Sources: the US State Department is building an online portal at freedom.gov that will let users in Europe and elsewhere see content banned by their governments
The U.S. State Department is developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned …
Sources and docs: the US “effectively gutted” the Internet Freedom program that dispensed $500M+ since 2016 to help build tech to evade state internet controls
Programme that funds groups building tech to evade oppressive government controls under serious threat
News Corp and OpenAI announce a multiyear agreement to bring News Corp's news content to OpenAI; sources say the deal could be worth $250M+ over five years
Agreement could generate over $250 million over five years for News Corp in cash and credits — Wall Street Journal owner News Corp struck …
OpenAI responds to The New York Times' lawsuit: training is fair use and there is an opt-out, “regurgitation” is a rare bug, and NYT “manipulated” its models
written evidence (LLM0113) Dan Milmo / The Guardian : ‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says Ryan Daws / AI News : Copyrighted data...
Twitter plans to wind down its legacy verified program, first introduced in June 2009, and remove legacy verified checkmarks starting on April 1, 2023
Ahead Of Twitter's Looming Verification Rollback Muskaan Saxena / TechRadar : Twitter's blue-check doomsday date is set and it's no April Fool's joke Megan Ellis / MakeUseOf : Twit...
A researcher finds Verification settings in Twitter's app showing that the company may be working on letting Blue subscribers hide their blue checkmark
Twitter may be working on a feature that lets you hide the blue checkmark you got by paying for its Blue subscription.
Twitter plans to wind down its legacy verified program and remove legacy verified checkmarks starting on April 1, 2023
The social network, which the mega-billionaire bought last year in a debt-heavy $44 billion deal, announced on Thursday that starting April 1, it will remove …
In a now-deleted tweet replying to Hillary Clinton, Elon Musk shared a lurid, baseless conspiracy theory about the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul
Billionaire peddled the conspiracy theory on Twitter just days after he completed his takeover of the social media platform
Meta disbands its Responsible Innovation team set up to address concerns about its products' downsides, but says the company remains committed to the same goals
just a year after company's vice president talked it up Nicholas Sutrich / Android Central : Meta is disbanding the team responsible for making its products more ethical Brendan Si...
Sources: Google signed News Showcase deals with Bloomberg Media and The Texas Tribune, but the feature is late to launch as other US outlets balk at the terms
Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @keachhagey , @jason_kint , @matthewstoller , @froomkin , and @jtoonkel See also Mediagazer Tweets: @keachhagey : Google News Showcase, Google's prog...
A detailed look at how Facebook and Instagram for iOS open links with a custom in-app browser, letting Meta track every interaction including entering passwords
How the seemingly innocuous “in-app web browsers” on iOS/Android are a really bad thing, and a proposal for how to fix that. With a little web history thrown in. https://www.holova...
A detailed look at how Facebook and Instagram opening links in a custom in-app browser on iOS lets Meta track every interaction, including entering passwords
The iOS Instagram and Facebook app render all third party links and ads within their app using a custom in-app browser.
Memo to staff: Meta is reallocating resources from Facebook's News tab and newsletter platform Bulletin, as the company focuses more on the creator economy
to pay Rupert's and the Germans' blackmail, actually—without paying for links. Danny Denhard / @dannydenhard : Most people forget Facebook is ahead of the curve when it comes to wh...
Memo to staff: Meta is reallocating resources from Facebook's News tab and newsletter platform Bulletin, as the company focuses more on the creator economy
to pay Rupert's and the Germans' blackmail, actually—without paying for links. Danny Denhard / @dannydenhard : Most people forget Facebook is ahead of the curve when it comes to wh...
State AGs' lawsuit alleges Google misled publishers and advertisers for years about ad pricing by deflating sales for some while increasing prices for buyers
Details show Google employees fretting its ad tech auctions were ‘untruthful’ and based in ‘insider information’
NYU study: from Aug. 2020 to Jan. 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinfo got six times more engagement on Facebook than trustworthy news sources
A look at Premise, an app that pays users around the world for tasks like taking photos, and has clients like US military using the data to gather intelligence
The Premise app pays users, many in the developing world, to do tasks like taking photos and completing surveys for clients including the U.S. military
NY AG's office says fake comments, including 8.5M funded by largest US ISPs, accounted for ~18M of the 22M+ net neutrality comments received by the FCC in 2017
The New York attorney general's office released a new report detailing the effort — The New York attorney general's office issued …
Sources: Biden is struggling to fill DOJ's antitrust chief role, due to a White House ethics pledge that may affect candidates who represented Big Tech critics
Leah Nylen / Politico :
Analysis of Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon US lobbying: $124M spent on lobbying and campaign donations during 2020 cycle; Facebook and Google are top spenders
An updated analysis of the rise in lobbying and campaign contributions from the Big Tech companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google