Morning Update: Facebook’s new chatbots; The Guardian targets trolls; Aunt Flo shakes up sanitary ads; Buzzfeed $80m under target

Facebook will now allow businesses to deliver automated customer support, ecommerce guidance, content, and interactive experiences through chatbots. By providing utility through its huge developer and business ecosystem, Facebook could boost loyalty with Messenger, one-up SMS, and keep up chat competitors like Kik, Line and Telegram that have their own bot platforms.

This confirms TechCrunch’s scoops from February that Facebook was working with chatbot developers, and last week that a program for automated agents would launch at F8. [Update: the official name for the platform is “bots on Messenger”, not “agents on Messenger”, which was a previous codename].