality.

The Times bombshell confirms what many inside the tech industry already knew: Sandberg is a brilliant, transformative figure—but she’s also a ruthless executive and indefatigable political animal.

Facebook faces a new controversy over alleged tactics it used to discredit its critics, embarrass rival firms and downplay problems at the company. The New York Times has published a wide-ranging account of the methods Facebook and a public relations firm used to "deny and deflect" criticism. The report has led US lawmakers to call for tighter regulation of social networks. Facebook has denied several of the claims.

Facebook’s proposed technology would analyze your #wifey tags, shared IP addresses, and photos to predict whom you live with.

Liberal philanthropist George Soros has called on Facebook to initiate an independent, internal investigation of its lobbying and public relations work.

An MIT professor argues that misinformation boils down to one simple thing: mental laziness, exacerbated by social media.

If verified users with huge followings can’t get Twitter to stop abuse, what hope does everyone else have?

Opinion: It had nothing to with politics and a lot to do with losing a $500 million lawsuit for stealing intellectual property.

Hustle is everywhere, but it isn’t just hard work -- it’s showing that you’re working hard.

In a small town in Mexico, a story on social media drove a mob to murder. But it was fake. By Marcos Martínez.

One of the mysteries of Facebook is that whenever public sentiment about the company feels most mixed, it delivers smashing results for Wall Street that keep any social consequences from depressing the company’s share price. This was true even during the depths of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which began with a major price drop and ended with Facebook at a new all-time high, $209.94 a share, ahead of its earnings announcement in mid-July.

If you haven't read The New York Times' blockbuster 6,000-word opus on how Facebook has dealt with a sequence of scandals, it's a worthwhile investment of your time. Based on interviews with 50 people, it is rich with devastating anecdotes and mini-scandals. In its own right, the black-ops mission to cast George Soros as the puppet master behind an anti-Facebook movement is startling and disturbing.

Instagram co-founder and former CEO Kevin Systrom said it is important for the future of the world that social media companies be policed well and seriously address the issues of misinformation and harassment on their services. Systrom said Russian meddling in U.S. elections and the exploitation of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica have highlighted just how big social media companies have become and the implications of their reach.

Facebook has had a turbulent two years. But almost no one in tech thinks Mr. Zuckerberg, the social network’s chief executive, should step down from the company he built.

Food for thought

The perpetrators told the BBC Russian Service they had details from a total of 120 million accounts.

People are sharing their deepest secrets on Facebook. Does the social network understand what it’s gotten into?

Limiting the utilization of social media Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat directly leads to reductions in loneliness and depression, per a recent study revealed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The study is titled “No more FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression,” and as a part of it, researchers determined 143 college boy students over 3 weeks.

Influencers are so 2014. And microinfluencers are so last week. Now advertisers see value in people with as few as 1,000 followers: the nanoinfluencers.

Remember when not every single thing you put on Facebook was shown to all of your friends? With any and every change you make showing up in everyone’s mini-feed, and with anyone able to obtain a Facebook account, it’s hard to keep anything private anymore.

Twitter is planning to remove the ability to "like" tweets in a radical move that aims to improve the quality of debate on the social network.

Total global user numbers continue to slowly rise, with more than 2.2bn people using the platform every month

Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers regularly posted anti-Semitic content on the social media site

Genevieve, 37, was online the other day when she got a friend request from her college boyfriend on Facebook. Through her profile, he found out where she worked and soon called her at the office to catch up. This married father of three proceeded to tell Genevieve how much he had thought of her over …

His job is like no other in history. It's time we start treating him that way.