An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: Twitter has on various occasions been accused of political bias, with politicians or commentators alleging Twitter's algorithm amplifies their opponents' voices, or silences their own. In this climate, Twitter commissioned a study to understand whether their algorithm may be biased towards a certain political ideology. While Twitter publicized the findings of the research in 2021, the study has now been published in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS.

The study looked at a sample of 4% of all Twitter users who had been exposed to the algorithm (46,470,596 unique users). It also included a control group of 11,617,373 users who had never received any automatically recommended tweets in their feeds. This wasn't a manual study, whereby, say, the researchers recruited volunteers and asked them questions about their experiences. It wouldn't have been possible to study such a large number of users that way. Instead, a computer model allowed the researchers to generate their findings. [...] The researchers found that in six out of the seven countries (Germany was the exception), the algorithm significantly favored the amplification of tweets from politically right-leaning sources. Overall, the amplification trend wasn't significant among individual politicians from specific parties, but was when they were taken together as a group. The starkest contrasts were seen in Canada (the Liberals' tweets were amplified 43%, versus those of the Conservatives at 167%) and the UK (Labour's tweets were amplified 112%, while the Conservatives' were amplified at 176%).

In acknowledgement of the fact that tweets from elected officials represent only a small portion of political content on Twitter, the researchers also looked at whether the algorithm disproportionately amplifies news content from any particular point on the ideological spectrum. To this end, they measured the algorithmic amplification of 6.2 million political news articles shared in the US. To determine the political leaning of the news source, they used two independently curated media bias-rating datasets. Similar to the results in the first part of the study, the authors found that content from right-wing media outlets is amplified more than that from outlets at other points on the ideological spectrum. This part of the study also found far-left-leaning and far-right-leaning outlets were not significantly amplified compared with politically moderate outlets. The authors of the study point out that the algorithms "might be influenced by the way different political groups operate," notes The Conversation. "So for example, some political groups might be deploying better tactics and strategies to amplify their content on Twitter."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: BlackBerry is adding another sad chapter to the downfall of its smartphone business. Today the company announced a sale of its prized patent portfolio for $600 million. The buyer is "Catapult IP Innovations Inc.," a new company BlackBerry describes as "a special purpose vehicle formed to acquire the BlackBerry patent assets." BlackBerry says the patents are for "mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking." These are going to be the patents surrounding BlackBerry's phones, QWERTY keyboards, and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). BlackBerry most recently weaponized these patents against Facebook Messenger in 2018, which covered ideas like muting a message thread and displaying notifications as a numeric icon badge. BlackBerry -- back when it was called RIM -- was a veteran of the original smartphone patent wars, though, and went after companies like Handspring and Good Technology in the early 2000s.

If the name "Catapult IP Innovations" didn't give it away, weaponizing BlackBerry's patents is the most obvious outcome of this deal. According to the press release, Catapult's funding for the $600 million deal is just a $450 million loan, which will immediately be given to BlackBerry in cash. The remaining $150 million is a promissory note with the first payment due in three years. That means Catapult is now a new company with a huge amount of debt, no products, and no cash flow. Assuming the plan isn't to instantly go bankrupt, Catapult needs to start monetizing BlackBerry's patents somehow, which presumably means suing everyone it believes is in violation of its newly acquired assets.

Moving halfway across America, from Colorado to New York, Austin and Valerie McNulty had a bad experience after hiring a moving company that subcontracted the work to another moving company.

But they'd also included an Apple AirTag in one of their boxes, Newsweek reports: A moving guy reportedly told Austin that he "just picked up the stuff" and would take another day or two. Due to the AirTag, the couple knew the moving guy was not in Colorado but was just less than five hours away in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As for the family's possessions, which were supposed to be inventoried and in a safe location, GPS tracking showed that neither action allegedly occurred. "It turns out [the items] just stayed overnight in a sketchy part of New Jersey," Austin told Newsweek.

According to Austin, that same driver who allegedly lied about his whereabouts told Austin in a phone call that he went to see "his lady" and that was part of the delay....

