Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has launched a social network called WT:Social. It has no financial association with Wikipedia and operates on donations, not advertising. The Next Web reports: WT:Social went live last month and is currently nearing 50,000 users. The company is rolling out access slowly; when I signed up, I was approximately number 28,000 on the waitlist. Alternatively, you can…
Tag: social media companies
Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower: US Heading In ‘Same Direction As China’ With Online Privacy
“The United States is walking in the same direction as China, we’re just allowing private companies to monetize left, right and center,” Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told CNBC on Wednesday. “Just because it’s not the state doesn’t mean that there isn’t harmful impacts that could come if you have one or two large companies monitoring or tracking everything you do,”…
White House Proposal Would Have FCC and FTC Police Alleged Social Media Censorship
A draft executive order from the White House could put the Federal Communications Commission in charge of shaping how Facebook, Twitter and other large tech companies curate what appears on their websites, CNN reported Friday, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. From the report: The draft order, a summary of which was obtained by CNN, calls for the FCC to…
Trump Asks Social Media Companies To Develop Pre-Crime Algorithms
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: After two recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump said his administration would ask social media companies to develop tools that could detect potential mass shooters. While delivering a speech on the recent violence, Trump said “we must do a better job of identifying and acting on early warning…
Did Facebook End The Encryption Debate?
Forbes contributor Kalev Leetaru argues that “the encryption debate is already over — Facebook ended it earlier this year.” The ability of encryption to shield a user’s communications rests upon the assumption that the sender and recipient’s devices are themselves secure, with the encrypted channel the only weak point… [But] Facebook announced earlier this year preliminary results from its efforts to…
EFF Argues For ‘Empowerment, Not Censorship’ Online
An activism director and a legislative analyst at the EFF have co-authored an essay arguing that the key to children’s safetly online “is user empowerment, not censorship,” reporting on a recent hearing by the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Commitee: While children do face problems online, some committee members seemed bent on using those problems as an excuse to censor the Internet and…
US Senators Want Social Media Firms To Tell Users How Much Their Data Is Worth
An anonymous reader shares a report from CNBC: A bipartisan team of senators introduced a bill Monday to require social media companies to disclose more information about the data they collect and monetize from their consumers. The Dashboard Act, which stands for Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data, aims to help consumers understand the price of…