Exclusive: Josh Simons, close ally of Starmer, suggests Musk manipulates platform’s algorithm to boost his own interests Westminster needs to wean itself off X, a close ally of Keir Starmer has said, as he suggested that Elon Musk was deliberately manipulating its algorithm to boost his own political and personal interests. Josh Simons, the MP for Makerfield and former head of the Starmerite thinktank Labour Together, said he believed the British political class was dangerously addicted to the platform, formerly known as Twitter. Simons maintains an active X profile, but says he is keen not to “overuse” it. Continue reading...

Social platform was blocked after tech billionaire failed to name local representatives and pay fines Brazilians are set to regain access to X after a supreme court judge lifted a ban introduced nearly six weeks ago as a result of Elon Musk’s failure to comply with the South American country’s laws. X was blocked in Brazil, where it had more than 22 million users, at the end of August in what was the culmination of a months-long arm wrestle between the network’s billionaire owner and the Brazilian supreme court. Continue reading...

Abdul Hai, acquitted of murder over the death of Richard Everitt in 1994, said social media sites must be held accountable A man falsely accused of murder by Tommy Robinson on X has called for legislation to control Elon Musk’s social media website, arguing it has become a “platform for racism, bigotry, bias, prejudice and disinformation”. Abdul Hai, who was acquitted of murdering the teenager Richard Everitt in 1994, told the Guardian that he is considering legal action against the social media site formerly known as Twitter, after Robinson, a far-right agitator, posted that he had been convicted of the crime. Continue reading...

Even if you haven’t knowingly opted in, companies are still scraping your personal information to train their systems Welcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. If you’d like to skip to a section about a particular site or social network, click the “Jump to” menu at the top of this article. The competition to make the latest, greatest, most advanced artificial intelligence thing has turned an already data-hungry tech industry ravenous. Companies looking to build out their AI-powered search engines, smart email composers or chatbots are scraping your posts and personal data and using them to train those systems, which need ever-increasing amounts of text and images. Continue reading...

X owner responds by saying people should avoid UK when ‘they’re releasing convicted pedophiles’ Elon Musk has hit back at the UK government after he was not invited to an international investment summit following his controversial social media posts during last month’s riots. Musk said on X on Thursday: “I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts.” Continue reading...

The platform agrees to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, pays fines and takes down user accounts that the court had ordered removed Elon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won. X, Musk’s social media platform, has backed down in its fight with the Brazilian judiciary, after complying with court orders that had blocked users in the country from accessing X. Continue reading...

Study says tagging posts with false claims on election fraud may make Trump voters more likely to think they’re true Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study. The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review. Continue reading...

Agency accuses Meta, Google, TikTok and other companies of sharing troves of user information with third-parties Social media and online video companies are collecting huge troves of your personal information on and off their websites or apps and sharing it with a wide range of third-party entities, a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff report on nine tech companies confirms. The FTC report published on Thursday looked at the data-gathering practices of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The majority of the companies’ business models incentivized tracking how people engaged with their platforms, collecting their personal data and using it to determine what content and ads users see on their feeds, the report states. Continue reading...

Justice Alexandre de Moraes imposes $900,000 daily fine on banned social media platform in dispute with Elon Musk In the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil’s top court, a senior judge has accused X of a “willful, illegal and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block – and imposed a fine of R$5m ($921,676) for each day the social network remains online. The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since 30 August, on Wednesday became accessible to many users in Brazil after an update that used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno. Continue reading...

World Health Organization and Great British Menu among accounts that posted ‘this is a hacked account’ British politicians and international organisations have had their accounts on X hacked on Wednesday night. MPs including Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, and the Labour MPs Chris Elmore and Carolyn Harris all shared the same message on the social media site. Although quickly removed, the messages could still be read on TweetDeck, a dashboard used to manage accounts on X, formerly Twitter. Continue reading...