"I think we would have been waiting a lot longer for our home goods to arrive [if we didn't have the AirTag]," Valerie said.... "I would say that AirTags are fairly inexpensive and it's an easy way to hold the third parties accountable."
"When we brought up the fact that we knew his exact location he hung up on us," Valerie McNulty said in a Facebook post (which has been shared more than 4,600 times) — although the driver did eventually call back a few minutes later and the items were delivered the next day.

ABC News reports that the driver "was put on probation" according to his moving company — which also added that it "plans to use AirTags for tracking their drivers in the future."

Valerie McNulty argued to ABC News that "I was never tracking the driver, that was never my intention. I was tracking my belongings." Yet the Washington Post notes the story "comes amid a robust debate about the small plastic-and-metal disks, which launched last spring: Are they creepy or helpful? The trackers have been found on expensive cars, presumably so they could be stolen. But they can also be attached to commonly lost valuables, like keys, to make finding them easier."

Apple Insider reports a Pennsylvania state legislator is even proposing legislation making it a crime to track someone else's location or belongings without their consent, adding that if passed in Pennsylvania the law would "create a precedent for other states to follow suit if passed."

ZDNet quotes a remark from the Director of Cyber-Security at the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the BBC, calling Apple's AirTags "a perfect tool for stalking." But ZDNet columnist Chris Matyszczyk adds "That's the problem with technology, isn't it? For every potential good use, there are at least several pain-inducing, criminal-pleasing, world-ending uses. Too often, the bad outweighs the good, especially in the public eyes and ears. Here, though, is a tale of a woman who's glad she used an AirTag for her own surveillance purposes....

This whole tale makes me wonder, though, what we've come to and where we're going.... If our default is that we can trust no one and fear everyone, how can we ever really get along?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Apple is stifling competition through its mobile app store, attorneys general for 34 U.S. states and the District of Columbia said on Thursday, as they appealed against a ruling that let the iPhone maker continue some restrictive practices. While dozens of state attorneys general have filed recent antitrust lawsuits against other big tech companies, including Facebook owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google, none had so far taken aim at Apple. Thursday's remarks, led by the state of Utah and joined by Colorado, Indiana, Texas and others, came in a lawsuit in an appeals court against app store fees and payment tools between "Fortnite" video game maker Epic Games and Apple. "Apple's conduct has harmed and is harming mobile app-developers and millions of citizens," the states said. "Meanwhile, Apple continues to monopolize app distribution and in-app payment solutions for iPhones, stifle competition, and amass supracompetitive profits within the almost trillion-dollar-a-year smartphone industry." [...] The states said in their filing that the lower court erred by failing to adequately balance the pros and cons of Apple's rules and also by deciding that a key antitrust law did not apply to non-negotiable contracts Apple makes developers sign. "Paradoxically, firms with enough market power to unilaterally impose contracts would be protected from antitrust scrutiny -- precisely the firms whose activities give the most cause for antitrust concern," they said.

Messenger has fully rolled out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to everyone, with toggles to encrypt text messages as well as group chats and calls. As The Verge notes, Messenger first added E2EE in 2016 back when it was still called Facebook Messenger and Meta was still Facebook. "Meta has discussed switching to E2EE as a default, but that may not happen until next year at the earliest, as some regulators claim this would harm public safety," adds The Verge. From the report: There are two ways Messenger users can opt in to the secure chats, either via vanish mode, by swiping up on an existing chat to enter one where messages automatically disappear when the window is closed or the original version that was introduced in 2016 as Secret Conversations. You can turn that on by toggling the lock icon when you start a new chat.

In addition to a full rollout of the feature, Messenger has some new features to enable as well. Now, in end-to-end encrypted chats, you can use GIFs, stickers, reactions, and long-press to reply or forward messages. The encrypted chats also now support verified badges so that people can identify authentic accounts. You can also save media exchanged in the chats, and there's a Snapchat-style screenshot notification that will be rolling out over the next few weeks.

