Moscow warns of retaliation against video-sharing platform after RT channels blocked over Covid disinformation
Russia on Wednesday threatened to block YouTube and take other retaliatory measures, after the US video-sharing platform blocked the German-language channels of state broadcaster RT.
Moscow has recently been ramping up pressure on foreign tech giants as it seeks greater control over content available online to its domestic audience.
Continue reading...Household names may have unwittingly helped spread fake news, investigation reveals
Dozens of the world’s biggest brands, including Nike, Amazon, Ted Baker and Asos, have been advertising on websites that spread Covid-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories, it has emerged. The companies, as well as an NHS service, are among a string of household names whose ads appear to have helped fund websites that host false and outlandish claims, for example that powerful people secretly engineered the pandemic, or that vaccines have caused thousands of deaths.
Analysis of nearly 60 sites, performed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and shared with the Observer, found that ads were placed through the “opaque” digital advertising market, which is forecast to be worth more than $455bn (£387bn) this year.
Continue reading...Navalny’s supporters say companies deleted tactical voting app from stores after pressure from Kremlin
Supporters of the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have accused Google and Apple of capitulating to Kremlin pressure after the two tech companies deleted his tactical voting app from their online stores.
Both companies had come under significant pressure from Russian regulators in the days before the courntry’s parliamentary elections to block access to Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative, which tries to channel opposition votes toward the strongest opponents of the ruling party, United Russia.
Continue reading...Adverts promoting ‘dangerous, unproven and unethical’ procedure shown millions of times, study finds
Facebook has served “abortion reversal” adverts 18.4m times since January 2020, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), promoting an “unproven, unethical” and “dangerous” procedure.
Google shows the adverts on more than four-fifths of searches related to abortion across a number of US cities, according to the CCDH research, targeted at search terms such as “unwanted pregnancy” and “abortion pill”.
Continue reading...Sergei Ryabkov’s claim of interference in Duma vote believed to be reference to anti-Putin apps on Apple and Google
The Russian foreign ministry has summoned the US ambassador, John Sullivan, to complain about alleged interference by “American digital giants” in Russia’s upcoming parliamentary election.
According to a ministry statement on Friday, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, claimed Russia “possesses irrefutable evidence of the violation of Russian legislation by American digital giants in the context of the preparation and conduct of elections to the state Duma”.
Continue reading...Documents show company dragged feet to correct disparity after learning it was failing to comply with laws in UK, Europe and Asia
Google has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem, the Guardian can reveal.
Google executives have been aware since at least May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with local laws in the UK, Europe and Asia that mandate temporary workers be paid equal rates to full-time employees performing similar work, internal Google documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian show.
Continue reading...Wear OS 3 watch ups ante for Android wearables, now faster and feature-packed with body-fat scanner
The Galaxy Watch 4 is Samsung and Google’s attempt to combine efforts and compete with Apple’s smartwatch – and it gets about 80% of the way there.
The Android smartwatch comes in two designs and four sizes, starting at £249 ($250) for the Watch 4 and £349 ($350) – as tested – for the Watch 4 Classic. They succeed the £269 Watch Active 2 and £399 Watch 3 respectively.
Continue reading...US tech firm fined for not complying with order to come up with proposals on compensating publishers
Google is appealing against a €500m (£430m) fine imposed by France’s antitrust watchdog after a dispute with local media about paying for news content.
The financial penalty came amid increasing international pressure on online platforms such as Google and Facebook to share more of the revenue they make from using media outlets’ content.
Continue reading...Pay calculator suggests workers who commute long-distance could see salary drop if they shun the office in wake of pandemic
Google employees could see their pay cut if they switched to working from home permanently in the wake of the pandemic, according to a company pay calculator seen by Reuters.
It is an experiment taking place across Silicon Valley, which often sets trends for other large employers. Facebook and Twitter cut pay for remote employees who moved to less expensive areas. However, Google’s pay calculator tool – which allows staff to see the effects of a move – suggests remote employees, especially long-distance commuters, could experience pay cuts without moving.
Continue reading...New flip phones and phone-tablet hybrids, plus updated earbuds and first Google Wear OS 3 smartwatch
Samsung is taking a big step towards making folding-screen smartphones mainstream with the launch of a pair of the first water-resistant models as part of its big tech event for the second half of 2021.
The new and improved Galaxy Z Flip3 folding-screen flip-phone and Z Fold3 folding phone-tablet hybrid were announced on Wednesday during a livestreamed event, alongside a Google watch co-developed in an attempt to take on the dominant Apple Watch – the Galaxy Watch4.
Continue reading...Wade can tell you the best pram for a tall parent; Matthew knows which cleaner has superior suction power. But how do you become a respected reviewer on the wild west of the internet?
