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False earthquake alerts went off on Wednesday on Android smartphones in Iran as the country continues to grapple with nationwide protests. Authorities offered conflicting accounts as to why the incident happened. Colonel Ramin Pashaei, deputy chief of Iran's cyber police, told Iranian state television that only Android phones received the false alert. He blamed testing at state-owned service provider Iran Mobile Communications for the alert.Meanwhile, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency described the incident as a hack and…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeNancy Meyers has shut down false reports of a forthcoming sequel to her 2006 romcom The Holiday. Starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, the director’s cult classic follows two heartbroken women who, after swapping homes, connect with romantic pick-me-ups.On Tuesday (6 December), reports circulated that stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet had “signed on” for a sequel toThe Holiday that…

Google's Jigsaw subsidiary is launching a new anti-misinformation project in India, aimed at preventing misleading information that has been blamed for inciting violence, a top executive said.The initiative will use "prebunking" videos – designed to counter false claims before they become widespread – circulated on the company's YouTube platform and other social media sites.Google's efforts to challenge the spread of misinformation mark a contrast with rival Twitter which is cutting its trust and safety teams, despite new…

False advertising can be really lethal and this was learnt by Ford India in a rather hard manner when the Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum in Thrissur ordered it to pay approx Rs 3.10 lakh to the complainant in this regard. The American automaker had advertised that the diesel version of Ford Classic delivers a mileage in excess of 32 kmpl but the complainant, Soudhamini PP, could only achieve as much as 16 kmpl. Hence, she filed a complaint under Section 12 (1) of the Consumer Protection Act of 1986.Also Read: Ford…

Twitter will no longer enforce its policy against COVID-19 misinformation, raising concerns among public health experts and social media researchers that the change could have serious consequences if it discourages vaccination and other efforts to combat the still-spreading virus.Eagle-eyed users spotted the change Monday night, noting that a one-sentence update had been made to Twitter's online rules: "Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.”By Tuesday, some…

Exposure to elite misinformation is associated with the use of toxic language and moral outrage. Shown is the relationship between users’ misinformation-exposure scores and (a) the toxicity of the language used in their tweets, measured using the Google Jigsaw Perspective API, and (b) the extent to which their tweets involved expressions of moral outrage, measured using the algorithm from ref. 28. Extreme values are winsorized by 95% quantile for…

When so much current movie-making is risk-averse, sanitised, cinema by consensus, you have to admire a film that takes such an ambitious and unfettered approach to storytelling. You don’t, however, have to like it. I’ve watched Alejandro Iñárritu’s latest – the wildly uneven, Fellini-esque Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths – twice. That’s a little shy of six hours of my life (Iñárritu cut about 20 minutes from the film after its premiere). It’s audacious, bold film-making, a highly personal work that is…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new study in Social Science Quarterly found that racial resentment plays a strong role in leading Americans to express confidence in misinformed beliefs about policy issues associated with race or evaluated through racial lenses—such as human-caused climate change or the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic—but not on less racialized issues—such as the safety of childhood vaccines.…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Asian Americans are widely stereotyped as studious, smart and hard-working. As minorities who have managed to overcome racial obstacles to success. As evidence that affirmative action is no longer necessary—or, even, that it hurts the very types of students it's meant to protect. The U.S. Supreme…

Vietnam's information minister said authorities had tightened regulations to deal with "false" content on social media platforms so that it must be taken down within 24 hours instead of 48 hours previously. The new rules will enshrine Vietnam's position as one of the world's most stringently controlled regimes for social media firms and will strengthen the ruling Communist Party's hand as it cracks down on "anti-state" activity. Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung told parliament there was risk…