Technology | The Guardian

Letter calls for suspension until after vote due to lack of time to reform online advertising rules

Former presidential candidate criticises Facebook’s decision to let politicians lie in adverts

(ZA/UM; PC)

Kari Paul and Alex Hern join Jordan Erica Webber to discuss how the big social media platforms are tackling the sticky issue of political adverts. Dr Kate Dommett also talks about how UK political parties could use or misuse social media as they launch their general election campaigns. Continue reading...

Rana Foroohar’s masterly critique of the internet pioneers who now dominate our world“Don’t be evil” was the mantra of the co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the graduate students who, in the late 1990s, had invented a groundbreaking way of searching the web. At the time, one of the things the duo believed to be evil was advertising. There’s no reason to doubt their initial sincerity on this matter, but when the slogan was included in the prospectus for their company’s flotation in 2004 one began to wonder what they were smoking. Were they really naive enough to believe that one could run a public company on a policy of ethical purity?The problem was that purity requires a business model to support it and in 2000 the venture capitalists who had invested in Google pointed out to the boys that they didn’t have one. So they invented a model that involved harvesting users’ data to enable targeted advertising. And in the four years between that capitulation to reality and the flotation, Google’s revenues increased by nearly 3,590%. That kind of money talks. Continue reading...

Company has been accused of pro-Republican bias, in both policy and personnel, amid fears it could be broken up if a Democrat wins in 2020Facebook has been accused of pro-Republican bias, in both policy and personnel, amid fears at the company that it could be broken up if a Democrat wins the White House next year.Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced fierce criticism this week, first for including Breitbart – once described by former chairman Steve Bannon as a “platform for the ‘alt-right’” – in its list of trusted sources for Facebook News, then for refusing to ban or factcheck political advertising. Continue reading...

Amateur boxers may dismiss the bout as ‘a joke’, but the web stars’ clash is big on marketable spectacleOn 9 November, two boxers will face each other in the ring in a highly anticipated bout, broadcast live on pay-per-view TV and expected to generate millions of pounds.Nothing unusual about that, except the pugilists are not Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder, or any of the sport’s big names, but two YouTube stars without a professional bout between them, fighting to settle a beef. Continue reading...

Social media app is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance but says it does not operate in ChinaTikTok is reportedly being investigated as a potential national security risk by the US government, as the company’s 2018 acquisition of American social media app Musical.ly comes under retroactive scrutiny.The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which has the ability to scrutinise acquisitions and investments by foreign companies, never formally approved the buyout, since TikTok, which is owned by Chinese startup ByteDance, did not explicitly request clearance. Continue reading...

Takeover allows web giant to take on Apple in fast-growing smartwatch and wearables businessGoogle has snapped up the Fitbit activity tracker business in a $2.1bn (£1.6bn) deal that will enable the search giant to go toe-to-toe with Apple in the fast-growing smartwatch and wearables business.Google is paying cash for the San Francisco-based Fitbit, which was set up in 2007. Continue reading...

Activists speak out after being warned of alleged cyber-attack to infiltrate mobile phonesMore than a dozen pro-democracy activists, journalists and academics have spoken out after WhatsApp privately warned them they had allegedly been the victims of cyber-attacks designed to secretly infiltrate their mobile phones.The individuals received alerts saying they were among more than 100 human rights campaigners whose phones were believed to have been hacked using malware sold by NSO Group, an Israeli cyberweapons company. Continue reading...

What do Zuckerberg’s bromides about American values mean to Facebook users in Kashmir or the Philippines?When Facebook wrote to Joe Biden’s campaign to say it would not back down from its decision to exempt politicians from its ban on advertising false statements, it was not Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg who signed the letter, but a not particularly well-known staffer named Katie Harbath.As Facebook’s director of public policy for global elections, Harbath has been a prominent voice in defending the controversial policy. “If people have a problem with Facebook’s policy, they have a problem with the way political speech is protected in this country,” she wrote in an op-ed in USA Today this week. “Fundamentally we believe that, in a democracy, it’s better to let voters make their own decisions, not companies like Facebook.” Continue reading...

