WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG, AFP) – Facebook is facing renewed fury from Washington after reports suggested the company knew, but did not disclose, that its Instagram platform could pose risks to teenagers.

The report from the Wall Street Journal citing Facebook’s own internal research gives fuel to politicians who have pledged to hold social media companies accountable for their impact on mental health, civil discourse and democracy.

While previous rounds of outrage over issues such as the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal have not dented Facebook’s business model or profitability, this backlash could bring chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and other company executives back to testify before Congress about the shortcomings.

United States Senators Mr Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and Ms Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, the chair and ranking member of the Senate consumer protection subcommittee, said they have been in contact with a Facebook whistle-blower and “will use every resource at our disposal to investigate what Facebook knew and when they knew it”.

The senators said on Tuesday (Sept 14) they planned to seek further documents and speak with witnesses as part of the investigation. The Senate Commerce Committee has the power to issue subpoenas for records and witness testimony.

“It is clear that Facebook is incapable of holding itself accountable,” the senators said. “The Wall Street Journal’s reporting reveals Facebook’s leadership to be focused on a growth-at-all-costs mindset that valued profits over the health and lives of children and teens.”

When asked about the Journal articles on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said US President Joe Biden thinks there are “serious issues around how much power Internet platforms have amassed in our society and certainly some of that reporting is an example of that.”

Tech giants, including Facebook, have been under increasing pressure from lawmakers questioning how companies handle user data, protect user safety and expand their market share and influence.

While legislation aimed at regulating content moderation and privacy practices have stalled, there is momentum for antitrust measures that take aim at the companies’ size and dominance.

A spokesman for Colorado Representative Ken Buck, the ranking Republican on the House antitrust subcommittee, said the recent revelations about Facebook underscore why legislation is needed to curb the power of dominant tech firms.

“Because Big Tech operates with almost unchecked power and answers only to themselves, it is not surprising they continue to peddle their products to children even though they are aware of the massive negative consequences children experience from engaging with their sites,” Mr Buck’s spokesman Mr Nick Givas told Bloomberg.

A Facebook spokesman referred to an earlier blog post from Ms Karina Newton, Instagram’s head of public policy, about what internal and external research found regarding social media’s impact on young people.

“The question on many people’s minds is if social media is good or bad for people,” Ms Newton wrote. “The research on this is mixed; it can be both. At Instagram, we look at the benefits and the risks of what we do.”

Lawmakers from both parties previously raised concerns about tech’s impact on young people. Washington Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, opened a March hearing with Mr Zuckerberg and other tech executives by saying their platforms are her “biggest fear as a parent” – a complaint she echoed Tuesday.

Ms McMorris Rodgers and other House Republicans wrote to Facebook after that March hearing to request the company’s internal research on the impact its platforms have on mental health.

She said the company did not comply, “and we now know why”.

“We will continue to demand transparency from Facebook and other Big Tech companies, especially as it relates to the harm their products have on our children,” Ms McMorris Rodgers said Wednesday. “Parents deserve the truth.”

Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Wednesday sent a letter to Mr Zuckerberg asking if he was personally aware of the internal research that showed mental health risks and requesting copies of those studies.

The letter, also signed by Democratic Representatives Ms Kathy Castor of Florida and Ms Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, demands that Facebook abandon plans to create an Instagram for children and gives the company until Oct 6 to respond.

The Journal story focuses on the mental health risks such as anxiety and depression for young people, especially girls, who use Instagram, the photo-sharing app.

The article references a letter that Mr Blumenthal and Ms Blackburn sent to Facebook last month seeking more information on how the company’s internal research informs products designed for children and teens.

But Facebook’s reply to the senators did not include the company study detailed in the article.

“When given the opportunity to come clean to us about their knowledge of Instagram’s impact on young users, Facebook provided evasive answers that were misleading and covered up clear evidence of significant harm,” the senators said.

Facebook also exempts certain celebrities, politicians and other high-profile users from some its own rules for posts as part of a programme launched as a quality-control mechanism, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The programme, referred to as “cross check” or “XCheck”, shields millions of elite users from rules that Facebook claims to apply equally at the social network, according to a report citing internal documents.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone in a series of tweets defended the programme, but noted the social media giant is aware its enforcement of rules is “not perfect”.

