James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
How Google tried to keep ‘Project Dragonfly’ under wraps
Google LLC has reluctantly become more open regarding its censored Chinese search engine, “Project Dragonfly,” but it turns out the company wanted to keep the project low-key for as long as it could. According to a report by The Intercept published on Thursday, when the project was announced last year at the Google offices in Mountain View, California, some ...
Facebook launches Today In feature, a place to read local news
Facebook Inc. said it’s expanding its “Today In” feature, which provides users with local news and announcements. In a blog post Wednesday, the company said the feature is available in 400 U.S. cities, while the first test of Today In has also begun in Australia. One of the reasons for the expansion, according to the ...
Google employees join Amnesty International to oppose Chinese search engine
Hundreds of Google LLC employees are doubling down on their efforts to discourage the company from developing a censored search engine for the Chinese market. On Tuesday, more than 290 Google staff signed an open letter stating in no uncertain terms that the search engine, codenamed “Project Dragonfly,” was not in line with their ethics, ...
Facebook’s War Room may have lost some of its soldiers, for now
On the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, Facebook Inc. showed off its War Room to reporters, a place within the company where certain employees would try to stamp out misinformation on the platform, among other nefarious activities. According to a report by Bloomberg Monday, in spite of its promised usefulness in spotting misinformation before ...
Facebook comes clean about hiring Definers PR firm to investigate George Soros
Facebook Inc. admitted Wednesday that it hired a right-wing-oriented public relations firm to investigate billionaire George Soros and some of the company’s competitors, following an expose that said as much published by the New York Times this month. Facebook’s head of communication and policy, Elliot Schrage, discussed in a blog post why Facebook had hired Republican-affiliated ...
Child pornography is the reason Tumblr was removed from Apple’s App Store
It’s now known that the reason social blogging site Tumblr mysteriously went missing from Apple Inc.’s App Store was because it had allowed some users to post images of child pornography. The app disappeared from the store on Friday, but up until now, no reason had been given for the disappearance. The Oath Inc.-owned site ...
Facebook pledges almost $6 million to train journalists in the UK
In what’s being called a first-of-its-kind project, Facebook Inc. has pledged £4.5 million ($5.7 million) to train journalists in the U.K. The money will go toward training 80 journalists who will work with local newspapers around the country. Part of what Facebook calls the “Community News Project,” the initiative will be administered by the U.K.’s ...
Facebook denies wrongdoing in the face of more scandals
Facebook Inc. quickly responded to the scathing report published by the New York Times Wednesday, stating the story included a number of inaccuracies. In a post on Thursday, Facebook denied that it knew about Russian activity on the platform as early as 2016 and was slow to respond, while the company also denied the allegation that ...
Google open-sources API for its Quick, Draw! machine learning doodle tool
In 2016, Google LLC released a sort of digital Pictionary called Quick, Draw!, a machine learning tool that let people doodle sketches, which would then be analyzed by the tool. Apparently it caught on. Since then, Google has open-sourced about 50 million of those doodles to allow developers to conduct research into the way people draw. “Since the ...
Report reveals Facebook’s aggressive strategies to deflect criticism away from itself
Updated below: The truth can be as strange as social media, it seems, according to a report published Wednesday by the New York Times about Facebook Inc.’s internal affairs. One takeaway from that report was an order Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had issued which demanded that his staff use only Android phones. That came after ...