PS4, PC; Sony / Kojima Productions

Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell match the Friends star stride for stride in this funny, fearless drama from Apple TV+What a strange and rather lovely thing it is to watch an actor you have grown up with for two and a half decades finally come into her kingdom. So it is with Jennifer Aniston who, 25 years after she arrived on our screens in Friends, returns in a TV series for the first time since the hit show ended in 2004.The Morning Show is a slick, sophisticated venture stuffed with powerhouse performances – Aniston’s foremost among them. She plays Alex Levy, the co-anchor of a morning talk show whose life is thrown into disarray when her co-presenter Mitch (Steve Carrell, proving alongside Aniston that if you can do comedy you can do anything) is accused of sexual misconduct and fired. Their chemistry kept the waning show afloat – without it, she becomes even more vulnerable. Behind the scenes, network executives have already been looking to replace her ageing presence. This is their opportunity to do so, at least until Alex starts to fight furiously back while the lies, rumours, deals, double-crossings and backstabbings multiply. In a coup d’etat, she installs as her new partner a scrappy regional reporter, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), who is experiencing 15 minutes of fame as a voice of the people after candid footage of her at a coal-mining protest went viral. Continue reading...

AppleTV+ starts with smaller budget than Netflix or Amazon but aims for prestige marketApple gatecrashes the fast-growing global streaming business on Friday with the launch of Apple TV+, offering a free service on all new Apple devices for the first year.The Silicon Valley giant has pulled out all the stops to promote the service, which launches in 100 countries on Friday, with the stars of its flagship new series The Morning Show, Jennifer Aniston and Reece Witherspoon, spearheading the publicity push on both sides of the Atlantic. Continue reading...

When you raise the question of not giving kids phones at all, parents balk. ‘How can we do that?’ they ask. But what alternative is there?A report released by Common Sense Media on Tuesday found that by age 11, 53% of kids in the US have their own smartphone. And 69% do by the time they’re 12. This surge in phone ownership and the increased screen time associated with it comes amid growing concerns from experts and people like me that phones are bad for kids.Related: In a world made small by smartphones, we crave escape into otherness | Brigid Delaney Continue reading...

Katarzyna Pruszkiewicz spent six months running fake social media accounts at self-described ‘ePR firm’ in WrocławIt is as common an occurrence on Polish Twitter as you are likely to get: a pair of conservative activists pouring scorn on the country’s divided liberal opposition.“I burst out laughing!” writes Girl from Żoliborz, a self-described “traditionalist” commenting on a newspaper story about a former campaign adviser to Barack Obama and Emmanuel Macron coming to Warsaw to address a group of liberal activists. Continue reading...

Instagram requires ads by LGBTQ-focused health center to go through verification processFacebook is facing backlash after it classified advertisements for an HIV prevention drug as political advertising.Apicha, a New York health center that caters to LGBTQ patients, said last week the tech giant initially blocked ads it tried to run on Instagram that aimed to raise awareness of PrEP, an FDA-approved anti-HIV medication sold under the brand name Truvada. Continue reading...

It’s easy to romanticise places where the thing that has you in its thrall hasn’t arrived yet – until you realise it may not have arrived for market-driven reasonsWhether the world feels small, close and manageable, or foreign, unknowable and chaotic, says something about where you live and what sort of device you carry in your hand.For the former, the world is made small by smartphones. Continue reading...

A splashy new series imagines what would have happened if Russia had won the space race with decent, if rarely compelling, resultsMonths of hype for Apple TV+ and the many A-list names attached has dramatically dissipated this week as reviews have revealed a ragtag bunch of half-formed shows that have replaced big ideas with big production values. It might therefore be faint praise to label glossy space race drama For All Mankind as the best of the bunch but it’s adequately entertaining and the first three episodes hint at the show it might become, something far better than it currently is.Related: Dickinson review – Emily Dickinson reborn as a Lizzo-loving feminist Continue reading...