According to a new report from the FTC, more than 95,000 people lost $770 million to scammers who found them via social media platforms in 2021. "That's more than double the $258 million they say scammers made off with in 2020," notes Engadget. From the report: The report doesn't speculate on why there was such a big increase in 2021, but it notes that reports of scams have "soared" over the last five years. It also states that there was a "massive surge" in scams related to "bogus cryptocurrency investments" and that investment scams accounted for nearly $285 million -- more than third -- of the $770 million lost last year. Romance scams have also "climbed to record highs in recent years," according to the report. "These scams often start with a seemingly innocent friend request from a stranger, followed by sweet talk, and then, inevitably, a request for money," the FTC says. Also prevalent are scams related to online shopping, most of which involve "undelivered goods" that were purchased as the result of an ad on social media.

Of note, Facebook and Instagram are the only two platforms named in the report. "More than a third of people who said they lost money to an online romance scam in 2021 said it began on Facebook or Instagram," the report states. Likewise, the FTC says that Facebook and Instagram were the most commonly cited platform for reports of undelivered good, with the two apps cited in 9 out of 10 reports where a service was identified. [...] Interestingly one of the FTC's recommendations is that users try to opt out of targeted advertising when possible as scammers can "easily use the tools available to advertisers on social media platforms to systematically target people with bogus ads based on personal details such as their age, interests, or past purchases." The agency also recommends users lock down their privacy settings and to be wary of any messages asking for money, especially in the form of cryptocurrency or gift cards.

Meta Platforms' WhatsApp was given a month to answer European Union concerns over new terms and services that sparked outrage among consumers and privacy campaigners. From a report: WhatsApp must provide "concrete commitments" to address EU concerns about a possible lack of "sufficiently clear information" to users, or the exchange of user data between WhatsApp and third parties, the European Commission said Thursday. "WhatsApp must ensure that users understand what they agree to and how their personal data is used," EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said in a statement. "I expect from WhatsApp to fully comply with EU rules that protect consumers and their privacy."

WhatsApp announced the policy changes a year ago, but was forced to delay their introduction until May after a backlash over what data the messaging service collects and how it shares that information with parent Facebook. European consumer association BEUC complained to the EU, saying the new terms and services were opaque. "WhatsApp bombarded users for months with persistent pop-up messages," BEUC said in reaction to the commission announcement. "WhatsApp has been deliberately vague about this, laying the ground for far-reaching data processing without valid consent from consumers."

LG has announced a new offering to advertisers that promises to be able to reach the company's millions of connected devices in households across the country, pummeling TV viewers with -- you guessed it -- targeted ads. From a report: While ads playing on your connected TV might not be anything new, some of the metrics the company plans to hand over to advertisers include targeting viewers by specific demographics, for example, or being able to tie a TV ad view to someone's in-store purchase down the line. If you swap out a TV screen for a computer screen, the kind of microtargeting that LG's offering doesn't sound any different than what a company like Facebook or Google would offer. That's kind of the point.

Online ad spending reached more than $490 billion by the end of last year, and those numbers are only going to keep going up as more advertisers look for more ways to track and target more people online. Traditional TV ad spend, meanwhile, has tanked since its peak around 2016. In order to lure ad dollars back, folks in the television space, like LG, are using every tool at their disposal to claw back the ad dollars the internet's taken away. And it's clearly working. While traditional TV ad spend has plummeted, there's never been more money spent on advertising across the digitally connected TVs offered by companies like LG. Roku, for example, recently announced an upcoming Shopify integration that would let retailers target TV viewers with more ads for more of their products. Amazon rolled out a new beta platform that lets networks promote apps, movies, or TV shows to people right from the device's home screen. And I don't need to remind Samsung TV owners how their devices are getting absolutely plastered with ads from every conceivable angle.

