Ads for fake versions of Google’s generative AI tool, Bard, are showing up on Facebook to steal social media accounts of U.S. small businesses, according to a lawsuit from Google filed Monday.Read more... | Continue reading
Mobile phones and the “app economy”, an environment controlled by exactly two companies and designed to extract a commission from almost every interaction and to promote native and not-portable applications over web applications. But we also see the same behaviour from so-called … | Continue reading
First batch of EU's required transparency reports reveals record content removals. | Continue reading
When the Canadian government first proposed the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, their goal was “to ensure fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and for independent local news businesses, including rural and remote news organizations, by ensuring that news me … | Continue reading
ByteDance, the China-based company that owns TikTok as well as one of the biggest overseas VR makers, Pico, is taking a long look at its VR headset business, finding that all those metaverse champions were way too “optimistic” in their estimation that virtual reality would take o … | Continue reading
Former Facebooker and designer Mykael Loomans interviewed me for his podcast, Full Stack Whatever. In Part 1 of the podcast, we talked about the evolution of technology and the internet from its early days to now. We chatted about how it has moved from connecting information to c … | Continue reading
The U.K.’s competition watchdog said Friday it has accepted proposals from Meta’s Facebook and Amazon that are meant to prevent […] The post Facebook, Amazon agree to curb use of rival data in U.K. appeared first on ReadWrite. | Continue reading
Favorited EDPB Urgent Binding Decision on processing of personal data for behavioural advertising by Meta by EDPB This is very good news. The European Data Protection Board, at the request of the Norwegian DPA, has issued a binding decision instructing the Irish DPA and banning t … | Continue reading
Social media platforms have been implicated in conflicts of all scales, from urban gun violence to the storming of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6 and civil war in South Sudan. Scientifically, it is difficult to tell how much social media can be blamed for one-off incident … | Continue reading
Today's links Zuck's gravity-defying metaverse money-pit: $46.5 billion incinerated and he's richer than ever. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects … | Continue reading
Being waterboarded with advertisements sort of feels like second nature on the likes of Facebook and Instagram, but for some in the EU willing to pay, that will change. Read more... | Continue reading
Meta’s Oversight Board wants the company to revise its policies to prevent it from incentivizing creators who post about dangerous extreme diets. As of now, creators posting through Meta’s Partner Monetization Program can earn ad revenues off of content that describes people tryi … | Continue reading
A massive lawsuit filed by 33 states accuses Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, of knowingly […] The post 33 U.S. states sue Instagram and Facebook for addicting children appeared first on ReadWrite. | Continue reading
Meta is once again showing the limits of its own Supreme Court’s policy recommendations. This time, the disagreement centers around the ways users can post about certain drugs like ketamine on Facebook and Instagram. These drugs, which can straddle the line between recreational a … | Continue reading
One would-be Twitter replacement crashes and burns, while an unexpected challenger is sneaking up behind the pack. Uncertain times in the social media world. | Continue reading
On Monday, Instagram announced it’s testing a feed that only shows posts from verified accounts. This new way for “businesses and creators to get discovered” is part of a broader push across the social media industry, where the apps are rolling out the blue-checked carpet to enco … | Continue reading
Grupa reprezentująca kanadyjskich prywatnych nadawców telewizyjnych i radiowych poprosiła rząd Kanady o uwzględnienie Apple w przepisach, które zmusiłyby Google i Meta do dzielenia się przychodami z wydawcami. Kanadyjskie Stowarzyszenie Nadawców (CAB) stwierdziło, że zgodnie z pr … | Continue reading
A bipartisan coalition of 33 state attorneys general sued Meta for allegedly designing and deploying harmful features on Instagram and Facebook that addicted a generation of young people.Read more... | Continue reading
Meta repeatedly chose not to design platforms safe for kids, states allege. | Continue reading
Riley Reid is many things: adult film superstar, social media influencer, meme-lord, and now, buzzy tech founder. As part of her new venture, Clona.ai, Reid is helping develop AI-generated chatbots of living creators that are designed with their explicit content and personal insi … | Continue reading
Plus Meta stitches Threads into Facebook, and Substack works around Musk’s headlines ban. | Continue reading
After shoving a Threads carousel into Facebook and Instagram, Meta gets that users might not like it. Meta posted Monday on its platform’s official account that it was collecting feedback on the new feature, but it almost certainly won’t do anything to make it any better. Read mo … | Continue reading
Serving the Technologist for more than a decade. IT news, reviews, and analysis. | Continue reading
All that metaverse tech — whatever that term means at this point — will get a big connectivity boost thanks to federal regulators.Read more... | Continue reading
Big tech company Meta has changed course in its relationship with news more times than we can count, pushing news publishers away one moment and pulling them back the next to serve their interests, with little regard for the detrimental impact to publishers, journalism, and reade … | Continue reading
