The U.S. Justice Department has indicted three North Korean computer programmers for trying to extort and steal more than $1.3 billion as part of a global cyber scheme that included the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.A Canadian American who allegedly laundered some of the stolen money also pleaded guilty in the scheme.North Koreans Park Jin Hyok, Jon Chang Hyok and Kim Il are charged with criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.Park, a computer programmer for North Korea’s intelligence service, was charged two years ago for his role in the Sony hack.That hack erased corporate data, obtained sensitive company emails among top Hollywood executives and forced the company to rebuild its entire computer network.The motivation for the hack was believed to be retaliation for the 2014 movie “The Interview,” which ridiculed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and even portrayed an assassination plot against him.As part of the scheme, the Justice Department said, the three plotted to steal more than $1.2 billion from banks in Vietnam, Mexico, Malta and other places. They also stole $75 million from a Slovenian cryptocurrency company and $11.8 million of digital currency from a New York financial services company.”The scope of the criminal conduct by the North Korean hackers was extensive and long-running, and the range of crimes they have committed is staggering,” Tracy L. Wilkison, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. “The conduct detailed in the indictment are the acts of a criminal nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and obtain money to prop up its regime.”The three are also believed to have been behind the 2017 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack, which affected computers in 150 countries and most notably crippled the computer network of Britain’s National Health Service.The three North Koreans are unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom.  
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A slew of attractive toy robots on the market today are teaching children important language and science, technology, engineering and math skills, while keeping them entertained. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.Producer: Julie Taboh/Adam Greenbaum     
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The information technology giant Google has agreed to pay an Australian media company to host news material ahead of a planned mandatory bargaining code. Google’s deal with Seven West Media, which publishes the Perth-based West Australian newspaper and other titles, is the first of seven such arrangements the tech giant is expected to make in Australia.  A law being introduced this week in federal parliament in Canberra would require large technology companies to pay to use Australian news stories.  The legislation would make Australia the first country to force big tech firms to pay for news content.  Google, which had called the law unworkable, and Facebook have threatened to downgrade their services to Australians or even walk away. They have argued that by using stories from other publishers they generate more internet traffic for the websites run by traditional media outlets.  But in an apparent softening of that stance, Google has reached an agreement with Seven West Media, reportedly worth $23 million a year.  Belinda Barnett is a lecturer in media at Swinburne University of Technology, a public research university based in Melbourne. She believes it is a good result for the Australian company. “It does sound like they have come up with a fairly lucrative deal for them, around AUD$30 million, but that figure has not been confirmed yet. Seven West owns quite a lot of regional outlets as well. So, it has the potential to benefit the regional news outlets that it owns and the journalists employed by them,” Barnett  said.The Australian government said a deal with Facebook was “very close.” As their advertising revenues collapsed, traditional broadcasting and publishing companies have for years complained that social media platforms have benefited from their quality reporting without paying for it.  
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Parler, a social media service popular with American right-wing users that virtually vanished shortly after the U.S. Capitol riot, relaunched on Monday and said its new platform was built on “sustainable, independent technology.”Known as an alternative to Twitter, Parler has struggled after Amazon stripped it of its web-hosting services on January 11 over Parler’s refusal to remove posts inciting violence. Citing the same reason, Google and Apple also removed the Parler app from their stores.  In a statement announcing the relaunch, Parler said it had appointed Mark Meckler as its interim chief executive, replacing John Matze who was fired by the board this month. Despite the relaunch, the website was still not opening for many users and the app was not available for download on mobile stores run by Apple and Alphabet-owned Google.  While several users took to rival Twitter to complain they were unable to access the service, a few others said they could access their existing account.Parler, which asserted it once had over 20 million users, said it would bring its current users back online in the first week and would be open to new users in the next week. Founded in 2018, the app has styled itself as a “free speech-driven” space and largely attracted U.S. conservatives who disagree with rules around content on other social media sites. On Monday, Parler said its new technology cut its reliance on “so-called Big Tech” for its operations. It’s unclear what company was hosting Parler.  “Parler is being run by an experienced team and is here to stay,” said Meckler, who had co-founded the Tea Party Patriots, a group that emerged in 2009 within the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement and helped elect dozens of Republicans. It is also backed by hedge fund investor Robert Mercer, his daughter Rebekah Mercer and conservative commentator Dan Bongino. 
