Profits are strong, shares are up and its users are increasing. But the social media company is still in big troubleUh-oh, it looks as if Mark Zuckerberg has caught on to the media’s dastardly plot to destroy Facebook! As you have probably noticed, the technology behemoth has been in the news nonstop recently, as media outlets plough through thousands of pages of internal documents leaked by the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Most people might think journalists reporting revelations about one of the world’s most powerful companies was par for the course. Zuckerberg, however, seems to think it’s some sort of vast conspiracy.“My view is that what we’re seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” Zuckerberg said during an earnings call on Monday. Sounds a little Trumpy, doesn’t it? Admit no wrong; instead, cast yourself as the victim of the malicious mainstream media. Continue reading...

The company reported a 6% increase in daily active users and a revenue that grew to $29.01bn thanks to online advertisingFacebook’s profit topped $9bn during its most recent financial quarter, clearing investor predictions even as the company faces an onslaught of negative publicity over a major release of whistleblower documents.The company revealed in its Monday earnings report that it saw a 6% year-on-year increase in daily active users, reaching an average of 1.93 billion for September 2021. Its revenue grew 35% to $29.01bn, thanks to a boom in online advertising. Continue reading...

Much of the blame for the world's increasingly polarised politics lies with social networks and the radicalising effects of their services, the whistleblower Frances Haugen told MPs as she called for external regulation to reduce social harm. The company’s internal culture prioritised profitability over its impact on the wider world, said Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook's civic misinformation team

The woman whose revelations have rocked Facebook tells how spending time with her mother, a priest, motivated her to speak outThis was not Frances Haugen’s plan A. The Facebook whistleblower says she does not like being the centre of attention, but what she saw while working at Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire compelled her into action – and made her famous.“When I look at what I did, this was not my plan A. It wasn’t my plan B, it wasn’t my plan C. It was like my plan J or something,” she laughs. “No one sat me down and said ‘what I want you to do is whistleblow’.” Continue reading...

Frances Haugen says chief executive has not shown any desire to shield users from the consequences of harmful contentThe Facebook whistleblower whose revelations have tipped the social media giant into crisis has launched a stinging new criticism of Mark Zuckerberg, saying he has not shown any readiness to protect the public from the harm his company is causing.Frances Haugen told the Observer that Facebook’s founder and chief executive had not displayed a desire to run the company in a way that shields the public from the consequences of harmful content. Continue reading...

In October 2001, the music industry was riven by piracy and had no idea how to solve it. Enter Steve Jobs, whose new device created a digital music market – and made Apple into a titanIn 2001, the record business was in freefall due to digital piracy, and the best way out of this accelerating crisis came in the shape of a white device the size of a deck of cards. The iPod, launched 20 years ago this week, was also how Apple’s Steve Jobs was able to prey on a failing business in order to avenge his own past failures – exiled between 1985 and 1997 from the company he co-founded – by turning Apple into the most profitable company in history.Before the iPod lifeline arrived in October 2001, record labels were in full panic mode. In its annual report for 2001, record company trade body IFPI called it “a turbulent” year, blaming filesharing and CD burning for a revenue slump. Jay Berman was chief exective of IFPI at the time and calls the scale of filesharing then “a crisis of momentous proportions” for record labels. “It really was,” he says, “a foreign invasion.” Continue reading...

Revelations about World Doctors Alliance pages raise questions about platform’s efforts to control misinformationAn international pressure group that spread false and conspiratorial claims about Covid-19 more than doubled the average number of interactions it got on Facebook in the first six months of 2021 in spite of renewed efforts to curb misinformation on the platform, according to a report.Pages owned by the World Doctors Alliance – a group of current and former medical professionals and academics from seven countries – received 617,000 interactions in June 2021, up from 255,000 in January, according to a six-month rolling average. Continue reading...

