platforms - CybAI news

13 Jul

The EU Is Coming for X’s Paid Blue Checks

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelselon musk, eu, platforms, social media, twitter, X

Paid-for blue checks on social media network X deceive users and are abused by malicious actors, the European Union said today, threatening the Elon Musk–owned platform with millions of dollars in fines unless the company makes changes.Enabling any account to pay for a verification breaches the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), European Commission officials said on Friday, because it “negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts.” X now has a chance to respond to the findings. If Musk cannot reach a resolution with the EU, the company faces fines of up…

17 Jun

Orkut’s Founder Is Still Dreaming of a Social Media Utopia

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsfacebook, platforms, social media

Before Orkut launched in January 2004, Büyükkökten warned the team that the platform he’d built it on could handle only 200,000 users. It wouldn't be able to scale. “They said, let's just launch and see what happens,” he explains. The rest is online history. “It grew so fast. Before we knew it, we had millions of users,” he says. Orkut featured a digital Scrapbook and the ability to give people compliments (ranging from “trustworthy” to “sexy”), create communities, and curate your very own Crush List. “It reflected all of my personality traits. You could flatter people by saying how cool…

05 Jun

Why the EU’s Vice President Isn’t Worried About Moon-Landing Conspiracies on YouTube

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsdeepfakes, eu, europe, european union, meta, platforms, regulation, social networks, youtube

When European Union vice president Věra Jourová met with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in California last week, they fell to talking about the long-running conspiracy theory that the moon landings were fake. YouTube has faced calls from some users and advocacy groups to remove videos that question the historic missions. Like other videos denying accepted science, they have been booted from recommendations and have a Wikipedia link added to direct viewers to debunking context.But as Mohan spoke about those measures, Jourová made something clear: Fighting lunar lunatics or flat-earthers shouldn't be a priority. “If the people want to believe it,…

29 May

A Nonprofit Tried to Fix Tech Culture—but Lost Control of Its Own

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelscontent moderation, facebook, google, meta, philanthropy, platforms, silicon valley, social media, startups

Allen, a data scientist, and Massachi, a software engineer, worked for nearly four years at Facebook on some of the uglier aspects of social media, combating scams and election meddling. They didn’t know each other but both quit in 2019, frustrated at feeling a lack of support from executives. “The work that teams like the one I was on, civic integrity, was being squandered,” Massachi said in a recent conference talk. “Worse than a crime, it was a mistake.”Massachi first conceived the idea of using expertise like that he’d developed at Facebook to drive greater public attention to the dangers…