Tech
Airbnb Said It’s Banning "Party Houses" After The Halloween Party Shooting That Killed Five People
Cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky said the company will have systems to flag "high-risk reservations" as well as form a "'party house rapid response team."
Tanya Chen
Gaggle Knows Everything About Teens And Kids In School
Gaggle monitors the work and communications of almost 5 million students in the US, and schools are paying big money for its services. Hundreds of company documents unveil a sprawling surveillance industrial complex that targets kids who can’t opt out.
Caroline Haskins
An Unidentified Government Spied On Dissidents In India Using A WhatsApp Exploit
Dozens of journalists, activists, and politicians were spied on in India. The Indian government hasn’t confirmed whether it ordered the hack.
Pranav Dixit
Your Dumb Tweets Are Getting Flagged To People Trying To Stop School Shootings
Schools are using a dragnet to scan social media for threats. They're finding a lot of jokes on Twitter.
Lam Thuy Vo
Students Are Going To Law School For Three Years To Get Executive JDs, But None Of Them Are Becoming Lawyers
A little-known and lightly regulated online school is offering students a three-year degree in the law with just one catch: They won’t be allowed to be lawyers after they graduate.
Venessa Wong
Apple’s New AirPods Pro Have Better Sound, Fit, And Noise Cancellation — But Not Battery Life Or Price
I covered the new AirPods Pro with my ear filth for the last 24 hours. Here’s how Apple’s new buds sound and feel — and whether they’re worth the cost.
Nicole Nguyen
Black Salve Is A Dangerous Fake Cancer Cure, But It Continues To Flourish In Facebook Groups
“Black salve” burns through human skin, but Facebook says that groups dedicated to the sham medicine don't violate its community guidelines.
Katie Notopoulos
Twitter Bans Political Ads As It Turns Up The Heat On Facebook
Twitter drops the hammer on political ads ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Alex Kantrowitz
Australia Wants To Use Face Scans To Unlock Online Porn
"It will be interesting to see how many politicians are looking at porn. And I think they would have some interesting fetishes."
Cameron Wilson
The Buffalo Chronicle Ran Facebook Ads Promoting Dubious Trudeau Stories
The Buffalo Chronicle paid to promote two of its highly dubious stories about Justin Trudeau.
Craig Silverman
398 New Emojis Are Officially Here And FYI They're Pretty Freakin' Great
I can't wait to start overusing the yawning emoji.
Ajani Bazile
The Australian Internet Community Says The Government Isn't Listening
As the Australian internet turns 30, digital rights groups are worried that policymakers aren’t paying attention to them.
Cameron Wilson
Facebook Failed The Rohingya In Myanmar. Now It May Be Repeating Its Mistakes In Assam.
A new report from human rights group Avaaz has found that “Facebook is being used as a megaphone for hate, pointed directly at vulnerable minorities.”
Pranav Dixit
A Google Staffer Helped Sell Trump's Family Separation Policy, Despite The Company Denials
“The idea that you could disassociate from a policy that consumed the entire department while you were deputy chief of staff is ridiculous,” one former DHS official told BuzzFeed News.
Ryan Mac
Twitter “Silenced” Dissenting Voices During Anti-Government Protests In Egypt
Dozens of accounts were suspended without reason during rare anti-government protests, new research shared with BuzzFeed News shows.
Megha Rajagopalan
Google Is Making A Big Change To The Way It Serves Search Results
Meet BERT, the machine-powered language processing technology, that Google executives said will better understand the context of search queries.
Nicole Nguyen
The 2010s Have Broken Our Sense Of Time
The rhythms of American life changed in the 2010s. How everything from TV to Trump to Instagram messed with your head just enough that time feels like it melted.
Katherine Miller
Google Removed Employee Questions About Its Hiring Of A Former DHS Staffer Who Defended The Muslim Travel Ban
“I find it ironic that leadership is worried about the hurt feelings of a single powerful person, but not about the message that their hiring has already sent to Googlers."
Ryan Mac
TikTok Users Are Finally Posting About Hong Kong, But Only To See If They'll Get Censored
BuzzFeed News found no evidence that TikTok blocks pro–Hong Kong democracy videos — or that many American teens were interested in the protests.
Ryan Broderick
Hundreds Of Teens Who Work At McDonald's Are Using TikTok To Vent About Their Jobs
"On everyone's videos SOMEONE always comments no wonder my food takes so long."
Cameron Wilson
Mark Zuckerberg Tied Himself In Knots Defending Facebook To Congress
The CEO struggled to answer basic questions about the site’s policies.
Alex Kantrowitz
Trolls Built A Trap Out Of Tulsi Gabbard’s Campaign — And Hillary Clinton Fell For It
When the former secretary of state accused a candidate barely polling at 2% of being a Russian asset, she showed she had learned nothing from the last election.
Ryan Broderick
A Top DHS Staffer Who Defended The Muslim Travel Ban Now Works At Google
Former DHS staffer Miles Taylor once defended a “tough” but “tailored” version of Trump’s controversial travel ban and served under Kirstjen Nielsen during the implementation of the family separation policy at the US–Mexico border.
Ryan Mac
Divorced Dad Facebook Groups Are Encouraging Men To Break The Law
"Facebook lawyers are, for many dads, the ‘go-to’ place."
Cameron Wilson
The Canadian Election’s Surprise Influencer Is A Buffalo Man Targeting Canadians With Viral Disinformation
Matthew Ricchiazzi has written debunked stories about Canadian politics and once told a US candidate he'd publish "negative articles about [their] opponents" for $400 apiece.
Jane Lytvynenko
As Marc Benioff Calls For A Better World, Salesforce Lawyers Are Doing The Opposite
Silicon Valley’s virtuous one wants tech to do as he says, not as he does.
Alex Kantrowitz
Rudy Giuliani: “I Don't Worry About Propaganda"
In an interview, the former New York mayor said he doubted online propaganda influenced his actions on Turkey — or anything else.
Ryan Broderick
Turkish Trolls Working For Erdogan Hijacked American Right-Wing Media — And Rudy Giuliani’s Brain
Here's how Turkish trolls infiltrated American conservative media, spread propaganda, and got Giuliani to fall for it.
Ryan Broderick
Andrew Yang Injected Silicon Valley’s Favorite Economic Idea Into The Democratic Debate. Silicon Valley Isn’t So Happy About That.
Universal basic income seems like an idea whose time has come — except to some of the very people pushing the idea in the first place.
Alex Kantrowitz
How A Massive Facebook Scam Siphoned Millions Of Dollars From Unsuspecting Boomers
From San Diego to the Philippines, a Republican digital marketing entrepreneur created one of the biggest Facebook scams of all time.
Craig Silverman
