Report includes Jeff Bezos, whose personal fortune has risen by 65% since 18 March
The already vast fortunes of America’s 643 billionaires have soared by an average of 29% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has at the same time laid waste to tens of millions of jobs around the world.
The richest of the superrich have benefited by $845bn , according to a report by a US progressive thinktank, the Institute for Policy Studies.
Continue reading...Pulling off balaclavas and publishing names is new tactic to stem harassment and assaults
During the past month’s uprising against Alexander Lukashenko, riot police and assorted thugs loyal to his regime have been given carte blanche by the Belarusian president to harass, assault and arrest peaceful protesters.
In recent days, however, protesters have found out that for all Lukashenko’s men’s ruthlessness and impunity, they have a vulnerable point: their faces. Grab at the mask of a policeman and he will run for cover.
Continue reading...Platforms will target unverified claims of election rigging and premature results declarations
Premature claims of victory will be blocked from Twitter and Google in the run-up to November’s US presidential election, as both companies follow Facebook in trying to fight the prospect of a stolen vote.
Under its new rules, Twitter will treat as harmful misinformation any tweet which makes false claims about election rigging, or prematurely claims to announce the election results.
Continue reading...The removal of the items followed pressure from Twitter users who urged people to complain to the retail giant
Amazon has removed a clothing line emblazoned with an offensive slogan referring to Kamala Harris from its website after complaints from Twitter users who branded it “unacceptable”.
The T-shirts, tank tops and hoodies which had the words “Joe and the hoe” written in red, white and blue in the style of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Harris’s campaign logo, were on sale for between $24.99 and $42.99.
Continue reading...Alexander Lukashenko has cut off entire population’s internet to try to stifle election dissent
As he fights for his political survival, Alexander Lukashenko has taken a big gamble by cutting off the internet across most of Belarus.
Belarusians seeking to protest against his government have been mostly cut off from the outside world: mobile internet has been throttled and popular messaging apps have been disabled, leaving demonstrators scrambling to find wifi connections and working VPNs or proxies to get online and then sharing what news they can find.
Continue reading...Three men charged in hack that saw accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk compromised in bitcoin scam
Authorities have charged three men in a major Twitter breach this month that hacked the accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in bitcoin.
The suspects include a 19-year-old British man from Bognor Regis, a 22-year-old man from Orlando, Florida, and a teenager from Tampa, Florida.
Continue reading...Russian cybercrime gang is believed to be responsible for taking Garmin services offline
A ransomware attack that took the GPS and smartwatch business Garmin entirely offline for more than three days is believed to have been carried out by a Russian cybercriminal gang which calls itself “Evil Corp”.
Garmin began to restore services to customers on Monday morning, after being held hostage for a reported ransom of $10m, although some services were still operating with limited functionality.
Continue reading...Residents rush to erase digital footprints as law gives police powers over online activity
At midnight on Tuesday, the Great Firewall of China, the vast apparatus that limits the country’s internet, appeared to descend on Hong Kong.
Unveiling expanded police powers as part of a contentious new national security law, the Hong Kong government enabled police to censor online speech and force internet service providers to hand over user information and shut down platforms.
Continue reading...Australian prime minister says widespread assault on political and private sector organisations has been going on for months but is increasing in frequency and scale
A wide range of political and private sector organisations in Australia have come under cyber-attack carried out by a “sophisticated state-based cyber actor”, the Australian government has revealed.
Scott Morrison disclosed the far-reaching attacks at a media conference in Canberra on Friday, while his defence minister declared that malicious cyber activity was “increasing in frequency, scale, in sophistication and in its impact”.
Continue reading...Pocket Casts says it refuses to restrict its content at request of Chinese authorities
Apple has removed two podcast apps from its Chinese app store, following government pressure to censor content.
Pocket Casts and Castro were both pulled from distribution in China after the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) demanded that the apps stop allowing content that breached the country’s restrictive speech laws.
Continue reading...Content focused on Covid-19 and the protests in Hong Kong and over George Floyd in the US
Twitter has removed more than 170,000 accounts the social media site says are state-linked influence campaigns from China focusing on Hong Kong protests, Covid-19 and the US protests in relation to George Floyd.
The company announced on Thursday that 23,750 core accounts – and 150,000 “amplifier” accounts that boosted the content posted by those core accounts – had been removed from the platform after being linked to an influence campaign from the People’s Republic.
Continue reading...Test to promote informed discussion will ask users if they want to retweet unread links
Twitter is trying to stop people from sharing articles they have not read, in an experiment the company hopes will “promote informed discussion” on social media.
In the test, pushed to some users on Android devices, the company is introducing a prompt asking people if they really want to retweet a link that they have not tapped on.
Continue reading...National Library of Israel is digitising collection of manuscripts and books dating back to ninth century
More than 2,500 rare manuscripts and books from the Islamic world covering a period of more than a thousand years are to be made freely available online.
The National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem is digitising its world-class collection of items in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, dating from the ninth to the 20th centuries, including spectacularly beautiful Qur’ans and literary works decorated with gold leaf and lapis lazuli.
Continue reading...Women whose social media pictures were uploaded to the site say they feel ‘violated’ by intrusion on their privacy
Female journalists say they feel “violated” by a sexist forum that has been posting personal images and lewd comments about women in the Australian media industry for more than a decade.
Hundreds of high-profile journalists and emerging reporters have had their images uploaded onto the forum, which also posts suggestive images of Australian actresses, female sports stars and models.
Continue reading...Activists say Facebook boss’s decision to leave ‘shooting threat’ up sets dangerous precedent
Civil rights leaders have criticised Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to take no action against a Facebook post from Donald Trump appearing to threaten to start shooting “looters”, after a Monday night meeting with the company’s executives ended in acrimony.
“We are disappointed and stunned by Mark’s incomprehensible explanations for allowing the Trump posts to remain up,” Vanita Gupta, Sherrilyn Ifill and Rashad Robison said in a statement. “He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump’s call for violence against protesters.
Continue reading...Move comes amid president’s feud with Twitter after it fact-checked him for the first time
Donald Trump has fired a shot across the bows of “big tech” companies by signing an executive order that aims to narrow their protections from liability over the content posted on their services.
The move came as the US president stepped up his attacks against social media giants after Twitter fact-checked him for the first time over a false assertion that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud.
Continue reading...Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that could erode legal protections for social media companies for content posted on their platforms, potentially opening them to liability claims over controversial content.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has threatened to “strongly regulate” or close down social media platforms that do not meet his standards for ideological balance, a day after Twitter, for the first time, slapped a warning label on a pair of Trump tweets spreading lies about mail-in voting.
Related: George Floyd killing: sister says police officers should be charged with murder
Continue reading...Streaming service must convince podcast listeners to switch from their favourite app
Joe Rogan, the comedian, MMA commentator and podcaster, may seem an unlikely prospect for becoming the world’s highest paid broadcaster. But after signing an exclusive deal with Spotify, that is what he may have become, marking a new era for podcasting in the process.
To much of the world, Rogan’s name is most associated with the periodic furores that erupt from the marathon interviews around which his podcast is structured.
Continue reading...The pandemic has forced the Unicode Consortium to delay new emojis in 2021 – but remixes of existing ones could be on their way
Covid-19 has taken so much from us, but now it’s come for our emojis too.
Related: Coronavirus US live: Trump claims to take hydroxychloroquine and threatens to withdraw US from WHO
Continue reading...