From Gyneth Paltrow to Trump, today’s stars speak directly to their fans. But are they really controlling their message?
I have a friend, Adam, who is an autograph seller – a niche profession, and one that is getting more niche by the day. When we met for breakfast last month he was looking despondent.
“Everyone takes selfies these days,” he said sadly, picking at his scrambled eggs. “It’s never autographs any more. They just want photos of themselves with celebrities.”
Continue reading...In wide-ranging speech, actor accuses tech giants of running the ‘greatest propaganda machine in history’
Read Sacha Baron Cohen’s scathing attack on Facebook in full
Sacha Baron Cohen has denounced tech giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google as “the greatest propaganda machine in history” and culpable for a surge in “murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities”.
Baron Cohen was speaking on Thursday at Never Is Now, the Anti-Defamation League’s summit on antisemitism and hate in New York, where he was presented with the organisation’s international leadership award. He said that “hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities” and that “all this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history”.
Continue reading...Singer appeals to fans for help in escalation of feud with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta
Taylor Swift’s performance at the American music awards is in doubt, as is the future of a new Netflix documentary about her, the singer has claimed, thanks to an ongoing feud with “tyrannical” music managers Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta.
Related: Taylor Swift returns to US court after appeal over copyright lawsuit
Continue reading...Company workers reportedly obtained personal account information of critics of the government in Saudi Arabia
Two former Twitter employees have been charged with spying after they reportedly obtained personal account information for critics of the government of Saudi Arabia.
A complaint unsealed on Wednesday in US district court in San Francisco detailed a coordinated effort by Saudi officials to recruit employees at the social media giant to look up the private data of thousands of Twitter accounts.
Continue reading...US presidential hopeful says fossil fuel firms will be free to promote themselves while critics are barred
Twitter’s plan to ban all political advertising risked muzzling climate activists while giving polluters free rein to promote themselves, the US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said.
“Twitter’s new ad policy will allow fossil fuel companies to buy ads defending themselves and spreading misleading info but won’t allow organisations fighting the climate crisis to buy ads holding those companies accountable,” she tweeted, linking to an environmental newsletter.
Continue reading...Social network’s move comes as Facebook faces controversy over ads that promote misinformation
Twitter will ban all political advertising, the company’s CEO has announced, in a move that will increase pressure on Facebook over its controversial stance to allow politicians to advertise false statements.
The new policy, announced via Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account on Wednesday, will come into effect on 22 November and will apply globally to all electioneering ads, as well as ads related to political issues. The timing means the ban will be in place in time for the UK snap election.
Continue reading...Mariela Castro and state media journalists were also blocked in move Cuban Union of Journalists called ‘massive censorship’
Twitter has blocked the accounts of the Cuban Communist party leader Raúl Castro, his daughter Mariela Castro and Cuba’s top state-run media outlets, a move the Cuban Union of Journalists denounced as “massive censorship”.
Related: Cuba is driving dissidents off island with threats of violence and jail, report finds
Continue reading...According to Microsoft’s president, the singer already had trademark issues with the company’s US version of the Chinese chatbot XiaoIce, before it was plugged into Twitter – and became a Nazi.
Taylor Swift has claimed ownership over many things. In 2015, she applied for trademarks for lyrics including “this sick beat” and “Nice to meet you. Where you been?” A few months later, she went further, trademarking the year of her birth, “1989”. We now know it didn’t end there. A new book reveals that, a year later, Swift claimed ownership of the name Tay – and threatened to sue Microsoft for infringing it.
In the spring of 2016, Microsoft announced plans to bring a chatbot it had developed for the Chinese market to the US. The chatbot, XiaoIce, was designed to have conversations on social media with teenagers and young adults. Users developed a genuine affinity for it, and would spend a quarter of an hour a day unloading their hopes and fears to a friendly, yet non-judgmental ear.
Continue reading...The 36-year-old New York musician tweeted that she’s ‘decided to retire’ from the music business
Rap star Nicki Minaj has announced she’s leaving the music business because she wants to make family life her priority.
The 36-year-old Trinidadian rapper, who grew up in New York and is known for her outlandish outfits, bizarre alter egos and fast flow, made the announcement in a tweet on Thursday morning.
Continue reading...Badiucao accuses the social media firm of violating the free speech of people who speak up against China’s bullying
A Melbourne artist who posted anti-Chinese government work has had it pulled offline by Instagram, while death threats against him have remained uncensored.
The censorship of Badiucao – and later restoration – by Instagram came as Twitter and Facebook suspended more than 200,000 accounts deemed to be part of a “co-ordinated state-backed operation” of misinformation from the People’s Republic of China.
Continue reading...Company also suspends thousands of accounts as it reports ‘state-backed information operation’
Twitter has removed nearly 1,000 accounts and suspended thousands of others tied to a campaign by the Chinese government against protesters in Hong Kong, the company announced on Monday.
Twitter disclosed a “significant state-backed information operation” originating from within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) targeting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. It removed 936 accounts and suspended approximately 200,000 accounts its investigation found were illegitimate.
