Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel/Getty Images)

Twitter has said Elon Musk’s own data scientists did not support his claim that the number of fake accounts on the social media platform is “wildly higher” than the company’s estimates, as the parties prepare to go to trial in October.

The Tesla chief executive is attempting to pull out of a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, arguing that it misled regulators and investors about the true number of fake and spam accounts on the platform, which he alleges far outstrips the 5 percent figure that Twitter has cited for years.

During a three-hour hearing in a Delaware court on Tuesday, Twitter’s lawyers said documents they had received during discovery showed that two different consultants hired by Musk, Cyabra and CounterAction, had produced estimates of the amount of spam on Twitter of 11 percent and 5 percent, respectively—figures broadly in line with Twitter’s public estimates.

Enlarge (credit: Chesnot / Contributor | Getty Images News)

China's ability to influence American politics by manipulating social media platforms has been a topic of much scrutiny ahead of the midterm elections, and this week has marked some progress toward mitigating risks on some of the most popular US platforms.

US President Joe Biden is currently working on a deal with China-based TikTok—often regarded as a significant threat to US national security—with the one goal of blocking potential propaganda or misinformation campaigns. Now today, Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, shared a report detailing the steps it took to remove the first "Chinese-origin influence operation" that Meta has identified attempting "to target US domestic politics ahead of the 2022 midterms."

In the press release, Meta Global Threat Intelligence Lead Ben Nimmo joined Meta Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich in describing the operation as initiated by a "small network." They said that between fall 2021 and September 2022, there were four "largely separate and short-lived" efforts launched by clusters of "around half a dozen" China-based accounts, which targeted both US-based conservatives and liberals using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | B4LLS)

The Federal Communications Commission today released a plan to require mobile carriers to block a wide range of illegal text messages.

"In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), we propose to require mobile wireless providers to block illegal text messages, building on our ongoing work to stop illegal and unwanted robocalls," the FCC order said. "Specifically, we propose to require mobile wireless providers to block texts, at the network level, that purport to be from invalid, unallocated, or unused numbers, and numbers on a Do-Not-Originate (DNO) list." These texts "are highly likely to be illegal," the FCC said.

The NPRM seeks public comment on the plan. Once the NPRM is published in the Federal Register, there will be 30 days for comments and another 15 days for reply comments. After that, the FCC can draft new requirements for mobile carriers and set up a final vote.

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

This month, LinkedIn researchers revealed in Science that the company spent five years quietly researching more than 20 million users. By tweaking the professional networking platform's algorithm, researchers were trying to determine through A/B testing whether users end up with more job opportunities when they connect with known acquaintances or complete strangers.

To weigh the strength of connections between users as weak or strong, acquaintance or stranger, the researchers analyzed factors like the number of messages they sent back and forth or the number of mutual friends they shared, gauging how these factors changed over time after connecting on the social media platform. The researchers' discovery confirmed what they describe in the study as "one of the most influential social theories of the past century" about job mobility: The weaker the ties users have, the better the job mobility. While LinkedIn says these results will lead to changes in the algorithm to recommend more relevant connections to job searchers as "People You May Know" (PYMK) moving forward, The New York Times reported that ethics experts said the study "raised questions about industry transparency and research oversight."

Among experts' biggest concerns was that none of those millions of users LinkedIn analyzed were directly informed they were participating in the study—which "could have affected some people's livelihoods," NYT's report suggested.

Enlarge / Google's Matt Brittin, president of EMEA Business and Operations, speaks at the Web Summit on November 9, 2017, in Lisbon, Portugal. (credit: Getty Images | Horacio Villalobos )

Big Tech companies shouldn't have to pay for Internet service providers' network-upgrade costs, a Google executive said today amid a push in Europe to have tech companies pay for broadband expansions and improvements.

"Introducing a sender-pays principle is not a new idea, and would upend many of the principles of the open Internet. These arguments are similar to those we heard ten or more years ago and we have not seen new data that changes the situation," said Matt Brittin, president of Google's EMEA business and operations.

Brittin spoke today in a keynote panel at the Tech and Politics Forum presented by Financial Times and telecom lobby group ETNO. Google provided Ars with a copy of his prepared remarks.

