Florida is on track to be the first state in America to punish social media companies that ban politicians, reports NBC News, "under a bill approved Thursday by the state's Republican-led Legislature." Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and close Trump ally who called for the bill's passage, is expected to sign the legislation into law, but the proposal appears destined to be challenged in court after a tech industry trade group called it a violation of the First Amendment speech rights of corporations...

Suspensions of up to 14 days would still be allowed, and a service could remove individual posts that violate its terms of service. The state's elections commission would be empowered to fine a social media company $250,000 a day for statewide candidates and $25,000 a day for other candidates if a company's actions are found to violate the law, which also requires the companies to provide information about takedowns and apply rules consistently...

Florida Republican lawmakers have cited tech companies' wide influence over speech as a reason for the increased regulation. "What this bill is about is sending a loud message to Silicon Valley that they are not the absolute arbiters of truth," state Rep. John Snyder, a Republican from the Port St. Lucie area, said Wednesday... The Florida bill may offer Republicans in other states a road map for introducing laws that could eventually force social media companies and U.S. courts to confront questions about free speech on social media, including the questions raised by Thomas.

State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando area Democrat, said if Republicans want to stay on private services, they should follow the rules. "There's already a solution to deplatforming candidates on social media: Stop trafficking in conspiracy theories...."
NetChoice, a trade group for internet companies, argued the bill punishes platforms for removing harmful content, and that it would make it harder to block spam. But they also argued that the freedom of speech clause in the U.S. Constitution "makes clear that government may not regulate the speech of private individuals or businesses.

"This includes government action that compels speech by forcing a private social media platform to carry content that is against its policies or preferences."

Slashdot reader zantafio points out the bill specifies just five major tech companies — Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon.

And that the bill was also amended to specifically exempt Disney, Universal and any theme park owner that operates a search engine or information service.

Scammers have been spoofing Target's delivery company Shipt's phone number in order to steal its gig workers' earnings by phishing their credentials from them. From a report: On the morning of March 28, a gig worker near Tampa, Florida, was shopping an order for Shipt, Target's delivery platform, when he received an email from "Shipt Support" asking him to reset his password. The worker says he didn't request to reset his password, but didn't think much of the email and went on with this day. Later that evening, the worker says he was sitting at home on his couch when he received a phone call from Shipt's corporate headquarters' phone number. Someone identifying themselves as a Shipt employee and addressing the worker by his first name said there had been unusual activity on his account regarding his password and asked him to read back a code that had been emailed to him to verify his identity.

Remembering the password reset email from earlier that day, the worker provided an authentication code that he'd received via email from Shipt. Shortly after, he received an email notifying him that someone had added a debit card to his account. When the worker checked his account again, he realized someone had logged in and cashed out his entire paycheck -- $499.51. "I noticed my withdrawal balance was zero," he said in a public video uploaded to Facebook. "At that point, I'm livid. I'm pissed." In recent weeks, personal shoppers on Target's delivery app, which boasts roughly 300,000 personal shoppers in the United States, have been repeatedly targeted by scammers hoping to steal their earnings by phishing gig workers' credentials from them. Since March 28, more than 30 gig workers have posted in private, unofficial Facebook groups for Shipt's personal shoppers saying scammers have targeted them using phishing schemes that include spoofing Shipt's corporate phone numbers and asking for passwords over the phone. In at least some cases, the strategy used by scammers is different from other phishing campaigns: Scammers trigger password reset emails sent to personal shoppers by clicking the "forgot password" button below the Shipt login. Then they follow up via phone, asking personal shoppers to "verify" their passwords in order to look into "unusual activity" or requests to update info on their accounts.

English soccer teams and organizations are all shutting down their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for the weekend as part of a massive social media blackout to advocate for better policies regarding discrimination and abuse that players and members of clubs receive on those platforms. From a report: Groups participating in the blackout include the Premier League, the English Football League, the Professional Footballers' Association, the Football Association, the League Managers Association, the Football Supporters' Association, and more. Clubs that are part of the Premier League, EFL, Barclays FA Women's Super League, and Women's Championship will all be shutting down their social channels over the weekend as part of the protest. The blackout comes after the various English soccer organizations banded together in February to request changes from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in an open letter requesting that the companies take stronger action against discriminatory and racist comments.

