Internet & Websites - Page 11

Iran is currently under protest as thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the fuel price jump.

Iranian people have taken to the streets to express their concern over the fuel price jump that saw the prices of fuel rise over 50%. In response to the wide-spread disapproval of the fuel price hike, the Iranian government has decided to switch off internet access in the country in an effort to block communication between protesters. The blocking of the internet also makes it extremely hard for journalists to share news regarding the size of the protests.

At the moment, there are only small pockets of internet connection available, and people within these pockets are managing to get the word out about the recent events occurring at ground zero. While that might sound like there is still internet available, it cannot be stressed enough how rare the connection is. The Iranian government hasn't officially acknowledged that it has shut off internet access.

Twitch has released a new introduction application for new streamers and ones that have just started - introducing Twitch Studio, a streamer's best-friend.

Twitch Studio is currently available for download and takes new streamers through an extremely easy to follow introduction process into streaming. It begins with a guided setup where the app detects microphones, webcams, monitor and streaming resolution, streaming display, templates, and bit rates.

The app also gives users the ability to customize their streaming template while also integrating alerts, programmable keys, activity feeds, and chats. It should be noted that the app is only available to download if your operating system is Windows 7 or above. Here is a link to the Twitch website for further information.

Everyday efforts are being made towards the creation of 'quantum internet,' and now a new network protocol has been developed that bring us even closer to its fruition.

UAB researchers have managed to face one of the many problems that are present when designing a quantum internet connection - optimizing automated information treatment protocols to work with quantum data sets. The researchers have created an optimal procedure that has the ability to be able to identify quantum data sets. This is done through a quantum network protocol that can identify common underlying probability distributions and organize them into recognizable patterns.

An example of a classical computer doing this is a simple street microphone test that has multiple sounds occurring at the same time. The computer recognizes patterns and can differentiate the sounds of a conversation, traffic, and cars. What the researchers at UAB were able to do is compare the performance of classic computers and their protocols, versus quantum protocols. The findings were that quantum protocols clearly outperform classical protocols; this was mainly present in large data sets.

AT&T has been caught out slowing down internet speeds, and have agreed to pay $60 million in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

In a prepared statement by Andrew Smith, the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection its detailed that AT&T misled internet customers by charging them for "unlimited" data plans, but inhibited overall download speeds. The settlement also details that any consumers who signed up for one of these plans before 2011 are entitled to "partial refunds".

Moving forward, the FTC has said that AT&T must disclose to customers any restrictions on speed, etc., "The disclosures need to be prominent, not buried in fine print or hidden behind hyperlinks." The FTC says that AT&T's speed restriction on "unlimited" plans are estimated to have affected more than 3.5 million customers as of 2014. "AT&T promised unlimited data -- without qualification -- and failed to deliver on that promise," said Smith.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Twitter not too long ago that the social networking giant was going to stop all political advertising outside of non-partisan exceptions.

The company will have its finished policy ready by November 15 and will enforce its new political advertising ban starting November 22. Dorsey said the decision was made from both principles and practical realities, saying that a tweet about politics should reach its desired audience without being "compromised by money".

As for the business side of things, Twitter reportedly only made less than $3 million in political advertising spend during the 2018 US midterms. But I'd dare say that things are much different now leading into the 2020 elections in the US, especially when one of the most powerful people on Twitter just so happens to the the President of the United States.

Now days, censorship is becoming more than abundant on the internet and while most websites or content creators are bending the knee to the rule makers, BBC has decided to take a different stance.

In an effort to stand-up against the current and coming censorship laws, the BBC has announced that they have created a dark web mirror-site that can only be accessed by the Tor browser. According to the recent BBC post, users who decide to use this dark web variant will not have to worry about "government surveillance and censorship".

This is especially true for countries that have blocked BBC, "China, Iran and Vietnam are among those who have tried to block access to the BBC News website". BBC also details that for users to visit their website they must first download the Tor browser, and then place the following link their search engine. "bbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onion". It should be noted that this link won't work in common web browsers. If you are interested in a full explanation of what Tor is, check out BBC's full post here.

Stalking on public Instagram accounts is no doubt a massive thing that people without Instagram accounts do. Now its almost impossible with this very small but extremely impact-full change.

In early October, Instagram decided to remove the 'Following' tab from its app in an effort to keep Instagram users' activity private. Now the company is moving towards not letting people browse public Instagram profiles without having an Instagram account.

Originally, normal people could search up a persons Instagram profile that they knew was under 'public' and browse through all of their photos and videos. Now, after a certain amount of videos, most likely one or two scrolls, Instagram will force pop-up a request to log-in or create an account. This pop-up cannot be navigated away from, essentially stopping any further Instagram stalking from happening until the user joins Instagram.

