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Category: Social media

Companies use your data to make money. California thinks you should get paid

Companies use your data to make money. California thinks you should get paid

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CNN reported in February: People give massive amounts of their personal data to companies for free every day. Some economists, academics and activists think they should be paid for their contributions. Called data dividends, or sometimes digital or technology dividends, the somewhat obscure idea got a boost on Feb 12 from an unexpected source: California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom. “California’s consumers should … be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data. And so I’ve asked…

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Facebook backtracks after removing Warren ads calling for Facebook breakup

Facebook backtracks after removing Warren ads calling for Facebook breakup

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Politico reports: Facebook removed several ads placed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign that called for the breakup of Facebook and other tech giants. But the social network later reversed course after POLITICO reported on the takedown, with the company saying it wanted to allow for “robust debate.” The ads, which had identical images and text, touted Warren’s recently announced plan to unwind “anti-competitive” tech mergers, including Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. “Three companies have vast power over our…

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Obscure group promoting no-deal Brexit is UK’s biggest political spender on Facebook

Obscure group promoting no-deal Brexit is UK’s biggest political spender on Facebook

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The Guardian reports: The single biggest known British political advertiser on Facebook is a mysterious pro-Brexit campaign group pushing for a no-deal exit from the EU. The revelation about Britain’s Future, which has never disclosed the source of its funding or organisational structure, has raised concerns about the influence of “dark money” in British politics. The little-known campaign group has spent more than £340,000 on Facebook adverts backing a hard Brexit since the social network began publishing lists of political…

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Zuckerberg’s so-called shift toward privacy

Zuckerberg’s so-called shift toward privacy

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Zeynep Tufekci writes: I was tempted to roll my eyes on Wednesday when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, posted a manifesto outlining his plan to make social networking more “privacy-focused” and less about the public disclosure of information. Why take seriously someone who has repeatedly promised — but seldom delivered — improvements to Facebook’s privacy practices? This is a company, after all, that signed a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission agreeing to improve how it handles the personal…

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The traumatic lives of Facebook moderators in America

The traumatic lives of Facebook moderators in America

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The Verge reports: On May 3, 2017, Mark Zuckerberg announced the expansion of Facebook’s “community operations” team. The new employees, who would be added to 4,500 existing moderators, would be responsible for reviewing every piece of content reported for violating the company’s community standards. By the end of 2018, in response to criticism of the prevalence of violent and exploitative content on the social network, Facebook had more than 30,000 employees working on safety and security — about half of…

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India and Pakistan are already at war on truth

India and Pakistan are already at war on truth

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Pankaj Mishra writes: In the predawn hours on Feb. 26, India launched an aerial attack — unprecedented in peacetime — on neighboring Pakistan, in retaliation for a suicide bombing 12 days earlier that killed more than 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers in the disputed valley of Kashmir. Pakistan predictably responded the next morning with its own air strike into Indian-controlled Kashmir. The confrontation could spiral out of control quickly. But fortunately, apart from a wounded Indian pilot and a Pakistani villager…

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‘Sustained and ongoing’ disinformation assault targets Democratic presidential candidates

‘Sustained and ongoing’ disinformation assault targets Democratic presidential candidates

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Politico reports: A wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020 candidates is already underway on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity. The main targets appear to be Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), four of the most prominent announced or prospective candidates for president. A POLITICO review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms, as well…

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Facebook described as ‘digital gangsters’ in British parliamentary report

Facebook described as ‘digital gangsters’ in British parliamentary report

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The Guardian reports: Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation, according to a devastating parliamentary report denouncing the company and its executives as “digital gangsters”. The final report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections. “Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of…

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Latest hack proves Facebook’s a dangerous monopoly that a fine won’t fix

Latest hack proves Facebook’s a dangerous monopoly that a fine won’t fix

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Sarah Miller and David Segal write: Facebook is too big to control. That simple reality becomes clearer with each passing day. The most recent example is the news this past Friday of a security breach that allowed hackers to access at least 50 million accounts; earlier that week, Facebook admitted to sharing phone numbers users provided to improve their account security with advertisers. Over the past year, the social media giant has experienced scandals like these on a regular basis,…

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AI that writes convincing prose risks mass-producing fake news

AI that writes convincing prose risks mass-producing fake news

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MIT Technology Review reports: Here’s some breaking fake news … Russia has declared war on the United States after Donald Trump accidentally fired a missile in the air. Russia said it had “identified the missile’s trajectory and will take necessary measures to ensure the security of the Russian population and the country’s strategic nuclear forces.” The White House said it was “extremely concerned by the Russian violation” of a treaty banning intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The US and Russia have had…

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Regulate social media now. The future of democracy is at stake

Regulate social media now. The future of democracy is at stake

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Anne Applebaum writes: A few days ago, ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, discovered that a tool it was using to track political advertising on Facebook had been quietly disabled — by Facebook. The browser extension had detected political ad campaigns and gathered details on the ads’ target audiences. Facebook also tracks political ad campaigns, but sometimes it fails to detect them. For the past year, the company had accepted corrections from ProPublica — until one day it decided it didn’t…

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Older, right-leaning Twitter users spread the most fake news in 2016, study finds

Older, right-leaning Twitter users spread the most fake news in 2016, study finds

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The Washington Post reports: The notion that fake news exists in its own universe turns out to be doubly true: One universe is the realm outside truth. The other is its own seedy pocket of social media. In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, political scientists surveyed the inhabitants of this Internet pocket around the time of the last presidential election, from Aug. 1 to Dec. 6, 2016. They found that people who shared fake news were…

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The plot against George Soros

The plot against George Soros

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Hannes Grassegger writes: The glass tower that houses George Soros’s office in Manhattan is overflowing with numbers on screens, tracking and predicting the directions of markets around the world. But there’s one that’s particularly hard to figure out — a basic orange chart on a screen analyzing sentiment on social media. The data, updated regularly since 2017, projects the reactions on the internet to the name George Soros. He gets tens of thousands of mentions per week — almost always…

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Why do people fall for fake news?

Why do people fall for fake news?

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Gordon Pennycook and David Rand write: What makes people susceptible to fake news and other forms of strategic misinformation? And what, if anything, can be done about it? These questions have become more urgent in recent years, not least because of revelations about the Russian campaign to influence the 2016 United States presidential election by disseminating propaganda through social media platforms. In general, our political culture seems to be increasingly populated by people who espouse outlandish or demonstrably false claims…

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Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to always be happy

Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to always be happy

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CNBC reports: At a company-wide town hall in early October, numerous Facebook employees got in line to speak about their experiences with sexual harassment. The company called the special town hall after head of policy Joel Kaplan caused an internal uproar for appearing at the congressional hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. A young female employee was among those who got up to speak, addressing her comments directly to COO Sheryl Sandberg. “I was reticent to speak, Sheryl, because the pressure…

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Apocalypse in America: The smell of fascism in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy

Apocalypse in America: The smell of fascism in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy

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Alexander Reid Ross writes: Emerging from the fever swamps of 4Chan and YouTube in November 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory community has spread rapidly from the lunatic fringe to the lunatic mainstream. Some commentators suggest it has all the hallmarks of a secular political cult. It promises ultimate salvation to its followers – the creation of a utopia of human togetherness, peace and love, brought about through a brutal military crackdown against the “Deep State.” And although it may seem…

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