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X, formerly known as Twitter, appears to have scaled back a tool for reporting election misinformation. The tool appears to now only be available in Europe. The BBC notes the tool launched in Australia, South Korea and the United States in 2021 and ... expanded to other countries last year. However, a non-profit group says it's now only available in European Union countries. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) Users on the former Twitter can report posts which they believe breach the site's guidelines, but must choose a specific category. That includes breaches such as spam or hate speech, but no longer ... (view more)

A recent report from StatCounter (March, 2023) suggests that Windows 11 is running on one out of every five Windows PCs (approximately 20 percent). Windows 11 has experienced a steady growth rate, increasing its market share from 19.13% to 20.94%, ... gaining 1.81 percentage points in March, 2023. While Windows 10 also saw an increase, it was not as significant as in February 2023 when Microsoft stopped support for Windows 7 and 8.1. Despite the increase in Windows 10's market share, Windows 11's growth rate indicates that users are more interested in the newer operating system. These numbers may ... (view more)

The most viewed link for Americans on Facebook in the first three months of 2021 was to a news story about a doctor who died after getting a COVID vaccine. The story turned out to be questionable and may have given a misleading impression. The ... statistic comes in a Facebook report that was mysteriously delayed. That's raised questions about whether Facebook held it back to avoid controversy. Facebook publishes a quarterly report titled "Widely Viewed Content" that details posts, links and other content that are seen by the biggest number of users in the United States. It's designed to show ... (view more)

A Senate committee has slammed cyber security in eight federal government agencies. The committee said most were failing basic security standards and had shown minimal improvements since a previous report. The report comes from the Committee on ... Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It followed up on a similar report from another committee in 2019. Both reports looked at issues including: Whether the agencies adequately protected personal information. Whether they kept track of the various IT equipment and systems they used. Whether they installed security patches quickly enough. Whether ... (view more)

29 countries intentionally disrupted Internet access for their citizens at some point in 2020 according to a new report. Of a total 155 shutdowns, 28 were "full Internet blackouts." While many were authoritative states, the most disruptions by far ... came in India, which is officially at least a democracy. It used more than 100 Internet shutdowns to prevent communication by protestors against a controversial law. Those shutdowns have now been judged illegal by the country's Supreme Court. Mobile Speeds Slowed The report, from Access Now, found the overall number of shutdowns around the world was ... (view more)

Two years ago Facebook commissioned an audit on its effect on civil rights. The results are in, and they don't make for pretty reading. The report makes a series of suggestions for Facebook to change its policies, but the company says it won't ... implement all of them. Arguably the most damaging conclusion in the report is that Facebook isn't just hosting extremist views and hatred, but that its very setup may actually be encouraging and boosting such material. The biggest criticism is that Facebook's own algorithms may have pushed users towards "self-reinforcing echo chambers of extremism." The ... (view more)

A computer security company claims malware attacks are on the decrease. The difference appears to be that criminals are more closely targeting attacks, which could be good news for the average user. The figures come from Sonicwall, which offers ... firewalls and other cyber security solutions. The data is based on the attacks and attempted attacks it detected among customers covering 1.1 million sites in 215 countries. (Source: sonicwall.com ) Although the actual numbers it gives aren't necessarily meaningful, the year-on-year comparisons between its new report covering 2019 and the one it did ... (view more)

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)

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)

A Harvard University report challenged the government's argument that online encryption helps criminals go undetected. The report also suggests that the "Internet of Things" will give law enforcement officials more opportunity to surveil suspects. ... Politicians and government agencies (such as the FBI) repeatedly make the case that the law fails to keep up with technology, especially when it comes to being able to monitor communications between suspected offenders. For example, recently-updated wiretapping laws can still prove to be unworkable, especially if data is encrypted ... (view more)