Jack Dorsey has cut off a tiny revenue stream while focusing attention on rival’s inactionTwitter’s announcement that it will ban all political advertising has prompted a wave of calls for Facebook to do the same. But Twitter’s political advertising operation had just 21 advertisers across the entirety of the EU during the parliamentary elections this year, according to the site’s transparency report.The Twitter co-founder and chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has turned a weakness into a strength, cutting off a minuscule revenue stream in order to heap pressure on his main competitor. In the hours since Twitter’s announcement, support has come from voices as diverse as the US-based campaign group Muslim Advocates, the Open Knowledge Foundation thinktank and the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Continue reading...

PC, PS4 (version tested), Xbox One; Activision

Robert still listens to MP3s but wants wants to know which music service pays artists bestI’m a big music fan and enjoy listening to music through my PC and phone, but I feel stuck in the last century as I still listen to my MP3 collection. I refuse to get Spotify, as it’s such a bad deal for the artists. Are there any alternatives that treat the artist well? RobertYour problem is that you don’t really have a problem. I’m in almost exactly the same position, only slightly worse, because I still use an MP3 player to listen to albums in MP3 format. The main difference is that I’m almost completely happy about not using any music streaming services. They are not obligatory. If you don’t need them, don’t use them. Spend the money on downloads or CDs instead. Continue reading...

Brilliant camera, slick features and small size mean nothing when the phone won’t even last a dayGoogle is one of only a handful of smartphone manufacturers still making flagship phones that aren’t ginormous beasts, with the new Pixel 4 the cheapest in a while that significantly undercuts the competition.Priced at £669, the Pixel 4 is £70 cheaper than last year’s Pixel 3 and £60 cheaper than Apple’s iPhone 11. It’s also cheaper than its bigger sibling the £829 Pixel 4 XL. The concern is: which corners have been cut and do they matter? Continue reading...

The favorable report drove the tech giant’s stocks up 2.5% on Wednesday, as the company expands its focus beyond the iPhoneApple reported record-high quarter four earnings on Wednesday, citing strong performances in wearables and other services as the company continues to expand its focus beyond flagship products such as the iPhone.The company reported a revenue of $64bn, beating a $63bn estimate from analysts. Continue reading...

Social network’s move comes as Facebook faces controversy over ads that promote misinformationTwitter will ban all political advertising, the company’s CEO has announced, in a move that will increase pressure on Facebook over its controversial stance to allow politicians to advertise false statements.The new policy, announced via Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account on Wednesday, will come into effect on 22 November and will apply globally to all electioneering ads, as well as ads related to political issues. The timing means the ban will be in place in time for the UK snap election. Continue reading...

Fake networks in eight nations are connected to man allegedly behind disinformation empireFacebook has taken down accounts linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin – the businessman allegedly behind Russia’s notorious troll factory – which were actively seeking to influence the domestic politics of a range of African countries.The company said on Wednesday it had suspended three networks of “inauthentic” Russian accounts. The Facebook pages targeted eight countries across the continent: Madagascar, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya. Continue reading...

DeepMind’s AlphaStar masters game dubbed ‘next grand challenge for AI’ in just 44 days‘The challenge was to play like a human’: AI takes on the gamersAn artificial intelligence (AI) system has reached the highest rank of StarCraft II, the fiendishly complex and wildly popular computer game, in a landmark achievement for the field.Related: 'The challenge was to play like a human': AI takes on the gamers Continue reading...

Firm had to promise to verify drivers’ identities, in deal attacked by London cabbies

The maestros of film sound reveal the secrets of their challenging job with great frankness and amazing modestyHere is a valuable and deeply felt documentary, celebrating the work of the sound designers, sound editors and Foley wizards in the cinema, and if it feels like a feelgood in-house promotional video for Hollywood technicians … well, they’ve got an awful lot to feel good about.These are the people who create that world of sound, that palimpsest of exquisitely blended noise layers, which is perhaps the thing least consciously comprehended by the movie audience but which is indispensable for fabricating a total world in which a film can live and breathe. It requires an artistry and a delicacy, as well as resourcefulness and make-do-and-mend ingenuity that reaches back to the cinema’s beginnings. Continue reading...