The company’s car sales are set to overtake last year’s figures even as construction of its new Texas factory is underwayTesla saw its biggest quarterly net earnings in history, the company said on Wednesday, propelled by record electric vehicle sales last summer, amid a shortage of computer chips and other materials.The company made $1.62bn in the third quarter, beating its old record of $1.14bn, set just in the second quarter of this year. The profit was nearly five times greater than the $331m Tesla made in the same quarter in 2019. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson appeared to back idea at PMQs but sources say online harms bill may not include itGovernment sources have rowed back on Boris Johnson’s apparent commitment to criminal sanctions for tech company bosses who fail to tackle harmful or illegal content.However, the Guardian understands that the new culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, who has first-hand experience of online abuse, is minded to take a tougher approach on sanctions than her predecessor Oliver Dowden, though she is still taking advice. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson has promised to present the delayed online harms bill to parliament before Christmas after the killing of David Amess. He made his comments after Keir Starmer urged him to work collaboratively in clamping down on web-based extremism. Johnson also appeared to agree to another of Starmer’s requests, that the bill would include a commitment to possible criminal sanctions against tech company bosses who do not do enough to remove harmful or illegal content

As Facebook reportedly plans to unveil a new corporate name, we look at how four other firms faredFacebook is planning to rebrand with a new corporate name to reflect its shift to building the metaverse, it has been reported. According to the Verge, the announcement could be made during Facebook’s Connect conference on 28 October. Here are four other companies that recently tried rebranding, and how it went. Continue reading...

CMA says firm ‘deliberately’ refused to supply information showing it had complied with order to separate businessesFacebook has been fined £50.5m for breaching an order imposed by the UK competition regulator during its investigation into the purchase of the gif creation website Giphy.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which launched an investigation into Facebook’s $400m (£290m) takeover earlier this year, said the social networking company “deliberately” refused to supply information proving that it was complying with an initial enforcement order (IEO). Continue reading...

Mini model trounces competition with great camera and performance, but isn’t the best iPhone for the yearThe iPhone 13 mini takes what’s great about the full-size iPhone 13 and squeezes it into a body not much larger than the iPhone 5S without cutting back on features or power.The smallest of Apple’s 2021 lineup costs £679 ($699/A$1,199), sitting above the £389 iPhone SE and below the £779 iPhone 13. Continue reading...

Hype and the thrill of gambling are pushing inexperienced people into danger, says City watchdogSocial media hype and the gambling-like thrill of competing to get rich quick are driving younger investors to turn to cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange trading and other high-risk products, according to the City watchdog.The Financial Conduct Authority said it was seeing more people chasing high returns and was concerned that many new investors were increasingly putting money into high-risk investments which may not be right for them. Continue reading...

LightBasin hackers were able to obtain subscriber information and call metadata, says CrowdStrikeAt least 13 phone companies around the world have been compromised since 2019 by sophisticated hackers who are believed to come from China, a cybersecurity expert group has said.The roaming hackers – known as LightBasin – were able to “search and find” individual mobile phones and “target accordingly”, according to CrowdStrike, a group regularly cited by western intelligence. Continue reading...

GetGo store uses weight sensors and skeleton outlines to track shoppers, who are billed when they leaveTesco is fighting back against Amazon with its first “just walk out” store, where it is possible to buy groceries without having to scan items or visit a till.The supermarket’s GetGo store in Holborn, central London, follows a small trial of a similar store at Tesco head office in Welwyn Garden City, which has been selling goods to the retailer’s staff since 2019. Continue reading...

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People don’t need catchprases: they need resources and empowerment so they can secure good green jobs

After six months and 15 visits by Openreach technicians BT still left us without a working connectionBack in March I placed an order with BT for “superfast enhanced” broadband for the community centre which I help run as a volunteer in Hastings.It is now almost six months on and we are no nearer to having a working broadband connection. We were upgrading from a basic TalkTalk package which was cut off in March. We have now had multiple visits from Openreach but every time that the engineer arrives on site, they have been given instructions to connect us to a street cabinet that is some distance from our property and they cannot complete the job. Ironically we have a cabinet just outside our car park, but the instructions don’t appear to allow the engineers to use that. Continue reading...