Diem, Meta's ill-fated cryptocurrency previously known as Libra, may never actually materialize. According to Bloomberg, the Diem Association is reportedly "weighing a sale of its assets as a way to return capital to its investor members." Engadget reports: It's unclear what assets the Diem Association owns, but the report notes the group is talking to bankers about selling its intellectual property and finding "a new home for the engineers that developed the technology." If a sale were to happen, it would seem to be the final nail in the coffin for Diem, the cryptocurrency project that Mark Zuckerberg has championed. Plans to get the stablecoin off the ground have stalled for years amid regulatory pushback and lawmaker concerns. After first launching as Libra, several high-profile partners pulled out in 2019.

Last fall, Facebook started a small pilot of Novi, the cryptocurrency wallet formerly known as Calibra. But the fact that Novi was forced to launch without support for Diem -- it used a different stablecoin called the Pax Dollar -- was a sign that Diem's future remained uncertain. Longtime Facebook exec David Marcus, who oversaw the social network's crypto plans, said at the time that Facebook remained committed to Diem. "I do want to be clear that our support for Diem hasn't changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live," he wrote. Marcus announced a month later that he was leaving Facebook.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Meta said Monday that its research team built a new artificial intelligence supercomputer that the company maintains will soon be the fastest in the world. The supercomputer, the AI Research SuperCluster, was the result of nearly two years of work, often conducted remotely during the height of the pandemic, and led by the Facebook parent's AI and infrastructure teams. Several hundred people, including researchers from partners Nvidia, Penguin Computing and Pure Storage, were involved in the project, the company said.

Meta, which announced the news in a blog post Monday, said its research team currently is using the supercomputer to train AI models in natural-language processing and computer vision for research. The aim is to boost capabilities to one day train models with more than a trillion parameters on data sets as large as an exabyte, which is roughly equivalent to 36,000 years of high-quality video. "The experiences we're building for the metaverse require enormous compute powerand RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages, and more," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement provided to The Wall Street Journal. Meta's AI supercomputer houses 6,080 Nvidia graphics-processing units, putting it fifth among the fastest supercomputers in the world, according to Meta.

By mid-summer, when the AI Research SuperCluster is fully built, it will house some 16,000 GPUs, becoming the fastest AI supercomputer in the world, Meta said. The company declined to comment on the location of the facility or the cost. [...] Eventually the supercomputer will help Meta's researchers build AI models that can work across hundreds of languages, analyze text, images and video together and develop augmented reality tools, the company said. The technology also will help Meta more easily identify harmful content and will aim to help Meta researchers develop artificial-intelligence models that think like the human brain and support rich, multidimensional experiences in the metaverse. "In the metaverse, it's one hundred percent of the time, a 3-D multi-sensorial experience, and you need to create artificial-intelligence agents in that environment that are relevant to you," said Jerome Pesenti, vice president of AI at Meta.

Facebook says it's helping millions of the world's poorest people get online through apps and services that allow them to use internet data free. Internal company documents show that many of these people end up being charged in amounts that collectively add up to an estimated millions of dollars a month. WSJ: To attract new users, Facebook made deals with cellular carriers in countries including Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines to let low-income people use a limited version of Facebook and browse some other websites without data charges. Many of the users have inexpensive cellphone plans that cost just a few dollars a month, often prepaid, for phone service and a small amount of internet data. Because of software problems at Facebook, which it has known about and failed to correct for months, people using the apps in free mode are getting unexpectedly charged by local cellular carriers for using data. In many cases they only discover this when their prepaid plans are drained of funds.

In internal documents, employees of Facebook parent Meta Platforms acknowledge this is a problem. Charging people for services Facebook says are free "breaches our transparency principle," an employee wrote in an October memo. In the year ended July 2021, charges made by the cellular carriers to users of Facebook's free-data products grew to an estimated total of $7.8 million a month, when purchasing power adjustments were made, from about $1.3 million a year earlier, according to a Facebook document. Facebook calls the problem "leakage," since paid services are leaking into the free apps and services. It defines leakage in internal documents as, "When users are in Free Mode and believe that the data they are using is being covered by their carrier networks, even though these users are actually paying for the data themselves."