Adriel Hampton registered as candidate for California governor in attempt to avoid checksFacebook will continue to fact-check adverts posted by a California gubernatorial candidate despite a policy exempting political candidates from its rules on misinformation in advertising.The company said that because Adriel Hampton, the head of the Really Online Lefty League political action committee (Pac), “has made clear he registered as a candidate to get around our policies … his content, including ads, will continue to be eligible for third-party fact-checking.” Continue reading...

Unlike most tech companies, Fairphone has a workforce with an almost equal gender split, and a majority of women in leadership. So is its ethical mission the secret to achieving parity?Eva Gouwens had heard that the tech industry was male-dominated, but it wasn’t until she attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for the first time that the extent of the gender imbalance really hit her.

While celebrated, some in the LGBTQ community say it reinforces a fixed idea of what gender-neutral people should look likeApple has expanded its emoji offerings on Monday to include non-binary versions of nearly every human emoji, including non-binary couple pairings.The 328 new emoji designs came with the release of the company’s latest software update iOS 13.2. The non-binary emojis even extend to fantastical creatures such as merpeople, fae, and vampires. Continue reading...

Adriel Hampton plans to run false commercials in protest at policy of letting politicians lieA California man has registered as a candidate for state governor purely to run false commercials on Facebook, as a protest against the social network’s policy to allow political misinformation in paid advertising.Adriel Hampton, a San Francisco resident, has already hit the headlines for his protests against Facebook’s misinformation policy, after a political action committee (Pac) he set up ran an advert falsely claiming that the Republican senator Lindsey Graham supported the Green New Deal. Continue reading...

Tom Watson urges competition regulator to investigate ‘data grab’ by tech companyLabour has written to the competition regulator calling for Google’s reported acquisition of Fitbit to be halted, at least until a wider inquiry into anticompetitive practices in the technology sector is completed.Google made an offer to purchase the fitness tracking company on Monday for an undisclosed price, according to Reuters. Continue reading...

Los Angeles district judge ruled jury will decide whether Tesla chief’s statements about British diver amount to defamationElon Musk will go to trial in December, after a judge denied his request to throw out a defamation lawsuit by a British man Musk called a “pedo guy”.Los Angeles district judge Stephen Wilson said a jury would now decide whether Musk’s statements about Vernon Unsworth, a British diver who helped rescue a team of young football players from an underwater cave in Thailand in 2018, amount to defamation. Continue reading...

More than 600 creators and social media influencers join campaign to plant 20m treesA group of YouTube stars have raised more than $6m (£4.7m) to plant trees around the world by rallying their huge numbers of subscribers.The American YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, was challenged on Reddit in May to plant 20m trees to celebrate reaching 20 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, where he posts videos of extravagant stunts. Continue reading...

Face Unlock, radar and on-device voice skills show Google’s magic, but some bits need fixingGoogle’s latest Pixel 4 XL smartphone is its bravest yet, throwing out the conventions of old, integrating cutting-edge technology and attempting to round it all out with a special mix of software direct from the Android-maker.By now you probably know the drill. The Pixel 4 XL is a metal and glass sandwich like practically every other phone. Unlike most though the aluminium sides have a black textured coating, which aids grip, while the back feels almost like super-smooth skin or silk rather than glass. It also has bold, contrasting colours, if you choose the white or orange variant, that make it stand out well against the competition. Continue reading...

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleges Google breached law when users set up Android accountsAustralia’s competition watchdog is pursuing Google over allegations the tech giant made false or misleading claims about which personal location data it was collecting.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission began proceedings against Google in the federal court in New South Wales on Tuesday, alleging it breached the law through a series of on-screen representations made as users set up Google accounts on their Android mobile phones and tablets. Continue reading...