“There aren’t two systems of justice; it’s an attempted safeguard against mistakes,” Mr Stone tweeted in response to the Journal report.

“We know our enforcement is not perfect and there are trade-offs between speed and accuracy.”

The article cites examples of posts from high-profile people, including one from soccer star Neymar showing nude images of a woman who accused him of rape and that Facebook subsequently removed.

A double-standard regarding content moderation would defy assurances Facebook gave to an independent board set up as a final arbiter of disputes regarding what is allowed to be posted at the leading social network.

“The Oversight Board has expressed on multiple occasions its concern about the lack of transparency in Facebook’s content moderation processes, especially relating to the company’s inconsistent management of high-profile accounts,” board spokesman John Taylor said in response to an AFP inquiry.

The Journal article reports that some users are “white-listed”, given protection from enforcement actions, while in other cases reviews of potentially problematic content simply fail to take place.

“White-listed” accounts have shared claims that Ms Hillary Clinton had covered up “paedophile rings”, and that then-president Donald Trump had called all refugees seeking asylum “animals”, according to the Journal.

XCheck grew to include at least 5.8 million users in 2020, the report indicated.

Facebook said in a post about cross-checking three years ago that it does not protect the profile, page or content from being removed but “is simply done to make sure our decision is correct”.

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

Republican efforts questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential race have led to voting system breaches that election security experts say pose a heightened risk to future elections.

Copies of the Dominion Voting Systems software used to manage elections – from designing ballots to configuring voting machines and tallying results – were distributed at an event this month in South Dakota organized by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of former President Donald Trump who has made unsubstantiated claims about last year’s election.

“It’s a game-changer in that the environment we have talked about existing now is a reality,” said Matt Masterson, a former top election security official in the Trump administration. “We told election officials, essentially, that you should assume this information is already out there. Now we know it is, and we don’t know what they are going to do with it.”

The software copies came from voting equipment in Mesa County, Colorado, and Antrim County, Michigan, where Trump allies had sue unsuccessfully challenging the results from last fall.

The Dominion software is used in some 30 states, including counties in California, Georgia and Michigan.

Election security pioneer Harri Hursti was at the South Dakota event and said he and other researchers in attendance were provided three separate copies of election management systems that run on the Dominion software. The data indicated they were from Antrim and Mesa counties. While it’s not clear how the copies came to be released at the event, they were posted online and made available for public download.

The release gives hackers a “practice environment” to probe for vulnerabilities they could exploit and a road map to avoid defenses, Hursti said. All the hackers would need is physical access to the systems because they are not supposed to be connected to the internet.

“The door is now wide open,” Hursti said. “The only question is, how do you sneak in the door?”

A Dominion representative declined comment, citing an investigation.

U.S. election technology is dominated by just three vendors comprising 90% of the market, meaning election officials cannot easily swap out their existing technology. Release of the software copies essentially provides a blueprint for those trying to interfere with how elections are run. They could sabotage the system, alter the ballot design or even try to change results, said election technology expert Kevin Skoglund.

“This disclosure increases both the likelihood that something happens and the impact of what would happen if it does,” he said.

The effort by Republicans to examine voting equipment began soon after the November presidential election as Trump challenged the results and blamed his loss on widespread fraud, even though there has been no evidence of it.

Judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, election officials of both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have dismissed the claims. A coalition of federal and state election officials called the 2020 election the “most secure” in U.S. history, and post-election audits across the country found no significant anomalies.

In Antrim County, a judge had allowed a forensic exam of voting equipment after a brief mix-up of election results led to a suit alleging fraud. It was dismissed in May. Hursti said the date on the software release matches the date of the forensic exam.

Calls seeking information from Antrim County’s clerk and the local prosecutor’s office were not immediately returned; a call to the judge’s office was referred to the county clerk. The Michigan secretary of state’s office declined comment.

In Colorado, federal, state and local authorities are investigating whether Mesa County elections staff might have provided unauthorized individuals access to their systems. The county elections clerk, Tina Peters, appeared onstage with Lindell in South Dakota and told the crowd her office was being targeted by Democrats in the state.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said she alerted federal election security officials of the breach and was told it was not viewed as a “significant heightening of the election risk landscape at this point.” This past week, Mesa County commissioners voted to replace voting equipment that Griswold had ordered could no longer be used.

