Group items tagged

"But the documents show that the company relies heavily on the intervention of a small editorial team to determine what makes its "trending module" headlines - the list of news topics that shows up on the side of the browser window on Facebook's desktop version. The company backed away from a pure-algorithm approach in 2014 after criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in users' feeds."

"Therefore, under EU law in force since May 2011, people must give their consent before an anti-ad-blocker script can run and hide content on a page. Of course, while waiting for that consent from a visitor, the site could refuse to show anything, but then the publisher will scare off all readers, even the ones who turn out to be not running anti-ad plugins. If the page is viewable while waiting for the consent, then blocking ad-blockers is pointless."

"Ringing Bells also plans to sell other more expensive handsets - ranging in price up to about $100 (£75) - at a profit. But, with just over a week to go until Freedom 251's launch, critics remain unconvinced. "I find it difficult to believe that any sort of phone can be manufactured for 251 rupees, so it's difficult to see what kind of business model they have," says Pranav Dixit, a tech expert at the news site Factor Daily."

"But one church in Lichfield, Staffordshire, faced a different fundraising problem: to pay a £6,000 bill demanded for photographs used on its website. The case came to the attention of Gavin Drake, the communications director for the diocese's 600 churches. In creating the church's website, a volunteer had included a couple of images sourced from Getty, a large picture agency, without paying for them. A couple of months later, Getty sent the church a demand for £6,000."

"The Purdue researchers have created Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC) which uses low-frequency, carrier-less broadband transmission, and so keeps the signal almost entirely within the human body. That means data from pacemakers and other implantable medical devices would only be readable a handful of centimetres outside the wearer."

"Increasing numbers of implantable medical devices are now gaining internet connectivity, giving doctors the ability to monitor patients health remotely, and even update the devices to tweak a treatment plan. Unfortunately, that flexibility offers a way for hackers to hijack that hardware, and even potentially make changes to the way the devices work. While so far no attacks have been successful, proof-of-concept attacks have been available for years"

"Some have argued for much greater policing of content online, and companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have talked about hiring thousands to staff up their moderation teams.8 8. April Glaser, Want a Terrible Job? Facebook and Google May Be Hiring,Slate (Jan. 18, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/facebook-and-google-are-building-an-army-of-content-moderators-for-2018.html (explaining that major platforms have hired or have announced plans to hire thousands, in some cases more than ten thousand, new content moderators).On the other side of the coin, companies are increasingly investing in more and more sophisticated technology help, such as artificial intelligence, to try to spot contentious content earlier in the process.9 9. Tom Simonite, AI Has Started Cleaning Up Facebook, But Can It Finish?,Wired (Dec. 18, 2018), https://www.wired.com/story/ai-has-started-cleaning-facebook-can-it-finish/.Others have argued that we should change Section 230 of the CDA, which gives platforms a free hand in determining how they moderate (or how they don't moderate).10 10. Gohmert Press Release, supra note 7 ("Social media companies enjoy special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, protections not shared by other media. Instead of acting like the neutral platforms they claim to be in order obtain their immunity, these companies have turned Section 230 into a license to potentially defraud and defame with impunity… Since there still appears to be no sincere effort to stop this disconcerting behavior, it is time for social media companies to be liable for any biased and unethical impropriety of their employees as any other media company. If these companies want to continue to act like a biased medium and publish their own agendas to the detriment of others, they need to be held accountable."); Eric Johnson, Silicon Valley's Self-Regulating Days "Probably Should Be" Over, Nancy Pelosi Says, Vox (Apr. 11, 2019), https:/

"After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically-now it seems that almost no one is happy. Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of trolling, bigotry, and hatred.1 1. Zachary Laub, Hate Speech on Social Media: Global Comparisons, Council on Foreign Rel. (Jun. 7, 2019), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-comparisons.Meanwhile, others feel that these platforms have become too aggressive in policing language and are systematically silencing or censoring certain viewpoints.2 2. Tony Romm, Republicans Accused Facebook, Google and Twitter of Bias. Democrats Called the Hearing 'Dumb.', Wash. Post (Jul. 17, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/17/republicans-accused-facebook-google-twitter-bias-democrats-called-hearing-dumb/?utm_term=.895b34499816.And that's not even touching on the question of privacy and what these platforms are doing (or not doing) with all of the data they collect."

""Once these technical photographic limitations of the image are determined, we can then zoom in as closely as possible to every edge of the subjects, in order to highlight where detail has been altered, knowing what should be sharp and what shouldn't. "As per the annotations, this reveals sharp transitions of detail, usually from hard edged selections [in the image editing programme Adobe Photoshop], which can be either straight or worked around curved areas of detail. "It's the juddering of straight-line detail that is the biggest telltale sign of multiple frames being composited together. This can be seen extensively around the hair, arms, and especially at the zip midway down the princess's jacket. Seeing repetition of detail in the finer areas also reveals the likely use of the cloning tool in Photoshop."