Disappointing earnings come as the company faces antitrust challenges and employees condemn policiesAlphabet’s stock fell as much as 4% in after hours trading after it reported it missed analyst expectations and posted a 23% decline in profit as it faces rising expenses.Google’s parent company posted earnings of $10.12 per share in its third quarter, lower than the $12.42 per share expected. Its quarterly profit fell 23% to $7.07, hurt by investments in research, development, and marketing. Continue reading...

A letter to Mark Zuckerberg says the exemption is ‘a threat to what FB stands for’ and called for the same standards as other advertsHundreds of Facebook employees have signed a letter to executive Mark Zuckerberg decrying his decision to allow politicians to post advertisements on the platform that include false claims.More than 250 employees signed the letter, which was posted on an internal communication message board for the company, the New York Times reported Monday. They expressed concern that Facebook “is on track to undo the great strides [its] product teams have made in integrity over the last two years”. Continue reading...

New silicone tips, noise cancelling and transparency modes in a similar designApple has launched a new set of its popular true wireless earbuds with traditional silicone tips and noise-cancelling software.The AirPods Pro have a similar design to the current non-isolating AirPods, complete with white stalks and an ultra-compact case. But instead of a plastic duct that rests in your ear, allowing sounds from the outside world to be heard over music, the AirPods Pro aim to block it all out. Continue reading...

If your phone is a bit too big, your hand hurts or you frequently drop it, these cheap accessories can helpSmartphones are getting bigger and heavier every year, but our hands aren’t. At some point something has to break. And when it does it’ll either be a sting in the wallet when your phone hits the ground or a pain in the hand as your constant finger stretching induces dreaded RSI.There aren’t any really small smartphones on the market, just smaller phones that are often very expensive. And that doesn’t help you with the phone in your pocket right now, whether an iPhone 11 Pro Max, a Pixel 3 XL or Galaxy Note 10+. So the solution is some kind of accessory to help you keep a grip. Here are five of the best: Continue reading...

The web domain democracy.com went up for auction last week with an asking price of at least $300,000 (£233,000). This week, Jordan Erica Webber looks at what makes a few words in a web browser worth thousands, if not millions of dollars Continue reading...

Scientists have conducted a series of trials that point to various ways to check the progress of the diseaseLast week, a US biotechnology company claimed to have produced the first drug with the ability to slow down the development of Alzheimer’s. Biogen says it hopes to release aducanumab on to the market after it gets US Food and Drug Administration approval, which could take up to two years. Research into the drug had been abandoned but trials using higher doses of the drug are claimed to improve cognitive functions such as memory, orientation, and language. Continue reading...

Ad, which ran Friday, was put up as a stunt by a left-leaning Pac to test Facebook political ad policies

China’s use of technology for social control of its citizens is extensive – but it could affect users elsewhere too, says security analyst Samantha HoffmanSamantha Hoffman is an analyst of Chinese security issues at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi). She recently published a paper entitled Engineering Global Consent: The Chinese Communist Party’s Data-Driven Power Expansion.Internet pioneers heralded a time when information would be set free, giving people everywhere unfiltered access to the world’s knowledge and bringing about the decline of authoritarian regimes… that’s not really happened has it?

Microsoft edges out Amazon to win joint enterprise defence infrastructure cloud contractMicrosoft has won the Pentagon’s $10bn (£7.8bn) cloud computing contract, beating Amazon, which was seen as the favourite to build the system.The joint enterprise defence infrastructure cloud (Jedi) contract is part of a broader digital modernisation of the Pentagon meant to make it more technologically agile. Continue reading...

Many third-party contractors learned of new policy from Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to CongressMany of Facebook’s third-party fact checkers have still not been told that the company now expects them to vet adverts as well as user content for misinformation – though, controversially, not political adverts.Some fact checkers only found out that they should be vetting paid adverts after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg described the new policyin Congress on Wednesday. Continue reading...