From bibliotherapy to burpees, gratitude journals to cathartic workouts, Nadine von Cohen logs into Australia’s new crop of wellbeing appsAustralians are the world’s biggest consumers of health and wellness apps, punching well above our per capita weight in our quest for peak physical and mental condition, according to research from telecommunications company Uswitch. In recent years we have also been making them – with everyone from fitness influencers to mental health advocacy groups launching digital products.I’m partial to a bit of mobile-based movement and mindfulness myself, but I have a complex relationship with wellness. While I love green juices, pilates and my “ness” being “well”, I can’t abide many contemporary uses of the word. In the diet, fitness, fashion and other industries, “wellness” can feel like a barely repackaged “weight loss”, while “healthy” has replaced “slim” as companies respond superficially to the body positivity movement without really changing their ways. Continue reading...

Warning that online giant’s move will lead to higher prices and empty shelves in shopsAmazon is offering signing-up bonuses of up to £3,000 in areas of Britain with labour shortages, to attract workers in time for the Christmas surge in demand.The Food and Drink Federation says there is a “battle for labour” in the run-up to Christmas, with Amazon trying to recruit 20,000 temporary staff. Many food and hospitality firms cannot compete with the pay now being offered by the online giant and this may affect Christmas deliveries and supplies. Continue reading...

Digital activists around the world are urging Facebook to take seriously how its algorithm incites misinformation and ethnic violenceOn a cloudy evening in Nairobi, Berhan Taye is scrolling through a spreadsheet in which she has helped document more than 140 Facebook posts from Ethiopia that contain hate speech. There are videos of child abuse, texts of hate speech against different ethnic groups, and hours-long live streams inciting hatred. These posts breach Facebook community guidelines in any context. Yet for Taye and her colleagues, this is what Facebook’s news feed has looked like for years in Ethiopia.Because there aren’t enough content moderators focused on Ethiopia, it has been up to Taye, an independent researcher looking at technology’s impact on civil society, and a team of grassroots volunteers to collect and then report misinformation and hate speech to Facebook. Continue reading...

After games boom in pandemic, gangs are using phishing and malware to cheat fans out of money and reveal their personal dataPlayers of online video games such as Roblox, Fortnite and Fifa are being warned to watch out for scammers, amid concerns that gangs are targeting the platforms.Multiplayer games boomed during the pandemic lockdowns as people turned to socialising in virtual spaces. Continue reading...

Client-side scanning, as the technology is called, should really be treated like wiretapping and regulated accordinglyFor centuries, cryptography was the exclusive preserve of the state. Then, in 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman came up with a practical method for establishing a shared secret key over an authenticated (but not confidential) communications channel without using a prior shared secret. The following year, three MIT scholars – Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman – came up with the RSA algorithm (named after their initials) for implementing it. It was the beginning of public-key cryptography – at least in the public domain.From the very beginning, state authorities were not amused by this development. They were even less amused when in 1991 Phil Zimmermann created Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, emails, files and other things. PGP raised the spectre of ordinary citizens – or at any rate the more geeky of them – being able to wrap their electronic communications in an envelope that not even the most powerful state could open. In fact, the US government was so enraged by Zimmermann’s work that it defined PGP as a munition, which meant that it was a crime to export it to Warsaw Pact countries. (The cold war was still relatively hot then.) Continue reading...

Beanless brews can cut deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions dramatically – but what will happen to workers in traditional coffee-growing regions?Heiko Rischer isn’t quite sure how to describe the taste of lab-grown coffee. This summer he sampled one of the first batches in the world produced from cell cultures rather than coffee beans.“To describe it is difficult but, for me, it was in between a coffee and a black tea,” said Rischer, head of plant biotechnology at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which developed the coffee. “It depends really on the roasting grade, and this was a bit of a lighter roast, so it had a little bit more of a tea-like sensation.” Continue reading...

Although the platform bans content promoting dangerous weight loss, hashtags such as #skinnycheck can still be foundInstagram has attracted a firestorm after whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed internal research showing the platform downplayed proof of its toxic effects – including the rise of eating disorders – on children.But such issues are not limited to the Facebook-owned social media company. The Guardian has found a variety of harmful pro-anorexia hashtags remain searchable on the popular video-sharing app TikTok, where corresponding videos have billions of views combined. Continue reading...

