Category: misinformation
ActiveFence comes out of the shadows with $100M in funding and tech that detects online harm, now valued at $500M+
Online abuse, disinformation, fraud and other malicious content is growing and getting more complex to track. Today, a startup called ActiveFence, which has quietly built a tech platform to suss out threats as they are being formed and planned, to make it easier for trust and safety teams to combat…
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Twitter tests more attention-grabbing misinformation labels
Twitter is considering changes to the way it contextualizes misleading tweets that the company doesn’t believe are dangerous enough to be removed from the platform outright. The company announced the test in a tweet Thursday with an image of the new misinformation labels. Within the limited test, those labels will…
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Indivisible is training an army of volunteers to neutralize political misinformation
The grassroots Democratic organization Indivisible is launching its own team of stealth fact-checkers to push back against misinformation — an experiment in what it might look like to train up a political messaging infantry and send them out into the information trenches. Called the “Truth Brigade,” the corps of volunteers…
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Facebook changes misinfo rules to allow posts claiming COVID-19 is man-made
Facebook made a few noteworthy changes to its misinformation policies this week, including the news that the company will now allow claims that COVID was created by humans — a theory that contradicts the previously prevailing assumption that humans picked up the virus naturally from animals. “In light of ongoing…
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At social media hearing, lawmakers circle algorithm-focused Section 230 reform
Rather than a CEO-slamming sound bite free-for-all, Tuesday’s big tech hearing on algorithms aimed for more of a listening session vibe — and in that sense it mostly succeeded. The hearing centered on testimony from the policy leads at Facebook, YouTube and Twitter rather than the chief executives of those…
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For VC Hans Tung, the personal becomes public in a growing campaign to ‘stop Asian hate’
Longtime venture capitalist Hans Tung is a big guy. His size might just be lifesaving. A first-generation Taiwanese-American who came to the U.S. and to LA specifically in 1984, it was a fraught time for the then 14-year-old. Two years earlier, a 27-year-old, Chinese-American draftsman named Vincent Chin was beaten…
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