In the Great Recession more than a decade ago, big tech companies hit a rough patch just like everyone else. Now they have become unquestioned winners of the pandemic economy. From a report: The combined yearly revenue of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook is about $1.2 trillion, according to earnings reported this week, more than 25 percent higher than the figure just as the pandemic started to bite in 2020. In less than a week, those five giants make more in sales than McDonald's does in a year. The U.S. economy is cranking back from 2020, when it contracted for the first time since the financial crisis. But for the tech giants, the pandemic hit was barely a blip. It's a fantastic time to be a titan of U.S. technology -- as long as you ignore the screaming politicians, the daily headlines about killing free speech or dodging taxes, the gripes from competitors and workers, and the too-many-to-count legal investigations and lawsuits.

America's technology superpowers aren't making bonkers dollars in spite of the deadly coronavirus and its ripple effects through the global economy. They have grown even stronger because of the pandemic. It's both logical and slightly nuts. The wildly successful last year also raises uncomfortable questions for tech company bosses, the public and elected officials already peeved about the industry: Is what's good for Big Tech good for America? Or are the tech superstars winning while the rest of us are losing?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: The Oculus Quest 2 is a hell of a lot of hardware for $299. In fact, we're convinced that Facebook is making a loss on each unit sold. Even so, that pricing is one of the main reasons it's the most popular headset on Steam and our pick as the best VR headset. Well, that and the ease of use. [...] The thing is, that price seems too good to be true, with no other manufacturer's VR headset close to the specs list of the Quest 2 -- in either tethered or standalone form -- hitting the same low, low price. That money gets you a robust virtual reality headset with 6GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 CPU, 64GB of storage, 1832x1920 per eye display and a pair of controllers. [...]

But there's one factor that could potentially offset that price -- Facebook has access to a whole lot of your data. This is something the Oculus Quest 2 is upfront about: You absolutely need a Facebook account in order to use the device and it does have its data collection policies in black and white. Although what isn't quite so obvious is how much your data is worth to Facebook. At least it isn't without a tiny bit of digging.

There is another version of the Quest 2 that isn't as discounted as the consumer version, and that's the one aimed at businesses. The actual hardware is identical, but the difference is you don't need to login in with a Facebook account in order to use it. The price for this model? $799. There's also an annual fee of $180 that kicks in a year after purchase, which covers Oculus' business services and support, but that just muddies the waters a little. The point being, the Quest 2 for business, the headset from which Facebook can't access your data directly, costs $500 more. So that's looking essentially like the value the social media giant attributes to your data, which either seems like a lot or barely anything at all, depending on your stance. The Supplemental Oculus Data Policy outlines what sort of data is actually being collected when you use the Quest 2. Such things as your physical dimension, including your hand size, how big your play area is using the Oculus Guardian system, data on any content you create using the Quest 2, as well as more obvious stuff like your device ID and IP address.

Facebook has joined the Rust Foundation, the organization driving the Rust programming language, alongside Amazon Web Services, Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Mozilla. From a report: Facebook is the latest tech giant to ramp up its adoption of Rust, a language initially developed by Mozilla that's become popular for systems programming because of its memory safety guarantees compared to fast languages C and C++. Rust is appealing for writing components like drivers and compilers.

The Rust Foundation was established in February with initial backing from Amazon Web Services, Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Mozilla. Microsoft is exploring Rust for some components of Windows and Azure while Google is using Rust to build new parts of the Android operating system and supporting an effort to bring Rust to the Linux kernel. Facebook's engineering team has now detailed its use of Rust beginning in 2016, a year after Rust reached its 1.0 milestone. "For developers, Rust offers the performance of older languages like C++ with a heavier focus on code safety. Today, there are hundreds of developers at Facebook writing millions of lines of Rust code," Facebook's software engineering team said.

