Inside Two Years of Turmoil at Big Tech’s Anti-Terrorism Group

Inside Two Years of Turmoil at Big Tech’s Anti-Terrorism Group

The four tech giants have presided over the consortium since they announced it in 2016, when Western governments were berating them for allowing Islamic State to post gruesome videos of journalists and humanitarians being beheaded. Now with a staff of eight, GIFCT—which the board organized as a US nonprofit in 2019 after the Christchurch massacre—is … Read more

X’s First Transparency Report Since Elon Musk’s Takeover Is Finally Here

X’s First Transparency Report Since Elon Musk’s Takeover Is Finally Here

Today, X released the company’s first transparency report since Elon Musk bought the company, formerly Twitter, in 2022. Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter would release transparency reports every six months.These largely covered the same ground as the new X report, giving specific numbers for takedowns, government requests for information, and content removals, as well as data … Read more

Why It’s So Hard to Fully Block X in Brazil

Why It’s So Hard to Fully Block X in Brazil

The social network X has been largely inaccessible in Brazil since Saturday, after the country’s Supreme Court ordered all mobile and internet service providers to block the platform. The court order followed a months-long dispute between Judge Alexandre de Moraes and X CEO Elon Musk over the company’s misinformation, hate speech, and moderation policies. With … Read more

Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Be Neutral–While Tossing Gifts to Trump and the GOP

Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Be Neutral–While Tossing Gifts to Trump and the GOP

This week Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. For months, the GOP-led committee has been on a crusade to prove that Meta, via its once-eponymous Facebook app, engaged in political sabotage by taking down right-wing content. Its investigation has involved thousands of documents, and the committee … Read more

Telegram Faces a Reckoning in Europe. Other Founders Should Beware

Telegram Faces a Reckoning in Europe. Other Founders Should Beware

“[Elon] Musk and fellow executives should be reminded of their criminal liability,” said Bruce Daisley, a former executive at Twitter, who worked at the company’s British office, days after British protesters tried to set fire to a hotel for asylum seekers. But Telegram has provoked politicians more than any other platform. What could be called … Read more

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Charged Over Alleged Criminal Activity on the App

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Charged Over Alleged Criminal Activity on the App

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is forbidden from leaving French territory after being charged for complicity in running an online platform that allegedly enabled the spread of sexual images of children, creating an uncertain future for the messaging app that has become one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. Durov was arrested on Saturday at … Read more

Pavel Durov’s Arrest Leaves Telegram Hanging in the Balance

Pavel Durov’s Arrest Leaves Telegram Hanging in the Balance

“Civil society has had a complicated relationship with Telegram over the years,” says Natalia Kapriva, a lawyer at the digital rights group Access Now. “We have defended Telegram against attempts by authoritarian regimes to block and coerce the platform into providing encryption keys, but we have also been raising alarms about Telegram’s lack of human … Read more

How Watermelon Cupcakes Kicked Off an Internal Storm at Meta

How Watermelon Cupcakes Kicked Off an Internal Storm at Meta

Williams in her note explained that “‘Prayers for …’ any location where there is a war in process might be taken down, but prayers for those impacted by a natural disaster, for example, might stay up.” She continued, “We know people may not agree with this approach, but it’s one of the trade-offs we made … Read more

A Nonprofit Tried to Fix Tech Culture—but Lost Control of Its Own

A Nonprofit Tried to Fix Tech Culture—but Lost Control of Its Own

Allen, a data scientist, and Massachi, a software engineer, worked for nearly four years at Facebook on some of the uglier aspects of social media, combating scams and election meddling. They didn’t know each other but both quit in 2019, frustrated at feeling a lack of support from executives. “The work that teams like the … Read more

The Low-Paid Humans Behind AI’s Smarts Ask Biden to Free Them From ‘Modern Day Slavery’

The Low-Paid Humans Behind AI’s Smarts Ask Biden to Free Them From ‘Modern Day Slavery’

AI projects like OpenAI’s ChatGPT get part of their savvy from some of the lowest-paid workers in the tech industry—contractors often in poor countries paid small sums to correct chatbots and label images. On Wednesday, 97 African workers who do AI training work or online content moderation for companies like Meta and OpenAI published an … Read more