Users can set encryption key for chats on Google Drive or iCloud to prevent authorities demanding access from providerWhatsApp is allowing users to encrypt their backed-up chats, making them unreadable without access to a password or 64-digit encryption key.Facebook, the messaging app’s owner, said from Thursday some users would be able to fully encrypt messages stored on Google Drive or Apple’s iCloud. The company said it would be introducing the feature slowly to people with the latest version of WhatsApp. Continue reading...

More than 50,000 alerts sent so far this year, including of an Iranian group that targeted a UK universityGoogle has warned of a surge in activity by government-backed hackers this year, including attacks from an Iranian group whose targets included a UK university.The search group said that so far in 2021 it had sent more than 50,000 warnings to account holders that they had been a target of government-backed phishing or malware attempts. This represents an increase of a third on the same period last year, Google said in a blogpost, with the rise attributed to an “unusually large campaign” by a Russian hacking group known as APT28, or Fancy Bear. Continue reading...

Campaigners say Face Pay, launched in over 240 stations, is ‘dangerous step’ in efforts to control populationThe Moscow metro has rolled out what authorities have lauded as the world’s first mass-scale facial recognition payment system, amid privacy concerns over the new technology.The cashless, cardless and phoneless system, named Face Pay, launched at more than 240 stations across the Russian capital on Friday. Continue reading...

After uploading her tracks online, the UK singer-producer thought the industry was a closed shop. Then she turned to TikTok ...In December, a TikTok user in London named PinkPantheress started uploading clips of a song, intending to keep at it until “someone notices”. Ten months later, the social media platform named her song Just for Me its breakout track of the summer; it has more than 20m plays on Spotify and, after being sampled by the drill rapper Central Cee, went into the UK Top Five.A flood of similarly fleeting tracks have followed: rarely lasting more than two minutes, they are mostly self-produced, lo-fi mash-ups of saccharine-sweet vocals and jungle and drum’n’bass beats. Gen Z adores her; Grimes and Charli XCX are fans; Lizzo and Charli d’Amelio, TikTok’s reigning queen, have used her music to soundtrack their own TikToks. Continue reading...

The Flipside sees Lees explore conflicting views on themes including identity. Plus: the great British canoe con, the resurgence of natural hair, and My Therapist Ghosted MeThe Flipside

One bill would prevent platforms from giving preference to their own products, the other would remove Section 230 protectionsUS lawmakers announced two major new proposals seeking to rein in the power of big tech, days after the revelations from a former Facebook employee spotlighted the company’s sweeping impact.The first bill, proposed by a group of senators headed by Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Chuck Grassley would bar big tech platforms from favoring their own products and services. Continue reading...

Captain Kirk’s profound reflection on our home planet was an ironic outcome for a trip that was meant to boost space travelThere’s nothing like a vacation to make you appreciate home.That seemed to be the sentiment behind William Shatner’s words as he returned from a brief journey to space on Wednesday. In remarks filmed after he landed, the actor described having had “the most profound experience I can imagine”. Continue reading...

Exclusive: UK institution was in line for huge donation but has paused talks due to concerns Gulf state used hacking softwareThe University of Cambridge has broken off talks with the United Arab Emirates over a record £400m collaboration after claims about the Gulf state’s use of controversial Pegasus hacking software, the university’s vice-chancellor has said.The proposed deal, hailed by the university in July as a “potential strategic partnership … helping to solve some of the greatest challenges facing our planet” – would have included the largest donation of its kind in the university’s history, spanning a decade and involving direct investment from the UAE of more than £310m. Continue reading...

Hope not Hate urges messaging app to act on privacy policy that ‘facilitates’ murderous contentMPs, leaders of faith communities, and groups involved in countering hate have sent a letter to Telegram urging it to take action as it emerged as an “app of choice” for racists and violent extremists.An image was projected on to Telegram’s offices in London this week by the campaign group Hope not Hate, which has organised the letter, in a move to shame the company. Continue reading...

