Governments Increasingly Spreading Disinformation Online, Report Says

Despite increased efforts by Internet platforms like Facebook to combat Internet disinformation, the use of the techniques by governments around the world is growing, according to a report by researchers at Oxford University. Governments are spreading disinformation to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs.

Justice Department Expected to Open Antitrust Probe of Facebook

The U.S. Justice Department will open an antitrust investigation of Facebook Inc, a source familiar with the matter said. It will mark the fourth recent investigation of the social media company which also faces probes by the Federal Trade Commission, a group of state attorneys general led by New York and the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

California Proposal Would Require State to Create Data Protection Agency

Californians for Consumer Privacy, the nonprofit group behind a landmark privacy law, announced a plan to give Californians new data rights and place new obligations on companies. Most significant, the proposal would require California to establish a data protection agency with the power to enforce the law and issue new regulations.

Under New Copyright Regime, Google Minimizes News Content in France

Google will not pay press publishers in France to display their content and will instead change the way articles appear in search results, a senior executive said. The announcement pours cold water on publishers' hopes of obtaining more money from the tech giant for displaying their content under the European Union's new copyright regime, which France was the first to transpose into national law.

FTC Sues Match Group for Sending Emails from Fake Users

The owner of Tinder and OkCupid is being sued by U.S. regulator for seeking to draw in potential subscribers with emails from fake users expressing interest in pairing up. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleged that Match Group Inc. knowingly sent automated advertisements via Match.com with expressions of interest from accounts which it knew were likely fake.

EU Court Says Google Doesn't Have to Apply 'Right to be Forgotten' Worldwide

The European Union’s top court ruled that Google does not have to extend the E.U.’s “right to be forgotten” rules to search results worldwide, handing the U.S. tech giant a major win as it comes under increasing scrutiny from European regulators. In 2014, the European Court of Justice gave E.U. residents more control over what pops up when their names are searched online.

Facebook Says It Won't Delete Politicians' Posts, Despite Community Rules

Facebook announced it intends to keep up all posts from politicians, even if they violate the social media giant's community rules, arguing that such statements from political figures are "newsworthy." During a speech in Washington, D.C., Facebook's vice president of global affairs and communications Nick Clegg announced that the company is taking an official stance on how to handle controversial speech from politicians on its platform.

SEC Chairman Refuses to Say Whether Facebook's Libra Will Face Regulation

The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly refused to tell a congressional panel on Tuesday whether or not Facebook’s Libra would be regulated as a security under his watch. Appearing alongside other SEC commissioners before the House Financial Services Committee, Chairman Jay Clayton said that while he had not yet discussed Facebook’s digital currency plan with the social-media giant, he has an “open door” policy.

Facebook Shuts Down 'I Love America' Page Run by Ukrainians

A Facebook page called “I Love America” that featured patriotic themes, rippling flags and pro-Trump memes was closed after it turned out to be run by Ukrainians. Facebook took action against the page — which had 1.1 million followers — and several affiliated ones after a report in Popular Information, a politically themed online newsletter, detailed the page’s Ukrainian management and remarkable reach.

Russian Man Pleads Guilty to Hacking Targeting JPMorgan Chase

A Russian man pleaded guilty to U.S. charges he took part in a massive computer hacking scheme that targeted JPMorgan Chase & Co and other financial services companies. Andrei Tyurin, 36, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to six counts including wire fraud and computer hacking conspiracy, admitting that he illegally obtained the personal information of the companies’ customers to find potential victims for fraudulent investment schemes.

Big Tech Companies Announce Changes to Extremism-Fighting Group

Some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies announced that they're revamping an organization they established to fight online extremism in order to allow it to work more extensively with outside parties. The announcement, which came on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, comes six months after the suspect in the New Zealand mosque shooting streamed the massacre live on Facebook.

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Facebook's Competitors Discussing Hardball Tactics with FTC Investigators

A number of Facebook’s current and former competitors are talking about the company’s hardball tactics to investigators from the Federal Trade Commission, as part of its broader antitrust investigation into the social-media giant’s business practices, according to people familiar with the matter. One of them is Snap Inc., SNAP 0.47% where the legal team for years kept a dossier of ways that the company felt Facebook was trying to thwart competition from the buzzy upstart, according to some of those people. The title of the documents: Project Voldemort.

Twitter Expands Policies to Explicitly Prohibit Financial Scams

Twitter says it’s expanding its policies to prohibit financial scams on its platform — something that apparently was never directly addressed through Twitter’s policy documentation. Instead, financial scams until now have been handled through Twitter’s spam reporting tool, which was expanded last year to specifically identify what exact type of spam a tweet contained.

Twitter Removes 10,000+ Accounts for Spreading Political Misinformation

Twitter continued its crackdown on what it considers improper content by removing more than 10,000 accounts for spreading political misinformation and unrest. Twitter said the accounts included more than 4,000 found to be operating out of the United Arab Emirates, and 4,000 others from China. More than 1,000 accounts came from Ecuador, and the company also shut down accounts from Saudi Arabia, Spain and Egypt.

U.S. Trade Regulators Approve 10 of Apple's Tariff Exemption Requests

U.S. trade regulators approved 10 out of 15 requests for tariff exemptions filed by Apple Inc. amid a broader reprieve on levies on computer parts, according to a public docket published by the U.S. Trade Representative and a Federal Register notice. The move by U.S. officials could make it easier for both Apple and small makers of gaming computers to assemble devices in the United States by lowering the costs of importing parts.

IBM Files Patent Suit Against Zillow Over Home Value Estimation Tool

IBM filed a lawsuit against Zillow, accusing the real estate giant of piggybacking off its patented technology to build key parts of its home value estimation and search features. The seven patents at the center of the suit cover a variety of different technologies, but the ones that stand out most deal with using computing power to analyze the quality and desirability of a geographic area and list-based searches that let users see the results on a map that fits within their screen.

Facebook Suspends Tens of Thousands of Apps for Using Personal Info

Facebook said that it had suspended tens of thousands of apps for improperly sucking up users’ personal information and other transgressions, a tacit admission that the scale of its data privacy issues was far larger than it had previously acknowledged. The social network said in a blog post that an investigation it began in March 2018 — following revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy, had retrieved and used people’s Facebook information without their permission — had resulted in the suspension of “tens of thousands” of apps that were associated with about 400 developers.

Apple's New iPhone Operating System Warns Users About Tracking

Apple’s new iOS 13, the thirteenth major iteration of its popular iPhone software, has new security and privacy features. The new operating system periodically reminds you about apps that are tracking your location in the background and every so often will tell you how many times an app has tracked where you’ve been in a recent period of time, along with a small map of the location points.

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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.