The Web

Meta on Wednesday warned internet users to be wary of online acquaintances promising romance but seeking cash as scammers use deep fakes to prey on those looking for love.... Read more

If your social media suitor seems too good to be true, it might be a scam.... Read more

Apple renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on its maps Tuesday after an order by President Donald Trump was made official by the U.S. Geographic Names Information System.... Read more

Google on Monday changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America" for those using its Maps platform inside the United States, complying with an executive order by President Donald Trump.... Read more

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), which combines the advantages of both Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things technologies, has become widely popular in recent years. In contrast to typical IoT setups, wherein devices collect and transfer data for processing at some other location, AIoT devices acquire data locally and in... Read more

As artificial intelligence technologies develop at accelerated rates, the methods of governing companies and platforms continue to raise ethical and legal concerns.... Read more

When you go shopping or visit the doctor, your smartphone tracks your journey there. It also tracks what we like and share on Facebook and Instagram; what we listen to on Spotify or watch on YouTube; our credit card transactions.... Read more

The booming short messaging service Bluesky, with its logo of a blue butterfly, is not only a suitable alternative to X, but offers tangible advantages to users, concludes a study by a team of researchers with leading involvement from TU Darmstadt in a study on the novel platform.... Read more

Online gambling and gaming can cause depression and other mental health issues in young people, which the Council of Europe rights watchdog is trying to counter with a new project encouraging good policy and awareness raising.... Read more

Google has said it will restore the name Mount McKinley to North America's highest peak and rename the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" on its Maps app, complying with executive orders by Donald Trump.... Read more

Social media giant Meta made hundreds of thousands of dollars last year from content posted by a well-known pro-Russian disinformation network, researchers have claimed.... Read more

Google pledged to crack down on fake online reviews with tougher punishments for rogue reviewers and businesses that try to profit from them, British regulators said Friday following an investigation.... Read more

Podcasting is the medium of choice for millions of listeners looking for the latest commentary on almost any topic. In Australia, it's estimated about 48% of people tune in to a podcast each month.... Read more

"Millions of connections" from social network X will be re-established on rivals BlueSky or Mastodon from Monday, a French researcher said, in a campaign timed to coincide with Donald Trump's inauguration.... Read more

TikTok refugees fled by the millions to RedNote, a Chinese app, in response to the TikTok ban, which went into effect Jan. 19, 2025. The company shut down the app shortly before midnight on Jan. 18 but restored service the following day. The app was unavailable to download from the... Read more

Within five hours while sitting at home in India, retired professor Kamta Prasad Singh handed over his hard-earned savings to online fraudsters impersonating police.... Read more

TikTok disconnected access to its users in the United States late Saturday shortly before a national ban on the app was to take effect, with President-elect Donald Trump unable to intervene until he takes office.... Read more

Social media giant TikTok is preparing to shut down its app in the United States this Sunday—the day that legislation signed by President Joe Biden last year banning the app takes effect.... Read more

Where will TikTok refugees go if the social media platform is banned?... Read more

French researchers have developed an application to help users migrate their whole online community from Elon Musk's X to rival social platforms such as Bluesky or Mastodon.... Read more

Meta, the corporation that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has announced that it not only plans to replace its professional fact-checking system with user-contribution, but also cut down on many of its diversity schemes in respect of hiring and training.... Read more

The US Supreme Court grappled with a challenge on Wednesday to a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify visitors' ages, part of a growing effort to limit access by minors to online sexual content.... Read more

Meta's decision to change its content moderation policies by replacing centralized fact-checking teams with user-generated community labeling has stirred up a storm of reactions. But taken at face value, the changes raise the question of the effectiveness of Meta's old policy, fact-checking, and its new one, community comments.... Read more

With a possible TikTok ban just days away, many U.S. users are looking for alternative social media platforms to help them keep up with pop culture or provide the type of entertaining videos that popularized the short-form video app.... Read more

British computer scientist and Internet Hall of Fame inductee Peter Kirstein died in January 2020 at the age of 86, after a nearly 50-year career at UCL. A few years before he died, he was commissioned by then Conversation technology editor Michael Parker (now director of operations) to write an... Read more

Social media giant Meta announced Friday it is dismantling its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs across the company, marking another major shift in strategy as it aligns with politically conservative priorities.... Read more

Internet giant Meta's fact-checking program aims to counter false information on its social platforms—Facebook, Instagram and Threads—with the help of media organizations, including AFP.... Read more

Media outlets around the world have been left scratching their heads over the future of their fact-checking operations after Meta's shock announcement that it will halt its US program.... Read more

There will be "real-world harm" if Meta expands its decision to scrap fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram, a global network warned Thursday while disputing Mark Zuckerberg's claim such moderation amounts to censorship.... Read more

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's claim that the fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram has veered into censorship is "false", the International Fact-Checking Network said Thursday.... Read more

We often take for granted just how ubiquitous Wi-Fi has become over the past two decades, explains Northeastern University electrical and computer engineering professor Francesco Restuccia, who is also a member of the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things.... Read more

Cultural and social biases significantly influence Wikipedia's multilingual content, according to a team of researchers that includes a computer scientist from Johns Hopkins University.... Read more

The new year is always a good time to make a fresh start—including with your email inbox. To kick off 2025 with a clean slate, why not clear out all those unnecessary and unwanted messages?... Read more

The clean cut hair has grown, his college kid's hoodie is now a gold chain, and his politics have swerved hard right.... Read more

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