 
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When NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside a space capsule, hits the final stretch of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it is set to emit a radio alert as it streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere.   By the time that signal reaches mission managers some 204 million kilometers away at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, Perseverance will already have landed on the Red Planet — hopefully in one piece.   The six-wheeled rover is expected to take seven minutes to descend from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the planet’s surface in less time than the 11-minute-plus radio transmission to Earth. Thus, Thursday’s final, self-guided descent of the rover spacecraft is set to occur during a white-knuckled interval that JPL engineers affectionately refer to as the “seven minutes of terror.”   Al Chen, head of the JPL descent and landing team, called it the most critical and most dangerous part of the $2.7 billion mission.   “Success is never assured,” Chen told a recent news briefing. “And that’s especially true when we’re trying to land the biggest, heaviest and most complicated rover we’ve ever built to the most dangerous site we’ve ever attempted to land at.”   Much is riding on the outcome. Building on discoveries of nearly 20 U.S. outings to Mars dating back to Mariner 4’s 1965 flyby, Perseverance may set the stage for scientists to conclusively show whether life has existed beyond Earth, while paving the way for eventual human missions to the fourth planet from the sun. A safe landing, as always, comes first.   Success will hinge on a complex sequence of events unfolding without a hitch — from inflation of a giant, supersonic parachute to deployment of a jet-powered “sky crane” that will descend to a safe landing spot and hover above the surface while lowering the rover to the ground on a tether.   “Perseverance has to do this all on her own,” Chen said. “We can’t help it during this period.”   If all goes as planned, NASA’s team would receive a follow-up radio signal shortly before 1 p.m. Pacific time confirming that Perseverance landed on Martian soil at the edge of an ancient, long-vanished river delta and lakebed.   Science on the surface From there, the nuclear battery-powered rover, roughly the size of a small SUV, will embark on the primary objective of its two-year mission — engaging a complex suite of instruments in the search for signs of microbial life that may have flourished on Mars billions of years ago.   Advanced power tools will drill samples from Martian rock and seal them into cigar-sized tubes for eventual return to Earth for further analysis — the first such specimens ever collected by humankind from the surface of another planet.   Two future missions to retrieve those samples and fly them back to Earth are in the planning stages by NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency.   Perseverance, the fifth and by far most sophisticated rover vehicle NASA has sent to Mars since Sojourner in 1997, also incorporates several pioneering features not directly related to astrobiology.   Among them is a small drone helicopter, nicknamed Ingenuity, that will test surface-to-surface powered flight on another world for the first time. If successful, the four-pound (1.8-kg) whirlybird could pave the way for low-altitude aerial surveillance of Mars during later missions.   Another experiment is a device to extract pure oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, a tool that could prove invaluable for future human life support on Mars and for producing rocket propellant to fly astronauts home.   ‘Spectacular’ but treacherous The mission’s first hurdle after a 293-million-mile (472-million-km) flight from Earth is delivering the rover intact to the floor of Jerezo Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-km-wide) expanse that scientists believe may harbor a rich trove of fossilized microorganisms.   “It is a spectacular landing site,” project scientist Ken Farley told reporters on a teleconference.   What makes the crater’s rugged terrain — deeply carved by long-vanished flows of liquid water — so tantalizing as a research site also makes it treacherous as a landing zone.   The descent sequence, an upgrade from NASA’s last rover mission in 2012, begins as Perseverance, encased in a protective shell, pierces the Martian atmosphere at 12,000 miles per hour (19,300 km per hour), nearly 16 times the speed of sound on Earth.   After a parachute deployment to slow its plunge, the descent capsule’s heat shield is set to fall away to release a jet-propelled “sky crane” hovercraft with the rover attached to its belly.   Once the parachute is jettisoned, the sky crane’s jet thrusters are set to immediately fire, slowing its descent to walking speed as it nears the crater floor and self-navigates to a smooth landing site, steering clear of boulders, cliffs and sand dunes.   Hovering over the surface, the sky crane is due to lower Perseverance on nylon tethers, sever the chords when the rover’s wheels reach the surface, then fly off to crash a safe distance away.   Should everything work, deputy project manager Matthew Wallace said, post-landing exuberance would be on full display at JPL despite COVID-19 safety protocols that have kept close contacts within mission control to a minimum.   “I don’t think COVID is going to be able to stop us from jumping up and down and fist-bumping,” Wallace said.   