Geoff Hale, who leads the election security effort at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said his agency has always operated on the assumption that system vulnerabilities are known by malicious actors. Election officials are focused instead on ways they can reduce risk, such as using ballots with a paper record that can be verified by the voter and rigorous post-election audits, Hale said.

He said having Dominion’s software exposed publicly doesn’t change the agency’s guidance.

Security researcher Jack Cable said he assumes U.S. adversaries already had access to the software. He said he is more concerned the release would fan distrust among the growing number of people not inclined to believe in the security of U.S elections.

“It is a concern that people, in the pursuit of trying to show the system is insecure, are actually making it more insecure,” said Cable, who recently joined a cybersecurity firm run by former CISA Director Christopher Krebs and former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos.

Concerns over access to voting machines and software first surfaced this year in Arizona, where the Republican-controlled state Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no previous election experience, to audit the Maricopa County election. The firm’s chief executive also had tweeted support of conspiracy theories surrounding last year’s election.

After the county’s Dominion voting systems were turned over to the firm, Arizona’s top election official determined they could never be used again and ordered the county to buy new ones.

Dominion has filed suits contesting various unfounded claims about its systems. In May, it called giving Cyber Ninjas access to its code “reckless,” given the firm’s bias, and said it would cause “irreparable damage” to election security.

Election technology and security expert Ryan Macias, in Arizona earlier this year to observe that review, was alarmed by a lack of cybersecurity protocols. There was no information about who was given access, whether those people had passed background checks or were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Cyber Ninjas did not respond to an email with questions about the review and their security protocols.

Macias was not surprised to hear that copies of Antrim County’s election management system had surfaced online given the questionable motives of the various groups conducting the reviews and the central role that voting systems have played in conspiracy theories.

“This is what I anticipated would happen, and I anticipate it will happen yet again coming out of Arizona,” Macias said. “These actors have no liability and no rules of engagement.”

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

The New York City Council on Thursday approved legislation to license food-delivery apps including Grubhub, DoorDash Inc and Uber Eats and to permanently cap commissions they can charge restaurants.

The companies say the price controls are unfair and vowed to fight them.

“This permanent price control is flagrantly unconstitutional and will hurt local restaurants, delivery workers and diners across NYC. We will vigorously fight this illegal action,” Grubhub, a unit of Just Eat Takeaway.com, said in a statement.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has 30 days to sign the legislation, which would go into effect 120 days after becoming law.

The bills limit the amount that companies can charge restaurants to use their platforms to 15% of food orders for delivery services and 5% for advertising and other nondelivery services.

Restaurants have complained that commissions as high as 30% were draining their finances, so the city enacted temporary caps on those fees during the pandemic when so many restaurants were forced to close or rely on delivery and carry-out alone.

The bills also require the companies to obtain operating licenses, which are valid for two years.

DoorDash said commission caps are “unnecessary and unconstitutional … New York’s restaurants need choice more than ever, and this dangerous government overreach will severely limit the options small businesses rely on everyday to succeed.”

Uber did not immediately provide a comment.

San Francisco has also enacted permanent commission caps on the services.

The New York City restaurant delivery market is split almost evenly among the major platforms, according to Bloomberg Second Measure, which collects payment data from customers.

DoorDash commanded 36% of July sales in the city, Grubhub 34% and Uber Eats and Postmates a joint 30%.

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

Frontier has launched the cinematic trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters and also teased some of the gameplay screenshots. The turn-based tactical RPG is coming to PC in 2022 and features the Grey Knights, the secret units in the Space Marines from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

The game’s storyline features the Grey Knights, called “humanity’s greatest weapons”, who are sworn to purge corruption. The game lets you lead your personalised squad of these Daemonhunters in a story spanning galaxies.In the 41st Millenium, a cosmic plague called The Bloom is about to take the cosmos in its grips and it is your job as a Daemonhunter to prevent that from happening. You will get to choose from powerful classes to select your squad. The environments can be used to your advantage.

Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate is set almost 25 years after the previous one and is under development by Complex Games, a Canadian studio. The game’s prequel, Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate, came out in the late nineties. The game lets you control a number of squads of Ultramarines with Captain Kruger as the leader. Standing in your way are the armies of the Chaos Lord Zymran, the leader of the traitor marines of the Word Bearers, the ancient enemies of the Ultramarines and their daemonic allies.

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

Toast Inc filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on Friday, as the start-up that sells software to help restaurants with online ordering looks to cash in on the surge in demand for food delivery since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Toast’s IPO will follow that of U.S. food delivery company DoorDash Inc, which was valued at more than $71 billion after its market debut in December.

Toast could be valued at $20 billion in its IPO, the Wall Street Journal reported in February, citing people familiar with the matter.

DoorDash and rivals Uber Eats, Grubhub and Postmates have benefited from a surge in demand for food delivery services due to widespread COVID-19 restrictions.

Toast’s operations hit a rough patch at the start of the pandemic because of lockdowns and the company was forced to cut the size of its staff by half through layoffs and furloughs in April.

It has since seen a change in fortune, joining rivals in benefiting from higher demand.

Toast was valued at about $5 billion, as of February last year. The company closed a secondary share sale in November, valuing it at $8 billion, CNBC reported.

The company’s investors include TPG, Tiger Global Management, American Express Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, G Squared, TCV and Greenoaks.

The Boston-based company, which was founded in 2011 and launched in 2013, has partnered with about 48,000 restaurant locations, and processed more than $38 billion in gross payment volume over the past 12 months.

Restaurants can use Toast’s platform to offer online ordering, operate on-demand delivery network among other things.

Toast will list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “TOST.”

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan are lead underwriters for the offering.

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

Britain said it was pursuing data partnerships with countries including the United States, Australia, South Korea and other fast-growing markets to break down barriers and boost trade after Brexit.

Britain’s digital minister, Oliver Dowden, said on Thursday data adequacy partnerships would mean organisations would not have to implement costly compliance measures to share personal data internationally when doing business.

The government also named New Zealand Privacy Commissioner John Edwards as its preferred candidate to be the UK’s next Information Commissioner.

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

Tech billionaire Elon Musk‘s space company SpaceX faces shortage of liquid oxygen that is used to power its Falcon 9 rockets because of its increasing demand in hospitals treating patients with Covid-19, media reports said.

The company uses liquid oxygen (LOX) as an oxidiser to ignite liquid kerosene rocket propellant which powers the Merlin engines on its Falcon 9 rockets.

However, as LOX is also used in respirators for those suffering with Covid-19, as well as water treatments, and with the pandemic lingering for more than 18 months, supplies are running low.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell stated that since liquid oxygen is short in supply, making it harder to launch rockets and that people should email her if they have some spare, the Daily Mail reported.

“We certainly are going to make sure hospitals have the liquid oxygen they need,” Shotwell said during a Space Symposium panel, per a video uploaded to YouTube by ExpovistaTV.

“For anybody that has liquid oxygen to spare, would you send me an email?” she added.

SpaceX uses liquid engines, that use liquid propellant to generate thrust in its Merlin engines, which are powered by kerosene. The rocket fuel is mixed with an oxidiser in the combustion chamber, where they chemically react and make new molecules, including a gas.

The huge amount of gas produced, or the exhaust, can only escape out of a nozzle built into the back of the rocket. The action of the exhaust shooting out exerts an equal and opposite force on the rocket, which propels it upwards, the report said.

US hospitals, currently dealing with a spike in Covid-19 cases, partly due to the delta variant, are putting a strain on SpaceX’s supplies.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 38,217,956 and 632,223, respectively, according to the latest update on Thursday morning by Johns Hopkins University.

As per the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, till August 19, over 4.59 million children have tested positive for the virus since the onset of the pandemic early last year.

Meanwhile, global microchip shortage has also delayed SpaceX’s Starlink broadband system.

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple social media posts that claim it shows microchips in the Covid-19 jab.

“Foreign vaccine contains microchip?” reads the simplified Chinese caption of this video posted on the social media site Bilibili.

The video has been viewed more than 34,000 times since it was uploaded on May 21, 2021.

It purportedly shows a Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine under a microscope.

