Anti-terrorism and hate-speech law catches musicians and students instead
One of the risks when governments try to curb what they see as offensive speech is that other kinds of speech are caught in the same net. One of the most recent examples comes from Spain, where a vague anti-terrorism law has been used to charge and even imprison musicians and other artists. In a new […]
Google offers olive branch to newspapers, YouTube relies on Wikipedia
Google is planning to highlight content from newspapers with paywalls for users who are paying subscribers, according to a report from Bloomberg on Tuesday, March 14. So when users search for articles on a topic, results from sites they subscribe to will show up higher than results from regular websites. Google also plans to share […]
Project Veritas catfished Twitter staffers. Was it illegal?
When the political-action group known as Project Veritas came out with hidden-camera videos of a number of Twitter employees talking about the company’s practices last year, one of the mysteries was how the organization—infamous for its supposed “investigative” pieces on groups like Planned Parenthood—managed to record the videos. According to Kashmir Hill, in a piece […]
Apple buys Texture, the ‘Netflix of magazines’
Apple announced on March 12 that it has acquired Texture for an undisclosed sum. Often called the “Netflix of magazines,” Texture gives readers access to over 200 popular magazines through its app and website for a single monthly fee. It was originally called Next Issue Media when it launched in 2012, and had raised $130 […]
EU expert group on fake news releases recommendations
The European Union released the final report from its High Level Expert Group on fake news, entitled “A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Disinformation,” on March 12. Several of the experts involved in fact-checking and tracking disinformation, including Claire Wardle of First Draft and Alexios Mantzarlis of the International Fact-Checking Network, summed up the main points of […]
Russian trolls used Facebook as it was designed, law prof says
Joshua Geltzer, executive director of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, writes in Wired on March 11 that the Russian trolls who tried to manipulate the 2016 election didn’t abuse Facebook or Twitter, they simply used those platforms in the way that […]
Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci says YouTube is an engine for radicalization
Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote in an essay published in The New York Times on March 10 about experiments she performed on YouTube during the 2016 election, where she noticed that no matter what kind of political content she searched for, the recommended videos were always more extreme and inflammatory, whether politically or socially. This is a vicious […]
Top Facebook ‘reporters’ include fake news creators, hyper-partisan sources
NewsWhip, an analytics company that measures social-media activity, looked at its data and came up with a list of news reporters who get the most engagement on Facebook in February, and number one was Ryan Shattuck, of the satirical news site The Onion. Number 2 was Jonah Urich, who works for a left-wing site called […]
WhatsApp blamed for spreading misinformation about vaccines in Brazil
Most of the attention around fake news has focused on Facebook and YouTube, but other apps and services can also play a role in spreading misinformation, as Wired points out in a March 9 piece on the use of Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp in Brazil. Use of the app is apparently complicating the country’s attempts […]
Russian trolls followed same social-media strategy as ISIS
Renee DiResta, a researcher with New Knowledge and a Mozilla fellow specializing in misinformation, argues that by using Facebook to spread fake news during the 2016 election, the “Russian troll factory” known as the Internet Research Agency was duplicating a strategy initially developed by ISIS, which used digital platforms and social-media methods to spread its […]
Italy’s new right-wing political star gives credit to Facebook
The Trump campaign’s use of Facebook to connect with right-wing supporters has been widely credited with helping them win the 2016 election (along with the activities of some Russian trolls) and now another conservative politician is thanking social media for his victory. Italy’s new political star, Matteo Salvini of the far-right Lega party, gave credit […]
Is a newspaper oligopoly better than a web duopoly?
Newspaper companies have gotten their wish: A bill introduced on March 7 by Democratic Senator David Cicilline (of Rhode Island) would give them an exemption from antitrust so they could seek collective remedies against Facebook and Google. News Media Alliance head David Chavern has been calling for this for some time: Chavern says the alliance is seeking changes […]
While others downsize, The Athletic raises money to expand
Many digital-media startups have been cutting back or downsizing, but The Athletic is going in the opposite direction: The two-year-old sports media company—which gets 100 percent of its revenue from subscriptions, and concentrates on providing smart commentary rather than breaking news—announced on March 5 that it has raised a $20-million round of funding and is preparing to more than […]
Another news site that relied on Facebook shuts down
Facebook’s latest changes to its news-feed algorithm seem to be taking their toll on companies that have built their businesses on “viral” content for the social network: The latest victim is Rare, Cox Media’s conservative-focused news site, which the company said is shutting down after traffic evaporated. The site was set up in 2013 and […]
Facebook says survey on underage sex photos was a mistake
It’s hard to believe that this actually happened, given all the problems Facebook has been having, but the company admitted to running a survey recently with some users that asked whether it would be acceptable for an adult man to ask a 14-year-old girl for sexual photos. There are a wide range of topics and […]