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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Gaza protests mark shift in Palestinian national consciousness

Gaza protests mark shift in Palestinian national consciousness

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Nathan Thrall writes: Protest organisers describe them as reflecting a shift in Palestinian national consciousness, stemming from Trump’s decision to, in his words, take “Jerusalem off the table”. They say that, to Palestinians, it is now indisputable that they cannot achieve their national aims through mediation by the U.S. or the international community. The march is an attempt by Palestinians to take matters into their own hands and shape their fate, as they attempted to do during the first and…

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A revolution in our sense of self

A revolution in our sense of self

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Nick Chater writes: At the climax of Anna Karenina, the heroine throws herself under a train as it moves out of a station on the edge of Moscow. But did she really want to die? Had the ennui of Russian aristocratic life and the fear of losing her lover, Vronsky, become so intolerable that death seemed the only escape? Or was her final act mere capriciousness, a theatrical gesture of despair, not seriously imagined even moments before the opportunity arose?…

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MLK’s vision matters today for the 43 million Americans living in poverty

MLK’s vision matters today for the 43 million Americans living in poverty

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. displays the poster to be used during his Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. AP Photo/Horace Cort By Joshua F.J. Inwood, Pennsylvania State University On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, while fighting for a 10-cent wage increase for garbage workers. These efforts by King were part of a broader and more sustained initiative known as the Poor People’s Campaign. King was working to broaden the scope of the civil rights…

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Corruption, not Russia, is Trump’s greatest political liability

Corruption, not Russia, is Trump’s greatest political liability

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Jonathan Chait writes: “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it. He was a brilliant businessman, or at least starred in a television show as one, and he would set…

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The strange tale of the man who pretended to be a Trump representative

The strange tale of the man who pretended to be a Trump representative

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Anne Applebaum writes: In the weeks after the 2016 election, European media, and especially British media, were desperate to find someone who could speak for Donald Trump. The transition team in Washington seemed to have no European links or contacts. The embassies knew nothing. Into this void stepped an American businessman and academic Ted Malloch. He was initially promoted by a publicist, according to the BBC television producer who first booked him on a program. He claimed he would be…

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Poisoned door handle hints at high-level Russian government plot to kill spy, U.K. officials say

Poisoned door handle hints at high-level Russian government plot to kill spy, U.K. officials say

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The New York Times reports: British officials investigating the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian double agent, believe it is likely that an assassin smeared a nerve agent on the door handle at his home. This operation is seen as so risky and sensitive that it is unlikely to have been undertaken without approval from the Kremlin, according to officials who have been briefed on the early findings of the inquiry. This theory suggests that an assassin, who…

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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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America still needs a radical revolution of values

America still needs a radical revolution of values

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William J Barber II writes: In the summer of 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. visited homes in the hamlet of Marks, Mississippi. Later he remembered the hundreds of children who lacked shoes. A mother told King that her children had no clothes for school. The Nobel laureate wept openly. “They didn’t even have any blankets to cover their children up on a cold night,” he recalled. “And I said to myself, God does not like this.” Then he vowed, “We…

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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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How do you deal with your brother becoming a huge star in the white supremacy movement?

How do you deal with your brother becoming a huge star in the white supremacy movement?

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Gabriel Thompson writes: On a Saturday evening in April of 2017, Josh Damigo was home in Oxnard, California, about 50 miles up the coast from Los Angeles, when he received a text message from a friend. “Are you OK?” she asked. “Kinda,” he texted back. “Why do you ask?” “Um, your brother is all over Twitter right now.” Josh went online. “Oh shit,” he wrote back. That morning, a motley collection of people—from mainstream Donald Trump supporters to helmeted militia…

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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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The interstitium, the largest organ we never knew we had

The interstitium, the largest organ we never knew we had

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Tanya Basu writes: What is an organ? Anatomy textbooks are rather fuzzy about what defines an “organ,” requiring one to have primary tissue—parenchyma—and “sporadic” tissue, called stroma, which can be nerves, vessels, and other connective tissue. Organs are the necessary building blocks of organisms (hence, the name), and can be gigantic or microscopic. So long as cells clump together to form tissues, and these tissues organize themselves into organs that perform specific functions in the survival of an organism, that…

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Our children are acting like leaders because our leaders act like children

Our children are acting like leaders because our leaders act like children

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Ann Hulbert writes: Anyone used to worrying about coddled young people, their backbone eroded by oversolicitous elders and smartphone addiction, was in for a surprisingly mature show of spine at last weekend’s March for Our Lives. The Parkland, Florida, survivors-turned-prodigy-activists and their followers—along with Dreamers and other youthful protesters lately—couldn’t possibly be denounced as out-of-control “bums,” President Nixon’s epithet for (older) student protesters half a century ago. Quite the contrary. These young people do grit and gumption with star-pupil poise…

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