Number of Posts: 52
Posts 1 - 10
Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein In a Wild Web
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 17.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, marketing, privacy, social media, threat
Summary | Facebook’s head of global policy management recently agreed to remove anything that violates the Vietnamese law from the social network. Governments around the world (even in the US) are increasingly trying to keep control of what's happening online. As a result, governments and big tech companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon don't always agree with each other. On the one hand, big tech companies want to have more control and power, and on the other hand, nations want to gain more control over people's online behvior. Facebook's desire to expand everywhere (e.g. in China) is one of the reasons for today's struggle between tech companies and nations. Facebook also faced some issues in Europe and Africa.
Image Description | Photograph of people using computers in a computer room, map of Facebook's users, two women laughing in front of a board displaying social media icons, Mark Zuckerberg and other people running in China, Mark Zuckerberg, his wife and daughters, glass building, people in front of a thumb-up sign, woman, crowd (some of them are using their phones), and people on their computers.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, Facebook, female(s), male(s), smartphone, social media
China Blocks WhatsApp, Broadening Online Censorship
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 25.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, threat, WhatsApp
Summary | The messaging app WhatsApp has been blocked in China. WhatsApp -which is owned by Facebook- was the last of Facebook products available in China. Indeed, both Facebook and Instagram are unavailable in China. To block the messaging app WhatsApp, the Chinese government may have created a special system that can intercept WhatsApp messages. Because of censorship in China, users have to turn to other messaging apps that can be easily controlled by the Chinese government (e.g. WeChat). When WhatsApp was blocked, many Chinese users complained.
Image Description | Photograph of a man staring at his phone.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone
How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Ever since the fatal Unite the Right protest in Charlotteville, social media and other internet companies seem to be washing their hands from any connection with far-right groups. Facebook has deleted such groups off of their platform, Reddit has done the same, Spotify is deleting white supremacist music from their libraries, and so on. Now far-right groups are building online alternatives for themselves and lamenting the censorship they have been victimized by.
Image Description | Illustration of hands around some crumpled-up paper.
Image Tags | hand(s)
A Hunt for Ways to Combat Online Radicalization
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 23.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Google, research/study, social media, threat, YouTube
Summary | Social media companies have only recently begun waking up to the fact that their unpoliced platforms are safe spaces for all kinds of extremism. Studies show that extremists nowadays get radicalized online, whether they be islamists or white supremacists. While these two movements may differ in ideologies, they resemble each otehr very strongly in their internet strategies of recruitment and organization of offline events. A research group at Google has now come up with a diversion strategy to combat the radicalization of individuals online. They target people who watch extremist recruitment videos on YouTube with video suggestions that present differing arguments and the downsides of that ideology. So far, there can be no knowing whether this strategy is helping but the redirection videos are being watched.
Image Description | GIF with mouse cursor arrows: black arrows surrounding a white arrow.
Image Tags | gifs
Teaching A.I. Systems to Behave Themselves
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 13.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, Google, threat
Summary | Artificial intelligence systems have made huge development leaps in recent times but there is still a lot of learning to do. The image recognition AI assistants of Facebook and Google demonstrate how, on the one hand, they can recognize a lot of images correctly if they have had enough data to learn from and, on the other hand, how it still makes bold mistakes. It suffices to manipulate a few pixels and the AI system gets confused. Developing AI systems not only takes a lot of data but also trial and error phases which are monitored and taught by human teachers.
Image Description | Programmers working on computers.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)
Crackdown on Online Criticism Chills Pakistani Social Media
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, law, misunderstanding, social media, threat
Summary | The Pakistani government has passed a very strict law that prohibits any anti-government or anti-army posts on social media. Some people have already been arrested. They claim that their posts were not criticizing the armed forces and that it was all a misunderstanding. This is a huge issie when people get arrested for trivial tweets.
Image Description | Getty image of a protest.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), text
Germany Tells Sites to Delete Hate or Pay Up
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | Germany has the strictest policies when it comes to illegalizing slanderous, threatening, and extremist language from public spaces. Germany has just passed a law that allows them to fine Facebook as much as 57 million dollars if they do not remove offensive content quickly enough from the platform. While some may say this is censorship , German lawmakers claim that respectful online encounters are a necessity for free speech to thrive. Facebook is now working on improving the flagging process for offensive material and are also using artificial intelligence to remove fake news.
Image Description | Blurry man looking at a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone
Germany vs. Twitter
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | law, threat, Twitter
Summary | The German government demands that Twitter remove illegal content (some offensive language is illegal in Germany) from the platform within 24 hours. If they fail to do so, Germany threatens to fine them up to 50 million euros. Now social media platforms have begun deleting German accounts which are even just coming close to illegal content so as not to risk a fine.
Image Description | Hand holding a lens over the Twitter logo.
Image Tags | hand(s), logo, Twitter
YouTube Sets Policies To Restrict Extremism
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google, marketing, threat, YouTube
Summary | Google has been using artificial intelligence to weed out offensive videos from YouTube and take them down. It is quite good at detecting nudity, graphic violence, and copyright violations. However, other less straightforward offensive material remains on the platform such as cultish sermons by extremist muslims. These are however not being monetized by displaying advertising next to them.
Image Description | An image of the London Tower and a portrait of a man.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)
I'm O.K. - You're Pure Evil
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 17.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, politics, threat, Twitter
Summary | Social media has made the political discourse cruder. In order to be heard in the millions of users one needs to provoke in just 140 characters. This is a threat to democracy because violent statements about people in office have become the norm because it is appropriate on social media. But now even serious news outlets begin using similar language that does not help a healthy political discussion.
Image Description | Illustration of facial features with mouse cursor arrows.
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