Fake news spikes in Indonesia, weeks ahead of elections

Dozens of posts containing disinformation spread, with fears people may not trust results of a legitimate election

The spread of fake news and disinformation has spiked in Indonesia in recent months, weeks before millions are scheduled to vote in the country’s elections.

Data released in a new report from Mafindo, an organisation focused on combating fake news and improving digital literacy, shows that political fake news and disinformation shot up by 61% between December 2018 and January this year.

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Use forecast to talk about climate change, urges ex-BBC presenter

Bill Giles calls on broadcasters to add slot explaining humans’ impact on climate

The veteran weatherman Bill Giles is calling on the BBC and other major broadcasters to radically overhaul their forecasts to incorporate information about climate change.

The former head of BBC weather presenters has said more needs to be done by broadcasters to highlight climate change to face the “reality more squarely and openly”.

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Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016

Faulty server migration blamed for mass deletion of songs, photos and video

Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.

The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations.

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Facebook’s local news project frustrated – by lack of local newspapers

About 1,800 newspapers have closed in the US in the last 15 years, partly as a result of internet-based companies like Facebook

Facebook’s effort to establish a service that provides users with local news and information is being hindered by the lack of outlets where the company’s technicians can find original reporting.

Some 1,800 newspapers have closed in the US over the last 15 years, according to the University of North Carolina. Newsroom employment has declined by 45% as the industry struggles with a broken business model partly caused by the success of companies on the internet – including Facebook.

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Sky New Zealand pulls Sky News Australia off air over Christchurch massacre coverage

Independent channel says decision by Rupert Murdoch’s company to show ‘distressing’ footage of terror attack is behind move

Sky New Zealand has pulled fellow broadcaster Sky News Australia off air until the channel stops broadcasting clips from the Christchurch mosque shooter’s Facebook live stream.

In a tweet posted on Saturday morning, Sky New Zealand, an independently-owned broadcaster, said it had decided to remove the Australian 24-hour news channel from its platform because of the distressing footage.

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Venezuela: prominent journalist taken by intelligence service

Luis Carlos Díaz, who went missing at about 5.30pm Monday, was taken by Sebin, fellow journalists confirmed

A prominent Venezuelan journalist who had been reporting on the country’s escalating political crisis and electricity blackout out has been seized by secret police, sparking international condemnation.

Related: US pulls all staff from Venezuela as Maduro blames blackout on 'demonic' Trump plot

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Bolsonaro under fire for smearing reporter who covered scandal involving his son

‘Bolsonaro is Fake News’ became a top hashtag in Brazil after president shared ‘false information’ to attack a journalist

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has provoked a storm of protest after sharing fake news to attack a journalist who has covered a scandal involving a former aide of his son Flávio, a senator who is also under investigation for money laundering.

Leading newspapers, the Brazilian Investigative Journalism Association and the Brazilian Bar Association, criticised the far-right president for sharing a “misrepresentation” and “false information”.

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Elizabeth Warren is right – we must break up Facebook, Google and Amazon | Robert Reich

The titans of the new Gilded Age must be busted and the idea has bipartisan support. It’s time big tech was brought to heel

The presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday she wants to bust up giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon.

America’s first Gilded Age began in the late 19th century with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – but culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, and William H “the public be damned” Vanderbilt.

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‘A real source of hope’: social media opens Thailand’s junta to criticism

Social platforms wield increasing power in Thai politics, where traditional media remain under the iron grip of the military

Just over a week ago, Thailand’s army chief began trending on Twitter.

It started with an order, made by General Apirat Kongsompong that 160 radio stations across the country must play the 1970s anti-communist propaganda song, Nuk Paen Din (Scum of the Earth) which glorifies the might of the armed forces, on a daily basis.

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Democrats bar Fox News from 2020 debates over ‘inappropriate’ Trump ties

DNC chairman says New Yorker exposé on Trump ties to Fox News cast doubt on network’s ability to hold ‘fair and neutral’ debates

The Democratic party’s governing body has announced it will not ask Fox News to host any of its televised primary debates during the 2020 US presidential race, citing a recent report detailing the conservative network’s close rapport with Donald Trump.

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said a New Yorker exposé on the depth of the Trump administration’s ties to Fox News cast doubt on the network’s capacity to hold a “fair and neutral” debate on the Democratic primaries. The decision was first reported by the Washington Post.