A viral internet joke becomes a real-life, good-natured 'battle' for a lot of people with the same first name. Behind the scenes of the 'JoshFight.' From a report: It began as a joke, Josh Swain emphasized. Spring, a year ago. As a pandemic surged, and millions idled at home, Swain, an engineering student at the University of Arizona, was very bored online. He noted that every time he tried to create a social media account, the name Josh Swain was already taken. An amused Swain logged onto Facebook, gathered every "Josh Swain" he could find into a group message, and offered a brash challenge, which was basically this: On April 24, 2021, everyone named Josh Swain should meet at these select coordinates -- 40.8223286, -96.79820002; it turned out to be farmland in Nebraska -- and duel for the right to be The One and Only Josh Swain. "We fight, whoever wins gets to keep the name, everyone else has to change their name, you have a year to prepare, good luck," Swain wrote.

Over time, Swain's terse, off-the-cuff, throw-down to all Josh Swains became a viral internet meme, leaping the curb from a bored joke into something quite real. The battle would broaden from Josh Swains to anyone named Josh, with Joshes from all over suggesting they, too, would come to Nebraska for a fight to be the The Only Josh. Terms of engagement were offered: they'd fight with foam pool noodles. Last Josh Standing wins. A public location was settled upon. (The original one turned out to be a private farm.) There was even a charitable angle: Supporters were asked to make contributions to the Nebraska Children's Hospital and Medical Center Foundation, and bring an item for the local food bank. On Friday, Joshua Swain, 22, got on a plane for Nebraska. And this past Saturday, on a grassy field in Lincoln, it actually happened. Josh vs. Josh vs. Josh vs. Josh vs. Josh, in the JoshFight of the Century. "It was insane," Swain said. "I can't describe it. It's so heartwarming, so incredible. It was a beautiful day."

Twitter user @mrcatacroquer, Manual Lucio Dallo, built the Yayagram -- a DIY project that makes sending and receiving voice and text messages over Telegram a physical process just like using an old-fashioned phone switchboard. Speaking to The Verge, Dallo says he built the machine to help stay in touch with his 96-year-old grandmother. From the report: To send a message, the user physically plugs in a cable next to the recipient's name. They then press and hold a button to record audio and speak into the integrated microphone. The message then appears on the recipient's phone like a regular voice note. And when the operator of the Yayagram receives a text message, it's printed off using a built-in thermal printer.

Dallo, who's a senior engineer for software firm Plastic SCM, goes into some detail about how the device was made in this Twitter thread. It's powered by a Raspberry Pi 4, runs on Python, and uses several third-party software libraries to tie everything together. The microphone is a cheap USB one and the printer similar to those used in cashier tills. He notes that he chose to use Telegram rather than WhatsApp or another messaging service as it's more open (and he doesn't like Facebook).

With a devastating second wave of Covid-19 sweeping across India and lifesaving supplemental oxygen in short supply, India's government on Sunday said it ordered Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to take down dozens of social media posts critical of its handling of the pandemic. From a report: The order was aimed at roughly 100 posts that included critiques from opposition politicians and calls for Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, to resign. The government said that the posts could incite panic, used images out of context, and could hinder its response to the pandemic. The companies complied with the requests for now, in part by making the posts invisible to those using the sites inside India. In the past, the companies have reposted some content after determining that it didn't break the law. The takedown orders come as India's public health crisis spirals into a political one, and set the stage for a widening struggle between American social media platforms and Mr. Modi's government over who decides what can be said online. On Monday, the country reported more than 350,000 new infections and more than 2,800 deaths, marking the fifth consecutive day it set a world record in daily infection statistics, though experts warn that the true numbers are probably much higher. The country now accounts for almost half of all new cases globally. Its health system appears to be teetering. Hospitals across the country have scrambled to get enough oxygen for patients.

Facebook just won its first Oscar. From a report: "Colette," from the social giant's Oculus Studios and EA's Respawn Entertainment game studio, picked up the trophy for documentary short subject Sunday at the 93rd Academy Awards. It's also the first project from the game industry to win an Oscar. The 25-minute film follows former French Resistance member Colette Marin-Catherine as she travels to Germany for the first time in 74 years. "Colette" was created for the World War II-set VR video game "Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond." "Colette" beat out the other contenders on the category: "A Concerto Is a Conversation," from Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers; "Do Not Split," from Anders Hammer and Charlotte Cook; "Hunger Ward," from Skye Fitzgerald and Michael Scheuerman; and "A Love Song for Latasha," from Sophia Nahli Allison and Janice Duncan.

