Author: Barbara Ortutay
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Purging long-forgotten online accounts: worth the trouble?
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NEW YORK • The internet is riddled with long-forgotten accounts on social media, dating apps and various shopping sites used once or twice. Sure, you should delete all those unused logins and passwords. And eat your vegetables. And go to the gym. But is it even possible to delete your zombie online footprints — or worth…
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Explainer: What is shadow banning?
NEW YORK • The sinister-sounding term “shadow banning” has been in play recently, mostly thanks to conservatives — including President Donald Trump — accusing Twitter and other technology companies of political bias. “Twitter ‘SHADOW BANNING’ prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints,” the president tweeted…
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Trump accuses Google of bias, warns: ‘Be careful’
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WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Google and other U.S. tech companies of rigging search results about him “so that almost all stories & news is BAD.” He offered no evidence of bias, but a top adviser said the White House is “taking a look” at whether Google should face federal regulation. Google…
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Facebook made some private posts public for as many as 14M
NEW YORK — Facebook said Thursday that a software bug made some private posts public for as many as 14 million users over several days in May. The problem, which Facebook said it has fixed, is the latest privacy scandal for the world’s largest social media company. It said the bug automatically suggested that users make new…
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Poll shows privacy debacle is prompting social-media changes
NEW YORK — If you’ve made changes to how you use social media since Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle, you’re not alone. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 7 out of 10 of online adults who’ve heard of the scandal — revelations that a data mining firm…
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Zuckerberg says company working with Mueller probe
WASHINGTON — Apologetic Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told senators Tuesday it had been “clearly a mistake” to believe the Trump-linked data-mining company Cambridge Analytica had discarded data that it had harvested from social media users in an attempt to sway 2016 elections. Zuckerberg told members of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees that Facebook considered…
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Facebook scandal affected more users than thought: up to 87M
NEW YORK — Facebook revealed Wednesday that tens of millions more people might have been exposed in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal than previously thought and said it will restrict the user data that outsiders can access. Those developments came as congressional officials said CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify next week, while Facebook unveiled a…
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Facebook edits feeds to bring less news, more sharing
NEW YORK — Facebook is changing what its users will see to highlight posts they are most likely to engage with and make time spent on social media more “meaningful.” By cutting back on items that Facebook users tend to passively consume, the change could hurt news organizations and other businesses that rely on Facebook…
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What robot strippers say about sexism, tech and the future
LAS VEGAS — On a recent evening in Las Vegas during the CES technology show, robot strippers offered a window into technology’s gender fault lines — not to mention our robot future. From a distance, the mechanical humanoids on a strip-club stage looked something like real dancers in robot drag. But close up, they were…
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AP Exclusive: Russia Twitter trolls deflected Trump bad news
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SAN FRANCISCO — Disguised Russian agents on Twitter rushed to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump just before last year’s presidential election while straining to refocus criticism on the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to an Associated Press analysis of since-deleted accounts. Tweets by Russia-backed accounts such as “America_1st_” and “BatonRougeVoice” on Oct.…