The Web

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

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

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

You've heard of burner phones. What about burner email?... Read more

Every day, users ask search engines millions of questions. The information we receive can shape our opinions and behavior.... Read more

Can a complete tech novice create a website using everyday language on ChatGPT?... Read more

Tech firms are fighting the scourge of deepfakes, those deceptively realistic voices or videos used by scammers that are more available than ever thanks to artificial intelligence.... Read more

The technology behind web search engines is useful for more than tracking down your long-lost buddy or discovering a delicious new recipe. Technology based on search engine algorithms might also help keep the lights on, the water running and the trains moving during an emergency.... Read more

The use of information technology (IT) has significant environmental and social impacts, including human mortality from climate change. One striking example is the carbon emissions and impacts associated with digital communication.... Read more

The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are warning against a dangerous ransomware scheme.... Read more

If you've got a smartphone, you probably spend too much time on it—checking Instagram, watching silly TikTok videos, messaging on WhatsApp or doomscrolling on X.... Read more

Social media giant Meta on Thursday announced it would begin testing its new "Community Notes" feature across its platforms in the United States next week, as it shifts away from third-party fact-checking toward a crowd-sourced approach to content moderation.... Read more

You've probably noticed lately that a lot of people are trying out alternatives to the big social media networks X, Instagram and Facebook. For example, after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and started allowing far more disinformation and hateful content on the site, renamed X, advertisers and users started... Read more

A newly identified time-based vulnerability exposes a widely used technique to evade internet censorship, University of Michigan researchers have found. The findings emphasize the need to develop more robust countermeasures for the millions of people in heavily censored regions who rely on evasion techniques.... Read more

Hours after a series of outages Monday that left X unavailable to thousands of users, Elon Musk claimed that the social media platform was being targeted in a "massive cyberattack."... Read more

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers have spent countless hours in videoconferences—now a fixture of office life. As more people work and live remotely, videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, MS Teams, FaceTime, Slack, and Discord are a huge part of socializing among family and friends as well.... Read more

A sprawling Russian disinformation network is manipulating Western AI chatbots to spew pro-Kremlin propaganda, researchers say, at a time when the United States is reported to have paused its cyber operations against Moscow.... Read more

Albanian authorities said Thursday they were moving to shut down TikTok in the coming days, following through on a ban announced in December.... Read more

Utah on Wednesday became the first state to pass legislation requiring app stores to verify users' ages and get parental consent for minors to download apps to their devices.... Read more

Google is updating its ubiquitous search engine with the next generation of its artificial intelligence technology as part of an effort to provide instant expertise amid intensifying competition from smaller competitors.... Read more

With the AFL and NRL seasons kicking off, fantasy footy players have been deep in draft mode, carefully building their best teams.... Read more

In July last year, Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, directed tech companies to develop codes of practice to keep children safe from online porn and harmful content. Now, after seven months, the industry has submitted draft codes to eSafety for approval.... Read more

The Los Angeles Times said Monday it was adding AI-generated counter-arguments to opinion pieces to help readers grasp differing points of view.... Read more

Thousands of Microsoft 365 customers reported having issues with services like Outlook on Saturday.... Read more

Microsoft on Friday announced it was retiring Skype, the online voice and video call pioneer that the tech titan acquired in 2011.... Read more

A Congressional committee has sent subpoenas to eight US internet giants demanding to know whether foreign governments are curbing what can be seen online in the United States.... Read more

When three former PayPal employees, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, registered the domain www.youtube.com 20 years ago, they wanted to create an online dating site based around videos of users. In 2016, Chen told the SXSW conference: "We thought dating would be the obvious choice."... Read more

The UK aims to be the first country in the world to create new offenses related to AI-generated sexual abuse. New laws will make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM), punishable by up to five years in prison. The... Read more

From sizing advice via selfies to robot stock-takers, online shopping behemoths have increasingly turned to artificial intelligence in a bid to stem the flow of bad-for-business clothes returns.... Read more

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