The chief executives of Facebook and Apple have opposing visions for the future of the internet. Their differences are set to escalate later today. The New York Times: At a confab for tech and media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2019, Timothy D. Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook sat down to repair their fraying relationship. For years, the chief executives had met annually at the conference, which was held by the investment bank Allen & Company, to catch up. But this time, Facebook was grappling with a data privacy scandal. Mr. Zuckerberg had been blasted by lawmakers, regulators and executives -- including Mr. Cook -- for letting the information of more than 50 million Facebook users be harvested by a voter-profiling firm, Cambridge Analytica, without their consent. At the meeting, Mr. Zuckerberg asked Mr. Cook how he would handle the fallout from the controversy, people with knowledge of the conversation said. Mr. Cook responded acidly that Facebook should delete any information that it had collected about people outside of its core apps.

Mr. Zuckerberg was stunned, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Facebook depends on data about its users to target them with online ads and to make money. By urging Facebook to stop gathering that information, Mr. Cook was in effect telling Mr. Zuckerberg that his business was untenable. He ignored Mr. Cook's advice. Two years later, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Cook's opposing positions have exploded into an all-out war. On Monday, Apple plans to release a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps. One of the secrets of digital advertising is that companies like Facebook follow people's online habits as they click on other programs, like Spotify and Amazon, on smartphones. That data helps advertisers pinpoint users' interests and better target finely tuned ads. Now, many people are expected to say no to that tracking, delivering a blow to online advertising -- and Facebook's $70 billion business.

At the center of the fight are the two C.E.O.s. Their differences have long been evident. Mr. Cook, 60, is a polished executive who rose through Apple's ranks by constructing efficient supply chains. Mr. Zuckerberg, 36, is a Harvard dropout who built a social-media empire with an anything-goes stance toward free speech. Those contrasts have widened with their deeply divergent visions for the digital future. Mr. Cook wants people to pay a premium -- often to Apple -- for a safer, more private version of the internet. It is a strategy that keeps Apple firmly in control. But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an "open' internet where services like Facebook are effectively free. In that scenario, advertisers foot the bill. The relationship between the chief executives has become increasingly chilly, people familiar with the men said. While Mr. Zuckerberg once took walks and dined with Steve Jobs, Apple's late co-founder, he does not do so with Mr. Cook. Mr. Cook regularly met with Larry Page, Google's co-founder, but he and Mr. Zuckerberg see each other infrequently at events like the Allen & Company conference, these people said.

"An internal task force found that Facebook failed to take appropriate action against the Stop the Steal movement ahead of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, and hoped the company could 'do better next time,'" writes Buzzfeed: Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of a House of Representatives committee that his company had done its part "to secure the integrity of the election." While the social network did not catch everything, the billionaire chief executive said, Facebook had "made our services inhospitable to those who might do harm" in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Less than a week after his appearance, however, an internal company report reached a far different conclusion... Shared on Facebook's employee communication platform last month, the report is a blunt assessment of how people connected to "Stop the Steal," a far-right movement based on the conspiracy theory that former president Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election, used the social network to foment an attempted coup. The document explicitly states that Facebook activity from people connected to Stop the Steal and other Trump loyalist groups including the Patriot Party played a role in the events of Jan. 6, and that the company's emphasis on rooting out fake accounts and "inauthentic behavior" held it back from taking preemptive action when real people were involved...

The document contradicts Zuckerberg's statement to Congress about Facebook being "inhospitable" to harmful content about the election, and refutes chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg's January comment that the insurrection was "largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate, don't have our standards and don't have our transparency...." Facebook disputed the idea that the report went against Zuckerberg's and Sandberg's public statements and noted that both had said there was violative content on the platform that the company did not catch...

Facebook's researchers also outline the bureaucratic, policy, and enforcement struggles of the social giant when trying to respond to a coordinated, fast-paced movement that exploits its platform to spread hate and incite violence. Despite the company removing the most populous Stop the Steal groups from its platform, the enforcement was "piecemeal" and allowed other groups to flourish. The company admitted that it only realized it was a cohesive movement "after the Capitol Insurrection and a wave of Storm the Capitol events across the country...." Ultimately, the report says, the issue is that the company is not prepared to deal with what it calls "coordinated authentic harm."

