Facebook bans ads for cryptocurrencies and ICOs
Facebook has announced a new advertising policy which ban ads for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The ban also applies to ICOs because they are "frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices."
The social network says that the new policy is a part of a drive to improve the "integrity and security of financial product and services ads," but it explains that it is keeping its guidelines "intentionally broad" to start with.
Facebook's latest News Feed update gives local news a boost
Facebook recently promised big changes to the way its News Feed works, and Mark Zuckerberg has now revealed that the social network will start to place a greater emphasis on local news. At least it makes a change from constantly banging on about fake news.
It's part of the company's desire to increase civic engagement, with the Facebook CEO saying that there is a direct link between reading local news and people getting involved in helping out with local causes. The changes are coming to the US first and will then spread to the rest of the world.
Ahead of GDPR laws, Facebook publishes privacy principles and promises to educate users
Facebook has published its privacy principles for the first time, ahead of the European Union's general data protection regulation (GDPR) which comes into force on May 25 -- although the company is pitching it as being part of Data Privacy Day.
On top of this, the social network has also detailed plans to use videos to educate its users about privacy. The videos will explain how to control who has access to personal data, as well as how to manage the data Facebook uses to control the ads it shows users.
Trump was almost ten times more popular with Russian Twitter bots than Clinton
In the run-up to the 2016 US election, Russian bots shared Donald Trump's tweets 470,000 times -- nearly ten times those of Hillary Clinton.
The figures come courtesy of Twitter, who shared the data with Congress for a review into Russian influence on the election. In the period September 1 to November 15, 2016, Russian bots accounted for more than four percent of Trump's retweets.
UK government to monitor social networks and fight fake news with National Security Communications Unit
In a bid to tackle the ongoing problem of fake news, the UK government is setting up the National Security Communications Unit. The NSCU is tasked with "combating disinformation by state actors and others."
It's a mission that the likes of Microsoft, Facebook and Google have already taken on in various ways, each with varying degrees of success. One of the aims of the NSCU is to "more systematically deter our adversaries and help us deliver on national security priorities," and part of its work will involve monitoring social networks.
Facebook to roll out new privacy tools ahead of European GDPR laws
Facebook has faced numerous complaints and accusations when it comes to privacy, and nowhere has this been more obvious than in Europe. In response to European Union plans to change the laws concerning the privacy of personal data, the social network is on the verge of rolling out a new privacy center to users.
The upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is designed to give people more control over their personal data, and it is due to come into force in May. Facebook's response means that its millions of global users will all benefit from additional privacy controls.
Rupert Murdoch suggests Facebook should pay 'trusted' publishers for news content
Facebook has been fighting something of a losing battle against the problem of fake news, but media mogul Rupert Murdoch thinks he has come up with a solution. He says that the social network should pay "trusted" publishers for the provision of news content.
Facebook recently said that it wants to promote content created by outlets deemed trustworthy by users, but Murdoch -- who controls Fox News -- is not impressed. He says that what Facebook has proposed so far is simply not enough, and he believes that the only solution is to start paying.
Facebook to fight 'sensationalism, misinformation and polarization' with news trustworthiness surveys for users
Facebook has said time and time again that it will do more to fight the problem of fake news on the social network, and the company's latest idea is to simply ask users which news sources they know and trust.
In a post on his own Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook will start to "ask people whether they're familiar with a news source and, if so, whether they trust that source." Seemingly blind to the idea that this could be open to abuse and manipulation, he says that this will shift the balance of the news that is displayed on the site.
Twitter admits that 670,000 people interacted with Russian propaganda bots during US election
Twitter has revealed that a total of 677,775 Americans followed accounts or liked tweets associated with Russian propaganda groups during the 2016 US election. The company does not reveal how many people saw the tweets posted by these accounts.
That Russia tried to use Twitter -- and other social networks -- to influence the outcome of the US election is hardly news, but there has been an ongoing investigation trying to determine the scale of the operation. In its latest announcement, Twitter also says that it closed 50,258 accounts with links to Russia.
Twitter denies reading your direct messages
Undercover footage emerged this week in which Twitter engineers said that hundreds of company employees were reading users' direct messages. The footage was shared by Project Veritas, and now Twitter has come out on the defensive.
The conservative activist group's video purports to show Twitter employees saying that the company not only has access to, but also actively reads, users' DMs. Project Veritas is on a mission to highlight what it believes to be liberal bias in the media, and this is not the first undercover footage it has recorded relating to Twitter. Other footage shows an engineer saying the company could hand President Trump's deleted tweets and direct messages to the Department of Justice.
Big changes to Facebook's news feed mean you'll probably spend less time on the social network
Facebook is planning major changes to the way its news feed works, and Mark Zuckerberg says he believes that the amount of time people spend using the social network will go down as a result.
This might seem like a slightly strange thing for the company to do, but these changes are about improving the overall experience. Zuckerberg says that "the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable." So what can we expect from the changes? For starters, you should see more posts from the people you know, and fewer from brands and pages.
7 things you could do instead of CES
The annual scourge is upon us, as tens of thousands of attention seekers descend on Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. Nowhere else can you watch bloggers and journalists in a constant chase of their public relations foibles, who desperately hunt for all the attention they can get their clients. Think a thousand kids in a small room, calling for mommy and groping her dress. Then multiply ten times.
My last CES pilgrimage was 2008. That's right, I haven't gone in 10 years. No-o-o-o regrets. Nothing important ever comes out of the show, even though each year the hype suggests otherwise. Most new unveiled products won't ship until second half of the year. If ever. There's more vaporware at CES than hot air—and that's no easy feat. Surely the Las Vegas Convention Center installs extra carbon dioxide scrubbers so that participants don't asphyxiate. If there was an alarm for toxic babble, it would sound incessantly.
Twitter won't ban Donald Trump because he's special
Since Donald Trump's inauguration, there have been countless calls for him to be banned from Twitter. As well as concerns that his often rash and bombastic statements could cause diplomatic nightmares nationally and internationally, there have also been suggestions that his particularly aggressive tone and threats violate Twitter's policies.
But Twitter has consistently refused to either ban the US president or remove his more controversial tweets -- despite doing the same with other users. Now the company has taken steps to explain why this is. In essence, it's because Trump -- and other world leaders -- have been granted a special status.
Facebook to use facial recognition to notify users when photos of them are uploaded
A new feature touted as a privacy tool sees Facebook automatically identifying users in photographs that are uploaded. It uses the same technology already employed to make image tagging suggestions.
The social networking giant is using facial recognition to alert people when someone uploads a photo of them, regardless of whether they have been tagged in the image. For the feature to work, Facebook users will have to agree to the company keeping a record of them in a facial database.
Twitter kills anti-Nazi bot Imposter Buster that tried to expose racists
A Twitter account designed to alert users about racist accounts has been shut down by Twitter. Imposter Buster was a bot created by journalist Yair Rosenberg in an attempt to expose racism on the platform.
But while many people welcomed the activities of Imposter Buster -- which would automatically join in the conversations of high-profile racist users in an attempt to expose their trolling of ethnic minority users -- Twitter saw things differently and slapped the bot with a permanent ban.
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