Technology

Earlier today, Facebook said that it has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percentand using 100 percent renewable energy to power global operations at the social networking giant by the end of 2020.

So, while the company may have problems keeping foreign nationals from using the platform for influence operations (or garbage influencers from engaging in influence operations), at least they&ll be doing it with less of an effect on climate change.

Facebook gave itself a well-deserved pat on the back for its pace of acquiring renewable energy. The company bought over 3 gigawatts of new solar and wind energy since its first renewable energy purchase in 2013 (that includes 2.5 gigawatts in the past 12 months alone — a rate of acquisition that makes the intervening years look… well… kind of paltry).

Whatespecially good about the Facebook renewable purchases is that they&re not just offset agreements — deals where a company buys renewable energy in some far-flung geography to offset the power they&re buying in local markets that relies on traditional carbon-based fuel sources.

&All of these wind and solar projects are new and on the same grid as our data centers,& the company said. &That means that each of these projects brings jobs, investment and a healthier environment to the communities that host us — from Prineville, Oregon, and Los Lunas, New Mexico, to Henrico, Virginia, and Luleå, Sweden.&

The targets that Facebook is making public today are part of the companycommitment to the Paris Agreement through the &We Are Still In& initiative, the company said.

For Facebook, the announcement is something of a victory lap. Back in 2015, the company set a goal of having 50 percent of its power supplied to facilities from renewable energy sources by 2018. It actually hit that target in 2017.

No, itnot just you. Yes, Slack is having connectivity issues yet again. Though this time, they seem a bit less pronounced. I know we&re having some problems off and on, with different channels appearing offline. For the most part, however, communication is still up, so you probably won&t be able to convince your boss to take the rest of the day off. Sorry.

Slack acknowledged the problems on its status page, noting, &Folks are having troubles connecting to their workspaces. We&re looking into the cause and will have updates shortly.& The site experience similar issues earlier this month and back in June.

We&ll update shortly after those updates arrive shortly. Shortly.

Update: Things appear to be back to normal. Herethe full rundown from Slack,

On August 28, 2018 between 10:15amPDT and 10:59amPDT, Slack experienced a 44-minute outage where all users were unable to establish new connections to the Slack service. Users who were already connected to the service were able to remain connected during this time.

A configuration change at 10:15amPDT accessed incorrect settings and prevented service access for new connections. We reverted the configuration change at 10:59amPDT and new connections to the service were able to resume. We called the all clear at 11:23amPDT.

We are currently hard at work to scope preventative measures to ensure this does not happen in the future.

Instagram has introduced a wide-ranging set of new tools today with security and transparency in mind. In a blog post titled &New Tools to Keep Instagram Safe,& the company is announcing three significant updates: an &About This Account& section to provide users more context about accounts with large followings, a form through which accounts can request a coveted blue verified badge and support for third-party authenticator apps.

Instagramnew &About This Account& section is designed to give users more information that they can use when evaluating the legitimacy of an account. The feature will be available by tapping the menu button from an account with substantial reach and will provide information like when an account was created, the country in which it is based, accounts that share followers and a lineage of that accountusername changes over the last year.

The feature will also link accounts with large audiences to the Instagram ads they are running, a nod to recent conversations around ad transparency in light of Russian government-sponsored political ads and disinformation seeping into social platforms.

According to Instagram, &In September, people who have accounts that reach large audiences can review the information about their accounts that will soon be publicly available.& When that period is over, the About This Account tool will launch to users around the globe.

The second major Instagram change will offer accounts a path toward verification on the platform, standardizing a process thatgenerally been opaque. A blue verified badge can be requested through a userown profile by tapping the menu icon, choosing Settings, and &Request Verification.& Instagram will then review the request, asking users to &provide your account username, your full name and a copy of your legal or business identification,& information that will not be made available to the public.

Last but certainly not least, Instagram is adding support for third-party authenticator apps like Google Authenticator and DUO Mobile that provide more robust methods of two-factor authentication (2FA). The move is a long-anticipated effort to make Instagram more robust against threats to user accounts that target text-based 2FA, which is notoriously vulnerable to sim hijacking attacks.

&We&ve been focused on the safety of our platform since the very beginning, and todayupdates build upon our existing tools, such as our spam and abusive content filters and the ability to report or block accounts,& Instagram co-founder and CTO Mike Krieger said in a statement about the updates.

&We know we have more work to do to keep bad actors off Instagram, and we are committed to continuing to build more tools to do just that.&