"We learned a lot from these cases," the report says. "We're building tools and protocols and having policy discussions to help us do better next time."
But Buzzfeed's 3,400-article concludes on a skeptical note. "The report echoes previous high-profile examples where Facebook failed to act and later issued a report promising to do better..."

UPDATE (4/26): After the report's existence was revealed, access to it was suddenly restricted for many Facebook employees, Buzzfeed writes — on a new web page republishing the whole report in its entirety.

The Washington Post reports on a surge in crowdfunding campaigns for basic essentials like rent, food and bills: Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause — or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward. After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020 — a 150 percent increase over 2019. Both Vancouver-based FundRazr and U.K. crowdfunding website GoGetFunding report similar, though smaller, trends for last year, as well as honeymoon sites PlumFund and HoneyFund.

But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses... Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. "I saw a whole bunch of zeros," he said...

GoFundMe hasn't seen a slow-down on activity related to basic expense campaigns. It "continues at an elevated rate," company spokesperson Bobby Whithorne said... The monthly bills category is now one of GoFundMe's largest and has made up 13 percent of all new fundraisers since it was added in October, the company said. The campaigns range from people who have lost their jobs or been evicted to those who have suffered a health emergency and need help paying rent, and more. Meanwhile fundraisers for food in January spiked 45 percent higher than a year before, the company said. On Facebook, people raised $175 million for coronavirus-related fundraisers on the flagship site and Instagram between early March to late December last year, said Elizabeth Davis, a product manager on Facebook's charitable giving team.

GoFundMe makes money from many of these new campaigns it hosts and fosters — the company charges credit card processing fees, but primarily makes money from "tips" left on each donation. The tip level is automatically set at 12.5 percent of a donation, though donors can change the amount or decline to tip the company...

Despite the surge in crowdfunding, it doesn't replace other societal safety nets, experts said. GoFundMe's chief executive Tim Cadogan published an op-ed in USA Today in February, calling for more robust government programs to help people and insisting to Congress that GoFundMe "can't do your job for you."
The article also cites one research team's preliminary finding that more than 40% of coronavirus-related fundraisers on GoFundMe never received a single donation.

Long-time Slashdot reader gregstumph writes: Dr.Fill, a software program that solves crossword puzzles, finished in first place at the 2021 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, for the first time ever (its previous best was 11th place in 2017). Dr.Fill, created by Matt Ginsberg, has been participating as a non-competitor at the tournament since 2012. This year, Ginsberg made improvements to Dr.Fill with the assistance of a team from the Berkeley NLP Group.
The program finished "a scant 15 points ahead of Erik Agard on the main block of puzzles 1-7," Ginsberg posted on Facebook. This was followed by "then solving the playoff puzzle perfectly in 49 seconds" (while according to Wikipedia the fastest human competitor, Tyler Hinman, took three minutes to solve the puzzle).

The Facebook post adds graciously, "Total kudos to Erik, the true winner of puzzles 1-7, and to Tyler Hinman, the winner of the event itself."

"Ville de Bitche is a town situated in northwestern France with a rich military history, pastoral landscape, and an unfortunate sounding name," reports Slate. (Adding that the "e" is silent....)

"Recently tiny Bitche made international headlines after Facebook mistook the city's name for a swear word and deleted the town's Facebook page." The city's communication manager, Valêrie Degouy, contacted Facebook on March 19 to explain the situation and ask the company to reverse its decision — for the second time. (The page was previously deleted in 2016.) As she awaited Facebook's response — which apologized and reinstated the page Tuesday — Degouy set up a new page for her town, under the name of Marie 57230, her city's postal code. Although Facebook's mistake seems innocuous enough, for the towns located around Bitche, local Facebook pages serve as the main form of communication. Shutting the page down effectively creates a local news blackout. When Rohrbach-les Bitche — a nearby town in the region — heard about the deletion, it quickly rid "ls-Bitche" from its Facebook page name to avoid a similar fate...

