The Washington Post covered “a sprawling yet secretive campaign that experts say evades the guardrails put in place by social media companies to limit online disinformation of the sort used by Russia” during America’s last presidential campaign in 2016. According to four people with knowledge of the effort, “Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages…”…
Tag: campaigns
FBI Director: It’s a Mistake To Get Election Information on Social Media
If a Facebook page or an Instagram post is offering the location of your polling place, you should double check that with your local elections office, the FBI director said Thursday at a congressional hearing. Better yet, don’t get your election information from social media at all. From a report: The House Committee on Homeland Security hosted on Thursday its annual…
Apple Says Epic Is ‘Saboteur, Not a Martyr’ in App Store Battle
Apple is asking a court to reject Epic Games’s latest bid to get Fortnite back on the App Store, saying the game maker is acting as “a saboteur, not a martyr” in its challenge to Apple’s payment system. From a report: In an overnight filing, Apple said “Epic started a fire, and poured gasoline on it, and now asks this court…
Facebook Partners with Coursera to Launch Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate
Designed to Help Learners of All Backgrounds Enter the Growing Field of Social Media Marketing By Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO, Coursera Today, we’re excited to announce a new Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate from Facebook – our newest industry partner. The certificate is designed for learners without a college degree or any prior experience to become […]
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A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation
Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and obtained by BuzzFeed News. From the report: The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples…
Kaspersky Warns Intruders are Targeting Linux Workstations and Servers
Researchers at Kaspersky “have warned that sophisticated hackers and crooks are increasingly targeting Linux-based devices — using tools specifically designed to exploit vulnerabilities in the platform,” reports TechRepublic: While Windows tends to be more frequently targeted in mass malware attacks, this is not always the case when it comes to advanced persistent threats (APTs), in which an intruder — often a…
Former Mentor Says Mark Zuckerberg Intoxicated by Power, Calls Disinformation ‘A National Security Issue’
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi interviewed Mark Zuckerberg mentor (and early investor) Roger McNamee for a special report on “the disinformation epidemic.” McNamee — also the author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe — says Zuckerberg is too focused on “imposing his vision” to acknowledge the website’s threat to national security, adding “It’s about power.” Ali Velshi: The fact that rumor,…
Apple Mistakenly Approved a Widely Used Malware To Run on Macs
Apple has some of the strictest rules to prevent malicious software from landing in its app store, even if on occasion a bad app slips through the net. But last year Apple took its toughest approach yet by requiring developers to submit their apps for security checks in order to run on millions of Macs unhindered. From a report: The process,…
‘GamerGate’ Proponent Kills Ex-Girlfriend, Commits Suicide
41-year-old Rudy Ferretti “was known in the male-dominated retro gaming community as a champion gamer — and as a raging misogynist who ferociously harassed women,” writes blogger David Futrelle. “He once made a homebrew game in which the goal was to kill women. “Last week, he allegedly gunned down his former girlfriend Amy Molter before turning his gun on himself.” Wired…
Klobuchar, Microsoft’s Smith Warn of Election Interference
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Microsoft President Brad Smith warned of ongoing election interference through technology on Thursday at an Axios virtual event on the Future of Employability. From a report: “It was four years ago at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that our eyes were first opened to nation-state cyberattacks on candidates and campaigns … Here we are again…