Apple “suspended” the social media platform Wimkin from its App Store, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, “part of a widening crackdown by tech companies on potentially dangerous content during the presidential transition.” Long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace shares their report: Mr. Sheppard said the takedowns on the platform, which has 300,000 users and mimics some of the functions of…
Tag: takedowns
Indian Coding Startup WhiteHat Jr Sues Critics
Karan Bajaj, an Indian entrepreneur who teaches meditation and in his recent book invites others to live a life away from the noise, is going after the most vocal critics of his startup. From a report: Bajaj, founder of coding platform WhiteHat Jr, has filed a defamation case against Pradeep Poonia, an engineer who has publicly criticized the firm for its…
Cheating-Detection Software Provokes ‘School-Surveillance Revolt’
New webcam-based anti-cheating monitoring is so stressful, it’s made some students cry, the Washington Post reports: “Online proctoring” companies saw in coronavirus shutdowns a chance to capitalize on a major reshaping of education, selling schools a high-tech blend of webcam-watching workers and eye-tracking software designed to catch students cheating on their exams. They’ve taken in millions of dollars, some of it…
Twitch Says It’s In Talks To License Music, Tells Users To Delete Videos With Unauthorized Tracks
In a lengthy blog post, Twitch told streamers that they must stop playing recorded music on their streams (unless it’s officially licensed) and that “if you haven’t already, you should review your historical VODs and Clips that may have music in them and delete any archives that might.” Variety reports: The Amazon-owned live-streaming platform also claimed that it is “actively speaking…
RIAA Takedowns Backfire as Pirated MP3s Now Surface on GitHub
Two weeks ago the RIAA asked GitHub to remove the open-source stream-ripper software youtube-dl. This request wasn’t well-received by developers, many of whom retaliated by posting copies of the code. Yesterday, things went from bad to worse when a user with the name ‘FuckTheRIAA’ uploaded three MP3s of the songs the RIAA mentioned in its takedown notice. TorrentFreak reports: A few…
Internet Archive Adds Fact Checks To Explain Web Page Takedowns
AmiMoJo writes: Fact checking is increasingly a mainstay of the modern internet, and that now includes “dead” web pages. The Internet Archive has started adding fact checks and context to Wayback Machine pages to explain just why they were removed. If a page was part of a disinformation campaign or pulled due to a policy violation, a conspicuous yellow banner will…
A New Botnet Is Covertly Targeting Millions of Servers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: FritzFrog has been used to try and infiltrate government agencies, banks, telecom companies, and universities across the US and Europe. Researchers have found what they believe is a previously undiscovered botnet that uses unusually advanced measures to covertly target millions of servers around the world. The botnet uses proprietary software written from scratch…
Academics Studied DDoS Takedowns and Said They’re Ineffective, Recommend Patching Vulnerable Servers
A team of Dutch and German academics has studied the aftermath of a major crackdown against DDoS providers and concluded that law enforcement takedowns are largely ineffective, recommending that authorities rather focus on patching the vulnerable systems that are abused for the DDoS attacks in the first place. From a report: The study, published last year on paper-hosting service arXiv, analyzed…
TikTok Reported Highest Takedown Requests From India and US, Zero From China
hackingbear shares a report from The Verge: TikTok released its first transparency report yesterday, showing which countries have submitted requests for content removal as well as access to user data. China is notably absent from the report — the video sharing app, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, claims it did not receive a single takedown request from Communist Party of…
Facebook Shuts Down New Accounts From Iran and Russia Spreading Disinformation
Facebook on Monday removed nearly 200 newly discovered fake accounts linked separately to Iran and to Russia’s Internet Research Agency. The takedowns demonstrate that foreign influence operations are already targeting the 2020 election, but provide evidence that Russia’s notorious troll farm is struggling to regain anything close to the influence in held in 2016. The Daily Beast reports: The new wave…