The Web

You're running late at the airport and need to urgently access your account, only to be greeted by one of those frustrating tests—"Select all images with traffic lights" or "Type the letters you see in this box." You squint, you guess, but somehow you're wrong. You complete another test but... Read more

The world's deadliest tsunami hit nations around the Indian Ocean two decades ago before social media platforms flourished, but they have since transformed how we understand and respond to disasters—from finding the missing to swift crowdfunding.... Read more

Finland is consistently ranked as Europe's most media-literate country and the skills needed to spot online hoaxes are on the school curriculum, amidst a boom of mis- and disinformation campaigns.... Read more

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence tools that allow people to efficiently produce novel and detailed online reviews with almost no work has put merchants, service providers and consumers in uncharted territory, watchdog groups and researchers say.... Read more

Are you helping an elderly parent with some holiday shopping and need to get reimbursed? Have they asked you to pay some bills or e-transfer funds to the grandkids from their accounts? You aren't alone.... Read more

OpenAI on Monday said it is making ChatGPT-powered internet search available to all users, escalating its threat to Google's dominance.... Read more

Nearly half of American teenagers say they are online "constantly" despite concerns about the effects of social media and smartphones on their mental health, according to a new report published Thursday by the Pew Research Center.... Read more

Australia will force Meta and Google to pay for news shared on their platforms under a new scheme unveiled Thursday, threatening to tax them if they refuse to strike deals with local media.... Read more

After a sprawling hacking campaign exposed the communications of an unknown number of Americans, U.S. cybersecurity officials are advising people to use encryption in their communications.... Read more

Social media giant Meta announced Monday a worldwide anti-scam awareness campaign aimed at protecting users from fraudulent schemes during the holiday shopping season.... Read more

Spotify has just released its 2024 Spotify Wrapped, the music streaming site's annual presentation of each user's yearly listening habits. It gives you a fun recap of your most listened to songs, artists and genres from the past year—complete with stats like how many minutes you listened and your top... Read more

What would you say at Twitter's funeral?... Read more

Social media giants on Friday hit out at a landmark Australian law banning them from signing up under-16s, describing it as a rush job littered with "many unanswered questions".... Read more

An Australian teenage news boss says landmark legislation barring under-16s from social media is a "really bad idea" that will stifle young people's creativity.... Read more

People determined to spread toxic messages online have taken to masking their words to bypass automated moderation filters.... Read more

A team of computer scientists at Technical University of Darmstadt, working with a colleague from the University of Glasgow, and another from Humbold University of Berlin, has found evidence via experiments they ran, that when asked to build a web page, LLMs often include manipulative design practices. The group has... Read more

Australian lawmakers moved a step closer to banning under 16s from social media platforms Wednesday, threatening companies that fail to comply with multimillion-dollar fines.... Read more

Australian celebrity and "public relations maven" Roxy Jacenko has said she regrets turning her daughter, Pixie Curtis, into a child social media influencer.... Read more

Thousands of Microsoft 365 customers worldwide reported having issues with services like Outlook and Teams on Monday.... Read more

US antitrust lawyers are calling on a judge to force the sale of Google's Chrome browser to limit the company's market clout in a move that would shake up the internet giant.... Read more

Social media companies could be fined more than US$30 million if they fail to keep children off their platforms, under new laws tabled before Australia's parliament Thursday.... Read more

The US government late Wednesday asked a judge to order the dismantling of Google by selling its widely used Chrome browser in a major antitrust crackdown on the internet giant.... Read more

Looking for a new social media platform because X, Threads and Mastodon just aren't cutting it? You could try Bluesky.... Read more

How do you remove children from the harms of social media? Politically the answer appears simple in Australia, but practically the solution could be far more difficult.... Read more

How will the internet evolve in the coming decades?... Read more

The US will urge a judge to make Google-parent company Alphabet sell its widely used Chrome browser in a major antitrust crackdown on the internet giant, according to a media report Monday.... Read more

The original idea for the world wide web emerged in a flurry of scientific thought around the end of World War II. It began with a hypothetical machine called the "memex," proposed by US Office of Scientific Research and Development head Vannevar Bush in an article titled "As We May... Read more