Enlarge (credit: VCG / Contributor | Visual China Group)

Millions of Americans share data daily on the video-streaming app TikTok—data the federal government considers a national security risk because the app is owned by China, a foreign adversary. Now it has been left up to President Joe Biden to figure out a way to minimize the national security risks without forcing the sale of TikTok or taking away one of America’s favorite apps, as former President Donald Trump tried and failed to do in 2020.

Today, The New York Times reported that Biden may be close to arriving at a potential solution to the TikTok problem. “Four people with knowledge of the discussions” told NYT that over the past few months, the Biden administration has drafted a preliminary agreement with TikTok “to resolve national security concerns.”

Because the negotiation is confidential, all sources requested anonymity, and not much is yet known about the terms. However, there are three main areas of change in the current draft. The first focuses on preventing China-based employees from accessing American data by storing all TikTok data solely on US servers. The second is designed to block Chinese propaganda or disinformation campaigns by granting US-based Oracle power to monitor what’s recommended by algorithms. The last provides some oversight by forming a TikTok board of security experts that oversees TikTok’s US operations and reports directly to the US government. (Oracle declined to comment to NYT and did not immediately respond to Ars.)

Enlarge / The Starlink dish and router. (credit: Starlink)

Elon Musk’s Starlink has activated its satellite broadband service in Iran after the US allowed private companies to offer uncensored Internet access to the country amid protests that have caused more than 40 deaths.

The open Internet access follows Starlink’s activation in Ukraine earlier this year as that country’s communication networks were disrupted by Russia’s invasion.

Starlink is the first in a new generation of satellite networks operating in low Earth orbit that are designed to provide high-bandwidth Internet connections from space directly to individual users. Starlink users are able to bypass a country’s terrestrial communications networks, freeing them from Internet censorship.

Enlarge (credit: Robert Nickelsberg / Contributor | Getty Images News)

For years, people in cars stuck behind blue delivery trucks in traffic have echoed media reports criticizing Amazon for clogging American roadways. It’s well-known that the Amazon drivers steering these fleets of trucks and vans don’t actually work for Amazon but are hired by companies contracted by Amazon, and Amazon has repeatedly denied liability for any dangerous driving reported, though.

Because Amazon has contracts with more than 50,000 firms, just how dangerous Amazon’s contracted drivers really are remains a question that is hard to track. However, The Information reported last year that horrific car crashes are part and parcel of Amazon’s culture of convenience. And then more recently, The Wall Street Journal provided another window into how deadly America’s favorite speedy delivery service can be. Since 2015, WSJ reported this week, “Trucking companies hauling freight for Amazon have been involved in crashes that killed more than 75 people.”

To arrive at this number, WSJ partnered with Jason Miller—a Michigan State University professor who researches transportation safety—to analyze various sources of government data from “3,512 trucking companies that were inspected by authorities three or more times while hauling trailers for Amazon since February 2020.”

Enlarge (credit: Starlink)

Starlink's median download speeds in the US dropped from 90.6Mbps to 62.5Mbps between the first and second quarters of 2022, according to Ookla speed tests. Starlink's median upload speeds in the US dropped from 9.3Mbps to 7.2Mbps in the same timeframe.

Median latency also got a little worse for Starlink's US customers, rising from 43 ms to 48 ms. The latest numbers are in Ooka's Q2 2022 report on Starlink speeds around the world, released Tuesday. "Starlink speeds decreased in every country we surveyed over the past year as more users sign up for service," this week's report said. The Q1 report is available here.

The Q2 report notes significant year-over-year decreases in Starlink speeds in numerous countries, while pointing out that overall performance is still pretty good:

Enlarge / Artist's rendition of the recent arrest of a 17-year-old hacker in the UK. (credit: Rockstar Games)

A Thursday night arrest of a 17-year-old in the UK may have led to the capture of one of the biggest video game-related leakers in recent history.

London police forces confirmed their apprehension of an Oxford suspect on a social media channel regularly used for police arrest updates, and it clarified the suspect's age, a vague charge of "suspicion of hacking," and that the investigation was coordinated with the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) and specifically its National Cyber Crime Unit.

