James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Tweet inflation: Twitter tests doubling up to a 280-character limit
Twitter Inc. announced today a giant step toward allowing people to better express themselves: It’s doubling the character limit on tweets from 140 to 280 characters. The new limit will be tested on only a select audience at the moment, but Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen explained that Twitter hopes to find a suitable character ...
Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg admits failure over racist ads, promises more human oversight
Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has promised to change the social network’s ad policies following last week’s controversy in which it was allowing hate speech terms in ad categories. In a post on Facebook, Sandberg (pictured) said that she felt “disgusted and disappointed” that Facebook had allowed the categories to appear, saying that ...
Twitter removes 300K terrorism-related accounts in a matter of months
Twitter Inc. released a new transparency report Tuesday that reveals how busy it has been weeding out extremism on its platform. The report follows mounting pressure from governments for social media platform to get tougher on terror. The company said that it had removed 299,649 accounts that promoted terrorism or endorsed violence enacted by terrorist organizations in ...
Uber could be facing a massive license fee hike in London
Uber Technologies Inc. could be looking at paying £2.9 million, or about $3.9 million, to continue its operations in London –a huge jump from the £2,826 the city’s transport regulator charged the ride-hailing giant in 2012. Transport for London said the hike in licensing fees to all private car hire companies was imposed because of ...
Facebook, Google and Twitter allowed advertisers to target with hate terms
Updated with Facebook, Google and Twitter responses: It’s common knowledge that advertisers can find niche target audiences on Facebook, but a recent investigation found some of those advertisers could use hate speech terms including “Jew Hater” to reach people with beliefs most of us would find unsavory. An investigation by ProPublica released Thursday found that it ...
Facebook will stop running ads on, well, just about anything controversial
Facebook Inc. is taking more steps to make its social network a cleaner, more well-lighted site for advertisers, this time not by removing certain content, but by not allowing content it deems inappropriate to make money from ads. In a blog post today discussing the new monetization guidelines, Facebook said the latest move was to ensure ...
Google’s power is again under fire as Yelp seeks help from FTC
Review site Yelp Inc. is hoping the U.S. Federal Trade Commission will take action against Google Inc. regarding its accusation that the search engine giant is violating a 2013 agreement not to scrape images from Yelp or other websites in its own search results. In a letter to FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen, Yelp said that ...
GM is about to start mass-producing the first ‘real’ self-driving cars
General Motors Co. and its self-driving car subsidiary Cruise Automation said today that they’re ready to mass-produce vehicles that already have fully autonomous hardware built in, meaning once the software is fully up to speed the cars will be good to go. Unlike other cars currently using self-driving technology, the Chevrolet Bolt EVs, 50 of ...
Russian-based operation likely paid Facebook $100K for political ads during U.S. election
In another possible sign of attempted foreign interference in the U.S. presidential election, Facebook Inc. revealed on Wednesday that it’s likely a Russian operation spent $100,000 on ads to promote certain views to targeted U.S. citizens. According to a report in the Washington Post citing several unnamed sources, the social media giant told congressional investigators that ...
Tech leaders again oppose Trump after decision to end DACA immigration program
Not for the first time since Donald Trump was elected president, leaders from some of the world’s biggest tech companies have united against him, this time in opposition to his call to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Obama-era program that has protected ...