Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

weatheriscool
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Facebook overpaid FTC fine as 'quid pro quo' to protect Zuckerberg from liability, shareholders clai
Source: Marketwatch

Facebook Inc. overpaid billions of dollars to the Federal Trade Commission as part of an agreement to keep CEO Mark Zuckerberg from being held personally liable for the Cambridge Analytica data breach, shareholders claim in a pair of lawsuits.

Two separate groups of Facebook FB, +0.50% shareholders filed suit Tuesday, Politico first reported, alleging that Facebook’s board approved an over-payment on its settlement with the FTC over the Cambridge Analytica scandal to protect Zuckerberg.

… snip …

The suit cited minutes from a subsequent Facebook board meeting, and claimed “Zuckerberg, [COO Sheryl] Sandberg, and other Facebook directors agreed to authorize a multi-billion settlement with the FTC as an express quid pro quo to protect Zuckerberg from being named in the FTC’s complaint, made subject to personal liability, or even required to sit for a deposition.”

In July 2019, Facebook agreed to pay the FTC a record fine of $5 billion to settle the investigation into the Cambridge Analytics data breach.

… snip …

The second lawsuit also claimed Facebook has failed in its obligation to protect the private data of its users, and alleged that the Cambridge Analytics’ data scraping was a “destined consequence” of Facebook’s business plan.
Read more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/faceb ... latestnews
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caltrek
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Social Media a Boon to Finding New Animal and Plant Species
by Fumi Yada
September 22, 2021

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14431244

Introduction:
(The Asahi Shimbun) Every so often, social media turns out to be an invaluable resource for those studying the natural world in discovering new animal and plant species.

Satoshi Shimano, a professor of biological taxonomy at Tokyo’s Hosei University, announced the discovery of a new mite species, Choshi hamabe dani, in March.

As its scientific name, Ameronothrus twitter, suggests, the arachnid’s existence might not have come to light had it not been for a photo that an amateur photographer posted on Twitter in May 2019.

Takamasa Nemoto, a company employee, often snaps photos of mites. But he was unfamiliar with ones he found near a port while out on a fishing trip with his family.

His tweet, with the photo of a mite cluster, found its way to Shimano by chance.
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caltrek
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Google Fights $5 Billion Antitrust Fine in EU Appeal
by Molly Quell
September 27, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/google-f ... st-action/

Introduction:
LUXEMBOURG (Courthouse News) — There were harsh words on all sides as a week of hearings over Google’s allegedly anti-competitive behavior opened before the EU’s second-highest court.

The General Court of the European Court of Justice will be hearing arguments for five days — an unusually long session — as Google’s parent company Alphabet tries to fend off a 4.34 billion euro ($5 billion) fine for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system.

“Far from justifying the biggest fine the commission has ever imposed, Android is, in truth, an exceptional success story of the power of competition in action,” lawyer for Meredith Pickford said in his opening statements before the Luxembourg-based court.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, announced the fine in 2018 following a three-year investigation into whether Google illegally used its dominance in the smartphone market to promote other Google products, such as Google Search and the Chrome browser.

The EU also didn’t equivocate. In its opening statement, European Commission lawyer Nicholas Khan described Google’s behavior as “abusive.”
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weatheriscool
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YouTube is banning prominent anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
Source: Washington Post
SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube is taking down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who experts say are partially responsible for helping seed the skepticism that’s contributed to slowing vaccination rates across the country. As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous. The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox.

Misinformation researchers have for years said the popularity of anti-vaccine content on YouTube was contributing to growing skepticism of lifesaving vaccines in the United States and around the world. Vaccination rates have slowed and about 56 percent of the U.S. population has had two shots, compared with 71 percent in Canada and 67 percent in the United Kingdom. In July, President Biden said social media companies were partially responsible for spreading misinformation about the vaccines, and need to do more to address the issue.

