Displaying items by tag: Fake News

Facebook warns users that it will take action and penalise users who share misinformation. It is also stepping up its efforts to fight fake news and warns users of suspicious pages and its activity.

GUEST OPINION by Jim Cook, Attivo Networks:  Separating truth from fiction in these days of social media campaigns and so-called fake news can often be challenging. As a result, false data that appears valuable can influence people.

Twitter accounts that are controlled largely by bots have been observed targeting Australians in the run-up to the Federal Election on 18 May, a researcher from the Queensland University of Technology Digital Media Research Centre claims.

Singapore has proposed a law to police social media, with those who spread lies online that harm the public interest to be jailed for 10 years, while companies that host the falsehoods would be fined up to S$1 million (A$1.03 million).

Microsoft's Edge browser has labelled the Daily Mail's UK edition as fake news, with the extension named NewsGuard that comes along with the mobile version of its browser making this judgment.

British fact-checking charity Full Fact has been chosen by Facebook to reduce the flow of misinformation on the social media site, and will start checking images, videos and articles from this month onwards.

Facebook officials are debating whether to ban posts that link to hacked material, a policy that has been put in place by Twitter, the company cyber security chief Nathaniel Gleicher says.

A British Government panel has recommended that technology companies should be made responsible and liable for the spread of disinformation and "fake news".

The Indian Government has indicated to Facebook that it will have to introduce "traceability and accountability", in order to ensure that provocative messages sent on WhatsApp can be traced to their source, or face legal action.

Social media is deeply distrusted by Australians, with Facebook by far the most distrusted media brand, according to a national survey by Roy Morgan Research.

Despite having launched a digital news initiative in Europe to "combat misinformation and disinformation, Google is one of six companies to sign up with London's Evening Standard newspaper for a £3 million (A$5.26 million) deal that promises “money-can’t-buy” positive news and “favourable” comment coverage.

Before Apple's earnings report last week, analysts were falling over themselves to declare the iPhone X as a failure with poor sales, but not only did Apple smash the naysayers with excellent results, Strategy Analytics says iPhone X is No.1 worldwide.

After a barrage of criticism over its inability — and apparent lack of concern — in stopping fake news flooding its platform both during and after the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook got its Christmas gift early – a soft, puff piece in the Australian Financial Review that paints it as a crusader against the spread of incorrect information.

A "technical error" has been blamed by Dow Jones for a story that was issued on its news wires overnight, saying that Google was buying Apple – and for a relatively paltry sum of US$9 billion.

Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos has taken to the digital airwaves (read Twitter) to try and counter the assumption that the social media giant is sitting on its hands when it comes to preventing the spread of fake news on its channels.

Underground online marketplaces are selling a range of services designed to help anyone who is looking to distribute fake news and launch a public opinion manipulation campaign, a detailed study by the security firm Trend Micro has found.

In a landmark ruling, an Austrian court has ordered Facebook to remove hate speech from its posts. The ruling is not country specific.

Google's featured snippets on search results, which appear right at the top, often provide shockingly incorrect information, leading one academic to characterise them as being worse than fake news.

Google’s ecosystem is the world’s largest online advertising vehicle. It took down 1.7 billion advertisements in the past year – a mere drop in the bucket.

At a time when fake news is very much in the news, the technology website eWeek, aided by the American news aggregation site Slashdot, has added its mite to the pile, claiming falsely that 70% of businesses impacted by ransomware end up paying the ransom.