"GIF folders were used by ancient civilisations as a way to store and catalogue animated pictures that were once employed to convey emotion," Vice writes: Okay, you probably know what a GIF folder is — but the concept of a special folder needed to store and save GIFs is increasingly alien in an era where every messaging app has its own in-built GIF library you can access with a single tap. And to many youngsters, GIFs themselves are increasingly alien too — or at least, okay, increasingly uncool. "Who uses gifs in 2020 grandma," one Twitter user speedily responded to Taylor Swift in August that year when the singer-songwriter opted for an image of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson mouthing the words "oh my god" to convey her excitement at reaching yet another career milestone.

You don't have to look far to find other tweets or TikToks mocking GIFs as the preserve of old people — which, yes, now means millennials. How exactly did GIFs become so embarrassing? Will they soon disappear forever, like Homer Simpson backing up into a hedge...?

Gen Z might think GIFs are beloved by millennials, but at the same time, many millennials are starting to see GIFs as a boomer plaything. And this is the first and easiest explanation as to why GIFs are losing their cultural cachet. Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of communication at Syracuse University and author of multiple books on internet culture, says that early adopters have always grumbled when new (read: old) people start to encroach on their digital space. Memes, for example, were once subcultural and niche. When Facebook came along and made them more widespread, Redditors and 4Chan users were genuinely annoyed that people capitalised on the fruits of their posting without putting in the cultural work. "That democratisation creates a sense of disgust with people who consider themselves insiders," Phillips explains. "That's been central to the process of cultural production online for decades at this point...."

In 2016, Twitter launched its GIF search function, as did WhatsApp and iMessage. A year later, Facebook introduced its own GIF button in the comment section on the site. GIFs became not only centralised but highly commercialised, culminating in Facebook buying GIPHY for $400 million in 2020. "The more GIFs there are, maybe the less they're regarded as being special treasures or gifts that you're giving people," Phillips says. "Rather than looking far and wide to find a GIF to send you, it's clicking the search button and typing a word. The gift economy around GIFs has shifted...."

Linda Kaye, a cyberpsychology professor at Edge Hill University, hasn't done direct research in this area but theorises that the ever-growing popularity of video-sharing on TikTok means younger generations are more used to "personalised content creation", and GIFs can seem comparatively lazy.
The GIF was invented in 1987 "and it's important to note the format has already fallen out of favour and had a comeback multiple times before," the article points out. It cites Jason Eppink, an independent artist and curator who curated an exhibition on GIFs for the Museum of the Moving Image in New York in 2014, who highlighted how GIFs were popular with GeoCities users in the 90s, "so when Facebook launched, they didn't support GIFs.... They were like, 'We don't want this ugly symbol of amateur web to clutter our neat and uniform cool new website." But then GIFs had a resurgence on Tumblr.

Vice concludes that while even Eppink no longer uses GIFs any more, "Perhaps the waxing and waning popularity of the GIF is an ironic mirror of the format itself — destined to repeat endlessly, looping over and over again."

"The European Union took a significant step Thursday toward passing legislation that could transform the way major technology companies operate," reports the Washington Post, "requiring them to police content on their platforms more aggressively and introducing new restrictions on advertising, among other provisions...."

"The legislation is the most aggressive attempt yet to regulate big tech companies as the industry comes under greater international scrutiny." The version approved Thursday would force companies to remove content that is considered illegal in the country where it is viewed, which could be Holocaust denials in Germany or racist postings in France. And it would significantly shape how companies interact with users, allowing Europeans to opt out of targeted advertising more easily and prohibiting companies from targeting advertisements at children.... The legislation would also ban companies from employing deceptive tactics known as dark patterns to lure users to sign up or pay for services and products. And it would allow users to ask companies which personal characteristics, such as age or other demographic information, led them to be targeted with certain advertisements.
The two legislation bodies of the 27-nation bloc "are expected to debate the contents of the legislation for months before voting on a final version," the Post adds. But they add this a vote on "initial approval" of the legislation passed "overwhelmingly". "With the [Digital Services Act] we are going to take a stand against the Wild West the digital world has turned into, set the rules in the interests of consumers and users, not just of Big Tech companies and finally make the things that are illegal offline illegal online too," said Christel Schaldemose, the center-left lawmaker from Denmark who has led negotiations on the bill.

