The Web

Google on Friday began letting people turn online searches into conversations, with generative artificial intelligence providing spoken summaries of query results.... Read more

American tech heavyweight Google on Friday reiterated its opposition to verifying the age of a device's user through the app stores built into operating systems, calling a proposal from Facebook and Instagram parent Meta "ineffective".... Read more

Popular online services across the globe were disrupted Thursday due to ongoing issues at Google Cloud.... Read more

From dangerous diet tips to disinformation, cyberbullying to hate speech, the glut of online content harmful to children grows every day. But several European countries have had enough and now want to limit minors' access to social media.... Read more

Earlier this year, Facebook rolled back rules against some hate speech and abuse. Along with changes at X (formerly Twitter) that followed its purchase by Elon Musk, the shifts make it harder for social media users to avoid encountering toxic speech.... Read more

"This video is not available in your location." It's a message familiar to many people trying to watch global content online. But beneath this frustration lies a deeper question—how do we navigate digital borders safely and ethically?... Read more

Free access to information online is a vital component of democratic societies. However, something that is taken for granted in this country is by no means possible everywhere.... Read more

As misinformation exploded during India's four-day conflict with Pakistan, social media users turned to an AI chatbot for verification—only to encounter more falsehoods, underscoring its unreliability as a fact-checking tool.... Read more

Microsoft sees artificial intelligence transforming the internet as fundamentally as mobile phones have over the past two decades. But the technology's limitations could curb Microsoft's grand vision.... Read more

In May 2025, a post asking "[Am I the asshole] for telling my husband's affair partner's fiancé about their relationship?" quickly received 6,200 upvotes and more than 900 comments on Reddit. This popularity earned the post a spot on Reddit's front page of trending posts. The problem? It was (very... Read more

A German court on Friday dismissed an injunction request brought by consumer protection groups to prevent US tech giant Meta from using user data from Facebook and Instagram to train artificial intelligence systems.... Read more

Online chat rooms and social networking platforms frequently experience harmful behavior as discussions drift from their intended topics toward personal conflict. Traditional predictive models typically depend on platform-specific data, limiting their applicability and increasing implementation costs.... Read more

A team of researchers, including Kevin Butler, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, is sounding the alarm on a disturbing trend in artificial intelligence: the rapid rise of AI-generated sexually explicit images created without the subject's consent.... Read more

As Google races to lead in artificial intelligence, it faces the challenge of making sure the technology doesn't slow its profit-pumping advertising engine.... Read more

The recommended reading list contained some works of fiction. It also contained some works that were, in fact, actually fictional.... Read more

In its most recent battle with authorities in Australia, X (formerly Twitter) has launched legal action in the Federal Court, seeking an exemption from a new safety standard aimed at preventing the spread of harmful material online.... Read more

Chess legend Magnus Carlsen, considered one of the best players in history, has been held to a draw by a team of 143,000 opponents in an online match.... Read more

Google on Tuesday unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence technology to accelerate a year-long makeover of its search engine that is changing the way people get information and curtailing the flow of internet traffic to websites.... Read more

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has more than 3.35 billion combined monthly active users. Recently, Meta has changed its approach to fact-checking in response to criticisms of its role in circulating fake news and disinformation. The company frames its Community Notes program as a way to... Read more

It's nearly impossible to use the internet without being asked about cookies. A typical pop-up will offer to either "accept all" or "reject all." Sometimes, there may be a third option, or a link to further tweak your preferences.... Read more

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup has blamed an "unauthorized modification" for causing its chatbot Grok to generate misleading and unsolicited posts referencing "white genocide" in South Africa.... Read more

Coinbase on Thursday said criminals bribed and duped their way to stealing cryptocurrency from its users, then tried to blackmail the exchange to keep the crime quiet.... Read more

The EU accused TikTok on Thursday of breaking digital rules after concluding that the Chinese-owned social media platform was not transparent enough about advertisements.... Read more

Many websites for children, such as learning platforms, are free of charge; they are financed by advertising. Researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands, the Belgian University KU Leuven and the German Ruhr University Bochum investigated the content of ads that are displayed on such websites.... Read more

