Internet

Facebook is rejecting claims that it let advertisers target users based on their current mood. It says research into the technology was carried out, but not used for advertising. "The Australian" newspaper report was based on leaked internal data ... that says Facebook could figure out mood swings based on combined data from user posts and pictures, the interactions they had with other users, and other activity on the site. Some of the moods which Facebook could reportedly discover included feeling anxious, defeated, nervous, overwhelmed, silly, stressed, stupid, useless or a failure. ... (view more)

The man behind Wikipedia is to launch a news service based around the goals of being factual and neutral. Wikitribune will combine elements of Wikipedia and traditional news reporting. Jimmy Wales says the key to the site is that it will neither ... charge a subscription fee nor chase advertising. With the majority of ad revenues based on page views, Wales believes the the big problem now is that reporters deliberately skimp on accuracy for the sake of sensationalism, or provoke readers with inflammatory headlines as they "chase clicks," which in turn creates more page views. (Source: ... (view more)

Facebook has admitted it needs to do more to monitor content after a video of a murder was on the site for just over two hours. Shockingly, it took more than 100 minutes for a user to report the video to Facebook. The video was one of three produced ... by the killer, Steve Stephens, who later took his own life while being pursued by police. Stephens posted a video to Facebook saying he planned to commit murder. Two minutes later he posted another video showing his killing of 74-year-old Robert Godwin. Shortly after that Stephens used Facebook's live broadcast feature to both confess to the ... (view more)

Facebook has joined a host of tech companies and non-profit groups to launch a $14 million project to fight fake news. The News Integrity Initiative's aim is to help people "make informed judgments about the news they read and share online." The ... project will be run by the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York (CUNY). As well as Facebook, it's backed by Firefox developer Mozilla, online ad company AppNexus and journalism investment group, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, among others. The main activity will be holding events at a range of ... (view more)

Congress has voted to ditch rules that would have made it harder for broadband companies to share personal user data with third party companies. The vote means Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations will not take effect. The rules were ... adopted by the FCC last October and covered broadband and wireless providers, but not websites such as Google or Facebook. Had they taken effect, the rules would have meant Internet providers could not share key data - for example with advertisers - without the explicit consent of customers. This data included browsing history, details of the apps ... (view more)

A major news organization says Facebook doesn't do enough to remove images that exploit children. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) says the site removed just 18 out of 100 images that it reported as part of an investigation. The test was ... part of a follow-up to a report last year about people using members-only groups on the site to share inappropriate images of children. At the time, Facebook said it was improving its moderation system. To see if that was the case, the BBC used Facebook's formal reporting button to report 100 images that appeared to breach the site's ... (view more)

Google's voice activated home assistant gadget has told users that former president Barack Obama is planning a coup. It's an unfortunate quirk of the way the company applies its website techniques to the gadget. Google Home - the company's answer to ... the Amazon Echo - is a small speaker that contains a microphone and a WiFi connection. It's designed to help with a host of activities around the house where voice-based information is quicker or more convenient than using a phone, tablet or computer. Examples include being able to ask for a recipe unit conversion while in the ... (view more)

Twitter is cracking down on abusive and personal attacks. It's giving users extra controls while introducing automated checks to pick up on potential abuse. The new rules aren't specifically about what people can post in a normal tweet. Instead, ... they cover posts where the writer deliberately includes somebody else's user name, meaning that other person will see the post as part of their notifications. That helps deal with a loophole in the way Twitter works. For the most part, people only see posts from accounts they've chosen to follow, but the notifications tool includes ... (view more)

Facebook is to make it easier for people to offer practical help after a crisis or natural disaster. It's an update to an existing tool for people to check up on loved ones. When triggered, the "Safety Check" feature will check which Facebook users ... are in the relevant physical area, based on their IP address or the location information on their mobile device. They'll then be asked to choose options of "I'm safe" or "I'm not in the area." Their Facebook friends will then see them listed as safe. The idea is that publicizing somebody as being " ... (view more)

Facebook is making several changes to its Trending Topics section that, in effect, serves as its news headlines. The changes are designed to make it harder for people to game the system with bogus or intentionally provocative stories. Trending ... Topics is not about the stories that appear in the main news feed. They will continue to be decided by how many of the user's friends post, share or comment on links to the relevant web pages. Instead, Trending Topics is a separate list that appears on the right hand side of the page when users are logged in to the Facebook website. Clicking on the ... (view more)