The video was also shared alongside a similar claim on the Iranian social media sites Aparat here and Wisgoon here; on Twitter here; and on Instagram.

However, the claim is false.

A Google reverse image search of the video’s keyframes found it was taken from a longer video in this article published August 26, 2020 by the British magazine Nature titled: “Robots smaller than the eye can see could revolutionise micro-robotics”.

The article is not related to Covid-19 vaccination.

It reads in part: “Now a team of researchers have developed a new type of actuator that operates electronically and that can be layered directly onto the circuit that controls it.

“This opens the doors for the last 50 years of micro-electronics research to be incorporated into robots so small they can’t be seen by the human eye.”

The paper for the research was published on the Nature journal here on the same day.

The same research was also reported by Cornell University here, and the US technology news site BGR here.

Marc Miskin, Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the research, told AFP the claim that the microrobots have been added to vaccines is “a total fabrication”.

“These are research-level robots. They can’t do anything without special laboratory equipment to power or control them. Outside of a lab, they’d be useless,” he told AFP on July 14, 2021.

“I don’t think anybody has ever tried to add microrobots to vaccines, nor will they anytime soon: it’d be hard, illegal, and pointless.”

The misleading video was also debunked by the Chinese state media fjsen.com here.

AFP has previously debunked multiple false and misleading claims that Covid-19 vaccine contain microchips.

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

Free-to-play online multiplayer game Destiny 2 has got its latest season titled ‘Season of the Lost’ ahead of the expansion of The Witch Queen. The new season brings plenty of changes and gameplay content including new Exotics and Guardians.

Season of the Lost is bringing important changes to the system in the form of cross-play and anti-cheat. With cross-play, users can team up with other players across consoles and PCs while combat cheating, a software called BattleEye has been added which should help keep the game free from cheaters.

The season allows players to get non-Exotic Stasis weapons that come with some special Stasis perks. With the special perks, the Guardians get the chance to slow down and freeze the enemies. Some reworking has been done on the Fusion rifles too.

Classes in the game that come with special melee attacks can now be better controlled as separate button mapping for ‘melee attack’ and ‘melee ability’ have been introduced. Also, the Light subclasses Exotics like Vex Mythoclast and the Stasis will get to see some improvements.

In the UI, some of the general fixes that have been made, as per the patch notes, include:

“
Fixed an issue where the Gambit post-game scoreboard would not paginate correctly.

Added elements to the Vanguard sub-screen in the Director menu to represent the player’s Vanguard reputation.

When a player has incoming Friend invites they are indicated in Orbit and Director tabs by a new invite indicator/shine.

“Inspect Player” terminology changed to “Inspect Guardian.””

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

At Gamescom 90 minutes long event, Microsoft has made several new announcements about the upcoming titles on Xbox, Xbox xCloud, game updates, game pass and more. The event included details about some of the anticipated updates to Forza Horizon 5, Flight Simulator and more. But somehow missed Halo’s next title. Let’s take a look at all the announcements Microsoft made at Gamescom 2021 event.

Forza Horizon 5: New cars and first drive trailer revealed
Forza Horizon 5’s initial trailer has already confirmed engaging gameplay in a beautiful landscape. At yesterday’s event, Microsoft announced some cool cards that will be coming to Forza Horizon 5. This includes Bronco Badlands 2021 and Mercedes AMG One

. In addition to that, the company has also revealed the first drive trailer of the game.

Flight Simulator: Receives several new updates
The popular flight simulator game from Microsoft has also received several new updates. This includes a new racing mode, new historic planes and new world updates. Apart from that electric air taxis will also become a part of the game in future.

Dying Light 2: More details revealed
Dying Light 2 is scheduled to launch on December 7 and ahead of that Microsoft has revealed some more details and an in-depth look at the game. As per the company, the game will improve in every aspect compared to the previous version. Also, the company has revealed the gameplay trailer of the game.

xCloud coming to Xbox consoles
Perhaps the biggest announcement made by Microsoft is the addition of xCloud gaming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S this holiday season. This will allow users to stream games on their consoles without having to download them.

Xbox Games Pass new titles
At the event, Microsoft has also announced new titles for Xbox Game Pass. This includes A Plague tales, Humble Games and more.

FacebookTwitterLinkedin

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here