The Post adds this quote from Gianclaudio Malgieri, an associate professor of technology and law at the EDHEC Business School in France. "For the first time, it will not be based on what Big Tech decides to do," he said. "It will be on paper."

In fact, the site Open Access Government reports there were 530 votes for the legislation, and just 78 against (with 80 abstentions). "The Digital Services Act could now become the new gold standard for digital regulation, not just in Europe but around the world," they quote Schaldemose as saying, also offering more details on the rest of the bill: Algorithm use should be more transparent, and researchers should also be given access to raw data to understand how online harms evolve. There is also a clause for an oversight structure, which would allow EU countries to essentially regulate regulation. Violations could in future be punished with fines of up to 6% of a company's annual revenue....

The draft Bill is one half of a dual-digital regulation package. The other policy is the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which would largely look at tackling online monopolies.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader UpnAtom for sharing the story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta (AKA Facebook) researchers are working on [...] an AI that can learn capably on its own whether it does so in spoken, written or visual materials. The traditional way of training an AI model to correctly interpret something is to give it lots and lots (like millions) of labeled examples. A picture of a cat with the cat part labeled, a conversation with the speakers and words transcribed, etc. But that approach is no longer in vogue as researchers found that it was no longer feasible to manually create databases of the sizes needed to train next-gen AIs. Who wants to label 50 million cat pictures? Okay, a few people probably -- but who wants to label 50 million pictures of common fruits and vegetables?

Currently some of the most promising AI systems are what are called self-supervised: models that can work from large quantities of unlabeled data, like books or video of people interacting, and build their own structured understanding of what the rules are of the system. For instance, by reading a thousand books it will learn the relative positions of words and ideas about grammatical structure without anyone telling it what objects or articles or commas are -- it got it by drawing inferences from lots of examples. This feels intuitively more like how people learn, which is part of why researchers like it. But the models still tend to be single-modal, and all the work you do to set up a semi-supervised learning system for speech recognition won't apply at all to image analysis -- they're simply too different. That's where Facebook/Meta's latest research, the catchily named data2vec, comes in.

The idea for data2vec was to build an AI framework that would learn in a more abstract way, meaning that starting from scratch, you could give it books to read or images to scan or speech to sound out, and after a bit of training it would learn any of those things. It's a bit like starting with a single seed, but depending on what plant food you give it, it grows into an daffodil, pansy or tulip. Testing data2vec after letting it train on various data corpi showed that it was competitive with and even outperformed similarly sized dedicated models for that modality. (That is to say, if the models are all limited to being 100 megabytes, data2vec did better -- specialized models would probably still outperform it as they grow.)

Alphabet's Google asked a federal judge on Friday to dismiss the majority of an antitrust lawsuit filed by Texas and other states that accused the search giant of abusing its dominance of the online advertising market. Reuters reports: Google said in its court filing that the states failed to show that it illegally worked with Facebook, now Meta, to counter "header bidding," a technology that publishers developed to make more money from advertising placed on their websites. Facebook is not a defendant in the lawsuit. The states had also alleged that Google used at least three programs to manipulate ad auctions to coerce advertisers and publishers into using Google's tools. Google responded that the states had a "collection of grievances" but no proof of wrongdoing. On some allegations, Google argued the states waited too long to file its lawsuit.

"They criticize Google for not designing its products to better suit its rivals' needs and for making improvements to those products that leave its competitors too far behind. They see the 'solution' to Google's success as holding Google back," the company said in its filing. Google asked for four of the six counts to be dismissed with prejudice, which means that it could not be brought back to the same court.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said they would press on with the fight. "The company whose motto was once 'Don't Be Evil' now asks the world to examine their egregious monopoly abuses and see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil," he said in a statement. The Texas lawsuit had two other claims based on state law and made against Google which were stayed in September. The search giant did not ask for them to be dismissed on Friday but may in the future.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: With its $68.7 billion acquisition of mammoth embattled video game publisher Activision Blizzard, Microsoft will be taking on a lot. It will be absorbing a company criticized by its employees for its workplace culture, one that is embroiled in lawsuits alleging gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment. Microsoft will also be taking on game development studios that have inched closer to unionization over the past several months. But it will also be adding an element that newly minted CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer sees as core to Microsoft's strategy for consumer acquisition: a slew of video games and long-abandoned franchises.

