New York Times: A Day Care and a Dog Rescue Benefit: On Facebook, They Were Political Ads. “What do a day care center, a vegetarian restaurant, a hair salon, an outdoor clothing maker and an investigative news publisher have in common? To Facebook, they looked suspiciously like political activists.”
stupidness
Bloomberg: Facebook Bug Switched as Many as 14 Million Users’ Privacy Settings to ‘Public’
Bloomberg: Facebook Bug Switched as Many as 14 Million Users’ Privacy Settings to ‘Public’. “Facebook Inc. had a software bug for 10 days in May that set the audience for people’s posts to ‘public,’ even if they had intended to share them just with friends, or a smaller audience.” Good grief.
BBC News: YouTube stars’ fury over algorithm tests
BBC News: YouTube stars’ fury over algorithm tests. “Some of YouTube’s most popular stars have criticised the website for ‘experimenting’ with how their videos are delivered to their fans. Unannounced, YouTube started testing an algorithm that changed the order videos appeared in users’ subscription feeds. The experiment came to light when some users complained on social media.” DO NOT WANT.
The Register: Hacking charge dropped against Nova Scotia teen who slurped public records from the web
The Register: Hacking charge dropped against Nova Scotia teen who slurped public records from the web . Good. He never should have been charged in the first place. “Cops in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, will not pursue charges against a 19-year-old fella who had dared to download a cache of public documents. In a brief statement issued Monday, police said that, following nearly a month of investigation, there were ‘no grounds to lay charges’ in a case that had drawn harsh criticism from digital rights groups. The young man had shown no criminal intent in fetching freely available files that anyone could have slurped, the plod admitted.”
Mashable: Facebook compares itself to a free newspaper in a new statement about data privacy
Mashable: Facebook compares itself to a free newspaper in a new statement about data privacy. Yeah, no. “There’s a saying that predates the internet, but is often used to describe the omnipresent and free internet services like Facebook we use on a daily basis: ‘If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.’ This criticism has been frequently marched out in the fallout of Facebook’s recent Cambridge Analyticia scandal, during which it was revealed that more than 87 million user profiles were improperly shared by academic Aleksandr Kogan to a political consulting firm that helped Donald Trump.”
The Verge: Twitter will start showing users its rules to encourage better behavior
The Verge: Twitter will start showing users its rules to encourage better behavior. “After facing a barrage of criticism over the toxicity of its community, Twitter announced last month that it will attempt to more actively measure and combat bad behavior, with input from outside researchers. We’re now seeing an early, straightforward idea: make its rules of conduct more visible.” So Jack Dorsey thinks people are just unaware that it’s illegal to threaten to kill and otherwise harm other people?
Krebs on Security: Panerabread.com Leaks Millions of Customer Records
Krebs on Security: Panerabread.com Leaks Millions of Customer Records. “Panerabread.com, the Web site for the American chain of bakery-cafe fast casual restaurants by the same name, leaked millions of customer records — including names, email and physical addresses, birthdays and the last four digits of the customer’s credit card number — for at least eight months before it was yanked offline earlier today, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.”