After election humiliation and Brexit, the former UK deputy prime minister swapped Westminster for a £2.7m job in Silicon Valley. The catch? Serving as the public face of the crisis-hit companyOn Sunday, Nick Clegg did a succession of interviews with some of the US’s biggest TV news shows. In his role as Facebook’s vice-president for global affairs and communications, he was defending his company after weeks of headlines about its latest crisis – this time involving Frances Haugen, a Facebook staffer turned whistleblower who had testified days earlier before a committee of the US Senate. The story centred on a stash of company documents that Haugen had given to the Wall Street Journal. The central allegation, which Facebook vehemently denies, was that the company had ignored its own research into the harms caused by some of its products in favour of the pursuit of “astronomical profits”.Anyone au fait with the five grim years Clegg spent as the UK’s deputy prime minister would have had the familiar impression of someone emphasising his good intentions in almost impossible circumstances. His facial expression regularly expressed a sort of righteous exasperation; his words seemed to imply that if only his critics could grasp the facts, everything would quickly die down. Like any well-briefed politician, he emphasised a handful of statistics: the 40,000 content moderators Facebook employs, the $13bn (£9.5bn) it says it has spent cracking down on misinformation and hate speech; the company’s claim that the latter accounts for only five of every 10,000 Facebook posts. Continue reading...

Edwin Robbe had a troubled life, but found excitement and purpose by joining an audacious community of hackers. Then the real world caught up with his online activitiesJosé Robbe was leaving her place of work in Rotterdam when she saw a man and a woman walking towards her. It was a Tuesday afternoon, 20 March 2012. “Are you Mrs Robbe?” She nodded. The woman, who was wearing jeans and a black windcheater, explained that she was with the police. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute. It’s about your son, Edwin. We’re arresting him.” José stared, frozen. The woman asked if she would accompany them. Warily, José agreed.At the police car, the officer told her they intended to surprise her son at the family home in Barendrecht, just south of Rotterdam, and arrest him on the spot. She asked if José wanted to be there for her son’s arrest. “No,” she replied grimly. It felt as if she had just betrayed her son. To stand by and watch would make it even worse. The police asked José for her house keys and dropped her off at a plaza by the local supermarket a few blocks from her house. She felt terrible as the officers drove away to arrest her eldest child, just a troubled 17-year-old. A little while later, three officers emerged from the house, escorting Edwin between them. He offered no resistance. Continue reading...

Industry’s huge use of electricity could present an awkward question for Joe Biden ahead of the Cop26 climate talksThe United States has overtaken China to account for the largest share of the world’s bitcoin mining, according to data published by researchers at Cambridge University.The figures demonstrate the impact of a crackdown on bitcoin trading and mining launched by the Chinese government in late May, which devastated the industry and caused miners to shut up shop or move overseas. Continue reading...

The company, under wide-ranging scrutiny for harms linked to its platforms, increased protections against harassment and bullyingFacebook will count activists and journalists as “involuntary” public figures and increase protections against harassment and bullying targeted at these groups, its global safety chief said in an interview this week.The social media company, which allows more critical commentary of public figures than of private individuals, is changing its approach on the harassment of journalists and “human rights defenders”, who it says are in the public eye due to their work rather than their public personas. Continue reading...

Inside the notoriously insular company, employees’ perceptions of Haugen appear to be dividedWhen former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the Senate last Tuesday, she painted an unsightly picture of the social networking company.As a member of the company’s civic misinformation team for almost two years until her departure in May, Haugen shared insights the company had previously hidden – from Facebook’s willingness to propagate hateful content on its platforms to keep users engaged to research proving Instagram’s detrimental effects on teen girls’ mental health – and leaked thousands of pages of internal documents backing up her claims. Continue reading...

Sir Jon Cunliffe likens danger to 2008 crash and calls for tough regulation of cryptocurrenciesA senior Bank of England policymaker has warned that digital currencies such as bitcoin could trigger a financial meltdown unless governments step forward with tough regulations.Likening the growth of cryptocurrencies to the spiralling value of US sub-prime mortgages before the 2008 financial crash, the deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe said there was danger financial markets could be rocked in a few years by an event of similar magnitude. Continue reading...