One of the biggest problems with old people is that they forget that they were young once, or that they were easily bored and did things that annoyed their parents, or that they had their own creative ways to deal with boredom and wasting time. And that is why I am a bit sanguine … | Continue reading
Threads was a unicorn in the vacuum left behind by a Musk-infested Twitter turned X. But as the excitement for the sterile and lifeless platform inevitably waned for users, Meta’s newest trick to give the illusion of Threads’ growth is to just jam its posts into Facebook feeds. R … | Continue reading
Threads search is blocking terms like “Covid,” “vaccines,” “long Covid,” and others, but it is reportedly only temporary according to Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri. This comes a week after he said the app would not “amplify news.”Read more... | Continue reading
The marketplace of the internet has turned into a game of Russian roulette as platforms providing everything from household goods to airline tickets are becoming less trustworthy with the rise of fake reviews. Now, the heavy hitters of online commerce are joining forces to put an … | Continue reading
A new Gallup survey found more than half of teenagers in the U.S. spend an average of 4.8 hours on social media each day. The responses came from 1,591 people ages 13-19 years old, and the survey’s findings show that as teens got older, they stayed on social media even longer.Rea … | Continue reading
For the first two decades of the new century, the “web” was organized around people and social connections. What appeared to be a social utopia has now transformed into an algorithm-driven profit machine. The social web has transitioned into social media and thrives on engagement … | Continue reading
Meta’s flirtation with innovation has been, at best, poorly panning out and, at worst, delightfully creepy. The latter best describes the case of the tech company’s new foray into AI with machine-generated personas.Read more... | Continue reading
For the first two decades of the new century, the “web” was organized around people and social connections. What appeared to be a social utopia has now transformed into an algorithm-driven profit machine. The social web has transitioned into social media and thrives on engagement … | Continue reading
Regulators in the EU sent letters to Meta, TikTok, and X/Twitter Thursday, giving the platforms 24 hours to address misinformation and other “illegal” content related to the Israel-Hamas war. It’s hard to say exactly what’s happening on these platforms, however, especially when i … | Continue reading
When the Arab Spring unfolded just over ten years ago, Twitter played a pivotal role. The site was both a source for up-to-the-minute information and an organizing tool for protestors, and some celebrated Twitter as part of a new, digital revolution. But this week, a less hopeful … | Continue reading
"With every video taken down, ten more are uploaded each day," developer complains. | Continue reading
On March 29, 2023, more than 500 top technologists and business leaders signed onto an eye-catching open letter begging artificial intelligence labs to immediately pause all training on any AI systems more powerful than Open AI’s GPT-4 for at least six months. The consequences fo … | Continue reading
Last week, Meta introduced AI chatbots to its family of apps, including Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. The bots include a variety of personas built for different purposes such as cooking and travel, and several based on celebrities including Snoop Dog and Mr. Beast. … | Continue reading
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta plans to charge European users $17 a month for an ad-free version of Instagram and Facebook. It solidifies a trend that would have seemed absurd just a few years ago: every major social media platform now either has a premium … | Continue reading
Serving the Technologist for more than a decade. IT news, reviews, and analysis. | Continue reading
Meta’s bread and butter has long been its user-centric targeted ad business, but European regulations are forcing the company to rethink how it can monetize its ostensibly free social platforms. The answer? Make users pay up if they prefer not to let their data be used to sell th … | Continue reading
Serving the Technologist for more than a decade. IT news, reviews, and analysis. | Continue reading
You may want to watch the interview between Lex Fridman and Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse — is it fantastic […] The post Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse: fantastic or frightening? appeared first on ReadWrite. | Continue reading
Watching the Meta Quest 3 being announced by Meta made me realize something – the hardware available for virtual, augmented and mixed reality is finally catching up with the big idea pitches everyone had about this concept called the “metaverse” a couple of years ago.Read more... | Continue reading
The kids are not all right and are being subject to a firehouse of pinging in the thick of the Information Age. A new report reveals that children are getting upwards of 4,500 notifications a day and have some predictable favorite (and least favorite) apps. Read more... | Continue reading
Serving the Technologist for more than a decade. IT news, reviews, and analysis. | Continue reading
The GOP’s biggest gripes with big tech content moderation will have their day in the United States’ highest court. On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments for Florida and Texas’ big bills that have tried to stop big tech companies from moderating disinformation or o … | Continue reading
WhatsApp, Instagram add animated AI chat avatars, including Snoop Dogg as dungeon master. | Continue reading