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Category: Social media

How merchants use Facebook to flood Amazon with fake reviews

How merchants use Facebook to flood Amazon with fake reviews

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The Washington Post reports: On Amazon, customer comments can help a product surge in popularity. The online retail giant says that more than 99 percent of its reviews are legitimate because they are written by real shoppers who aren’t paid for them. But a Washington Post examination found that for some popular product categories, such as Bluetooth headphones and speakers, the vast majority of reviews appear to violate Amazon’s prohibition on paid reviews. Such reviews have certain characteristics, such as…

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The internet promised utopia and instead gave us Trump

The internet promised utopia and instead gave us Trump

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Noah Kulwin writes: To keep the internet free — while becoming richer, faster, than anyone in history — the technological elite needed something to attract billions of users to the ads they were selling. And that something, it turns out, was outrage. As Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in virtual reality, points out, anger is the emotion most effective at driving “engagement” — which also makes it, in a market for attention, the most profitable one. By creating a self-perpetuating loop…

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America’s first reality TV war

America’s first reality TV war

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Micah Zenko writes: One year after launching a limited strike against the Syrian government to deter future chemical weapons attacks, U.S. President Donald Trump did the same thing again Friday night. Within 12 hours, the Pentagon judged the operation as being “very successful,” which was a given since the three above-ground facilities were assuredly monitored for years and situated in a relatively low-threat air defense environment. The ability of a $700 billion military to destroy static targets is unremarkable. What…

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Facebook is able to ‘collect information from all of us’

Facebook is able to ‘collect information from all of us’

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The New York Times reports: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, went to Capitol Hill this week to explain to members of Congress how the detailed personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of a voter-profiling company called Cambridge Analytica. What Mr. Zuckerberg got instead, as he testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday, was a grilling about Facebook’s own data-mining practices. Representative Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, for one,…

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Zuckerberg gaslights Congress

Zuckerberg gaslights Congress

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Kevin Poulsen writes: Facebook was warned five years ago that the “reverse-lookup” feature in its search engine could be used to harvest names, profiles, and phone numbers for virtually all its users. But the company ignored the red flags until last week, after it happened. In prepared testimony to Congress released Monday, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that malefactors had used the reverse-lookup “to link people’s public Facebook information to a phone number,” he wrote (PDF). “When we found out about the…

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Two-thirds of tweets linking to popular websites come from bots, not humans

Two-thirds of tweets linking to popular websites come from bots, not humans

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Pew Research Center reports: The role of so-called social media “bots” – automated accounts capable of posting content or interacting with other users with no direct human involvement – has been the subject of much scrutiny and attention in recent years. These accounts can play a valuable part in the social media ecosystem by answering questions about a variety of topics in real time or providing automated updates about news stories or events. At the same time, they can also…

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Regulating the invisible ecosystem where thousands of firms possess data on billions of people

Regulating the invisible ecosystem where thousands of firms possess data on billions of people

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Jonathan Zittrain writes: Currently there is no way for us to retract information that previously seemed harmless to share. Once tied to our identities, data about us can be part of our permanent record in the hands of whoever has it — and whomever they share it with, voluntarily or otherwise. The Cambridge Analytica data set from Facebook is itself but a lake within an ocean, a clarifying example of a pervasive but invisible ecosystem where thousands of firms possess…

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Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data

Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data

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CNBC reports: Facebook has asked several major U.S. hospitals to share anonymized data about their patients, such as illnesses and prescription info, for a proposed research project. Facebook was intending to match it up with user data it had collected, and help the hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment. The proposal never went past the planning phases and has been put on pause after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal raised public concerns over how…

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Mark Zuckerberg’s exceptional ability to retract his own words

Mark Zuckerberg’s exceptional ability to retract his own words

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TechCrunch reports: You can’t remove Facebook messages from the inboxes of people you sent them to, but Facebook did that for Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspiculously remain. An email receipt of a Facebook message from 2010 reviewed by TechCrunch proves Zuckerberg sent people messages that no longer appear in their Facebook chat logs or…

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Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook, Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters

Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook, Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters

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Center for Responsive Politics reports: As the final weeks of the 2016 elections ticked down, voters in swing states like Nevada and North Carolina began seeing eerie promotional travel ads as they scrolled through their Facebook feeds or clicked through Google sites. In one, a woman with a French accent cheerfully welcomes visitors to the “Islamic State of France,” where “under Sharia law, you can enjoy everything the Islamic State of France has to offer, as long as you follow…

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Facebook said the personal data of most of its 2 billion users has been collected and shared with outsiders

Facebook said the personal data of most of its 2 billion users has been collected and shared with outsiders

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The Washington Post reports: Facebook said Wednesday that most of its 2 billion users likely have had their public profiles scraped by outsiders without the users’ explicit permission, dramatically raising the stakes in a privacy controversy that has dogged the company for weeks, spurred investigations in the United States and Europe, and sent the company’s stock price tumbling. The acknowledgment was part of a broader disclosure by Facebook on Wednesday about the ways in which various levels of user data…

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As Malaysia moves to ban ‘fake news,’ worries about who decides the truth

As Malaysia moves to ban ‘fake news,’ worries about who decides the truth

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The New York Times reports: In highway billboards and radio announcements, the government of Malaysia is warning of a new enemy: “fake news.” On Monday, the lower house of Parliament passed a bill outlawing fake news, the first measure of its kind in the world. The proposal, which allows for up to six years in prison for publishing or circulating misleading information, is expected to pass the Senate this week and to come into effect soon after. The legislation would…

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Russian bots are tweeting their support of embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham

Russian bots are tweeting their support of embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham

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The Washington Post reports: Embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham has found some unlikely allies: Russian bots. Russian-linked Twitter accounts have rallied around the conservative talk-show host, who has come under fire for attacking the young survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. According to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks the spread of Russian propaganda on Twitter, the hashtag #IstandwithLaura jumped 2,800 percent in 48 hours this weekend. On Saturday night, it was the top trending hashtag among Russian…

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Are today’s teenagers smarter and better than we think?

Are today’s teenagers smarter and better than we think?

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Tara Parker-Pope writes: Today’s teenagers have been raised on cellphones and social media. Should we worry about them or just get out of their way? A recent wave of student protests around the country has provided a close-up view of Generation Z in action, and many adults have been surprised. While there has been much hand-wringing about this cohort, also called iGen or the Post-Millennials, the stereotype of a disengaged, entitled and social-media-addicted generation doesn’t match the poised, media-savvy and…

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AggregateIQ: The obscure Canadian tech firm and the Brexit data riddle

AggregateIQ: The obscure Canadian tech firm and the Brexit data riddle

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Carole Cadwalladr reports: “Find Christopher Wylie.” That instruction – 13 months ago – came from the very first ex-Cambridge Analytica employee I met. He was unequivocal. Wylie would have answers to the two questions that were troubling me most. He could tell me about Facebook. And he would know about Canada. What Christopher Wylie knows about Facebook, the world now knows. Facebook certainly knows – its market value is down $100bn. But the Canadian connection remains more elusive. What it…

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Author of Facebook’s ‘ugly truth’ memo says he didn’t agree with what he wrote — employees call for stronger vetting for potential whistle-blowers

Author of Facebook’s ‘ugly truth’ memo says he didn’t agree with what he wrote — employees call for stronger vetting for potential whistle-blowers

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The New York Times reports: Late Thursday, [Andrew Bosworth] said he did not agree with what he wrote in the memo “and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it.” He added that “the purpose of this post, like many others I have written internally, was to bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion with the broader company.” After BuzzFeed published the memo, Mr. Bosworth deleted it from an internal message board where it had…

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