Shares in Apple fall as global chip shortage and supply chain issues prompt White House to admit there could be empty shelves during festive seasonApple may slash the number of iPhone 13s it will make this year by up to 10m because of a shortage of computer chips amid a worldwide supply chain crunch that led the White House to warn that “there will be things that people can’t get” at Christmas.Apple was expected to produce 90m units of the new iPhone models this year but has told its manufacturers that the number would be lower because chip suppliers including Broadcom and Texas Instruments were struggling to deliver components, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Mothers describe their daughters’ dangerous experiences after whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimonyEarly in the Covid-19 pandemic, Michelle noticed her teenage daughters were spending substantially more time on Instagram.The girls were feeling isolated and bored during lockdown, the Arizona mom, who has asked to be identified by her first name to maintain her children’s privacy, recalled. She hoped social media could be a way for them to remain connected with their friends and community. Continue reading...

Round-the-clock surveillance of students’ accounts raises tricky privacy concerns. And do they really help keep kids safe?In the midst of a pandemic and a national uprising, Teeth Logsdon-Wallace was kept awake at night last summer by the constant sounds of helicopters and sirens.For the 13-year-old from Minneapolis, who lives close to where George Floyd was murdered in May 2020, the pandemic-induced isolation and social unrest amplified the emotional distress he was experiencing as a result of gender dysphoria. His billowing depression landed him in the hospital after he tried to kill himself. During that dark stretch, he spent his days in an outpatient psychiatric facility, where he listened to a punk song on loop that promised things would soon “get better”. Eventually they did. Continue reading...

TikTok | Children’s books | Child refugees | Travelling fairs | DuelsIt isn’t TikTok that’s letting kids see inappropriate posts, it’s their parents (Revealed: anti-vaccine TikTok videos being viewed by children as young as nine, 8 October). There are controls that can stop young people signing up; it’s up to their parents and guardians to use them. I suggest a “revert to defaults” on kids’ devices once a day, or as often as necessary. Then get TikTok to deal with the liars. Take back control, people!

Lindy Cameron, head of National Cyber Security Centre, says extortion is most serious online threat to UKCybercriminals from Russia and neighbouring states are behind the majority of online extortion conducted against businesses and other organisations in Britain, according to the chief of the UK’s cybersecurity agency.Lindy Cameron, the chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said ransomware “presents the most immediate danger” of all cyber threats faced by the UK, in a speech to the Chatham House thinktank. Continue reading...

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According to one survey, 81% of teachers in America said their schools monitor devices. Students are not always awareWhen the pandemic started last year, countless forms of inequality were exposed – including the millions of American families who don’t have access to laptops or broadband internet. After some delays, schools across the country jumped into action and distributed technology to allow students to learn remotely. The catch? They ended up spying on students. “For their own good”, of course.According to recent research by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), “86% of teachers reported that, during the pandemic, schools provided tablets, laptops, or Chromebooks to students at twice the rate (43%) prior to the pandemic, an illustration of schools’ attempts to close disparities in digital access.”Jessa Crispin is a Guardian US columnistIn the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org Continue reading...

Corinne and Luke, both 31, met online in August 2013 when they bonded over a video game. They now live together in LondonIn August 2013, Corinne was living with her family in north London and working in a dull admin job. “I was playing a lot of video games as an escape,” she says. One day, she was recruited by friends to try a new game with a group of others online. She wasn’t told how it worked and quickly became lost, but got talking to Luke, an American who was struggling with the same game. “While everyone else was slaying dragons, we started talking on voice chat,” he says. They couldn’t see each other’s faces, but Luke liked her accent.They continued to talk during online gaming sessions and spoke regularly about Luke’s love for British comedy panel shows. “I was living in New York with my family and I was curious about what life was like in the UK. I had a lot of questions,” says Luke, laughing. They built an online friendship, but it wasn’t until the following March that they began to speak on other platforms. Continue reading...