Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and Trump ally, to step down from Meta board

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Admin

Thiel, a major donor to the Republican party, was seen by critics as part of the reason why Facebook did not censor Trump

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, is stepping down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, after 17 years.

Thiel, Facebook’s longest-serving board member and a major donor to the Republican party, plans to focus on backing Donald Trump’s allies in the November midterm elections, according to the New York Times. He recently donated $10m each to the Senate campaigns of Blake Masters, who is running for a seat in Arizona, and JD Vance, who is running in Ohio. Masters is the chief operating officer of Thiel’s family office and Vance used to work at one of Thiel’s venture funds.

Kirat Assi: ‘Bobby tried to destroy my hopes, my dreams, every part of my life’

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Admin

She had been ‘catfished’ for years, and now her hit podcast tells the story of tracing the scammer and her quest for justice

The voice of Kirat Assi, subject of the podcast Sweet Bobby, is so familiar I momentarily forget we had never spoken, let alone met. I am one of the million-plus listeners gripped by her story of being “catfished” – duped into a relationship by someone with a false identity.

Assi, who lives in London, fell victim to a complex fraud that lasted eight years and involved up to 60 characters who only existed in the scammer’s warped imagination. At the centre was Bobby, a handsome cardiologist with whom Assi formed a close friendship that turned into romance despite never meeting in real life. Bobby was a real person whose identity had been stolen by the scammer, eventually exposed as Assi’s cousin Simran Bhogal.

Controversial Pegasus spyware faces its day of reckoning | John Naughton

Posted on November 27, 2021 by Admin

The infamous hacking tool is now at the centre of international lawsuits thanks to a courageous research lab

If you were compiling a list of the most toxic tech companies, Facebook – strangely – would not come out on top. First place belongs to NSO, an outfit of which most people have probably never heard. Wikipedia tells us that “NSO Group is an Israeli technology firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones”.

Pause for a moment on that phrase: “remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones”. Most smartphone users assume that the ability of a hacker to penetrate their device relies upon the user doing something careless or naive – clicking on a weblink, or opening an attachment. And in most cases they would be right in that assumption. But Pegasus can get in without the user doing anything untoward. And once in, it turns everything on the device into an open book for whoever deployed the malware.

‘I’m happy to lose £10m by quitting Facebook,’ says Lush boss

Posted on November 26, 2021 by Admin

Losing 10m followers on sites such as Instagram is a price worth paying for co-founder of ethical beauty empire

Quitting social media is hard to do, even when it doesn’t cost you anything. So when Lush’s chief executive, Mark Constantine, shut its thousands of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok accounts on Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, he knew dropping off millions of customers’ screens would damage his business.

Its Facebook and Instagram accounts alone had 10.6 million followers and the void will result in an estimated £10m hit to sales but Constantine, one of the business’s co-founders, said it had “no choice” after whistleblowers called attention to the negative impact social media sites such as Instagram are having on teenagers’ mental health.

Can big tech ever be reined in?

Posted on November 21, 2021 by Admin

The Biden administration has shown an early determination to tackle the power of Amazon, Google, Facebook and co. But is it already too late?

When historians look back on this period, one of the things that they will find remarkable is that for a quarter of a century, the governments of western democracies slept peacefully while some of the most powerful (and profitable) corporations in history emerged and grew, without let or hindrance, at exponential speeds.

They will wonder at how a small number of these organisations, which came to be called “tech giants” (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft), acquired, and began to wield, extraordinary powers. They logged and tracked everything we did online – every email, tweet, blog, photograph and social media post we sent, every “like” we registered, every website we visited, every Google search we made, every product we ordered online, every place we visited, which groups we belonged to and who our closest friends were.

Chakras, crystals and conspiracy theories: how the wellness industry turned its back on Covid science

Posted on November 11, 2021 by Admin

Its gurus increasingly promote vaccine scepticism, conspiracy theories and the myth that ill people have themselves to blame. How did self-care turn so nasty?

Ozlem Demirboga Carr is not really into all that woo‑woo stuff. “I’m definitely a full-science kind of person,” says the 41-year-old telecoms worker from Reading. She doesn’t believe in crystals, affirmations or salt lamps. But she did find herself unusually anxious during the UK’s Covid lockdown in March 2020 and, like many people, decided to practise yoga as a way to de-stress.

“I tried to be open-minded and I was open to advice on trying to improve my wellbeing and mental health,” she says. So she followed a range of social media accounts, including the “somatic therapist and biz coach” Phoebe Greenacre, known for her yoga videos, and the “women’s empowerment and spiritual mentor” Kelly Vittengl. The Instagram algorithm did its work. “I suddenly found myself following so many wellness accounts,” she says.

India hunts ‘fake news’ spreaders after anti-Muslim attacks

Posted on November 7, 2021 by Admin

Misleading images shared on social media after mosques vandalised and homes ransacked in Tripura state

Police in India are seeking the owners of about 100 social media accounts accused of sharing “fake news” after mob attacks on mosques in the north-east of the country.

Last month’s violence in Tripura state erupted on the sidelines of a rally for hundreds of followers of a rightwing Hindu nationalist group. The incident appeared to be a revenge attack prompted by the killing of several Hindu worshippers across the border in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Why people believe Covid conspiracy theories: could folklore hold the answer?

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Admin

Researchers use AI – and witchcraft folklore – to map the coronavirus conspiracy theories that have sprung up

Researchers have mapped the web of connections underpinning coronavirus conspiracy theories, opening a new way of understanding and challenging them.

Using Danish witchcraft folklore as a model, the researchers from UCLA and Berkeley analysed thousands of social media posts with an artificial intelligence tool and extracted the key people, things and relationships.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen calls for urgent external regulation

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Admin

Ex-employee tells UK MPs Mark Zuckerberg ‘has unilateral control over 3bn people’ due to his position

Mark Zuckerberg “has unilateral control over 3 billion people” due to his unassailable position at the top of Facebook, the whistleblower Frances Haugen told MPs as she called for urgent external regulation to rein in the tech company’s management and reduce the harm being done to society.

Haugen, a former Facebook employee who released tens of thousands of damaging documents about its inner workings, travelled to London from the US for a parliamentary hearing and gave qualified backing to UK government proposals to regulate social media platforms and make them take some responsibility for content on their sites.

Frances Haugen to testify to MPs about Facebook and online harm

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Admin

Whistleblower and critic of Mark Zuckerberg will give evidence to MPs scrutinising online safety bill

The Facebook whistleblower is to give evidence to MPs and peers scrutinising the online safety bill, amid calls for a toughening up of the landmark legislation.

Frances Haugen has triggered a deep crisis at Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire after she released tens of thousands of internal documents detailing the company’s failure to keep its users safe from harmful content. On Monday Haugen, 37, will testify in person at the joint committee scrutinising the draft online safety bill, a piece of legislation that places a duty of care on social media companies to protect users – with the threat of substantial fines if they fail to do so.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

France hails victory as Facebook agrees to pay newspapers for content

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Admin

Social media firm announces deal after long-running battle with national and regional newspapers

France has hailed a victory in its long-running quest for fairer action from tech companies after Facebook reached an agreement with a group of national and regional newspapers to pay for content shared by its users.

Facebook on Thursday announced a licensing agreement with the APIG alliance of French national and regional newspapers, which includes Le Parisien and Ouest-France as well as smaller titles. It said this meant “people on Facebook will be able to continue uploading and sharing news stories freely amongst their communities, whilst also ensuring that the copyright of our publishing partners is protected”.