James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
How social media companies will deal with the election night and beyond
With election night looming, social media platforms say they’ve stepped up efforts to ensure their platforms are not exploited by bad actors. Since there are so many mail-in votes this time around, it’s even more certain that the counting of votes will take some time. During the downtime, there could be some amount of chaos, so ...
Facebook mistakenly took down thousands of political ads
Facebook today said that “technical flaws” caused thousands of approved political ads to be blocked from the platform this week. The social media giant was roundly criticized by the Biden campaign, which said thousands of its own ads had been taken down to the cost of a half-million dollars. Facebook had previously said there would ...
Big tech’s meeting with Congress over Section 230 was largely political theater
A triumvirate of the world’s best-known tech bosses squared off with Congress today, although the showdown was entirely disappointing to most observers. Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg surprised some onlookers Tuesday when his written testimony seemed to suggest that he was up for revising a law that gives tech companies broad immunity for what ...
What tech chiefs are telling Congress today about Section 230 reform
The chief executives of Facebook Inc., Google LLC, and Twitter Inc. will be grilled in front of Congress Wednesday, with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg the only one expected to embrace reform regarding the controversial Section 230 law. Section 230 is a statute in the Communications Decency Act that gives companies broad protection over liability for the ...
Twitter launches preemptive messages to warn of election misinformation
Twitter Inc. announced today that users in the U.S. will start seeing messages on their timeline that “preemptively debunk” misinformation relating to the election. The messages will appear in the form of banners when people search for election information, such as claims about mail-in voting or premature claims about victory. The company seems to have ...
US officials say emails threatening people to vote for Trump came from Iran
Emails that told voters in Florida to vote for Donald Trump were part of an Iranian intelligence campaign, the FBI announced today. “We are in possession of all your information,” said the email. “You are currently registered as a Democrat, and we know this because we have gained access into the entire voting infrastructure. You ...
Thousands of deepfake images of naked women shared online
More than 100,000 women have fallen prey to an artificial intelligence that used their social media photos to create new images of them appearing naked, it was reported today. According to Sensity, a visual threat intelligence company based in the Netherlands, there is a “deepfake ecosystem” that exists on the messaging app Telegram. It appears that ...
Irish regulator is looking into Instagram’s handling of children’s data
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is investigating how Facebook Inc.-owned Instagram handles the data of children, it was first reported by The Telegraph Monday. The probe comes a year after David Stier, a U.S. data scientist, published a report that suggested Instagram was not protecting the contact information of millions of minors. He said 2 million ...
Facebook rejected 2M+ ads for attempting to obstruct US voting
Facebook Inc. rejected 2.2 million ads designed to obstruct voting in the U.S., the company announced over the weekend. Nick Clegg, the social network’s vice president for global affairs, said 120,000 posts were also taken down and warnings were posted on about 150 million posts that provided incorrect information related to voting in the upcoming ...
After complaints about handling of news story, FCC moves to regulate social media
The Federal Communications Commission today said it’s in the process of regulating social media platforms such as Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. The move comes a day after President Trump aired his disdain for the platforms for their handling of a dubious news story in the New York Post about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s ...