The change marks a shift for the social media giant, which streams more than 1 billion hours’ worth of content every day. Like its peers Facebook and Twitter, the company has long resisted policing content too heavily, arguing maintaining an open platform is critical to free speech. But as the companies increasingly come under fire from regulators, lawmakers and regular users for contributing to social ills — including vaccine skepticism — YouTube is again changing policies that it has held onto for months.

YouTube didn’t act sooner because it was focusing on misinformation specifically about coronavirus vaccines, said Matt Halprin, YouTube’s vice president of global trust and safety. When it noticed that incorrect claims about other vaccines were contributing to fears about the coronavirus vaccines, it expanded the ban. “Developing robust policies takes time,” Halprin said. “We wanted to launch a policy that is comprehensive, enforceable with consistency and adequately addresses the challenge.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... h-mercola/
Dthomask
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Facebook goes down and on the same day, the data of 1.5 billion Facebook Users gets advertised on a hacker forum. This can't be a coincidence :)

Personal Information of More Than 1.5 Billion Facebook Users Sold on Hacker Forum

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/81974/ov ... index.html
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Hmm...


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The entirety of Twitch has reportedly been leaked

6th Oct 2021 / 9:19 am

An anonymous hacker claims to have leaked the entirety of Twitch, including its source code and user payout information.

The user posted a 125GB torrent link to 4chan on Wednesday, stating that the leak was intended to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space” because “their community is a disgusting toxic cesspool”.

VGC can verify that the files mentioned on 4chan are publicly available to download as described by the anonymous hacker.

One anonymous company source told VGC that the leaked data is legitimate, including the source code for the Amazon-owned streaming platform.

Internally, Twitch is aware of the breach, the source said, and it’s believed that the data was obtained as recently as Monday. We’ve requested comment from Twitch and will update this story when it replies.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/new ... een-leaked


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caltrek
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Google and YouTube Say They Won't Allow Ads or Monetized Content Pushing Climate denial
by Tayloir Hatmaker
October 7, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/07/googl ... enial-ban/

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Google announced Thursday that it would no longer allow ads or monetization for content that promotes climate change denialism. The policy change will apply to publishers, advertisers and YouTube creators, who will no longer be able to make money from content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

Google plans to enforce the new policy with a blend of algorithmic detection and human moderation and the change will go into effect next month. While there’s some room for interpretation in the new rules, according to Google they “[include] content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.”

In a blog post, the Google Ads team said that the policy change reflects the desires of advertisers, who “simply don’t want their ads to appear next to this content.” The blog post also noted that creators and publishers don’t want ads pushing climate denialism on their videos either, though that fact seems a bit dubious considering how rife Google’s video platform is with misinformation.

Google’s new policy takes a strong stance on false claims about the climate crisis, but social networks have only just begun to reckon with their role in disseminating climate-related misinformation. YouTube has also proven notoriously slow to introduce new rules designed to stop the flow of misinformation in the past on other issues, including false claims about the U.S. election.

Ultimately, the policy is an improvement — all platforms should build out robust rule sets around the accelerating existential threat to humanity — but new rules will only make a dent in the misinformation ecosystem if they’re aggressively and consistently enforced.
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caltrek
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^^^More on that:

Dissecting Google's Climate Denial Crackdown
by Andrew Freedman
October 8, 2021

https://www.axios.com/googles-climate-d ... 527d9.html

Extract:
How it works: Per a Google statement, the policy affects the monetization of "content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change."
  • "This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change."
  • Google plans to use "automated tools and human review" to put the policy into practice.
  • The system does not seek to limit policy debate, making Google's job easier but potentially allowing the promotion of partisan assaults on established science.
  • Discerning denial can be tough. Google says it will "look carefully at the context in which claims are made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim."
Our thought bubble, from Axios' Scott Rosenberg: Facebook and Google have both faced censorship accusations from conservatives who object to measures that have sought to limit misinformation on COVID, elections and other topics.
  • YouTube's move on climate is likely to encounter similar objections, given the politically polarized views on this issue, especially in the U.S.

Image
Data: Google Trends; Chart: Jacque Schrag/Axios
Don't mourn, organize.

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