Google grants €500,000 to regional UK publishers for podcast venture March 21, 2019 Local publishers Reach and JPI Media have secured €500,000 (£433,000) in funding from Google to launch a new podcast project for local news. The grant will help the two regional publishers, which have partnered with podcast platform Entale, to develop the new audio project known as Laudable. Read more: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism secures £800,000 [...]
Data breaches drive losses from fraud up to £1.2bn March 21, 2019 The theft of personal information following data breaches drove an increase in money stolen through fraud to £1.2bn last year. A number of well known companies suffered high profile data breaches in 2018, including Facebook, Google, and British Airways. Read more: Fraud office launches investigation into London Capital & Finance Unauthorised fraud, where the account [...]
Myspace loses 12 years worth of music in botcher server migration March 19, 2019 Fallen social media giant Myspace has admitted to losing 12 years worth of music following a botched server migration. Read more: European data breaches hit 60,000 in eight months An estimated 50m songs from 14m artists that were uploaded onto the website between 2003 and 2015 are lost, the once-great social network said. The firm blamed a [...]
We don’t need to break up big tech to make a better internet – we just need more competition March 19, 2019 Last week saw the release of the government-commissioned Furman Review into digital competition. The commission, chaired by former Obama administration chief economic adviser Jason Furman, found that Google, Amazon, and Facebook don’t face enough competition. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the recent attention on tech giants’ business models by governments across the world. [...]
Revamp media regulation to help broadcasters take on Netflix, BBC chairman urges March 18, 2019 The UK’s media regulation must be overhauled to protect public service broadcasters from rivals such as Netflix, the BBC chairman said today. Speaking at the Oxford Media Convention this morning, Sir David Clementi said existing regulation is not fit for the digital age and must be updated to ensure British broadcasters can take on global [...]
MPs call for social media regulation to protect children from online ‘wild west’ March 18, 2019 The “lawless landscape” of social media must be regulated to ensure young people are protected from graphic content that could damage their mental health, a group of MPs has said. A report into the impact of social media on young people’s mental health concluded firms such as Facebook and Instagram should face a 0.5 per [...]
Labour hits back at social media giants over Christchurch attack footage March 17, 2019 Social media firms must be better at reacting quickly to take down live broadcasts, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said today. A gunman attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday, killing 50 Muslims. He live-streamed the attack on Facebook for 17 minutes, with footage of the event quickly spreading to other platforms such as [...]
UK home secretary Sajid Javid warns tech giants over footage March 16, 2019 Home secretary Sajid Javid has warned social media companies to "clean up their platforms" after the attack by a gunman in New Zealand, killing 49 people at two mosques, was live streamed on Facebook. Javid told these firms they would face the "force of the law" if they did not more, with the video lasting 17 [...]
Facebook blames server problem after 14-hour outage cripples social media sites March 15, 2019 Facebook has blamed a “server configuration change” for the outage that affected its social media platforms for more than 14 hours yesterday. “We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone’s patience,” the company said in a statement. Read more: Facebook restores service after worst [...]
Facebook loses two top technology execs after Zuckerberg adopts privacy shift March 14, 2019 Two senior Facebook technology executives have left the social media giant, days after its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company would be moving towards a “privacy-focused future”. Zuckerberg said in a blog post that chief product officer Chris Cox, one of the firm’s earliest employees, and Whatsapp vice president Chris Daniels had resigned. “As Mark has [...]