The residents of Bitche are far from alone in their reliance on Facebook for local news. In the United States alone, more than 2,000 local newspapers have closed over the past two decades, according to an estimate from Joshua Scacco, associate professor of political communication at the University of South Florida. In these news deserts, Facebook has risen as an alternative information source, allowing anyone with an account to share updates and post events...

But Facebook is not only filling the local news void — it is tied to local papers' disappearance. "Social and digital media are a contributing factor in thinking about the declines of the presence of local newsrooms, as well as what that coverage looks like for the local newsrooms that remain," Scacco says. Facebook is moving advertising dollars away from local newspapers, and even driving the content local newspapers create. Local news coverage often panders to Facebook's algorithms when creating content and headlines, notes Ashley Muddiman, a communications professor at the University of Kansas.

Chris Poole, who founded controversial online community 4chan before joining Google in 2016, has left the search giant after jumping among several groups within the company, CNBC has learned. From the report: Poole's last official day at Google was April 13th, according to an internal repository viewed by CNBC, which described his last role as a product manager. Oftentimes, employee shares attached to hiring vest at the five-year mark, though it's unclear if that's a reason for Poole's departure now. Poole, who goes by the moniker "Moot," founded 4chan in 2003 at age 15. It grew into one of the most influential and controversial online communities to date. Rolling Stone famously called him a boy-genius and the "Mark Zuckerberg of the online underground." [...]

Poole revealed in 2016 that he'd joined Google as a continuation of his work, and in a now-removed post, stated he'd use his "experience from a dozen years of building online communities" and "grow in ways one simply cannot on their own." He joined as product manager in the photos and streams unit, which oversaw social networking efforts under VP Bradley Horowitz at the time. That sparked speculation that the company hired him to help it revamp its social media ambitions, some of which aimed to compete with Facebook. Poole jumped between several different roles during his five years. At one point, he reportedly became a partner at Google's in-house start-up incubator, Area 120, which was just getting off the ground in 2016. He then became a product manager in Google's Maps division, according to Crunchbase.

Still smarting from last month's dump of phone numbers belonging to 500 million Facebook users, the social media giant has a new privacy crisis to contend with: a tool that, on a massive scale, links Facebook accounts with their associated email addresses, even when users choose settings to keep them from being public. Wired reports: A video circulating on Tuesday showed a researcher demonstrating a tool named Facebook Email Search v1.0, which he said could link Facebook accounts to as many as 5 million email addresses per day. The researcher -- who said he went public after Facebook said it didn't think the weakness he found was "important" enough to be fixed -- fed the tool a list of 65,000 email addresses and watched what happened next. "As you can see from the output log here, I'm getting a significant amount of results from them," the researcher said as the video showed the tool crunching the address list. "I've spent maybe $10 to buy 200-odd Facebook accounts. And within three minutes, I have managed to do this for 6,000 [email] accounts."

The researcher [...] said that Facebook Email Search exploited a front-end vulnerability that he reported to Facebook recently but that "they [Facebook] do not consider to be important enough to be patched." Earlier this year, Facebook had a similar vulnerability that was ultimately fixed. "This is essentially the exact same vulnerability," the researcher says. "And for some reason, despite me demonstrating this to Facebook and making them aware of it, they have told me directly that they will not be taking action against it."

In a statement, Facebook said: "It appears that we erroneously closed out this bug bounty report before routing to the appropriate team. We appreciate the researcher sharing the information and are taking initial actions to mitigate this issue while we follow up to better understand their findings." A Facebook representative didn't respond to a question asking if the company told the researcher it didn't consider the vulnerability important enough to warrant a fix. The representative said Facebook engineers believe they have mitigated the leak by disabling the technique shown in the video.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The European Union unveiled strict regulations on Wednesday to govern the use of artificial intelligence, a first-of-its-kind policy that outlines how companies and governments can use a technology seen as one of the most significant, but ethically fraught, scientific breakthroughs in recent memory. The draft rules would set limits around the use of artificial intelligence in a range of activities, from self-driving cars to hiring decisions, bank lending, school enrollment selections and the scoring of exams. It would also cover the use of artificial intelligence by law enforcement and court systems -- areas considered "high risk" because they could threaten people's safety or fundamental rights.