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Netflix to adapt One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Streaming giant buys rights to create first ever screen adaptation of Colombian author’s seminal 1967 magical realist novel

Netflix has acquired the rights to Gabriel García Márquez’s seminal One Hundred Years of Solitude to create the first screen adaptation of the author’s 1967 masterpiece.

The streaming company announced on Wednesday that the book will be adapted into a Spanish-language series and filmed largely in the Nobel prize-winning author’s home country of Colombia, with García Márquez’s sons, Rodrigo García and Gonzalo García Barcha, serving as executive producers.

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Kylie Jenner’s makeup makes her the world’s youngest billionaire

Youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner reality TV family tops Mark Zuckerberg by two years

Kylie Jenner, the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner American reality TV family, has become the world’s youngest billionaire at the age of just 21.

Jenner, who grew up under the watch of TV cameras filming Keeping Up with the Kardashians, was on Tuesday admitted to the “nine-zero” fortune club by Forbes. The business magazine ranked Jenner as the world’s 2,057th richest person. She became a billionaire two years younger than the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who took the title at the age of 23 in 2008.

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Facebook criticised after women complain of inaction over abuse

Amnesty says social media firm must do more to support users who report harassment

Human rights campaigners have called for action after a survey revealed that more than half of the reports that women lodge about harassment on Facebook are met with no action from the social media company.

The Survation poll, commissioned by the feminist campaign group Level Up, found that 29% of the 1,000 women who took part had been harassed on Facebook.

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Fox News reportedly killed Stormy Daniels story to help Trump win

Diana Falzone ‘had obtained proof’ of alleged affair but was told: ‘Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go’

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel knew about Donald Trump’s illegal hush money payment to a pornographic film actor ahead of the 2016 election but killed the story because the media mogul wanted him to win, it was reported on Monday.

Related: Mueller report to be 'instantly' printed as a book, if made public

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Screen queens: the funny, fearless women who revolutionised TV

Phoebe Waller-Bridge exploded into our living rooms with Fleabag, her vicious comedy about an angry, awkward woman. As it returns, Guardian writers pick their TV heroines

Who gets to be the bitch?

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Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws

Social network targeted legislators around the world, promising or threatening to withhold investment

Facebook has targeted politicians around the world – including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne – promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed.

The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU. The documents include details of how Facebook:

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Facebook withholding data on its anti-disinformation efforts, EU says

Commissioners demand hard numbers from firm ahead of European parliament elections

Facebook has repeatedly withheld key data on its alleged efforts to clamp down on disinformation ahead of the European elections, the EU’s executive has said.

Related: Anti-vaxx propaganda has gone viral on Facebook. Pinterest has a cure

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Facebook moderators tell of strict scrutiny and PTSD symptoms

Facebook says it has hotline for whistleblowers after report paints picture of contractors’ working conditions

Facebook has said it remains committed to ensuring that the contractors who moderate its sites are treated fairly and with respect by their employers, after a report revealed the traumatic experiences of many of the low-paid workers who keep violence, hate speech and sexual imagery off its platforms.

The vast majority of the more than 15,000 people who work as Facebook moderators are employed by third-party contractors, and their working conditions are often far from the stereotype of a perk-filled Silicon Valley job.

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‘Centuries of entitlement’: Emma Thompson on why she quit Lasseter film

In her resignation letter from the film Luck, the actor questions whether any company should work with disgraced film executive John Lasseter

When the actor Emma Thompson left the forthcoming animated film Luck last month while it was still in production, it was done without public fanfare, and was only confirmed when film-industry publications such as Variety magazine picked up on it. Now Thompson has put herself firmly above the MeToo parapet with the publication publishing her incendiary letter of resignation addressed to the film’s backers, Skydance Media, one of Hollywood’s most prestigious studios.

It was known that Thompson was unhappy with the arrival in January of former head of Pixar John Lasseter as the new head of Skydance Animation. But the letter goes into extraordinary detail about her disquiet over the appointment of a studio executive whose downfall had been one of the key landmarks of the Me Too and Times Up campaigns.

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Univision’s Jorge Ramos detained in Venezuela after Maduro interview, network says

Anchor, who has reportedly been released, asked question embattled leader did not approve of, according to Univision executive

The Univision anchor Jorge Ramos has been detained in the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, the network announced on Monday evening.

The Mexican-born journalist was interviewing Venezuela’s embattled president Nicolás Maduro when he and his crew were detained after asking a question the combative Maduro did not approve of, according to a tweet by the network’s US president, Daniel Coronell. The team’s equipment had also been confiscated, Coronell said.

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