Twitter Is Helping Diabetes Patients Create New Treatment Devices
In a surprising twist of events, Twitter is helping to improve the quality of life for people with diabetes and other health issues. According to the researchers at the University of Utah Health, health communities are congregating on Twitter to share useful information about emerging technology, like the OpenAPS (open source artificial pancreas). Hacking the (Human) System It’s […]
Cambridge Analytica Files for Bankruptcy
By now, you’re probably quite familiar with Facebook’s data scandal involving Cambridge Analytica. Recently, the London-based company posted a statement on its website saying that it has been forced to file for bankruptcy after bad press from the whole ordeal. The Cost of Business Cambridge Analytica cited “the controversy” as the driving force behind its loss […]
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 […]
Tech Companies Stamp Out Neo-Nazis After Charlottesville
The events this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, shocked the nation, and Trump’s equivocating response threw salt in the wound. For many years now, the trend of political polarization has made common ground harder and harder to find, but it used to be that denouncing Nazis was as American as hot dogs, sparklers, and apple pie. […]
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 […]
Trump, Putin, and the Absurd “Cyber Security Unit”
Cybersecurity issues have been weighing on the minds of Seattle IoT app developers lately, especially in the aftermath of the recent WannaCry and Petya ransomware attacks. The general public is not yet panicking, but people are certainly growing more aware of how vulnerable their digital information is. In this era of increased alertness to hacks […]
It’s Twitter vs the Government in a Battle Over Free Speech
As if President Trump’s relationship to tech wasn’t already fraught enough, Twitter announced yesterday that it is filing a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for attempting to unmask the anonymous user (or users) behind the @ALT_USCIS account. One of the several rogue government agency accounts that have popped up since the election to […]