Some uses would be banned altogether, including live facial recognition in public spaces, though there would be several exemptions for national security and other purposes. The108-page policy is an attempt to regulate an emerging technology before it becomes mainstream. The rules have far-reaching implications for major technology companies that have poured resources into developing artificial intelligence, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, but also scores of other companies that use the software to develop medicine, underwrite insurance policies and judge credit worthiness. Governments have used versions of the technology in criminal justice and the allocation of public services like income support. Companies that violate the new regulations, which could take several years to move through the European Union policymaking process, could face fines of up to 6 percent of global sales.

The European Union regulations would require companies providing artificial intelligence in high-risk areas to provide regulators with proof of its safety, including risk assessments and documentation explaining how the technology is making decisions. The companies must also guarantee human oversight in how the systems are created and used. Some applications, like chatbots that provide humanlike conversation in customer service situations, and software that creates hard-to-detect manipulated images like "deepfakes," would have to make clear to users that what they were seeing was computer generated. [...] Release of the draft law by the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, drew a mixed reaction. Many industry groups expressed relief that the regulations were not more stringent, while civil society groups said they should have gone further.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After visits by unnamed masked intruders and the cancellation of its lease, Imaguru -- the country's key startup hub, event and co-working space in Minsk -- has effectively been shut down by the Lukashenko regime, which has led a brutal crackdown on its own people in recent months. But the company behind the space says it will defy the authorities and continue its activities online.

Since 2013, Imaguru had become known as being the birthplace of a large number of startups from Belarus, including MSQRD, acquired by Facebook in 2017 -- as well as a landing pad for international investors visiting the country. Startups that have emerged from the space have attracted over $100 million in investments in recent years. The "Imaguru Startup HUB" leased the space from "Horizon Holding" in 2013, when it took over a dilapidated building from a state-owned company. But on April 16, 2021, Horizon told Imaguru it was unilaterally terminating its lease and the startup space has been given until April 30 to vacate. Imaguru says there has been no reason given for the lease termination, despite Horizon calling Imaguru a "flagship" leasehold for its property business.

To outside observers, it looks like Horizon has come under pressure because of Imaguru's active support of the pro-democracy protests inside the country. In early March, unidentified men wearing masks broke into the office, "blocked the exit, put young event attendees against the wall, and brought them to the police station" said the company. [...] In recent months, the startup hub came out in solidarity with the protests inside the country following last year's tainted elections, recorded videos of solidarity with PandaDoc, who's employees have been jailed, and supported the general strike on October 26, 2020. In a statement, Imaguru said it is "not silent about lawlessness, repressions and persecution against civilians who defend their rights to an honest and fair choice ... Not silent about the regime shutting down the business, investment and startup environment ... Not silent about the massive relocation of startups from Belarus, about the catastrophe of this for the country and the role of the High Tech Park in this process."

As the 20-year-old International Space Station (ISS) starts showing its age, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov suggested Russia would back away from the ISS as early as 2025 to pursue a national space station. Science Magazine reports: Although he and other officials have since backpedaled from such a concrete date for withdrawal, Russian skepticism over the future of the ISS could complicate U.S. efforts to keep it operating until the end of the decade. "ISS partners would have a really hard time keeping the station functional without Russia," says Vitaly Egorov, an industry observer, writer, and former spokesperson for Dauria Aerospace, a Russian company.

On 18 April, Russia 1, a state TV channel, reported that Borisov told a meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, "We need to honestly inform our partners about leaving the ISS in 2025." In a statement to newswires released later that day, Borisov's office clarified his remarks and backtracked from the date. "A technical inspection is needed, and then we can make a decision and inform our partners," the statement said. But it reiterated that the ISS has run well past its original life span, and its condition "leaves much to be desired."

Seemingly downplaying Borisov's remarks this week, Dmitry Rogozin, who leads Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said on Monday that Russia would not pull out of the ISS until the proposed new station becomes functional. "Pauses are deadly for human spaceflight," he wrote in a Facebook post. Rogozin later added that the new station, which does not have a name yet, could be based on one of the modules initially planned for the ISS.