The Guardian profiles 66-year-old Craigslist founder (and former IBM programmer) Craig Newmark, calling him “a survivor from the era of internet optimism.” He’s now investing “significant sums” to protect the future of the news industry — “and rejects the idea his website helped cause journalism’s financial crisis”
[H]e firmly rejects any notion that all the philanthropy — an estimated $50m in the…
Tag: Disinformation
YouTube anti-vax videos are on the decline but are yet to be wiped out
Anti-vaccination views are often spread on YouTube, but new research suggests the site has begun to get a handle on its vaccine disinformation problem Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2208157-youtube-anti-vax-videos-are-on-the-decline-but-are-yet-to-be-wiped-out/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
This Horrifying App Undresses a Photo of Any Woman With a Single Click
The $50 DeepNude app dispenses with the idea that deepfakes were about anything besides claiming ownership over women’s bodies.Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzm59x/deepnude-app-creates-fake-nudes-of-any-woman…
Google’s New Media Literacy Program Teaches Kids How To Spot Disinformation, Fake News
Google announced this morning it’s expanding its two-year-old digital safety and citizenship curriculum for children, “Be Internet Awesome,” to now include media literacy — specifically, the ability to identify so-called “fake news” and other false content. “The company is launching six new media literacy activities for the curriculum that will help teach kids things like how to avoid a phishing attack,…
Facebook Turned Off Search Features Used To Catch War Criminals, Child Predators, And Other Bad Actors
The human rights and war crimes community is up in arms over Facebook’s decision to turn off a set of advanced features in its graph search product, which is “a way to receive an answer to a specific query on Facebook, such as ‘people in Nebraska who like Metallica,'” reports BuzzFeed News. “Using graph search, it’s possible to find public –…
Congress To Investigate Deepfakes
The House Intelligence Committee will next week examine the risks posed by deepfakes, artificial intelligence technology that can create realistic-looking fake videos, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said this week. From a report: Schiff, a California Democrat, said he feared that Russia could engage in a “severe escalation” of its disinformation campaign targeting the United States ahead of the 2020 US…
YouTube To Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views
YouTube said on Wednesday that it plans to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its popular service. From a report: The new policy will ban “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,”…
DIY Facial Recognition For Porn Is a Dystopian Disaster
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vice News: Someone posting on Chinese social network Weibo claims to have used facial recognition to cross-reference women’s photos on social media with faces pulled from videos on adult platforms like Pornhub. In a Monday post on Weibo, the user, who says he’s based in Germany, claimed to have “successfully identified more than 100,000…
Russia’s Anti-5G Propaganda Campaign Is Spreading Across Social Media
An anonymous reader quotes Fierce Wireless:
Earlier this week, the New York Times published a story with the headline “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You. But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise.” [Non-paywalled MSN version here.] The story outlined how RT, the Russia-backed and U.S.-based television network, has been peddling 5G cancer fear-mongering stories, making claims that 5G causes brain cancer, infertility,…