Internet Use/New Technologies
14 September 2017
Facebook Moves to Keep Ads From Running on Objectionable Videos New York Times
Facebook’s enormous audience has long been catnip to advertisers. But the company’s vast ecosystem has come under scrutiny this year from major brands, which are increasingly sensitive to the possibility of inadvertently showing up next to objectionable content.
07 September 2017
Facebook takes the next step to monetize WhatsApp Reuters
Facebook Inc is gearing up to make money from WhatsApp, the messaging service used by more than a billion people every day, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Facebook uncovers Russia-funded misinformation campaign BBC News
Facebook says it has discovered a Russian-funded campaign to promote divisive social and political messages on its network.
04 September 2017
Technology, jobs, and the future of work McKinsey
Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work. Understanding these shifts can help policy makers, business leaders, and workers move forward.
01 September 2017
1 billion drones in world by 2030, US futurist Thomas Frey says ABC News
Drones will become the most disruptive technology in human history, American futurist Thomas Frey says, predicting that by the year 2030, there will be 1 billion drones in the world doing things people cannot yet imagine.
31 August 2017
Internet Behaviors and Attitudes Project Internet Innovation Alliance
In June of 2017, IIA commissioned CivicScience to conduct an objective, large-scale study of U.S. consumers and their online behaviors, means of Internet and email access, and Internet service expectations.
30 August 2017
'Cortana, Open Alexa,' Amazon Says. And Microsoft Agrees. New York Times
In an unusual partnership, Amazon and Microsoft are working together to extend the abilities of their voice-controlled digital assistants.
29 August 2017
Google error disrupts corporate Japan's web traffic BBC News
Google has admitted that wide-spread connectivity issues in Japan were the result of a mistake by the tech giant.
25 August 2017
Jon Snow: Facebook a threat to democracy BBC News
Facebook should do more to tackle the spread of "cancerous" fake news, and help fund original journalism, newsreader Jon Snow has said.
Google Begins Biggest Crackdown on Extremist YouTube Videos Bloomberg
Starting on Thursday, Google will police YouTube like it never has before, adding warnings and disabling advertising on videos that the company determines crosses its new threshold for offensive content.
22 August 2017
How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature New York Times
White supremacist marchers had not yet lit their torches when the deletions began. The ‘‘Unite the Right’’ Facebook page, which had been used to organize the rally in Charlottesville, was removed the day before the event was scheduled, forcing planners to disperse to other platforms to organize. And then, in the hours and days after a participant drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others, internet companies undertook a collective purge.
21 August 2017
A Different Story from the Middle East: Entrepreneurs Building an Arab Tech Economy MIT Technology Review
Middle Eastern startups are overcoming cultural and other barriers to tap into a growing local taste for technology, from Bitcoin wallets to digital publishing.
Eliminating the Human by David Byrne David Byrne
We are beset by—and immersed in—apps and devices that are quietly reducing the amount of meaningful interaction we have with each other.
20 August 2017
What Is Trump Worth to Twitter? One Analyst Estimates $2 Billion Bloomberg
Without Donald Trump, Twitter Inc. could lose almost a fifth of its value.
14 August 2017
Vanishing app: Snapchat struggles as Facebook bites back The Guardian
Is Snapchat – the social media app famous for its disappearing messages – in danger of doing a vanishing act of its own? It’s a question some are asking after investors turned on the company again this week following a second set of poor results which have turned a once-hot tech company into a stock market casualty.
13 August 2017
In China, Facebook Tests the Waters With a Stealth App New York Times
Facebook and many of its apps have been blocked in China for years. To change that, Mark Zuckerberg has made a big point of meeting with Chinese politicians, reading stodgy Communist Party propaganda, studying Mandarin and — perhaps more daunting — speaking it in public.
11 August 2017
The Fate of Online Trust in the Next Decade Pew Research Center
Many experts say lack of trust will not be a barrier to increased public reliance on the internet. Those who are hopeful that trust will grow expect technical and regulatory change will combat users’ concerns about security and privacy. Those who have doubts about progress say people are inured to risk, addicted to convenience and will not be offered alternatives to online interaction. Some expect the very nature of trust will change.
10 August 2017
We can stop hacking and trolls, but it would ruin the internet: A new way to run the internet would scupper ransomware and hacking, but its authoritarian backers could control everything we do online New Scientist
Cyberterrorism fears are through the roof. Ransomware is wreaking havoc on corporations, hospitals and individuals. Printers can be hacked to take down the world’s largest websites. Put simply, the internet is a mess.
09 August 2017
Encourage children to spend more time online, says former GCHQ head The Guardian
Parents should be encouraging their children to spend more time online in order to “save the country,” the former head of GCHQ has said.
The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d! Bill Burr’s 2003 report recommended using numbers, obscure characters and capital letters and updating regularly—he regrets the error Wall Street Journal
The man who wrote the book on password management has a confession to make: He blew it. Back in 2003, as a midlevel manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Bill Burr was the author of “NIST Special Publication 800-63. Appendix A.” The 8-page primer advised people to protect their accounts by inventing awkward new words rife with obscure characters, capital letters and numbers—and to change them regularly.
06 August 2017
ITU releases 2017 global information and communication technology facts and figures International Telecommunication Union
New data released by ITU, the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), show that 830 million young people are online, representing 80 per cent of the youth population in 104 countries. ITU's ICT Facts and Figures 2017 also shows a significant increase in broadband access and subscriptions with China leading the way.
05 August 2017
China's online population hits 751m Xinhua
China's online population reached 751 million in June, up 2.7 percent compared with the end of 2016, according to a report on China's Internet published Friday.
03 August 2017
For Facebook, erasing hate speech proves a daunting challenge Washington Post
Francie Latour was picking out produce in a suburban Boston grocery store when a white man leaned toward her two young sons and, just loudly enough for the boys to hear, unleashed a profanity-laced racist epithet.
A Better, Safer Battery Could Be Coming to a Laptop Near You New York Times
A start-up company is trying to turbocharge a type of battery that has been a mainstay for simple devices like flashlights and toys, but until now has been ignored as an energy source for computers and electric cars.
01 August 2017
Tech Companies Policing the Web Will Do More Harm Than Good Wired
The influence and proliferation of extremist content, hate speech, and state-sponsored propaganda on the internet has risen around the globe, as demonstrated by Russia’s involvement in the US election and the rise of ISIS recruitment online. As a result, the pressure that governments, media, and civil society are placing on technology companies to take meaningful action to stem the flow of this content is at an all-time high.
