Facebook said on Thursday that it would not make any major changes to its political advertising policies, which allow lies in ads, despite pressure from lawmakers who say the company is abdicating responsibility for what appears on its platform. The New York Times: The decision, which company executives had telegraphed in recent months, is likely to harden criticism of Facebook’s political…
Tag: ad
Ivanka Trump, Big Tech Companies Plan Marketing Campaign Targeting Teens’ Perceptions of Tech Jobs
theodp writes: Dismissing questions of whether Ivanka Trump’s Tuesday CES keynote appearance on The Path to the Future of Work should have gone to somebody else who’s had more to do with tech in the administration, CES Chief Gary Shapiro informed the BBC: “Ivanka Trump actually co-chairs the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, whose members include companies like Apple, Walmart and…
NASA’s Great Observatories help astronomers build a 3-D visualization of exploded star
In the year 1054 AD, Chinese sky watchers witnessed the sudden appearance of a “new star” in the heavens, which they recorded as six times brighter than Venus, making it the brightest observed stellar event in recorded history. This “guest star,” as they described it, was so bright that people saw it in the sky during the day for almost a…
‘Fox News Is Now a Threat to National Security’
The network’s furthering of lies from foreign adversaries and flagrant disregard for the truth have gotten downright dangerous. Garrett M. Graff, writing for Wired earlier this month: Monday’s split-screen drama, as the House Judiciary Committee weighed impeachment charges against President Trump and as the Justice Department’s inspector general released a 476-page report on the FBI’s handling of its 2016 investigation into…
Mike Bloomberg Is Plowing Millions of Dollars Into a Secretive Tech Firm Called Hawkfish
As a way to help his 2020 presidential bid, presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is pouring tens of millions of dollars into an unknown digital business called Hawkfish — which Bloomberg himself founded during the spring. CNBC reports: Hawkfish will be the “primary digital agency and technology services provider for the campaign,” Julie Wood, a Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman, told CNBC. She added…
Ask Slashdot: At What Age Should Toddlers Get Screen Time?
Slashdot reader ne0phyte73 writes: I got my first computer (a Commodore 64) when I was 13. My daughter got hers (One Laptop Per Child) when she was 5. What are the current trends? I see new AI-powered edutainment products coming to the market, targeted at toddlers. Would you give something like this to your 18 months old? (Kidshealth claims that there…
Instagram, Facebook Bans Influencers From Getting Paid To Promote Vaping, Tobacco, and Weapons
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook and Instagram will no longer allow influencers to promote vaping, tobacco products or weapons on its platforms using “branded content.” Instagram announced Wednesday it would no longer allow “branded content” that promotes those goods on either platform. In June, Instagram introduced a change that would let advertisers promote posts from influencers, or…
Amazon Learns a New Skill: Making Money From Alexa
For most of Alexa’s five years in existence, Amazon has focused on making its voice assistant as ubiquitous as possible, putting it in everything from microwaves to wearable rings to its growing family of Echo devices. Now Amazon has a new focus for Alexa: making money from it, reports The Information. [Editor’s note: the link is paywalled; an alternative source was…
Facebook Fired a Contractor Who Was Paid Thousands In Bribes To Reactivate Banned Ad Accounts
BuzzFeed News has found that a Facebook contractor was paid thousands of dollars in bribes by a shady affiliate marketer to reactivate ad accounts that had been banned due to policy violations. From the report: A company spokesperson confirmed that an unnamed worker was fired after inquiries from BuzzFeed News sparked an internal investigation. The person in question was based in…
Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market
Two years ago, Apple launched an aggressive battle against ads that track users across the web. Today executives in the online publishing and advertising industries say that effort has been stunningly effective — posing a problem for advertisers looking to reach affluent consumers. The Information reports: Since Apple introduced what it calls its Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature in September 2017, and…