The games created by Activision Blizzard's developers provide the centerpiece of Microsoft's strategic thinking around the acquisition. The titles are some of the most popular in the world. And those Activision Blizzard properties extend well beyond Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush. In discussing some of the intellectual properties owned by Activision Blizzard, Spencer's excitement may have mirrored the enthusiasm of a "StarCraft" player noticing the long-dormant franchise's logo in Microsoft's acquisition announcement. "I was looking at the IP list, I mean, let's go!" Spencer said. " 'King's Quest,' 'Guitar Hero,' I should know this but I think they got 'HeXen.' " "HeXen," indeed an Activision Blizzard property, is a cult hit first-person game about using magic spells.

Microsoft's pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard also means owning the rights to many creations from gaming's past, including Crash Bandicoot, the original Sony PlayStation mascot. There's also the influential and popular Tony Hawk skateboard series and beloved characters like Spyro the Dragon. Toys for Bob, one of the studios working under the Activision Blizzard banner, successfully launched games like "Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time," but was later folded into supporting Call of Duty games. Spencer said the Xbox team will talk with developers about working on a variety of franchises from the Activision Blizzard vaults. "We're hoping that we'll be able to work with them when the deal closes to make sure we have resources to work on franchises that I love from my childhood, and that the teams really want to get," Spencer said. "I'm looking forward to these conversations. I really think it's about adding resources and increasing capability." Spencer said he's concerned about tech companies unfamiliar with the gaming industry barging in to the space, as opposed to the current, experienced competition against Nintendo and Sony. "They have a long history in video games," he said. "Nintendo's not going to do anything that damages gaming in the long run because that's the business they're in. Sony is the same and I trust them. [...] Valve's the same way. When we look at the other big tech competitors for Microsoft: Google has search and Chrome, Amazon has shopping, Facebook has social, all these large-scale consumer businesses. [...] The discussion we've had internally, where those things are important to those other tech companies for how many consumers they reach, gaming can be that for us."

He added: "I think we do have a unique point of view, which is not about how everything has to run on a single device or platform. That's been the real turning point for us looking at gaming as a consumer opportunity that could have similar impact on Microsoft that some of those other scale consumer businesses do for other big tech competitors. And it's been great to see the support we've had from the company and the board."

According to the Financial Times, Meta is developing ways to create, display and sell NFTs on Facebook and Instagram. TechCrunch reports: The company's Novi wallet technology would power much of the "supporting functionality," one tipster said. Instagram is reportedly testing a way to showcase NFTs, while Meta is also said to be discussing a marketplace that would help you buy or sell these digital collectibles.

The company has already declined to comment, and the sources cautioned the effort was still early and could change.However, Instagram leader Adam Mosseri said in December that his social network was "actively exploring" NFTs. The technology is on the company's mind, at least. Twitter appears to have beat Meta to the chase. According to Engadget, the social media company is testing a new feature that allows NFT owners to authenticate NFTs displayed in their profile photos. It's currently only available for Twitter Blue subscribers, but the authentication symbol will be visible to everyone on Twitter.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The Royal Society is the UK's national academy of sciences. On Wednesday, it published a report on what it calls the "online information environment," challenging some key assumptions behind the movement to de-platform conspiracy theorists spreading hoax info on topics like climate change, 5G, and the coronavirus. Based on literature reviews, workshops and roundtables with academic experts and fact-checking groups, and two surveys in the UK, the Royal Society reached several conclusions. The first is that while online misinformation is rampant, its influence may be exaggerated, at least as far as the UK goes: "the vast majority of respondents believe the COVID-19 vaccines are safe, that human activity is responsible for climate change, and that 5G technology is not harmful." The second is that the impact of so-called echo chambers may be similarly exaggerated and there's little evidence to support the "filter bubble" hypothesis (basically, algorithm-fueled extremist rabbit holes). The researchers also highlighted that many debates about what constitutes misinformation are rooted in disputes within the scientific community and that the anti-vax movement is far broader than any one set of beliefs or motivations.