Disgruntled X users are again flocking to Bluesky, a newer social media platform that grew out of the former Twitter before billionaire Elon Musk took it over in 2022. While it remains small compared to established online spaces such as X, it has emerged as an alternative for those looking... Read more

If you're tired of memorizing passwords, then give passkeys a try.... Read more

Facebook and Instagram users in Europe will get the option to see less personalized ads if they don't want to pay for an ad-free subscription, social media company Meta said Tuesday, bowing to pressure from Brussels over privacy and digital competition concerns.... Read more

Automated social media profiles are a powerful tool for spreading propaganda. They often feature AI-generated profile pictures. Researchers are currently looking into ways of identifying such images.... Read more

The internet search engine of the future will be powered by artificial intelligence. One can already choose from a host of AI-powered or AI-enhanced search engines—though their reliability often still leaves much to be desired. However, a team of computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently published and... Read more

A range of different age checks is needed to protect children—but also to ensure they can take advantage of positive opportunities online, a new study says.... Read more

Just in time for the holiday travel frenzy, Google Flights is introducing a new feature designed to help users obtain the lowest airline ticket prices available.... Read more

The ever-advancing technologies of our digital age have transformed many industries, including—and perhaps especially—music. One of the most significant shifts has been the rise of DIY artists. These independent musicians take on roles traditionally held by record labels and managers, such as producing, recording, promoting and distributing their music.... Read more

Social media has revolutionized the way information is shared throughout communities, but it can also be a cesspit of hateful content. Current research on hateful content detection focuses on text-based analysis, while hateful video detection remains underexplored.... Read more

For anyone who has been online in Australia longer than a decade or so, the discussion around current proposals to set a minimum age for social media use might trigger a touch of déjà vu.... Read more

Myanmar and China have the world's worst internet freedom, with declines reported in a number of other countries led by Kyrgyzstan, a study said Wednesday.... Read more

For years a potential disaster lurked in the internet's encryption system, threatening the security of organizations and individuals worldwide. Princeton engineers have now squelched that threat, working with industry leaders to transform their research into a universal security standard that was adopted by global organizations in August and made effective... Read more

Researchers have developed a new way to automatically detect hate speech on social media platforms more accurately and consistently using a new multi-task learning (MTL) model; a type of machine learning model that works across multiple datasets.... Read more

Mounting pressure to regulate children's use of technology in the United States raises the question: Is childproofing the internet constitutional?... Read more

In the modern world we are all constantly connected, but this comes with risks. As most cybersecurity specialists will tell you, the biggest vulnerability in any system is the user—whether at home or work.... Read more

An independent appeals panel was unveiled Tuesday to decide disputes between social media firms and their users in the European Union over content posted on their platforms.... Read more

Google said Friday it will stop linking to New Zealand news content and will reverse its support of local media outlets if the government passes a law forcing tech companies to pay for articles displayed on their platforms.... Read more

As internet usage becomes an integral part of our daily lives, many people rely on various online sources for information. While the internet offers greater convenience and a wider range of news sources, the spread of false information has become one of the biggest challenges of this century, exacerbated by... Read more

Imagine scrolling through social media or playing an online game, only to be interrupted by insulting and harassing comments. What if an artificial intelligence (AI) tool stepped in to remove the abuse before you even saw it?... Read more

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Friday added conditions for Elon Musk's X to have its service reestablished in the country, one day after the social media platform said it had complied with all the judge's demands, including naming a legal representative.... Read more

Worried about your teen's Instagram use? Faced with growing pressure to do more to stop online harm, the social media platform has rolled out a major new update to protect young people and give parents more control.... Read more

A crisis can alter one's personal considerations of the benefits and costs related to choices around data and privacy. In a new study, researchers used location data before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to determine how U.S. consumers reacted. They found that decisions to opt out of... Read more

Google has monopolized the technology used to buy and sell online display ads by restricting or eliminating the choices of its customers—both website publishers and advertisers—the U.S. Justice Department alleged at a federal antitrust trial.... Read more