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"The "battle for Telegram" pits one of Russia's most popular messaging apps - with more than 13 million users - against the internet censor Roskomnadzor, in a public cat-and-mouse game to block traffic that has put the agency's reputation on the line. Telegram is widely used by the Russian political establishment, and prominent politicians and officials have openly flouted or criticised the ban. Data from the app showed several Kremlin officials had continued to sign in on Tuesday evening, four days after a court ordered the service to be blocked over alleged terrorism concerns."

"Facebook announced late Friday that it had eliminated jobs in its trending module, the part of its news division where staff curated popular news for Facebook users. Over the weekend, the fully automated Facebook trending module pushed out a false story about Fox News host Megyn Kelly, a controversial piece about a comedian's four-letter word attack on rightwing pundit Ann Coulter"

"It found that social media bots were used by many countries to drum up ideas aligning with party messaging, by inflating social media engagement, "creating an artificial sense of popularity, momentum or relevance." An army of 500 to "amplify" ideas In Duterte's case, his social media manager has said they've used some 400 to 500 people to "amplify" ideas. They individually handled groups on platforms like Facebook, that each had hundreds to hundreds of thousands of followers."

"Bias in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a popular topic over the last few years as AI-solutions have become more ingrained in our daily lives."

"MEETINGS ON ZOOM, the increasingly popular video conferencing service, are encrypted using an algorithm with serious, well-known weaknesses, and sometimes using keys issued by servers in China, even when meeting participants are all in North America, according to researchers at the University of Toronto."

"A hacker has stolen millions of user account details from popular education platform Edmodo, and the data is apparently for sale on the so-called dark web. Teachers, students and parents use Edmodo to work on lesson plans, assign homework, and more. The organization claims to have over 78 million members."

"What if this isn't just a one-off case of a popular professor dying. With so many classes online, why wouldn't universities just lay off any professor with a body of recorded lectures? We already know that tenure is harder to achieve every year, and schools are relying more and more on adjunct professors who teach a couple of classes on yearly contracts with no benefits. This scheme could save schools even more money! Of course, tuition will remain the same. One prof in the Twitter thread saw this possibility already."

"Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent to Microsoft that outlines a process to create a conversational chatbot of a specific person using their social data. In an eerie twist, the patent says the chatbot could potentially be inspired by friends or family members who are deceased, which is almost a direct plot of a popular episode of Netflix's Black Mirror."

"We seem to be safe for the moment, however - the MIT team said it has no interest in taking artificially intelligent horror machines to the next level or exploring their darker possibilities. "We wanted to playfully commemorate humanity's fear of AI, which is a growing theme in popular culture, but we currently have no plans to use the immense power of AI to scare people further," Yanardag said. "The world is already pretty scary!""

"This type of extreme racist post was frequently met with pushback from the community. Common responses included; "people should be treated as individuals not as part of a group" and "the Democrats are the ones who want to divide us up by race". Implicit or explicit gestures of antisemitism were strongly protested by evangelical Christians. Red-pill posts would rarely stay up long. In most cases, they were only intended to appear in one's Instagram feed and to vanish shortly after. The account would then resume posting popular content, wait another week and try it again. This process would continue for months, maybe a year. By posting mainstream conservative content most of the time, these extreme-right groups were able to build up an audience numbering in the range of 30,000 to 40,000, which they could then incrementally expose to radical content."

"Telegram, a messaging app created by the reclusive Russian exile Pavel Durov, is suited to running protests for a number of reasons. It allows huge encrypted chat groups, making it easier to organise people, like a slicker version of WhatsApp. And its "channels" allow moderators to disseminate information quickly to large numbers of followers in a way that other messaging services do not; they combine the reach and immediacy of a Twitter feed, and the focus of an email newsletter. The combination of usability and privacy has made the app popular with protestors (it has been adopted by Extinction Rebellion) as well as people standing against authoritarian regimes (in Hong Kong and Iran, as well as Belarus); it is also used by terrorists and criminals. In the past five years, Telegram has grown at a remarkable speed, hitting 60 million users in 2015 and 400 million in April this year. "

"The case was finally cracked when new legislation in January 2019 allowed police to search for matches to suspects' DNA on commercial genealogy websites, which are popular among Swedes seeking long-lost relatives."

"Four U.S. senators today urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims that the very popular video app TikTok, which is owned by a company tied to China's military and government, violated a consent decree to protect children's privacy."

""There has been a high degree of improvisation in the rollout of Chivo and a great deal of opacity," says Ricardo Castaneda, a local economist. "The app asks for access to your microphone and your contacts, which are not needed for a wallet. Bitcoin might be a distraction but given the decision to push ahead with the plan despite popular opposition and the advice of experts, it could also be an important pillar of Bukele's political project.""

"While it's still a popular choice to allege that technology is putting human beings out of work, a study by Deloitte based on 140 years of data seems to prove otherwise. Automation, robotics and the simple fact that IT is faster, better connected and capable of massive amounts of analytics and storage means technology has often been held responsible for replacing the roles of people, but census data stretching back to 1871 begs to differ."

"They tested four well-known models, including GPT-3. The best was truthful on 58% of questions, while human performance was 94%. The models "generated many false answers that mimic popular misconceptions and have the potential to deceive humans". Interestingly, they also found that "the largest models were generally the least truthful"."

"People have been censored or blocked from the platform because their names sounded too fake. Ads for clothing disabled people we removed buy algorithms that believed they were breaking the rules and promoting medical devices. The Vienna Tourist Board had to move to adult content friendly site OnlyFans to share works of art from their museum after Facebook removed photos of paintings. Words that have rude popular meanings but other more specific definitions in certain circles - like "hoe" amongst gardeners, or "cock" amongst chicken farmers or gun enthusiasts - can land people in the so-called "Facebook jail" for days or even weeks."

"Social media giant TikTok has announced it will actively ban videos that encourage tanning and add educational content to its platform after alarm from Australian medical experts over the platform's sharing of pro-tanning material. In September, Melanoma Institute Australia co-medical directors Prof Georgina Long and Prof Richard Scolyer, speaking at the National Press Club, took issue with the video-sharing app for its popular #sunburnchallenge hashtag."

"The role of AI writing systems as drafting buddies is a big departure from how writers typically get help, yet so far it is their biggest selling point and use case. Most writing tools available today will do some drafting for you, either by continuing where you left off or responding to a more specific instruction. SudoWrite, a popular AI writing tool for novelists, does all of these, with options to "write" where you left off, "describe" a highlighted noun, or "brainstorm" ideas based on a situation you describe. Systems like Jasper.ai or Lex will complete your paragraph or draft copy based on instructions, and Laika is similar but more focused on fiction and drama. "

"A POPULAR news outlet has been publishing articles written by AI since November, keeping it on the down low. Tech media site CNET has been publishing the articles since November, and lots of readers don't seem to have noticed."