Meta closes nearly 4,800 fake accounts in China that tried to polarize US voters

Someone in China created thousands of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts designed to impersonate Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the US ahead of next year’s elections, Meta said on Thursday. The network of nearly 4,800 fake accounts was attempting to build an audience when it was identified and eliminated by the tech company, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The accounts sported fake photos, names and locations as a way to appear like everyday American Facebook users weighing in on political…

Meta closes nearly 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Chinese ‘Spamouflage’ foreign influence campaign

Meta shut down close to 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, groups and pages associated with a Chinese political spam network that had targeted users in Australia and other parts of the world, the company has revealed. Meta began investigating the so-called Spamouflage network after several research groups including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi) first discovered the foreign influence campaign. In a report released by the social media giant on Tuesday, Meta said it had removed 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups and 15 Instagram accounts identified as violating…

Social media campaign linked to Chinese government spreading disinformation about Australian politics, thinktank says

A coordinated foreign influence campaign linked to the Chinese government is using social media to undermine confidence in Australia’s democratic system, according to researchers at a Canberra-based defence thinktank. The researchers believe the network is operating from within China and is either spreading disinformation about Australian politics or amplifying concerns about political scandals. They reference rape allegations made by the former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins and against the former attorney general Christian Porter, which he strongly denies. The network is believed to have about 30 active accounts so far, which…

TikTok: how the west has turned on gen Z’s favourite app

The FBI has called it a national security threat. The US government has passed a law forcing officials to delete it from their phones. Texas senator Ted Cruz has denounced it as “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist party can use to influence what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think”. And in March its CEO will defend its existence before the US Congress. For those unaware of the debate broiling on the other side of the Atlantic, the target of this strong rhetoric might prove surprising: an app best known…

Job cuts and falling shares: how did it all go so wrong for the US tech sector?

Amazon announced 18,000 job cuts, Apple’s share price fell below $2tn (£1.7tn) and there was more bad news from Tesla: it has been another tough week for big US tech firms. But this has not been a one-off. The ongoing drama at Twitter since its takeover by Elon Musk in October has taken place against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty, retrenchment from aggressive expansion plans and China’s disruptive transition from Covid lockdowns to rocketing case numbers as restrictions ease. In fact this week’s events have been a continuation of…

‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity

Jaron Lanier, the eminent American computer scientist, composer and artist, is no stranger to skepticism around social media, but his current interpretations of its effects are becoming darker and his warnings more trenchant. Lanier, a dreadlocked free-thinker credited with coining the term “virtual reality”, has long sounded dire sirens about the dangers of a world over-reliant on the internet and at the increasing mercy of tech lords, their social media platforms and those who work for them. Nothing about the last few weeks – of chaos on Twitter and the…

Meta takes down ‘influence operations’ run by China and Russia

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has said it has removed a pair of “influence operations” run by China and Russia, which aimed to sway views on the US elections and the war in Ukraine. The Russian network, the largest the company has disrupted since the war began, targeted audiences across Europe and the UK, and incorporated a “sprawling network” of websites impersonating news websites including the Guardian, according to Meta. “It presented an unusual combination of sophistication and brute force,” said Meta’s Ben Nimmo and David Agranovich in a blogpost announcing…

How TikTok is turning a generation of video addicts into a data goldmine

Question: what do men and Excel have in common? Answer: they’re always automatically turning things into dates when they’re not. To younger people – that is, anyone under the age of 20 – Microsoft’s spreadsheet program, a tool as essential to accountants as saws are to carpenters, is the contemporary equivalent of mom jeans, handwritten thank-you notes and cravats: stuff that oldies care about. How come, then, that the hashtag #excel has had 3.4bn views on a certain social media platform and that one Excel expert on that platform has…

The rise of TikTok: why Facebook is worried about the booming social app

TikTok is on track to overtake the global advertising scale of Twitter and Snapchat combined this year, and to match mighty YouTube within two years, as trendsetting teens and young adults make it the hottest social app of the moment – and Facebook is worried. The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is forecast to catch up with YouTube by 2024 when both are predicted to take $23.6bn (£18.2bn) in ad revenue, despite TikTok being launched globally 12 years after its Google-owned rival. Helped by unparalleled moments of cool at the height of…

Oil prices climb to fresh highs, UK petrol price hits record – business live

More reaction is coming in from trade unions, economists and analysts to the increase in the national living wage and the minimum wage from next April. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) said a boost to the minimum wage was vital “in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis” But the government must set its sights higher. We need a £10 minimum wage now, and we need ministers to cancel the cut to universal credit. This increase won’t come into effect until next spring by which time…