Are We Witnessing the Fall of Facebook?
Fake news, data privacy issues, mental health concerns… Facebook has seen its fair share of controversies and unfavorable headlines in recent months. But it hasn’t faced anything compared to what it’s up against now. Will the latest scandal about stolen personal information be the last straw for the behemoth social network? Keep Your Friends Close […]
Human Nature Spreads Fake News Faster Than the Truth
Who’s to blame for the spread of fake news? Common suspected culprits are Russian bots and social media platforms propagating false information without any checks in place. A recent study from MIT hints at a more disparaging truth — we don’t have anyone to blame but ourselves. The Numbers Don’t Lie “Falsehood diffused farther, faster, deeper, […]
Are Tech Titans Just Tools for Russian Meddling in U.S. Politics?
Social media platforms are powerful. There’s no denying that. Even in the early days of mobile app development, it was clear that this niche would be a dominant driving force in digital media. From influencers to marketers, it’s hard to remember a time when social media didn’t possess such a powerful ability to sway the […]
1.4 Million Twitter Users Tricked by Russian Spam Accounts in 2016 Election
Russian involvement in the 2016 United States presidential election has been a volatile point of contention for over a year now. It has plagued President Donald Trump’s tenure for its entirety so far, and will probably end up being one of the defining characteristics of this era in future history books. One of the most worrisome […]
Facebook Will Likely Have to Testify About Those Russian Ads
Any banking app developer online during last year’s contentious U.S. presidential election knows that the social media landscape was a mess. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, civic debate is now powered as much by memes and the dreaded fake news as much as it is an exchange of thoughts and ideas. But since […]
Airbnb Kicks Alt-Right Extremists to the Curb Before Protest
One of the recurring themes in the tech world during the Trump era so far is startups’ need to align their actions with their professed values. Twitter has had to find ways to fight trolling and abuse without completely squashing free speech. Facebook and Google are attempting to fight the fake news that propagated on […]
The Russian Hack of the Election Was Worse Than We Thought
Like most Americans, Chicago eHealth app developers have been watching with their mouths agape as the Russia investigation intensifies. With each new revelation, it seems more and more like the stuff of great fiction, or at least like the kind of conspiracy theory a kooky uncle would dream up. It would be entertaining if the […]
Facebook Looks for New Approaches to the Fake News Problem
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2016 was “surreal.” The Oxford English Dictionary went with “post-truth.” The Australian Macquarie Dictionary settled on “fake news.” No matter what term social media app developers prefer to use to define it, 2016 was the year that the conspiracies, propaganda, and outright hooey that used to be the purview […]
Startup Applies Tinder UI/UX to the Democratic Process
In a political season where it sometimes feels like everybody and their brother has run for the Republican presidential candidacy, Voter, a startup touted as “Tinder for the government,” brings a fresh breeze of simplicity to the decision-making process — on the voter’s end, anyway. Like any successful iPhone app developer, Voter looked at a […]