content moderation

There are things we can do. When our members tell us that they've had a negative interaction, whether it's any type of physical safety risk, assault, financial fraud, we act on those reports immediately. That’s a lot of what my team is going to be doing. A second critical piece of that is working with law enforcement. In Colombia, around the world, we want to make sure that we are empowering local law enforcement to actually get bad guys off the streets and off of our apps as well. And we are proactively referring…

Whether through the frowning high-definition face of a chimpanzee or a psychedelic, pink-and-red-hued doppelganger of himself, Reuven Cohen uses AI-generated images to catch people’s attention. "I've always been interested in art and design and video and enjoy pushing boundaries,” he says—but the Toronto-based consultant, who helps companies develop AI tools, also hopes to raise awareness of the technology’s darker uses.“It can also be specifically trained to be quite gruesome and bad in a whole variety of ways,” Cohen…

Soon after Elon Musk took control of Twitter, now called X, the platform faced a massive problem: Advertisers were fleeing. But that, the company alleges, was someone else’s fault. On Thursday that argument went before a federal judge, who seemed skeptical of the company's allegations that a nonprofit’s research tracking hate speech on X had compromised user security, and that the group was responsible for the platform’s loss of advertisers.The dispute began in July when X filed suit against the Center for Countering…

When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, he promised to stick up a middle finger to propriety. He ran roughshod over the platform, pulling hosting servers while they were still operational and ultimately firing about 80% of the company’s staff. Twitter’s eventual rebrand as X was then positioned by both Musk and his CEO, Linda Yaccarino, as a move toward a radically different app—one that goes beyond social media to also offer messaging, banking, shopping, and much more.But 16 months later, a number…

Elon Musk’s X halted searches for Taylor Swift this weekend after AI-generated, sexually explicit photos of the international pop superstar went viral on the platform. This is one of the few times X has meaningfully blocked controversial content on the platform, which has largely hidden behind claims of being a “free speech” platform to let its content run wild since Musk’s takeover.Did Elon Musk Regret Buying Twitter? | Walter Isaacson Interview“Something went wrong,” says X when you search for “Taylor Swift” on Monday…

Critics say that Meta has often caused serious psychological harm to younger users by exposing them to a variety of toxic and inappropriate content. Eating disorders, depression and even suicide have all been blamed on the company’s algorithms, and the calls to reform those algorithms have grown so loud lately that it’s apparently become impossible to ignore. Nobody’s Really Watching ReelsThe social media giant announced Tuesday new changes to its content filtering system, the likes of which are designed to steer younger…

If 2022 was the year the generative AI boom started, 2023 was the year of the generative AI panic. Just over 12 months since OpenAI released ChatGPT and set a record for the fastest-growing consumer product, it appears to have also helped set a record for fastest government intervention in a new technology. The US Federal Elections Commission is looking into deceptive campaign ads, Congress is calling for oversight into how AI companies develop and label training data for their algorithms, and the European Union passed…

A few years ago, Karine Mellata and Michael Lin met while working at Apple’s fraud engineering and algorithmic risk team. Both engineers, Mellata and Lin were involved with helping to address online abuse problems including spam, botting, account security and developer fraud for Apple’s growing customer base. Despite their efforts to develop new models to keep up with the evolving patterns of abuse, Mellata and Lin felt that they were falling behind — and stuck rebuilding core elements of their…

The EU announced "formal infringement proceedings" against Elon Musk's platform X on Monday, under a law designed to combat disinformation and hate after identifying suspect posts related to Hamas's October 7 attack in Israel. The action against the company formerly known as Twitter is the first against a major online platform since Brussels implemented the Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping piece of European Union legislation that strengthens online companies' responsibility for content moderation. The EU…

The European Union opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X on Monday examining the platform’s role in spreading ‘illegal content’ around the Israel and Hamas war. X has come under fire recently for antisemitic content on the platform, losing a slew of advertisers in the process.Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl Tweet“The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether X may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns,…