James Farrell
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Activision employees stage walkout amid claims of discrimination, sexual harassment
Employees at Activision Blizzard Inc.’s main campus in Irvine, California, staged a walkout today in protest over accusations of pervasive sexism and harassment in the company. The protest comes a week after the game publishing giant – creator of the titles “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft” – was sued by the state of ...
In push to protect kids, Facebook says it will now reduce ads for teens on all its platforms
Facebook Inc. announced today that it’s in the process of restricting advertisers from targeting people under the age of 18. In the coming weeks, the company will ensure that advertisers won’t be able to base ads for people under 18 on their interests or their activity on other apps. These restrictions will be enforced on ...
China cracks down on food delivery platforms with new workers’ rights
China today issued new rules that will offer various protections to its food delivery workers, a move that’s part of a wider regulatory crackdown on the tech industry in the country. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said today the wider crackdown is designed to deal with ongoing problems in the industry, ranging from ...
New bill aims to remove legal protections social media companies have for health misinformation
Two Democrat senators introduced a bill today that would take away the immunity social media companies such as Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. have under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act when health misinformation is posted on their platforms. The Health Misinformation Act, introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ray Luján, is designed ...
Privacy concerns raised after Catholic priest resigns over Grindr use allegations
A senior Catholic priest has resigned after it was alleged that he was using the gay dating app Grindr, but the question now is how supposedly encrypted data got into someone’s hands. The Reverend Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill was the former general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a position USCCB says he no ...
Biden nominates big-tech critic Jonathan Kanter as DOJ’s antitrust chief
Veteran antitrust lawyer Jonathan Kanter was nominated today by President Biden to lead the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. That will come as another blow to big tech, following Lina Khan being made chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in June. Khan has a history of criticizing what she sees as out-of-control ...
Israeli company’s Pegasus spyware allegedly used to hack journalists, politicians, activists worldwide
Israeli cybersurveillance firm NSO Group is currently under the gun for allegedly selling spying software to shady governments around the world, although it’s not certain just how many people were hacked. NSO has been accused of selling the malware, named “Pegasus,” to authoritarian governments, which in turn used it to spy on journalists, lawyers, opposition ...
Facebook shelves its brain-reading interface project to move in a different direction
Facebook Inc. proclaimed in 2017 that it was developing noninvasive technology that would measure thought signals, but today the company announced that the dream is no more. When the company announced it was working on a Brain-Computer Interface or BCI that would allow people to “type just by imagining the words,” there were of course ...
Twitter says it’s getting more requests from governments to remove media content
Twitter Inc.’s latest transparency report published today shows the company has received a significant increase in the number of requests from global governments demanding that content from journalists and media companies be taken off the platform. Twitter said through the first half of 202o, it saw an increase of 26% in governments asking to remove ...
Facebook introduces ‘Experts’ to cut down on misinformation in Groups
In an effort to reduce the amount of dubious information appearing in Facebook Inc.’s Group pages, the company said today it will now let experts decide what is true. The feature, called “Group Experts,” will allow administrators to choose certain people they feel are knowledgeable on a given subject. When those people post something or ...