The spread of inaccuracies on social media – including political “fake news,” and misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines – has led to a plethora of problems in areas as disparate as politics and public health. To combat the spread of false and misleading information, MIT Sloan School Professor David Rand and his colleagues have been […]
Ethical Tech
Privacy campaign groups filed legal complaints Thursday with European regulators against Clearview AI, alleging the facial recognition technology it provides to law enforcement agencies and businesses breaches stringent European Union privacy rules. Four groups complained to data protection authorities in France, Austria, Greece, Italy and the U.K. about Clearview’s practices. They say the company stockpiled […]
The District of Columbia has sued Amazon, accusing the online retail giant of anticompetitive practices in its treatment of sellers on its platform. The practices have raised prices for consumers and stifled innovation and choice in the online retail market, the DC attorney general alleges in an antitrust suit. The suit filed Tuesday in the […]
Amazon said Tuesday that it will extend its ban on police use of its face-recognition technology beyond the one-year pause it announced last year. Amazon and other technology companies have been under pressure from civil rights activists and their own workers to halt the sale of face-recognition systems to law enforcement agencies. One concern is […]
Two years after a white supremacist in New Zealand livestreamed the slaughter of 51 Muslim worshippers on Facebook, French President Emmanuel Macron says the internet continues to be be used by terrorists as a weapon to propagate hate. Macron and other leaders from tech giants and governments around the world — including the U.S. for […]
Popular Chinese video-sharing app TikTok announced earlier last week that it has joined the Technology Coalition, an organization that works to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse. The social media mammoth joins a setlist of Big Tech names enrolled in the organization such as Adobe, Amazon, Apple Inc., Discord, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Facebook […]
Microsoft is pledging to let business and public sector customers in the European Union keep cloud computing data inside the 27-nation bloc to avert concerns about U.S. government access to sensitive information. Microsoft “will go beyond our existing data storage commitments and enable you to process and store all your data in the EU,” said […]
Risky uses of artificial intelligence that threaten people’s safety or rights such as live facial scanning should be banned or tightly controlled, European Union officials said Wednesday as they outlined an ambitious package of proposed regulations to rein in the rapidly expanding technology. The draft regulations from the EU’s executive commission include rules for applications […]
A House subcommittee is investigating YouTube Kids, saying the Google-owned video service feeds children inappropriate material in “a wasteland of vapid, consumerist content” so it can serve them ads. The inquiry comes despite Google agreeing to pay $170 million in 2019 to settle allegations that YouTube collected personal data on children without their parents’ consent. […]
The CEOs of tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google faced a grilling in Congress Thursday as lawmakers tried to draw them into acknowledging their companies’ roles in fueling the January insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and rising COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. In a hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, lawmakers pounded Facebook CEO Mark […]