That charge was followed hours later by a report from American freelance journalist Matthew Keys alleging that the arrest revolved squarely around the recent theft and distribution of unreleased assets from British video game studio Rockstar North. This report cites "sources" to claim that the FBI was involved in this investigation and that the data seized also included portions of a massive Uber-related breach. Keys' report, as of press time, has not been corroborated by larger newsrooms in either the US or UK.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

Earlier this year, the International Organization for Migration reported that more than 3 million refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine were "at heightened risk of exploitation." Human trafficking cases, they warned, involved refugees more likely to leave home suddenly without secure financial resources and "less likely to be identified in the immediate aftermath of mass displacement." Since February, the European Union announced that the number is even larger, counting more than 5.4 million people who "have arrived in the European Union since the beginning of the war in Ukraine."

"All relevant stakeholders have recognized that the threat of trafficking in human beings is high and imminent," EU's human trafficking plan states. Since women and children represent the majority of refugees fleeing, the plan says they are believed to be most at risk.

To respond, the EU began monitoring online and offline human trafficking risks, and experts called for countries across Europe to start working together to shield refugees during this uncertain time of conflict. This week, the EU's law enforcement agency focused on cybercrimes, Europol, reported that it had done exactly that by coordinating the first online EU-wide hackathon.

Enlarge (credit: Chesnot / Contributor | Getty Images Europe)

After Apple updated its privacy rules in 2021 to easily allow iOS users to opt out of all tracking by third-party apps, so many people opted out that the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that Meta lost $10 billion in revenue over the next year.

Meta's business model depends on selling user data to advertisers, and it seems that the owner of Facebook and Instagram sought new paths to continue widely gathering data and to recover from the suddenly lost revenue. Last month, a privacy researcher and former Google engineer, Felix Krause, alleged that one way Meta sought to recover its losses was by directing any link a user clicks in the app to open in-browser, where Krause reported that Meta was able to inject a code, alter the external websites, and track "anything you do on any website," including tracking passwords, without user consent.

Now, within the past week, two class action lawsuits [1] [2] from three Facebook and iOS users—who point directly to Krause's research—are suing Meta on behalf of all iOS users impacted, accusing Meta of concealing privacy risks, circumventing iOS user privacy choices, and intercepting, monitoring, and recording all activity on third-party websites viewed in Facebook or Instagram's browser. This includes form entries and screenshots granting Meta a secretive pipeline through its in-app browser to access "personally identifiable information, private health details, text entries, and other sensitive confidential facts"—seemingly without users even knowing the data collection is happening.

Enlarge / The US Supreme Court building. (credit: Getty Images | Rudy Sulgan)

Florida yesterday asked the US Supreme Court to reinstate its social media regulation law that made it illegal for sites like Facebook and Twitter to ban politicians.

Florida's petition said the Supreme Court should answer the questions of whether the First Amendment prohibits states "from requiring that social-media companies host third-party communications, and from regulating the time, place, and manner in which they do so," and whether the First Amendment prohibits states "from requiring social-media companies to notify and provide an explanation to their users when they censor the user's speech."

The Florida law is currently blocked by an order issued by the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which made its ruling in a lawsuit filed by Big Tech industry groups. Florida filed its Supreme Court petition several days after a Texas social media law was reinstated by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

Enlarge

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres had just returned from a visit to flooded Pakistan when he stepped before the UN General Assembly to give a speech on Tuesday. Poverty-stricken regions experiencing the most severe climate change impacts like Pakistan were front-of-mind when he declared, “Today, I am calling on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies.”

Guterres made it clear how taxing fossil fuel companies could help struggling countries recover, recommending that developed economies convert rocketing oil and gas industry profits into funds to help struggling nations recover. By redirecting funds “to countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis and to people struggling with rising food and energy prices,” he suggests “polluters must pay” for the damage that reports have shown fossil fuel companies are largely responsible for.

The Guardian called Guterres’ appeal his “most urgent, and bleakest, speech to date.” However, Guterres did suggest that “by acting as one, we can nurture fragile shoots of hope” and overcome “loss and damage from disasters” and reverse a “once-in-a-generation global cost-of-living crisis" that he said is "unfolding" and "turbocharged by the war in Ukraine.”

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | rolfo)

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) yesterday recommended that all new vehicles be equipped with alcohol detection systems that can stop people from driving when drunk.

