James Farrell
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Mark Zuckerberg appears to defend Holocaust deniers on Facebook, then backtracks
When Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Recode’s Kara Swisher for an interview published Wednesday, he discussed the issues in which he has been embroiled over the past year or so, from conspiracy theories appearing on Facebook to whether he should keep his job after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal. But what ...
Undercover investigation reveals Facebook isn’t moderating itself nearly as well as it should
An investigative documentary called “Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network” has revealed that the site allows images of child abuse, hate speech, graphics violence and racist content to stay on the platform in some instances. This information was discovered after an undercover journalist working for Channel 4’s Dispatches program in the U.K. went undercover ...
Amazon Prime Day gets off to a rough start
Amazon.com Inc.’s 36-hour shopping bonanza Prime Day got off to a shaky start on Monday, with shoppers complaining of outages on the site along with other glitches. Some of the reported issues were users getting stuck in frustrating loops, being asked to “Shop all deals” only to click through on that link and return to the ...
German court rules parents of deceased daughter can access her Facebook
In a landmark case, a German court ruled Thursday that the parents of a dead girl can legally have access to her Facebook account and private messages. Judge Ulrich Herrmann at the country’s highest civil court ruled that such digital data was no different from diaries or letters left behind, so the parents of the ...
If you just lost lots of your Twitter followers, you’re not alone
As part of Twitter Inc.’s ongoing initiative to make its platform safer and less plagued by bots, the company has now started to remove all locked accounts from follower lists. Accounts that were locked, Twitter explained Wednesday, had been locked for “tweeting a large volume of unsolicited replies or mentions, tweeting misleading links, or if ...
Facebook fined $664K in UK over Cambridge Analytica data breach
Facebook Inc. Tuesday was been slapped with its first fine over the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, with reports saying the amount is to the tune of £500,000, or $664,000. The fine is the maximum amount the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office can impose, who said Facebook had failed to protect the privacy of its users and ...
YouTube invests $25 million to combat spread of misinformation
Google LLC-owned YouTube is taking steps to steer its billions of daily viewers towards reputable news and away from what’s become known as “fake news” as well as the many conspiracy theories that can be found on the platform. YouTube announced the changes Monday and an investment of $25 million that will include putting “more ...
Samsung just opened world’s largest mobile phone factory in India
Korean giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. today opened what is thought to be the world’s biggest mobile phone factory in India as demand for phones in the country surges. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Moon Jae-in cut the ribbon at the site in Noida, a city located a little under 20 miles ...
Italian, Spanish and Polish Wikipedia pages shut down ahead of controversial copyright law
The Polish, Spanish and Italian language pages of Wikipedia were temporarily shut down Wednesday in protest against European Union legislation that would overhaul internet copyright laws. In late June, critics of the new legislation had called it a “dark day” for the Internet when the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs voted in favor of articles 13 ...
After lynchings, Indian government tells WhatsApp it must help stop spread of deadly fake news
India’s information technology ministry warned Facebook Inc.-owned WhatsApp on Tuesday that the spread of fake news on its platform in the country has been an accomplice to a slew of beatings and lynchings. Indian Today reported that in the last few months alone, more than two dozen people have been lynched in the country, with five people on ...