[AxisOfEasy] Study: Social Media Manipulation Rising Globally

• Facebook suspends another data analytics firm over privacy breaches
• Antitrust guns may be taking aim at Amazon
• A look at the Calisto trojan that targets MacOS
• Study: Social media manipulation rising globally
• Voter file breach leaves records in wide open S3 buckets
• Online tool detects if Twitter has shadowbanned your account
• EU fines Google 4.3 Billion euro over Android
• Meanwhile, in Canada: Toronto Hydro issues warning, Edmonton man arrested for Ponzi 

Facebook suspends another data analytics firm over privacy breaches

Looks like we have another Cambridge Analytica here: “Facebook announced on Friday that it is suspending data analytics firm Crimson Hexagon while it investigates whether the firm’s government contracts are in violation of the social-media giant’s policies on how public data is harvested and shared.” The story broke via Wall Street Journal, reporting that Facebook is  “investigating whether the analytics firm’s contracts with the U.S. government and a Russian nonprofit tied to the Kremlin violate the platform’s policies.”

Read: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-probing-how-analytics-firm-shares-public-user-data-1532104502 (subscription required)

Antitrust guns may be taking aim at Amazon

Apparently a vocal critic of Amazon’s purported monopoly stature was recently hired by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fueling speculation that the giant may come under antitrust scrutiny sooner or later. The source here requires a free registration to read the entire article, but there is also this New York Times article from May which raises the same issues.

This is deeply conflicting for me, as a self-declared small government libertarian I usually eschew interference and regulation, but after Amazon bought Whole Foods I suddenly realized that this is going beyond vertical integration. I don’t have the space to wax philosophical here, but Bruce Sterling’s “Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things” is a short, readable introduction to the concept of big tech platforms eating the world.

Read: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/business/amazon-the-elephant-in-the-antitrust-room.html

A look at the Calisto trojan that targets MacOS

Interesting, albeit highly technical look at the Calisto trojan that targets MacOS based computers. I learned something new reading it, namely that Apple had added System Integrity Protection (SIP) as of El Capitain, and that when it’s enabled it greatly hampers the effects of Calisto (but it’s still very bad to be infected with it).

You can check if SIP is enabled by simply typing “csrutil status” from a terminal window. To enable or disable it, see this tutorial.

Study: Social media manipulation rising globally

Formal, coordinated methods to manipulate public opinion via social media networks is on the rise, according to a report by the Oxford Internet Institute of Oxford University in England. The primary purveyors are political parties and government agencies who are using the systems “to spread junk news and disinformation, exercise censorship and control, and undermine trust in media, public institutions and science.” The research found that formally organized manipulation has “increased greatly” in up to 48 countries globally, and usually occurs around election times.

Further, despite efforts to reign these practices in, one of the report co-authors also expressed concern that “The problem with this is that these ‘task forces’ to combat fake news are being used as a new tool to legitimise censorship in authoritarian regimes” which makes for a double-edged sword.

(Related, I’m about 3/4 of the way through Jaron Lanier’s “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts” and I have to say it’s extremely cognizant and germane. So much so I’ll do a full post / review about it after I’m done.)

The full report: http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/cybertroops2018/