Science, Technology, and Social Media

Drug dealers are using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube to sell illicit appearance and performance-enhancing drugs (APEDs). The Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) and cyber-intelligence firm GiPEC purchased some of the drugs being promoted on these sites and found some drugs contained potentially harmful steroids or were altogether fake. The social media sites’ policies state it ...

YouTube has revoked the live streaming privileges of RightSide Broadcasting Network (RSBN) on the evening before President Trump’s rally in New Mexico. RSBN live streams of President Trump’s rallies are heavily featured on Conservative Daily News and other news outlets. According to RSBN, YouTube has offered no explanation for the censorship and in a video on their channel show that ...

Google Earth helped law enforcement discover the remains of a Flordia man who went missing after he left a nightclub in 1997. Palm Beach County deputies were responding to a call from a local resident who found a vehicle submerged in a pond behind his old home while doing a Google Earth search of the area in August, WPTV reported ...

Facebook suspended a feature on Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s account Thursday after someone managing the profile posted comments suggesting Arabs plan to destroy all Jewish people. The move, which Facebook says will last for 24 hours, comes after chatbot messages were sent from Netanyahu’s page stating that “Arabs want to annihilate us all,” Israeli publication Haaretz reported. The message ...

Lawmakers sent a letter to Facebook challenging a fact check on the pro-life organization Live Action’s content. Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and  Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were among the lawmakers who sent the letter. Live Action has said that they were targeted by pro-abortion fact checkers, and that Facebook “took sides” and “called us the spreaders of false news.” ...

Apple introduced a line of shiny new products at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, on Tuesday, including the iPhone 11, iPad 7th Generation and Apple Watch Series 5. Here’s how much those products will cost and when you can expect to buy them. iPhone 11 Cost: Starts at $699, $999 for iPhone 11 Pro and $1,099 for iPhone ...

California is one of two states not to publicly announce an antitrust investigation into some of the largest big tech companies in the country. The Golden State is home to Google, Facebook and other companies under investigation. Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s decision not to go public is apparently standard operating procedure for the state, which has refused to make public ...

A total of 50 attorneys general from across the U.S. have signed onto a probe into Google and its potential to stifle market competition. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the investigation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the goal of the investigation is to “have an open, fair and free market.” Google responded to the investigation ...

Apple and its manufacturing partner, Foxconn, violated Chinese labor rules by hiring temporary workers to produce its latest iPhone model, a Chinese Labor Watch (CLW) report revealed Monday. The report found that Apple’s Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China — the largest iPhone factory in the world — violated China’s rule that bars temporary workers from exceeding 10% of a factory’s ...

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Friday morning an eight-state coalition to open an investigation into Facebook that will focus on the social media titan’s alleged anticompetitive business practices. The probe will include the attorneys general from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina and Ohio, among others, James’s office said in a statement. The probe “focuses on Facebook’s dominance ...

Facebook officially launched its new dating feature, Facebook Dating, in the United States on Thursday. The tech giant says the new feature will take “the work out of creating a dating profile and gives you a more authentic look at who someone is” in a Thursday newsletter. The feature will allow users to connect their Dating profiles with their Instagram ...

Thieves used voice-mimicking software to dupe a company’s employees into putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into a secret account, the company’s insurer said, marking a first for the growing artificial intelligence industry. The managing director of a British energy company followed orders one day in March from the supposed CEO to wire more than $240,000 to an account in ...

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft met with U.S. intelligence in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to discuss plans to avoid the spread of misinformation ahead of 2020. The tech giants met with officials from the FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and Department of Homeland Security to explore ways to avoid security threats during the next presidential election, ...

Google agreed to pay a record $170 million fine Wednesday to settle an investigation into YouTube by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and New York’s attorney general. Of the $170 million, $136 million will be paid directly to the FTC, which approved the settlement 3-2, and $34 million be paid to the state of New York, according to NYT. The investigation ...

Sen. Ron Wyden is floating the possibility that imprisoning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg might be the best way to hold the social media company responsible for privacy violations. “I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to—and let me underline this—the possibility of a prison term,” Wyden said in an interview published Saturday on ...