Latino voters are coveted by both major parties. They also are a target for election misinformation
Experts expect a surge of misinformation targeting Spanish-speaking voters with a high-stakes presidential election in the fall as candidates vie for support from the rapidly growing number of Latino voters.
In rural Zimbabwe, a group of grandmothers counters alleged election intimidation, bias on WhatsApp
Ahead of national elections next week, some people in Zimbabwe's rural areas say they are facing intimidation from supporters of the long-ruling ZANU-PF party and a biased state-run media that restricts their options.
German watchdog bans Facebook from processing WhatsApp data
A German privacy regulator banned Facebook on Tuesday from gathering data on WhatsApp users, citing an update to its privacy policy that breaches stringent European data protection rules by allowing access to a lot more information on the chat appโs users.
WhatsApp growth slumps as rivals Signal, Telegram rise
FILE - This Friday, March 10, 2017, file photo shows the WhatsApp communications app on a smartphone, in New York. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)OAKLAND, Calif. โ Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram are seeing huge upticks in downloads from Apple and Googleโs app stores. Mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower said Wednesday that Signal saw 17.8 million app downloads on Apple and Google during the week of Jan. 5 to Jan. 12. WhatsApp, meanwhile, saw downloads shrink to 10.6 million, down from 12.7 million the week before. In that same period Telegram has seen about 755.2 million installations and WhatsApp a whopping 5.6 billion โ almost eight times as many as Telegram.
Q&A: What's next for Facebook in the antitrust case?
Whatever happens, experts expect a long-drawn out battle that Facebook is prepared to defend vigorously โ and with enormous resources. Facebook insists that its services provide useful benefits for users and that complaints about its power are misguided. Justice Department prosecutors are pursuing a separate antitrust case against Google, one that mirrors its case against Microsoft 20 years ago. Facebook doesn't operate the three companies as separate businesses and has been integrating functions of Instagram and WhatsApp with its main platform. While some original Instagram users deride the additions, others have come to appreciate them โ and might miss them if they were to disappear.
US antitrust siege of tech widens with lawsuits vs Facebook
The antitrust lawsuits were announced by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Regulators filed landmark antitrust lawsuits Wednesday against Facebook, the second major government offensive this year against once seemingly untouchable tech behemoths. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have come under scrutiny from Congress, federal regulators, state attorneys general and European authorities. โThe government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final,โ Facebook general counsel Jennifer Newstead said in a statement. Antitrust skeptics point to newer social media services such as TikTok and Snapchat as rivals that could โovertakeโ older platforms like Facebook.
US govt, states sue Facebook for 'predatory' conduct
Federal regulators and a group of states launched a landmark antitrust offensive against Facebook, accusing the social network of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors. Amazon and Apple also have been under investigation in Congress and by federal authorities for alleged anticompetitive conduct. Facebook called the government actions โrevisionist historyโ that punishes successful businesses and noted that the FTC cleared the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions years ago. James alleged Facebook had a practice of opening its site to third-party app developers, then abruptly cutting off developers that it saw as a threat. Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, bolstering the social network's business a month before its stock went public.