Search results for "misinformation"

Google says Australian law on paying for news is unworkable

A Google executive said on Friday that a proposed Australian law to make digital platforms pay for news was unworkable and its proposed arbitration model was biased toward media businesses. Google Australia and New Zealand Managing Director Mel Silva made her first public comments on the details of the proposed legislation since it was introduced […]

Twitter, Facebook CEOs vow election action; GOP touts curbs

As the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook gave assurances of vigorous action against election disinformation, Republicans at a Senate hearing Tuesday pounded the social media companies over political bias, business practices and market dominance, laying the ground for curbs on their long-held legal protections. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg defended at the Senate […]

3 social media CEOs face grilling by GOP senators on bias

The CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google are facing a grilling by Republican senators making unfounded allegations that the tech giants show anti-conservative bias. The Senate Commerce Committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing Wednesday. The executives agreed to appear remotely after being […]

The latest COVID-19 information hub

The World Health Organization and the nonprofit administration of Wikipedia have announced their commitment towards making critical COVID-19 information accessible to everyone. The latest collaboration between the two organizations will ensure equitable, free, and available information amidst the ongoing pandemic. The information will be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. This allows any outside […]

Facebook demands academics disable ad-targeting data tool

Academics, journalists and First Amendment lawyers are rallying behind New York University researchers in a showdown with Facebook over its demand that they halt the collection of data showing who is being micro-targeted by political ads on the world’s dominant social media platform. The researchers say the disputed tool is vital to understanding how Facebook […]

Is Facebook really ready for the 2020 election?

Ever since Russian agents and other opportunists abused its platform in an attempt to manipulate the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook has insisted — repeatedly — that it’s learned its lesson and is no longer a conduit for misinformation, voter suppression and election disruption. But it has been a long and halting journey for the […]

Why tech giants limited the spread of NY Post story on Biden

When Facebook and Twitter moved quickly this week to limit the spread of an unverified political story published by the conservative-leaning New York Post, it led to predictable cries of censorship from the right. But it also illustrated the slippery hold even the largest tech companies have on the flow of information, particularly in the […]

Microsoft attempts takedown of global criminal botnet

Microsoft announced legal action Monday seeking to disrupt a major cybercrime digital network that uses more than 1 million zombie computers to loot bank accounts and spread ransomware, which experts consider a major threat to the U.S. presidential election. The operation to knock offline command-and-control servers for a global botnet that uses an infrastructure known […]

Twitter tightens limits on candidates ahead of US election

Twitter is imposing tough new rules that restrict candidates from declaring premature victory and tighten its measures against spreading misinformation, calling for political violence and spreading thoughtless commentary in the days leading up to and following the Nov. 3 U.S. election. The social platform will remove tweets that encourage violence or call for people to […]

2020 racks up highest number of cyberattacks to date

In a year where companies far and wide shifted their business to remote operations due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it comes as no surprise that cyberattacks and data breaches have drastically increased during 2020. According to a report published by Kaspersky there have been almost 726 million confirmed cyberattacks since the beginning of the year; […]