A new announcement has come out from Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg regarding his views on freedom of speech. He says he will be addressing the public via a livestream tomorrow.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has taken to his official Facebook page to post a status update that says he has been writing a new speech about his views on voice and free expression. Zuckerberg says that this speech is the "the most comprehensive take I've written about my views, why I believe voice is important, how giving people voice and bringing people together go hand in hand, how we might address the challenges that more voice and the internet introduce, and the major threats to free expression around the world."

Zuckerberg continues in his post to say that this speech will contain much of what he has learned over years by focusing on these subjects. The CEO also says that this speech has taken him a lot of time to form and that its an "unfiltered take" on how he thinks about these extremely serious questions. For those interested in tuning into the livestream, Zuckerberg says that he will be going live on Facebook at 10am PT / 1pm ET.

Jennifer Aniston has taken the leap and officially joined Instagram, and the first photo that she has posted is of the famous Friends cast!

Friends star Jennifer Aniston that played Rachael in the massively popular TV show has joined Instagram, and upon her arrival the actress has already amassed more than 3 million followers in just eight hours. At the time of writing this Aniston has hit 4.7 million followers, and the first picture that has been posted is of Friends cast - Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Matthew Perry.

Aniston's first image has been captioned "And now we're Instagram FRIENDS too. HI INSTAGRAM". It seems this image is the most recent photo of the Friends cast being together, and comment support for the decision of Aniston joining Instagram has come in droves from fellow celebrities. Ellen DeGeneres said "I'm so glad they're still there for you." Kate Hudson also wrote, "Whoa girl!!!! Here we go!" If you want to follow Jennifer Aniston on Instagram, a link can be found here.

Facebook users have dealt with multitudes of scams and fake profiles over the years.

Some of these things users have dealt with are messages from friends who had already been compromised. Most of these end up direct messaging you a link to compromise you as well To all together scam or fake profiles. Fake profiles can range from a loved one who had passed to even someone you are already friends with. As it turns out, there is a new bug (or feature?) on Facebook where users are reporting a scam or fake profile and being locked out of their accounts.

This was brought up by several news reporting sites but most notable is to simply follow the hashtag #FacebookLockout and see for yourself.

Snapchat want users to be able to easily share Reddit content with their user-base, as their new update to the sharing options on Reddit will allow users to distribute content to their snap-followers with a couple of button presses.

For this new feature to work, users must have both the Snapchat and Reddit app installed on their iOS or Android device. Reddit users will then be able to select the "share" button on a Reddit post and then find Snapchat. If Snapchat is selected, Snapchat's camera will be pulled up and here is where users will be able to decide whether or not to share the Reddit story with a select amount of users or add it to the Snapchat story.

According to Vaibhav Sahgal, Reddit's head of growth product, "Snapchat is the first platform partner with whom we're testing a content sharing integration, and we're excited to see how the feature will shape the sharing habits and experiences among our users." At the moment, the sharing option on Reddit is limited to 'safe-for-work' subedits and is only available on iOS. The feature should be rolled out to Android devices at a later date.

8chan was gone, but it looks like it is about to return and possibly be re-branded into 8kun -- according to the official Twitter account of 8chan. Check out this tweet, with the video having 277,000 views at the time of writing:

Nothing is official yet, but the video clearly displays '8kun' in different animations -- so we could expect 8kun.com or 8kun.org or 8kun.net to make an appearance, but if you visit 8kun.com you're greeted with an Apache 2 Test Page.

What is 'kun'? Well, it is one of the titles that are given to Japanese people to address each other, in the same wway 'san', 'chan', and 'sama' are used. Kun is the 'informal and mostly used for males, such as boys or juniors at work. It is used by superiors to inferiors, by males of the same age and status to each other, and in addressing male children. In business settings junior women may also be addressed as kun by superiors' according to this website.

Back in March, Facebook announced plans to bring more privacy to not only their main platform but all their other services as well. This new privacy would come in the form of encryption for messages.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is now set to make an announcement regarding Facebook's encryption plans, and according to a signed draft that BuzzFeed News and the New York Times obtained before publication, the DOJ will be halting the encryption process. Attorney General William Barr is said to make the request in an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday. The draft also shows signatures from Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel and Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton.

The main concern by the DOJ and others who have signed the letter is that if Facebook roll out its end-to-end encryption across all of its messaging platforms (WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger), that law enforcement will be hindered in tracking illegal activity on the platforms. Which directly connects into this recent report about child sex abuse being rampant on Facebook Messenger. The DOJ letter argues that Facebook should be providing law enforcement agencies "lawful access to content in a readable and usable format". In other words, law enforcement agencies want back-door access to the messaging apps content even if the messages are 'encrypted'.

With The Pirate Bay being the home to many illegal torrents and file sharing methods, Facebook has lodged an all out war against any links directed to the website.

