Crime/Legal Action

Meta Platformswill start fully encrypting messages on Facebook and Instagram by default, moving ahead with a privacy measure that government officials and others have warned could hide illegal activity by child predators and other criminals.The social-media giant starting this week will begin automatically shifting Facebook users to so-called end-to-end encryption for their messages, according to people familiar with the matter, with the change being rolled out over the course of weeks. Direct messages on Instagram also…

Facebookand Instagram recommend sexual content to underage users and promote minors’ accounts to apparent child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit against parent company Meta Platforms and its CEO.The civil lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New Mexico state court, alleges that “Meta has allowed Facebook and Instagram to become a marketplace for predators in search of children upon whom to prey.” It also claims that Meta has failed to implement protections against usage by children below the age of 13 and has…

Updated Dec. 5, 2023 3:49 pm ETA group of activist nuns filed an unusual shareholder lawsuit to pressure gun maker Smith & Wessonto drastically change the way it markets, makes and sells its popular version of the AR-15 rifle.The so-called shareholder derivative action, which the nuns filed in Nevada state court Tuesday against publicly traded Smith & Wesson, alleges that company leaders are putting shareholders at risk. They argue the leaders are exposing the company to liability by the way they have made and…

The recent breach of 23andMeuser accounts shows a simple yet powerful truth about data security: Don’t reuse passwords, people.The DNA test-kit company on Monday reported a hacker accessed 14,000 accounts because of password reuse, exposing information belonging to approximately 6.9 million people. The 23andMe computer network wasn’t breached and wasn’t the source of these compromised credentials, a company spokesman said in a statement. The company first disclosed the incident in October and has been investigating since…

Listen to article(2 minutes)MetaPlatforms has spent months trying to fix child-safety problems on Instagram and Facebook, but it is struggling to prevent its own systems from enabling and even promoting a vast network of pedophile accounts.The social-media giant set up a child-safety task force in June after The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed that Instagram’s algorithms connected a web of accounts devoted to the creation, purchasing and…

TikTok won a reprieve in Montana after a judge ruled a state law banning the app can’t go into effect in January. A federal judge on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law, which was passed by the Montana legislature earlier this year, pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by the social-media company. The legality of the ban itself will be decided later in a bench trial that has yet to be scheduled.Copyright ©2023Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8…

Bari Weiss realized that her news startup, the Free Press, was attracting a lot of attention with its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war when famous people started citing its work on social media.Music executive Scooter Braun shared a Free Press video about a hostage taken by Hamas. Comedian Chelsea Handler shared on Instagram Free Press’s “Voices from Gaza” video that showed a young Gazan describing Hamas as a barrier that must be removed. Cookbook author Jessica Seinfeldposted a column by Weiss about antisemitism…

Elon Musk said that an advertising boycott over his posts that he said were misperceived as antisemitic would kill his social-media platform X.  “If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money. Go f—- yourself,” Musk said during an interview at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday. Copyright ©2023Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 Elon Musk said that an advertising boycott over his posts that he said were misperceived as…

Listen to article(2 minutes)Instagram’s Reels video service is designed to show users streams of short videos on topics the system decides will interest them, such as sports, fashion or humor. The Meta Platforms-owned social app does the same thing for users its algorithm decides might have a prurient interest in children, testing by The Wall Street Journal showed.Copyright ©2023Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 Listen to article(2 minutes)Instagram’s Reels video…

Nov. 21, 2023 10:07 am ETX sued Media Matters for America after the left-leaning media watchdog group reported ads appeared near antisemitic and pro-Nazi content on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter.X alleged in its lawsuit filed in federal court Monday that Media Matters was orchestrating a smear campaign to drive away advertisers. Copyright ©2023Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 Nov. 21, 2023 10:07 am ETX sued Media Matters for America after the…