Category: SOCIAL MEDIA

Google to warn when humans chat with convincing bots

Dianne Jacobs

Google says it will take steps to ensure that humans are not fooled when they get called by software bots that can convincingly mimic the human voice. Anyone called by the bot will be told they are conversing with a machine, Google told tech news site the Verge. The vocal skills of the Duplex bot were demonstrated at Google’s I/O developer conference this week when it was shown booking a hair appointment. The demo left one technology expert “horrified” by what she had seen. Social impact In its statement, Google…

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YouTube Pulls Down Hundreds of Videos that Promoted a Homework Cheating Site

Dianne Jacobs

Hundreds of YouTube channels have had their videos removed from the site following a BBC investigation that found the widespread promotion of an essay-writing service as a way for students to cheat at school. Last week, the BBC published an investigation which found that more than 250 channels had promoted a Ukranian company called EduBirdie, which sells essays to desperate students. The company says that its services are useful for “research into the subject, generating initial input for for further reasoning and citations…paraphrasing in accordance with major educational standards as…

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Snapchat’s controversial redesign isn’t helping it make more money

Dianne Jacobs

Snapchat’s stock price plummeted during after hours trading yesterday following its first quarter earnings report. The stock dropped by more than 15 percent, or roughly a sixth of its worth. Although the app grew its global users by four million or so since the last quarter, it made less money per user. During the prior quarter, the company made $1.53 per user globally, or $286 million in total revenue. This quarter, that dropped to $1.21 per user and $231 million in revenue. Still, that’s a major growth from just over…

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Facebook Unveils Dating Service among Other New Products

Dianne Jacobs
Facebook’s to invest $57 Billion in Africa’s Economy in next five years

Facebook’s chief has said that 2018 has been an “intense year” for his firm. But Mark Zuckerberg also took the opportunity to unveil a dating service among other new products at his firm’s annual F8 developers conference in San Jose, California. He told his audience that the match-making feature would take privacy issues in mind and would launch “soon”. The company can ill afford another data scandal as it continues to be embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica affair. “There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as Facebook…

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Google Confirms Its Services Are Casualties Of A Russian Blockage Due To The Recent Telegram Ban

Dianne Jacobs

A shower of paper airplanes were darted through the skies of Moscow and other towns in Russia as users answered the call of entrepreneur Pavel Durov to send the blank missives out of their windows at a pre-appointed time in support of Telegram, a messaging app he founded that was blocked last week by Russian regulator Roskomnadzor (RKN) that uses a paper airplane icon. RKN believes the service is violating national laws by failing to provide it with encryption keys to access messages on the service (Telegram has refused to comply).…

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Google’s New Chat Messaging Service is Ready to Launch

Dianne Jacobs

Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat messaging service, which is designed to replace SMS text messages on Android phones. Chat has features such as group texts, videos, typing indicators and read receipts, which are not available when sending SMS texts. Chat will be integrated with the default messages app on Android phones. However, it will be up to mobile operators to enable the service and it does not offer encrypted messages. The new system has been in development for several years, but is now beginning to…

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Google Gets Rid of Fake Chrome Ad Blockers

Dianne Jacobs

Research unearths five malicious ad-blocker extensions on the Chrome Web Store that were installed by 20 million Chrome users before Google removed them. The bogus ad blockers were discovered by researchers at AdGuard, a Moscow-based maker of ad-blocking and anti-tracking tech. Following AdGuard’s report on the fake ad blockers in the Chrome Web Store, Google removed the suspect extensions, which have been installed on 20 million Chrome instances over the past year. The most popular fake ad blocker was AdRemover for Google Chrome, which had over 10 million users, putting…

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Facebook calls out Google, Amazon and Twitter for also harvesting user data

Dianne Jacobs

Facebook wants users to know that it’s not the only one tracking their every move on the internet. The social media giant pointed a finger at Google, Amazon, Twitter and other platforms for using many of the same data collection practices that some privacy advocates are referring to as invasive. In a blog post published Monday, the firm described in depth all the ways it gathers information on you around the web — even if you’re not a Facebook member or are logged out of your account. Facebook has been…

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Facebook seeks facial recognition consent in EU and Canada

Dianne Jacobs

Facebook has started asking European and Canadian users to let it use facial recognition technology to identify them in photos and videos. Facebook originally began face-matching users outside Canada in 2011, but stopped doing so for EU citizens the following year after protests from regulators and privacy campaigners. The new request is one of several opt-in permissions being rolled out in advance of a new data privacy law. The move is likely to be controversial. The company is currently embroiled in a privacy scandal related to the use of its…

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Gmail.com redesign includes self-destructing emails

Dianne Jacobs
Google Meet Gmail

Gmail.com is soon getting its first redesign in seven years, and with that new look comes some new features. There has been new side panels for Google Calendar, Google Keep, and Google Tasks, and now we’re getting word of another new feature: self-destructing emails. TechCrunch has screenshots detailing the feature from the pre-release version of Gmail. In the compose window, there’s a new lock icon called “Confidential Mode.” When clicked, a message pops up saying, “Options to forward, download or copy this email’s contents and attachments will be disabled.” The…

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