Author: Elizabeth Dwoskin
-
Why innovation isn’t dead in Silicon Valley
SAN FRANCISCO • For years now, Silicon Valley has been searching in frustration for the next big breakthrough. Innovative businesses that launched a decade ago, such as Uber and Airbnb, are finally making money or heading toward public offerings — but only after years of bruising fights with regulators and costly operational challenges. At the…
-
Facebook’s former security chief has plan to solve tech’s ‘negative impacts’
For two years, Alex Stamos was the Facebook executive tasked with defending the company’s systems against Russian interference and other critical threats. Now the former chief security officer, who left the social network in August, says Facebook — and the technology industry — needs a systems of checks and balances to help it weigh the…
-
Mainstream ads still showing up on misleading sites despite efforts to stop it
Jihadi rapists. Muslim invaders. Faked mass shootings. Pizzagate. Somebody browsing highly partisan websites in recent weeks could have seen articles about all of these subjects — and on the same pages seen cheerful green ads for the Girl Scouts, bearing the slogan “Helping Girls Change the World!” Such juxtapositions, documented by a Washington Post review…
-
Instagram has a drug problem. Its algorithms make it worse
Instagram is known for its celebrity posts and photos of enviable vacations. But it has also become a sizable open marketplace for advertising illegal drugs. The company has pledged a crackdown in recent weeks, but it is struggling to keep pace with its own algorithms and systems, which serve up an array of personalized drug-related…
-
Some employers using Facebook to target job ads exclusively to men, complaint alleges
Three female job hunters, a large worker coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union lodged a legal complaint against Facebook on Tuesday, accusing the company of enabling discriminatory job postings with its ad targeting tools. The complaint also targets 10 employers that used Facebook to post job ads — for roles as police officers, truck…
-
CEO Dorsey says he’s rethinking the core of how Twitter works
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said he is rethinking core parts of the social media platform so that it doesn’t enable the spread of hate speech, harassment and false news, including conspiracy theories shared by prominent users like Alex Jones and InfoWars. In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Dorsey said he was…
-
High-profile Twitter users could see a ‘significant drop’ in followers
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save SAN FRANCISCO – Celebrities and politicians, start kissing your Twitter followers goodbye. On Wednesday, the social media service said it would begin removing large numbers of Twitter profiles that had been included in people’s follower counts — even though these profiles had been frozen by the company’s…
-
Twitter finds hundreds of accounts tied to Russian operatives
WASHINGTON – Twitter has shut down 201 accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads on Facebook, the company told congressional investigators Thursday and revealed in a blog in the afternoon. The company also found three Russian Today accounts – which it said it believes are linked to…
-
Facebook’s willingness to copy rivals’ apps seen as hurting innovation
SAN FRANCISCO – Four years ago, Facebook spent over $150 million on a free app used by millions. Today that app, called Onavo, has become a little-known weapon in Facebook’s massive expansion strategy, helping the social-networking giant determine what is gaining popularity among consumers. It can then bring similar features to its own products, according…
-
Judge asks federal prosecutors to investigate Uber in trade-secret case
SAN FRANCISCO – The stakes are getting higher in a trade secrets case that pits Uber against Waymo in a battle over the future of self-driving cars. A judge asked federal prosecutors to investigate whether Uber Technologies and one of its executives colluded to steal key technology from Waymo, the driverless car division of Google…