Pushing to better protect children online, the EU on Tuesday invited the public including parents and minors to help prepare recommendations for digital platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.... Read more

When disasters happen—such as hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes—every second counts. Emergency teams need to find people fast, send help and stay organized. In today's world, one of the fastest ways to get information is through social media.... Read more

The British government suffered a setback to its plans to make it easier for AI companies to access data as the House of Lords backed more protection for content creators on Monday.... Read more

Holding an oversized carrot, a brawny, shirtless man promotes a supplement he claims can enlarge male genitalia—one of countless AI-generated videos on TikTok peddling unproven sexual treatments.... Read more

India has ordered X to block more than 8,000 accounts, the platform said Thursday, adding that it was reluctantly complying with what it described as government-imposed "censorship."... Read more

Women's sport is more and more getting the attention it deserves.... Read more

As President Donald Trump's administration purges public records since storming back to power, experts and volunteers are preserving thousands of web pages and government sites devoted to climate change, health or LGBTQ rights and other issues.... Read more

Shares in Google parent Alphabet plunged more than eight percent on Wednesday after Apple executive Eddy Cue testified in federal court that Google's search traffic on Apple devices declined last month for the first time in over two decades.... Read more

A popular Japanese dating app has introduced a feature allowing it to verify users' marital status through government records, in a bid to prevent married cheaters pretending to be single.... Read more

The Internet may be a global phenomenon, but its often-claimed global nature is tempered by the "digital divide"—digital participation still heavily depends on economic conditions.... Read more

Steve Chen had never been in love. Last spring though, it happened. The 25-year-old met his first girlfriend in a way he couldn't have imagined before: a livestreamed video chat.... Read more

Internet company Yahoo Inc.—backed by owner Apollo Global Management Inc.—would bid for the Chrome web browser if a federal court orders Google to divest it as a remedy for maintaining an illegal monopoly, a senior executive said.... Read more

Britain's broadcasting regulator announced Thursday that tech firms failing to prevent children from accessing harmful content will face fines or even elimination from the UK market under "transformational" measures launching in July.... Read more

Alphabet Inc. pays Samsung Electronics Co. an "enormous sum of money" every month to preinstall Google generative AI app, Gemini, on its phones and devices, according to court testimony, even though the company's practice of paying for installations has twice been found to violate the law.... Read more

YouTube on Wednesday celebrated more than 20 billion videos being uploaded to the platform since the first clip debuted two decades ago.... Read more

In another major legal blow to Google, a federal judge has ruled that the search giant held an illegal monopoly over some advertising technology, a ruling that could reshape the online advertising business.... Read more

A US judge on Thursday ruled that Google illegally wielded monopoly power in the online ad technology market, in a legal blow that could rattle the tech giant's revenue engine.... Read more

A federal judge permanently struck down an Ohio law on Thursday that would have required children and teens under 16 to get parental consent to use social media apps.... Read more

A Google Maps scan on Monday of the body of water directly west of the Philippines now shows a name once invisible to most users—the West Philippine Sea.... Read more

Scientific research on the harms of digital technology is stuck in a "failing cycle" that moves too slowly to allow governments and society to hold tech companies to account, according to two leading researchers in a new report published in the journal Science.... Read more

When her 14-year-old son took his own life after interacting with artificial intelligence chatbots, Megan Garcia turned her grief into action.... Read more

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996 as part of the Telecommunications Act, has become a political lightning rod in recent years. The law shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content while allowing moderation in good faith.... Read more

News articles produced by artificial intelligence (AI) do not have the same creative flair as stories written by human journalists, according to research into the stylistic differences between the storytellers.... Read more

Instagram users under 16 won't be able to livestream or unblur nudity in direct messages they've received without parental approval, owner Meta Platforms said Tuesday as it widened its safety measures for teenagers.... Read more

Researchers at Cornell Tech have released a dataset extracted from more than 300,000 public Reddit communities, and a report detailing how Reddit communities are changing their policies to address a surge in AI-generated content.... Read more

While mainstream sites have taken steps to moderate harmful content, less-regulated platforms, such as 4chan, continue to foster a murky community of online hate speech.... Read more