Month: December 2019
Facebook Has Banned Groups That Promote Flesh-Eating Fake Cancer Cures
Following a BuzzFeed News report, Facebook has banned several groups that promote and discuss black salve, a dangerous and unproven skin cancer treatment. The banned groups include the two largest, which had respectively around 21,000 and 12,000 members. According to Facebook, the groups were banned not for the rules prohibiting…
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Facebook Is Still Prioritizing Scale Over Safety
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Facebook’s growth at any cost mentality has birthed innumerable scandals over the past decade — election meddling, political discord, privacy invasion. Yet today, after repeated apologies and promises to do better, that mentality remains largely unchanged. BuzzFeed News has learned the company continues to evaluate…
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Facebook Is Investigating A Voter Engagement App Used By Italy’s Five Star Movement
LONDON — A voter engagement app used by the populist party that is the senior partner in Italy’s coalition government is being investigated by Facebook as part of a broader probe into potential historical data misuse. The Five Star Movement (M5S), an antiestablishment party that won the most seats in…
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Venmo Users Are Being Inundated With Payment Requests From Strangers
tech Spammers are targeting Venmo users who show up in the app’s public feed and flooding them with dozens of payment requests. By Nicole Nguyen Nicole Nguyen BuzzFeed News Reporter Last updated on December 16, 2019, at 12:39 p.m. ET Posted on December 12, 2019, at 7:01 p.m. ET On…
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Bogus Hypothyroid Cures Are Rampant Across Social Media
Pinterest Pinterest search results for “hypothyroidism.” “No, you are not crazy, lazy, or faking,” the Pinterest post says. “Just count…” The link leads to a post on the website HypothyroidMom.com called “300 hypothyroidism symptoms: count how many you have.” The post, which lists 307 symptoms, details nearly everything that could…
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Why Is “Death Stranding” The Video Game People Took Seriously This Year?
Kojima Productions Death Stranding is a video game that belongs to the eminently fashionable “open-world” genre, where you freely roam a large environment, except it doesn’t focus much on traditional combat. Instead, you play as a postapocalyptic deliveryman, Kevin Costner–in–The Postman–ing your way across a ravaged US with hundreds of…
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