One of the main takeaways: The government and social media companies should not rely on "constant removal" of misleading content [because it is] not a "solution to online scientific misinformation." It also warns that if conspiracy theorists are driven out of places like Facebook, they could retreat into parts of the web where they are unreachable. Importantly, the report makes a distinction between removing scientific misinformation and other content like hate speech or illegal media, where removals may be more effective: "... Whilst this approach may be effective and essential for illegal content (eg hate speech, terrorist content, child sexual abuse material) there is little evidence to support the effectiveness of this approach for scientific misinformation, and approaches to addressing the amplification of misinformation may be more effective. In addition, demonstrating a causal link between online misinformation and offline harm is difficult to achieve, and there is a risk that content removal may cause more harm than good by driving misinformation content (and people who may act upon it) towards harder-to-address corners of the internet."

Instead of removal, the Royal Society researchers advocate developing what they call "collective resilience." Pushing back on scientific disinformation may be more effective via other tactics, such as demonetization, systems to prevent amplification of such content, and fact-checking labels. The report encourages the UK government to continue fighting back against scientific misinformation but to emphasize society-wide harms that may arise from issues like climate change rather than the potential risk to individuals for taking the bait. Other strategies the Royal Society suggests are continuing the development of independent, well-financed fact-checking organizations; fighting misinformation "beyond high-risk, high-reach social media platforms"; and promoting transparency and collaboration between platforms and scientists. Finally, the report mentions that regulating recommendation algorithms may be effective.

New submitter HillNKnowlton22 writes: U.S. federal agencies have been using a 35-year-old American surveillance law to secretly track WhatsApp users with no explanation as to why and without knowing whom they are targeting. In Ohio, a just-unsealed government surveillance application reveals that in November 2021, DEA investigators demanded the Facebook-owned messaging company track seven users based in China and Macau. The application reveals the DEA didn't know the identities of any of the targets, but told WhatsApp to monitor the IP addresses and numbers with which the targeted users were communicating, as well as when and how they were using the app. Such surveillance is done using a technology known as a pen register and under the 1986 Pen Register Act, and doesn't seek any message content, which WhatsApp couldn't provide anyway, as it is end-to-end encrypted.

As Forbes previously reported, over at least the last two years, law enforcement in the U.S. has repeatedly ordered WhatsApp and other tech companies to install these pen registers without showing any probable cause. As in those previous cases, the government order to trace Chinese users came with the statement that the Justice Department only needed to provide three "elements" to justify tracking of WhatsApp users. They include: the identity of the attorney or the law enforcement officer making the application; the identity of the agency making the application; and a certification from the applicant that "the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by that agency." "Other than the three elements described above, federal law does not require that an application for an order authorizing the installation and use of a pen register and a trap and trace device specify any facts," the government wrote in the latest application.

Democrats introduced a new bill that would ban nearly all use of digital advertising targeting on ad markets hosted by platforms like Facebook, Google, and other data brokers. From a report: The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act -- sponsored by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) -- prohibits digital advertisers from targeting any ads to users. It makes some small exceptions, like allowing for "broad" location-based targeting. Contextual advertising, like ads that are specifically matched to online content, would be allowed. "The 'surveillance advertising' business model is premised on the unseemly collection and hoarding of personal data to enable ad targeting," Eshoo, the bill's lead sponsor, said in a Tuesday statement. "This pernicious practice allows online platforms to chase user engagement at great cost to our society, and it fuels disinformation, discrimination, voter suppression, privacy abuses, and so many other harms. The surveillance advertising business model is broken."