The Web

Millions of Brazilians, including the president, have flocked to social media platforms such as Threads or Bluesky, where Portuguese has become the most spoken language in the few days since Elon Musk's X was shut down in the country.... Read more

The founders of internet search and digital advertising giant Google wrote in a 1998 paper that goals for online advertising "do not always correspond" to useful internet search results.... Read more

Online reviews and testimonials are a key way that small businesses can attract new customers and boost sales of products.... Read more

A deluge of bizarre computer-generated images swept Elon Musk's social platform X last week—including violent, offensive and sexually suggestive content. In one, Trump piloted a helicopter as the World Trade Center buildings burned in the background. In others, Kamala Harris wore a bikini, and Donald Duck used heroin. Amidst the... Read more

The internet, and particularly social media, have grown exponentially over the last decades. The nature of social media allows anyone to go online and create content they find interesting, whether appropriate or not. One form of inappropriate content is hate speech—offensive or threatening speech targeting certain people based on their... Read more

In the face of rising cybersecurity threats, many internet users continue to neglect essential security actions, such as installing updates or changing compromised passwords. A new study led by Prof. Eyal Pe'er from the Federmann School of Public Policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reveals that offering users the... Read more

The boss of social media platform Telegram has been arrested in France, accused of allowing the sharing of illegal content.... Read more

A federal appeals court on Tuesday breathed new life into a lawsuit by Chrome users who say Google gathered data even though they did not "Sync" to their accounts.... Read more

There is clear evidence of a growing demand for AI-generated images of child sexual abuse on the dark web, according to a new research report published by Anglia Ruskin University's International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute (IPPPRI). The full report can be viewed here.... Read more

Social platform X said Friday it would work European regulators after agreeing to suspended its heavily criticised use of European users' personal data to train its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.... Read more

While much attention on sexually explicit "deepfakes" has focused on celebrities, these non-consensual sexual images and videos generated with artificial intelligence harm people both in and out of the limelight. As text-to-image AI models grow more sophisticated and easier to use, the volume of such content is only increasing.... Read more

A federal judge has branded Google as a ruthless monopolist bent on suffocating its competitors. But how do you go about creating alternatives to a search engine that's synonymous with internet exploration?... Read more

Over the past 20 years, social media has transformed how we communicate, share information and form social connections. A federal parliamentary committee is currently trying to come to grips with these changes, and work out what to do about them.... Read more

Content creators are moving beyond mainstream social media channels in favor of emerging platforms, according to a new study by the University of Sussex.... Read more

Turkey on Friday blocked access to the Instagram social media network, the national communications authority said without explanation, following censorship accusations against the US company by a high-ranking Turkish official.... Read more

A global Microsoft Azure outage that impacted a range of services for consumers Tuesday—from reports of stalling Outlook emails to trouble ordering on Starbucks' mobile app—was triggered by a distributed denial of service cyberattack, according to the tech giant.... Read more

Researchers from Leiden University have developed a method to predict which sellers will be successful in illegal online marketplaces. This could help the police track down big players on the dark web, the hidden part of the internet. Their results are published in Scientific Reports.... Read more

The US Senate passed a sweeping social media safety package Tuesday that would force tech companies to do more to protect children—the first major legislation targeting Silicon Valley in a generation.... Read more

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, just took its most direct shot at Google yet.... Read more

UN member states opened a two-week meeting Monday seeking to finalize an international treaty on the fight against cybercrime, a text strongly opposed by an unlikely alliance of human rights groups and big technology companies.... Read more

OpenAI on Thursday said it was putting its artificial intelligence engine to work in a challenge to Google's market-dominating search engine.... Read more

If you use Google—and chances are you do—then you're used to seeing ads when searching online. But how do those ads get on Google search and, more importantly, who is paying for them? It's easy to assume Nike pays for the Nike ads, but that's not always the case.... Read more

Meta's oversight board on Thursday called on the tech titan to bring its rules regarding porn deepfakes out of the "photoshop" days and into the era of artificial intelligence.... Read more

On the move and looking for an internet connection to check email or post a video to TikTok? It's tempting to jump onto the free Wi-Fi at the coffee shop or the shopping mall. But don't do it unless you've got protection.... Read more

CrowdStrike is blaming a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off last week's global tech outage that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.... Read more

