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"If Facebook cared about unfair profiling and privacy abuse, for instance, it would probably not have started grouping its users together based on their "Ethnic Affinity". It wouldn't then allow that ethnic affinity to be used as a basis for excluding users from advertisements, and it certainly wouldn't allows that ethnic affinity to be used as a basis for potentially illegal discrimination in real estate advertising."

"Facebook will rely on users to report fake news despite evidence that suggests users have a difficult time assessing or identifying fake news. Teens seem to be especially vulnerable to fake news. A recent study by researchers at Stanford found that middle and high school students have a difficult time detecting fake news from real news, or detecting bias in tweets and Facebook statuses."

"* 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone * Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk * Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'"

"While Google has played down the notion of rolling out anything soon (it will take years until Glass builds up enough users to make it worthwhile), marketers can't stop buzzing about the possibility of paying for ads in the physical world based on user engagement and reactions. The patent even details how a device like Google Glass could infer a user's emotional response to an ad - whether they were happy, sad or indifferent - and adjust pricing accordingly."

"Government agencies around the world demanded access to the information of over 38,000 Facebook users in the first half of this year, and more than half the orders came from the United States, the company said on Tuesday."

Clear rules are needed to govern what social networks can do with the massive amount of personal data they collect and how they inform their users about their practices, said Sen. Charles Schumer, who has asked the FTC to articulate a set of guidelines. Facebook claims it offers users "powerful" privacy tools, but Paul Stephens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse suggested consumers need a PhD to understand them.

"The judge also wants the app wiped from existing users' smartphones and tablets, though it's unclear which users that would apply to. It's also unknown at this point whether the judge has the power to enforce this ban and what the chances are of it going through. The report stated that three app store providers could be subject to a fine of 20,000 Brazilian real (about $9,000) for every day the app remains available for download after the 10-day period starting with Wednesday. The judge argues that the app violates Brazil's constitution The judge argues that the app violates Brazil's constitution, which states freedom of expression cannot be promoted if it's done anonymously."

"With news that the 15 million Twitter users in the UK can now be targeted at individual postcode levels, the micro-blogging platform is selling its advertising opportunities as ultra-geographically precise, and therefore ultra-cost effective. "The key benefit of geo-targeting is that it enables advertisers, or in this case political parties, the ability to reach users in specific regions, metropolitan areas and now postcodes," Twitter said in a blog post. "

""Parties who wish to process device fingerprints which are generated through the gaining of access to, or the storing of, information on the user's terminal device must first obtain the valid consent of the user (unless an exemption applies)," the Article 29 Working Party wrote. It means that some websites, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, that have used alternative technical processes to try to bypass the need for a "cookie policy notice" will have to show a notification after all."

"A story on the site of the Japanese broadcaster NHK shows how this is playing out in the world of social networks. Online criticism of the behavior of the President of South Korea following the sinking of the ferry MV Sewol prompted the government to set up a team to monitor online activity. That, in its turn, has led people to seek what the NHK article calls "cyber-asylum" -- online safety through the use of foreign mobile messaging services, which aren't spied on so easily by the South Korean authorities. According to the NHK article: Many users have switched [from the hugely-popular home-grown product KakaoTalk] to a German chat app called Telegram. It had 50,000 users in early September. Now 2 million people have signed up."

"Google announced on its blog that it is expanding upon Safe Browsing to alert Gmail users about the possibility of suspicious government activity. Since 2012, Google has put a banner on top of users' Gmail pages that had a warning about state-sponsored attackers if Google believed they were in danger, but starting today people will get a full-page warning about it - very hard to miss."

"The social network, which did not oppose the application, has until mid-January to comply. The parody accounts, @Wetherspoon__UK and @SpoonsTom, have tens of thousands of followers each on the social network, and tweet a mixture of fake updates about Wetherspoon's pubs and replies to users who mistakenly believe they are contacting the real company."

"california has banned bots that pretend to be human. under a newly signed bill, these bots will need to disclose their nature, making it clear to the user that they're conversing with a machine rather than a human.    according to a bill signed on friday by democratic gov. jerry brown, automated accounts, more commonly called 'bots', will need to disclose to customers that they're not real humans, according to reporting from PC magazine. the bill is part of a move that will help users avoid falling victim to automated messages selling goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election."

"But, for a growing number of users - and mental health experts - the very positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. The site encourages its users to present an upbeat, attractive image that others may find at best misleading and at worse harmful. If Facebook demonstrates that everyone is boring and Twitter proves that everyone is awful, Instagram makes you worry that everyone is perfect - except you."

"Microsoft has pulled its latest Windows 10 update offline after some users complained of missing files. It's the latest in a string of incidents with regular patches and Microsoft's larger Windows 10 updates that have been causing issues for some PC users this year. While Microsoft tests Windows 10 with millions of beta testers, there are signs that this public feedback loop isn't always working. Earlier this year Microsoft delayed its April 2018 Windows 10 update due to last minute Blue Screen of Death issues, and then had to fix desktop and Chrome freezing issues after it was shipped to more than 600 million machines. "

"Algorithms steer us back to similar content in echo chambers that inhibit both critical and creative thinking. Platforms incentivized to keep users scrolling discourage long-looking and render users as passive consumers, rather than active seekers of inspiration. They aren't a space for productive feedback, either: Art takes on a different tone when it's surrounded by dog GIFs, political memes, and your cousin's baby photos."

""I don't really care about data privacy because I think it's all an illusion anyway." It's interesting to see how this encounter also reflects the general behavior of a majority of people when it comes to privacy. Although user data has long been a gold mine for companies, would it be more acceptable if they started paying their users in exchange for it?"

"TikTok moderators were told to suppress videos from users who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled, as part of the company's efforts to curate an aspirational air in the videos it promotes, according to new documents published by the Intercept."

"A draft government memo explaining how the NHS contact-tracing app could stem the spread of the coronavirus said ministers might be given the ability to order "de-anonymisation" to identify people from their smartphones, the Guardian can reveal. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced on Sunday that the UK planned to introduce an app that would enable people who developed Covid-19 symptoms to "anonymously" alert other users to whom they had been in close proximity. "All data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research," he said."

"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."