The NTSB can't issue such a regulation on its own but urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to do so. The NTSB said it "is recommending measures leveraging new in-vehicle technologies that can limit or prohibit impaired drivers from operating their vehicles as well as technologies to prevent speeding."

If adopted, this would require "passive vehicle-integrated alcohol impairment detection systems, advanced driver monitoring systems or a combination of the two that would be capable of preventing or limiting vehicle operation if it detects driver impairment by alcohol," the NTSB said. The agency urged the NHTSA to "require all new vehicles to be equipped with such systems."

Enlarge (credit: Eugene Mymrin / Getty Images)

Burmese influencer Han Nyein Oo rose to prominence in 2020, posting memes and gossip about Burmese celebrities on Facebook to an audience that grew to several hundred thousand people in Myanmar by early 2021. Then, after the country’s military seized power that February, he lurched rightwards, becoming a full-blooded supporter of the junta, which has killed more than 1,500 people and arrested thousands more in bloody crackdowns.

He was soon banned from Facebook for violating its terms of service, so he moved to Telegram, the encrypted messaging app and social sharing platform. There, he posted messages of support for the military, graphic pictures of murdered civilians, and doctored pornographic images purporting to be female opposition figures. Often, these were cross-posted in other channels run by a network of pro-junta influencers, reaching tens of thousands of users.

This year, Han Nyein Oo moved on to direct threats. Opponents of the junta planned to mark the anniversary of the coup on February 1 with a “silent strike,” closing businesses and staying home to leave the streets abandoned. On his Telegram channel, Han Nyein Oo raged, asking his followers to send him photos of shops and businesses that were planning to shut. They obliged, and he began posting the images and addresses to his 100,000 followers. Dozens of premises were raided by police. Han Nyein Oo claimed credit. He did not respond to a request to comment.

Enlarge (credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Top US lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to put Chinese semiconductor company Yangtze Memory Technologies Co on a blacklist for allegedly violating export controls by supplying Huawei.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Financial Times that he was concerned about a report, obtained by the FT, that showed YMTC has provided NAND memory chips for the Mate Xs 2, the new flagship foldable phone from Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment giant.

“This report is extremely troubling and further underscores the need for the administration to act swiftly to add YMTC to the entity list,” Schumer said, in a reference to the commerce department blacklist that effectively bars US companies from selling technology to groups on the list.

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum service truck in McKinney, Texas, on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Charter Communications must pay over $1.1 billion to the estate and family of an 83-year-old woman murdered in her home by a Spectrum cable technician, a Dallas County Court judge ruled yesterday.

A jury in the same court previously ordered Charter to pay $7 billion in punitive damages and $337.5 million in compensatory damages. Judge Juan Renteria lowered the award in a ruling issued yesterday.

The damages are split among the estate and four adult children of murder victim Betty Thomas. Renteria did not change the compensatory damages but lowered the punitive damages awarded to the family to $750 million. Pre-judgment interest on the damages pushes Charter's total liability to over $1.1 billion.

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

After Amazon made a blockbuster of a deal to acquire Roomba-maker iRobot in August, it looked like Amazon was primed to suddenly dominate the consumer robotics industry. However, earlier this month, Politico reported that the deal won’t go through unless the Federal Trade Commission approves.

Weeks in already, like a Roomba in a dusty basement, the FTC’s investigation already looks like it won’t finish without some serious back and forth. On Tuesday, the FTC announced in a regulatory filing that it needs more information before it gives Amazon the go-ahead.

The filing cites a federal regulation specifying that the FTC is requesting "any soliciting material published, sent or given to security holders."

Enlarge (credit: Alexander Newton)

Last weekend, Meta told Ars that it reversed an advertising ban on a newly released Holocaust film called Beautiful Blue Eyes, saying that the ban—for allegedly violating Meta's race policy—was implemented in error.

The filmmaker whose movie was being blocked, Joshua Newton, told Ars that he’s still experiencing issues promoting the movie on Meta platforms, where accounts still seem to be restricted. Most frustrating to Alexander Newton, Joshua’s son and an actor featured in the film, is the fact that he still can’t promote his version of the movie’s title track on his Instagram.

“My Instagram page just has an endless spinning wheel when I click to promote, so they've damaged my account somehow,” Alexander alleged. "I have to completely restart the app on my phone to even get out of the app."