Once a month, every month, more than 8,000 strangers pay James Hoffmann a total of £16,263 so he can go out and buy coffee machines. Hoffmann, 41, from London, is an author, business owner, coffee connoisseur and, above all, a YouTuber: more than 900,000 people subscribe to his channel, on which he discusses everything to do with beans and brewing. Around a third of Hoffmann’s videos are product reviews: grinders, espresso machines, storage canisters and filters have all been scrutinised by him.
Hoffmann’s monthly £16,000 comes from Patreon, a membership platform that allows fans to pay creators a regular fee. The money is intended to keep him impartial: it enables him to buy machines to review directly – just like you or me – instead of getting them on loan from brands.
Continue reading...Organisations in Scotland say they have tried to contact Google about the dangers but received no reply
Scottish mountaineering charities have criticised Google for suggesting routes up Ben Nevis and other mountains they say are “potentially fatal” and direct people over a cliff.
The John Muir Trust, which looks after the upper reaches of the UK’s highest mountain, said attempts to contact the company over the issue had been met with silence.
Continue reading...Global tax changes could mean Treasury loses £230m digital services tax receipts from Google, Amazon, Facebook and eBay
Experts have warned that US tech companies, including Google, Amazon and Facebook, could pay less tax in the UK and several other big economies under global reforms agreed at the weekend by the G7.
In a key stumbling block emerging days after the landmark deal, research from the TaxWatch campaign group indicates that the UK Treasury stands to lose about £230m from the taxes paid each year by four of the big US tech firms.
Continue reading...The AI researcher on how natural resources and human labour drive machine learning and the regressive stereotypes that are baked into its algorithms
Kate Crawford studies the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is a research professor of communication and science and technology studies at the University of Southern California and a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research. Her new book, Atlas of AI, looks at what it takes to make AI and what’s at stake as it reshapes our world.
You’ve written a book critical of AI but you work for a company that is among the leaders in its deployment. How do you square that circle?
I work in the research wing of Microsoft, which is a distinct organisation, separate from product development. Unusually, over its 30-year history, it has hired social scientists to look critically at how technologies are being built. Being on the inside, we are often able to see downsides early before systems are widely deployed. My book did not go through any pre-publication review – Microsoft Research does not require that – and my lab leaders support asking hard questions, even if the answers involve a critical assessment of current technological practices.
Study claims firms paid $96bn less in tax between 2011 and 2020 than the notional figures cited in their annual reports
The giant US tech firms known as the “Silicon Six” have been accused of inflating their stated tax payments by almost $100bn (£70bn) over the past decade.
As Chancellor Rishi Sunak called on world leaders to back a new tech tax ahead of next week’s G7 summit in the UK, a report by the campaign group Fair Tax Foundation singled out Amazon, Facebook, Google’s owner, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft.
Continue reading...Our reliance on technology means ever more devices and apps and ever less interoperability – and the ubiquity of Apple hasn’t helped
In 2001, if you listened to digital music, you did it with a large folder of MP3 files. How you acquired them is probably best left between you and a priest, but you may have ripped them from a CD, downloaded them from a file sharing service, or bought them from one of a few nascent download sites.
Whichever option you picked, you’d play them on your computer with a program built for the task. And if you were lucky enough to have an early standalone MP3 player, it was probably made by another company again.
Continue reading...European Commission proposes more factchecking and algorithm changes to tackle disinformation
A “massive anti-vaccination campaign” has been cited by the European Commission as a reason for social media platforms to intensify their factchecking and revise the internal algorithms that can amplify disinformation.
Under a revised code of practice proposed by Brussels, companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter would need to show why particular material is disseminated and prove that false information is being blocked.
Continue reading...You might be surprised how much Google’s email service – and others – know about you. Here’s how to set some boundaries
Most people are aware of the cookies that track them across the web, and the privacy-invading practices of Google search, but did you know Google’s email service, Gmail, collects large amounts of data too?
This was recently put into stark focus for iPhone users when Gmail published its app “privacy label” – a self-declared breakdown of the data it collects and shares with advertisers as part of a new stipulation on the Apple App Store.
Continue reading...The former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped
Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.
The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works.
Continue reading...Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft raked in money in first quarter
Big tech is on a roll. In every minute of the first three months of 2021, Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft sold products and services worth about $2.5m (£1.8m) combined. Profits before tax for the period came in at $88bn – more than $1bn of profit for every working day.
After a year of shifting to online work and leisure across the global economy, financial results published this week by most of US tech’s biggest names were bound to be strong. But even more bullish analysts on Wall Street were surprised by how fast they raked in money in the quarter, auguring even greater profits in the years ahead.
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