Continue reading...MPs, celebrities and academics criticise ‘disgraceful’ comment by Brexit backer
Arron Banks has been criticised after he appeared to wish harm upon Greta Thunberg as the 16-year-old activist set sail across the Atlantic in a solar-powered yacht on a zero-carbon two-week voyage.
The controversial Brexit backer warned the teenager that “freak yachting accidents do happen in August” as he responded to a tweet by Green party MP Caroline Lucas who said Thunberg was carrying “the vital message to the UN that time is running out to address the climate emergency”.
Continue reading...Fifteen-year-old resorts to drastic measures after mom takes action ‘so I’d pay more attention to my surroundings’
A resourceful teenager has taken the rise of increasingly powerful smart home devices to its logical conclusion – tweeting from her family’s smart fridge after her mother confiscated her phone.
The 15-year-old Ariana Grande fan known only as “Dorothy” was barred from using her phone but managed to find a number of innovative ways to reach her thousands of followers – a handheld Nintendo device, a Wii U gaming console, and finally, her family’s LG Smart Refrigerator.
Continue reading...A Twitter user’s loaded question has been widely mocked, but there’s actually more to it than many have assumed
As the gun control debate rages in the US in the wake of a weekend of devastating mass shootings, calls for an assault weapons ban have resurfaced. While this has led many Americans to cite their second amendment rights, one man in Arkansas has asked a simple question: “How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?”
It all began when Willam McNabb, who identifies as a libertarian, waded into a debate about assault weapons (high-powered rifles were reportedly used by the gunmen in both El Paso and Dayton).
Continue reading...Troll farms, bots, dark ads, fake news ... from Putin’s Russia to Brexit Britain, new methods are being used to change politics and crush dissent. It’s time to fight back
Father came out of the sea and was arrested on the beach: two men in suits standing over his clothes as he returned from his swim. They ordered him to get dressed quickly, pull his trousers over his wet trunks. On the drive the trunks were still wet, shrinking, turning cold, leaving a damp patch on his trousers and the back seat. He had to keep them on during the interrogation. There he was, trying to keep up a dignified facade, but all the time the dank trunks made him squirm. It struck him they had done it on purpose, these mid-ranking KGB men: masters of the small-time humiliation, the micro-mind game.
It was 1976, in Odessa, Soviet Ukraine, and my father, Igor, a writer and poet, had been detained for “distributing copies of harmful literature to friends and acquaintances”: books censored for telling the truth about the Soviet Gulag (Solzhenitsyn) or for being written by exiles (Nabokov). He was threatened with seven year’s prison and five in exile. One after another his friends were called in to confess whether he had ever spoken “anti-Soviet fabrications of a defamatory nature, such as that creative people cannot realise their potential in the USSR”.
Continue reading...US president refers to message about Met police twitter account, calling London mayor ‘incompetent’
Donald Trump has retweeted the British far-right commentator Katie Hopkins and launched another attack on Sadiq Khan.
Referring to a message from Hopkins that the Met’s Twitter account had been targeted by hackers on Friday night, in which she said officers had “lost control of London streets” and “lost control of their Twitter account too”, Trump tweeted: “With the incompetent mayor of London, you will never have safe streets!”
Continue reading...Books by James Williams and Carles Boix offer fascinating takes on how we can combat anger and distraction online
We’re having problems with the internet and big tech, principally Alphabet (Google/YouTube), Amazon, Apple and Facebook. The government has taken note.
Related: 'Facebook is dangerous': tech giant faces criticism from Congress over Libra currency
Continue reading...‘Unauthorised access’ led to series of messages being posted and emailed to subscribers
Scotland Yard’s principal Twitter account, which is followed by more than 1.2 million people and is used to provide important alerts in times of crisis, tweeted a series of bizarre messages on Friday night after becoming “subject to unauthorised access”.
Many of the dozen errant tweets, some of which referred to the British rapper Digga D, were also repeated in press releases emailed out to journalists from the force’s official email address. Officers said they were “assessing to establish what criminal offences have been committed” over the security breach.
Continue reading...Company automatically posted pictures of new shirts with offensive Twitter handles on back
Adidas UK has come under fire after a social media gambit backfired spectacularly, leading to the company tweeting out pictures of its shirts with racist and offensive slogans on the back.
The error came as Adidas launched a social media campaign, #DareToCreate, in conjunction with its release of the new Arsenal home kit.
Continue reading...The four men behind the nationwide Brexit billboard phenomenon finally reveal their identities – in the pub where it all began
The Birdcage pub in Stoke Newington, north London, seems an unlikely birthplace for a rebellion. On a midweek afternoon, the bar is almost empty. Spring sunshine streams through the windows; Spandau Ballet provide a gentle soundtrack; black-hatted men from the local ultra-Orthodox Jewish community pass by outside.
The only customers are four men sitting at a table in an alcove. It was at this spot, more than five months ago, that this group of friends came up with an idea born from their collective despair over the “lies, lunacy and hypocrisy” of the Brexit process.
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