Meta said Wednesday that it has taken down about 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria running sexual extortion scams and has removed thousands of Facebook groups and pages that were trying to organize, recruit and train new scammers.... Read more

Google's corporate parent Alphabet Inc. delivered another quarter of steady growth amid an AI-driven shift in the ubiquitous search engine that is the foundation of its internet empire.... Read more

The US Senate will vote on a pair of bills this week designed to protect children online which would be the first major legislation targeting the tech industry in a generation.... Read more

Google on Monday said it was ditching its long mooted plan to block tracking "cookies" on its Chrome browser after years of resistance from online publishers and questions from regulators.... Read more

The global information technology outage on July 19, 2024, that paralyzed organizations ranging from airlines to hospitals and even the delivery of uniforms for the Olympic Games represents a growing concern for cybersecurity professionals, businesses and governments.... Read more

From fearmongering about a looming "World War III" to false narratives linking a cabal of global elite to a cyberattack, a torrent of online conspiracy theories took off Friday after a major IT crash.... Read more

Computer systems across Australia and overseas have failed this afternoon after an update was pushed out by global security software provider CrowdStrike.... Read more

Meta on Thursday said it would delay the release of its most powerful generative AI models in Europe because of what it called unpredictable EU regulation.... Read more

Some of the UK's most recognizable TV doctors are increasingly being "deepfaked" in videos to sell scam products across social media, finds The BMJ today.... Read more

Meta said Friday it was lifting restrictions on US presidential candidate Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts, ending measures put in place after his supporters violently stormed the US Capitol in 2021.... Read more

China on Saturday announced a new crackdown on its tightly controlled internet, taking aim at video apps and social media platforms to purge content deemed harmful to children.... Read more

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's X platform is deceiving users with its blue checkmarks for certified accounts, and is also violating EU content rules, Brussels said Friday, in a finding that could lead to hefty fines.... Read more

Remember the metaverse? It was just a couple of years ago when it seemed as if every technology, media and entertainment company was scrambling to adapt to a future in which regular people would live parallel digital lives online, walking around as virtual reality avatars in 3D computerized worlds.... Read more

The United States has disrupted a Russian disinformation campaign involving AI-powered bots used to create fake profiles on the social media platform X, the Justice Department said Tuesday.... Read more

A doctoral candidate at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) is lead author of a study in the International Journal of Production Research investigating the ways social media platforms can be leveraged with artificial intelligence (AI) to provide vital communication connecting victims of disaster to outside aid and support.... Read more

Australia's eSafety Commissioner has announced she's given the major tech platforms six months to develop enforceable codes for protecting children from online pornography and other "high-impact" content like self harm.... Read more

Post a comment on Reddit, answer coding questions on Stack Overflow, edit a Wikipedia entry or share a baby photo on your public Facebook or Instagram feed and you are also helping to train the next generation of artificial intelligence.... Read more

Bot-like social media accounts have spread "disinformation and hate" in tens of thousands of posts viewed an estimated 150 million times during the UK general election campaign, a watchdog investigation revealed Tuesday.... Read more

Google made major changes to its search algorithm and spam filters earlier this year to get rid of low-quality content—but the effects have proved devastating to some smaller websites.... Read more

The EU accused Facebook owner Meta on Monday of breaching the bloc's digital rules, paving the way for potential fines worth billions of euros.... Read more

Debate continues to rage in Australia over whether children should (or can) be banned from social media. Following politicians' recent promises to ban those under 16 from the platforms, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has raised concerns that imposing age restrictions could push children to use social media in secret... Read more

Everyone has too many passwords. The credentials we need to remember to navigate online life keep multiplying, not just for frequently used email, banking, social media, Netflix and Spotify logins, but also, say, the little-known e-commerce site you're not sure you'll buy from again.... Read more

A pioneering internet messaging service that once boasted 100 million accounts has shut down, a message on the Russian-owned ICQ website said Wednesday.... Read more

Artificial intelligence (AI), now an integral part of our everyday lives, is becoming increasingly accessible and ubiquitous. Consequently, there's a growing trend of AI advancements being exploited for criminal activities.... Read more

A trio of security experts at Stanford University has found that millions of people are running an infected version of Chrome web browser due to extensions installed from the Google Chrome Web Store (GCWS). Sheryl Hsu, Manda Tran and Aurore Fass have posted a paper to the arXiv preprint server... Read more