According to TorrentFreak who noticed the update to Facebook, Pirate Bay related links were blocked from being sent from one Facebook account to another. But now in an effort from social media companies to crack down on the distribution of copyrighted content, Facebook has blocked the sharing of any links that are directed to the Pirate Bay in timeline posts or in chat messages.

This newly released blockade carries over to Facebook Messenger as well, and if a link is attempted to be shared among users this message will come up in the chat: "You can't share this link. Your post couldn't be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards." This isn't the first time The Pirate Bay has been blocked by Facebook, ten years ago the site only prevented people from linking to torrent pages, but now users can't even link to its landing home page.

A new report out of The New York Times has connected the use of Facebook Messenger to the reports of child sex abuse online.

According to "people familiar with the reports" out of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sex abuse online, an immense 12 million of those source back to Facebook Messenger. Back in March, Facebook announced its new initiative to make their platform more secure, and while this effort would benefit majority of the user-base, throughout its execution nefarious users would also become more secure.

Encrypting messengers on their own platform would make it much more difficult for the company to track abusers and sexual predators, which would greatly influence the fact that Facebook is the majority holder when it comes to reports on their platform. Zuckerberg said back in March, "Encryption is a powerful tool for privacy, but that includes the privacy of people doing bad things. When billions of people use a service to connect, some of them are going to misuse it for truly terrible things like child exploitation, terrorism, and extortion."

There are people out there that get triggered (no, really) when their social media posts don't get as many likes as they wanted, or less likes than someone else. Facebook has a solution -- remove all Likes.

Starting tomorrow in Australia, Facebook will hide Like counts on posts. We knew Facebook was working on this a little while ago, but now we'ere here and while the Likes will be hidden from the public the author can still see how many people Liked their posts.

Instagram is also testing something similar by hiding its Likes, and remember Instagram is owned by Facebook so we're seeing similar internal changes being made across both platforms. The end goal here from Facebook is they want you to not feel like you can't express yourself, and not have people judge posts by the stories you share, or the amount of Likes there are.

Facebook has come out at the Atlantic Festival in Washington DC to speak about how they are going to be preventing outside interference in elections and the companies attitude towards political speech on their platform.

According to Nick Clegg, VP of Gloabl Affairs and Communications at Facebook, the company relies on 'third-party fact-checkers' to help reduce the spread of fake news and misinformation. However, Facebook recognizes politicians differently than normal users, saying that "We don't believe, however, that it's an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny. That's why Facebook exempts politicians from our third-party fact-checking program".

Clegg says during his speech that "I want to be really clear today - we do not submit speech by politicians to our independent fact-checkers, and we generally allow it on the platform even when it would otherwise breach our normal content rules." He continues and says there is exemptions to this rule and that's when the speech endangers people and where they take money. Full statement "Of course, there are exceptions. Broadly speaking they are two-fold: where speech endangers people; and where we take money, which is why we have more stringent rules on advertising than we do for ordinary speech and rhetoric."

Twitch streamer Quqco has announced that she has been banned from Twitch for violating the websites streaming guidelines, her offense comes under "sexually suggestive content or activities".

The ban happened when Quqco did a weekend stream in a cosplay outfit, and dressed up as the Street Fighter character Chun-Li. As both PCGamer and Kotaku note, most casual Street Fighter fans know that Chun-Li's outfit features a high thigh-cut slit. Quqco also was aware of this and even "brought [the skirt] one size up to ensure that the slit wasn't too high."

Quqco mentioned to Kotaku that this ban was a targeted attack by "a group of trolls" who have previously reported her in mass. She said "I am immediately reported because I've been branded a thot". From the ban, non-followers and followers of Quqco have taken to Twitter to express their concerns with Twitch's power to pick and choose what content has broken their Terms of Service and why.

Discord's Nitro subscription service has been live for over a year now and subscribers have had access to some free games in its library. Those games will now be ejected out of the service.

Discord has taken to their blog to announce a new reinvigorated plan focussed around bringing better quality of service to Nitro subscribers. The post reads that Discord has noticed that most of the Nitro subscribers weren't actually playing the available games, so they have decided that they will remove them next month.

The blog post reads "We learned a lot from all of you over the last year. Through your valuable feedback, it became clear that while we and some of you love these games, the truth is the vast majority of Nitro subscribers didn't play them."

Facebook is considering the removal of the Like counter from the News Feed, in something TechCrunch reports is to "protect users' from envy and dissuade them from self-censorship". Mmmhmm.

Jane Manchun Wong, a "reverse engineering master", noticed Facebook is prototyping the hidden Like counts within the Facebook app for Android. TechCrunch reached out to Facebook for clarification, with the site reporting that Facebook confirmed it is "considering testing removal of Like counts. However it's not live for users yet".

Instagram recently did this, and being Facebook-owned it makes sense that Facebook would follow suit. Instagram started the testing of hiding its Like counter in Canada, but spread quickly to Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, and Japan. I'm in Australia and can confirm the Like counter is hidden.