James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Facebook changes Groups privacy settings and vows crackdown on extreme content
Privacy settings for Facebook Inc.’s Groups are changing to make things simpler, the company announced on Wednesday. The social media giant said that from now on public, closed and secret group settings will either be just public or private. The administrators of those groups will have the option to make the group visible to other ...
Facebook has been listening to and transcribing Messenger voice chats
People who have voice-chatted on Facebook Inc.’s Messenger app might have had their conversation listened to and transcribed, according to a report published by Bloomberg today. The company has admitted that it did indeed hire third-party contractors to listen to clips but said that the practice stopped “more than a week ago.” The reason they ...
Whole Foods workers demand Amazon break ties with ICE
A group of employees from Whole Foods signed a letter Monday asking that its parent company Amazon.com Inc. break all ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The letter by the grocery chain, which was acquired by Amazon for $13.7 billion in 2017, was signed by a group of present and former employees of Wholes Foods calling ...
Microsoft contractors have been listening in to private Skype calls and Cortana commands
Real-time conversations on Microsoft Corp.’s Skype are sometimes listened to by contractors, according to an investigation by Motherboard published Wednesday. Internal documents, screenshots and audio recordings acquired by Motherboard reveal that personal conversations were sometimes eavesdropped on by human staff in order to analyze how the app’s translation software was working. Microsoft said on the ...
Accused of bias against conservatives, Google draws Trump warning
U.S. President Donald Trump unleashed a salvo of tweets aimed at Google LLC Tuesday, stating that there was a conservative bias at the company, among other things. Trump also had words for Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, whom he said in a recent meeting with him worked hard “to explain how much he liked me, ...
Memo at Google claims discrimination against pregnant women
An internal memo that circulated around the offices of Google LLC last week claims that the company discriminated against a pregnant woman. The memo, titled, “I’m Not Returning to Google After Maternity Leave, and Here is Why,” was seen by more than 10,000 Google staffers before it found itself on other message boards. On Monday it ...
Facebook cracks down on Saudi, UAE and Egypt misinformation campaigns
Facebook Inc. has cracked down on a misinformation campaign involving Saudi and other Middle Eastern authorities on its platform, the company said Thursday. Accounts linked to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt as well as Saudi Arabia, have been involved in what Facebook called “inauthentic behavior,” and in total 350 accounts and pages have been removed ...
Lyft takes its e-bikes off the streets after some catch fire
As if Lyft Inc.’s year couldn’t get any worse, the company this week had to pull its electric bicycles off the streets of San Francisco after some of them exploded in flames while being used. The bikes, known simply as Lyft bikes, have only been in use in the city for a couple of months. ...
Facebook says it’s getting closer to creating a mind-reading wearable device
Facebook Inc. is one step closer to developing augmented reality glasses that will allow people to type without people having to use a keyboard, the company announced Tuesday. The company first talked about building a “brain-computer interface” at its F8 developer conference in 2017. This week Facebook said after working with the University of California ...
EU court rules websites using Facebook’s Like button are liable for user data collection
Companies could find themselves in trouble for data collection from now on for using Facebook Inc.’s Like button on their websites, according to a ruling by the European Union’s top court on Monday. The ruling from the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union stated that any companies with an embedded Like button will ...