Worldcrunch
? Hej!* Welcome to Wednesday, where chaos hits Syria, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is accused of crimes against humanity and a social media giant plans to rebrand itself. For Spanish daily La Razon, reporter Paco Rodríguez takes us to the devastated town of Belchite, where visitors are reporting paranormal phenomenons. [*Danish] 7 THINGS TO […]
? добры дзень!* Welcome to Wednesday, where China/Taiwan tensions rise, Mark Zuckerberg responds to the Facebook whistleblower, and artworks by Muhammad Ali (gloves off) sell at auction. Kiev-based news website Livy Bereg also explains why the Pandora Papers revelations about global financial trickery may hit hardest in Ukraine. [*Dobry dzien – Belarusian] 7 THINGS […]
Google tried and failed to play the social media game. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the tech giant, which is doing just fine by sharing the tech market with California rival Facebook.
SAN FRANCISCO — On Amazon, customer comments can help a product surge in popularity. The online retail giant says that more than 99 percent of its reviews are legitimate because they are written by real shoppers who aren’t paid for them. But a Washington Post examination found that for some popular product categories, such as Bluetooth headphones and speakers, the vast majority of reviews appear to violate Amazon’s prohibition on paid reviews. Such reviews have certain characteristics, such as repetitive wording that people probably cut and paste in. Many of these fraudulent reviews originate on Facebook, where sellers seek shoppers […]
FOREST CITY — It was slow at the thrift shop, and manager Stephanie Henderson, 38, was looking at her laptop, trying to discover all that Facebook had collected on her: the posts, the memes, the photos, the messages to her family. She had been meaning to do this for weeks, ever since outrage over Facebook’s handling of user privacy first burst into her timeline. Now, she clicked a button. Her request for her Facebook data was sent. As she waited, Henderson tried to imagine what a decade’s worth of personal details might look like. “I’m afraid to see what Facebook […]
-OpEd- MUNICH — We are making the world a better place: That has been a central promise that helped Silicon Valley’s Internet giants seduce the public, on their way to gaining unprecedented power over our lives. That vow remains at the heart of the message of Mark Zuckerberg and his company Facebook. The goal, as […]
There’s simply no way for Mark Zuckerberg to fix the fake news and data abuse problems without destroying his social network’s business model.
Think of Facebook as akin to a delivery truck, noting that such trucks often carry guns, junk food and bad books.
As mourners gather today at a funeral for at least 200 of the 292 victims of the Aug. 24 quake in central Italy, the initial search for survivors has been replaced by the grim final task of recovering bodies and identifying the dead. As has happened in the wake of natural disasters in the past, […]
SPOTLIGHT: SARAJEVO RUBBLE TO TRUMP TOWER The pace of modern communication tells us that what’s here today is gone … tonight. The potential worldwide virality of any piece of digitally circulated information comes with the caveat that everything is also potentially, and eternally, invisible. The tree falling in some proverbial unseen forest of the Internet. […]
SPOTLIGHT: A LOADED TRANSCRIPT It’s hard to recall the last time the FBI flip-flopped so quickly. The release yesterday morning of transcripts of the Orlando nightclub gunman’s calls to 911 had initially withheld Omar Mateen’s references to his apparent Islamist motivations for the attack that killed 49 people. Outrage was immediate. House Republican Speaker Paul […]
A temporary ban on the Facebook-owned messaging service sent countless Brazilians into a momentary panic, revealing how rapidly communication habits have evolved.
SYRIA SLIDING BACK TO OPEN WAR Few had dared to consider the five-year-long conflict in Syria over. Yet for the past two months a fragile truce among some, though not all, the warring sides had offered a bit of hope that peace might not be too far off. Casualties were down, diplomats were talking, life […]
UK TO VOTE ON SYRIA AIRSTRIKES Photo: Andrew Parsons/i-Images/ZUMA British Members of Parliament are set to vote on whether the United Kingdom will join the United States, France and Russia and several other countries in carrying out airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. The vote is expected late Wednesday after a long debate in the House […]
BEIJING — If one were to think of the Internet as a person with flesh, blood and a soul, then what would be the source of its soul? The answer will be a very different one depending on which country’s Internet we are talking about. In the United States, a Time magazine article explored the […]
-OpEd- 

How important is intellectual property in the digital age? Not very, if the business strategies of industry luminaries like PayPal’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are any indication. Musk, the multi-talented entrepreneur behind PayPal, and more recently Tesla cars and SpaceX, has made it clear he considers Tesla’s impressive lead in battery and […]
With rumblings that young people are disenchanted with the social network, a reporter visits the Harvard University campus where Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook 10 years ago.
Worldcrunch MENLO PARK – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is spearheading a new initiative to bring Internet access to “the next five billion people,” those too poor or disconnected to be able to get online. The new global partnership, Internet.org, launches Wednesday, and also includes several major mobile phone companies. Here’s an introduction video: “Everything Facebook […]
Facebook is the upstart, Google is the grizzled veteran — and still the powerhouse — in the massive battle for online advertising dollars. But when the cash register rings, who gets the credit? That is the billion-dollar question in advertising these days—particularly in Internet advertising, where it’s easy to track clicks and links, but often […]
BERLIN – Social networks like Facebook make many things easier. You can find out right away if Alex got the job or not, and you can not only read about Marie’s vacation, but you can also see all those pictures of her on the beach, too. There’s also a downside to this. Researchers have conducted […]
European law may require right to anonymity. Will Zuckerberg’s ad-based business model “crumble”?
Seniors Demographic Reaches Social Media Tipping Point.