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Microsoft on Thursday lobbied for other countries to follow Australia’s lead in calling for news outlets to be paid for stories published online, a move opposed by Facebook and Google.Microsoft last week offered to fill the void if rival Google follows through on a threat to turn off its search engine in Australia over the plan.Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement the company fully supports proposed legislation in Australia that would force Google and Facebook to compensate media for their journalism.”This has made for an unusual split within the tech sector, and we’ve heard from people asking whether Microsoft would support a similar proposal in the United States, Canada, the European Union and other countries,” Smith said in a blog post.FILE – This combination of file photos shows a Google sign and the Facebook app. “The short answer is, yes.”Facebook and Google have both threatened to block key services in Australia if the rules, now before Parliament, become law as written.The situation raises the question of whether U.S. President Joe Biden will back away from his predecessor’s objection to the proposal in Australia.”As the United States takes stock of the events on January 6, it’s time to widen the aperture,” Smith said, referring to a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of Trump supporters out to overturn the election results.”The ultimate question is what values we want the tech sector and independent journalism to serve.”Smith argued that internet platforms that have not previously compensated news agencies should now step up to revive independent journalism that “goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms.”“The United States should not object to a creative Australian proposal that strengthens democracy by requiring tech companies to support a free press,” Smith said. “It should copy it instead.”Bing goes big?The proposed law in Australia would govern relations between financially distressed traditional media outlets and the giants that dominate the internet and capture a significant share of advertising revenues.Microsoft’s search engine Bing accounts for less than 5% of the market in Australia, and from 15% to 20% of the market in the United States, according to the tech giant based in Washington State.”With a realistic prospect of gaining usage share, we are confident we can build the service Australians want and need,” Smith said.”And unlike Google, if we can grow, we are prepared to sign up for the new law’s obligations, including sharing revenue as proposed with news organizations.”Under the proposed News Media Bargaining Code, Google and Facebook would be required to negotiate payments to individual news organizations for using their content on the platforms.Australia’s biggest media companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Nine Entertainment, have said they think the payments should amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year.If agreement cannot be reached on the size of the payments, the issue would go to so-called “final offer” arbitration where each side proposes a compensation amount and the arbiter chooses one or the other.Google and Facebook, backed up by the U.S. government and leading internet architects, have said the scheme would seriously undermine their business models and the very functioning of the internet.Both Facebook and Google have insisted they are willing to pay publishers for news via licensing agreements and commercial negotiations, and both have signed deals worth millions of dollars with news organizations around the world.Google has said the bargaining code should focus on facilitating these kinds of negotiations, but it rejected the idea of mandatory “final offer” arbitration.
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The Biden administration asked a U.S. court Thursday to suspend litigation connected to former President Donald Trump’s proposed ban on WeChat while it reviews the policy. The Justice Department filed a request with the U.S. Court of Appeals seeking a suspension of the case. That followed action Wednesday in which the department asked a federal court for a pause on proceedings aimed at banning TikTok. Newly installed Commerce Department officials have begun a review of the prior administration’s actions on WeChat, including “an evaluation of the underlying record justifying those prohibitions,” the DOJ said in the filing. “The government will then be better positioned to determine” whether “the regulatory purpose of protecting the security of Americans and their data continues to warrant the identified prohibitions,” the filing added. Trump issued an executive order last August declaring both WeChat and TikTok as threats to national security because of data collection practices affecting Americans. However, U.S. courts have blocked the bans from going into effect, leading to appeals lodged in the final months of the Trump administration seeking to override the lower courts. The DOJ said the Commerce Department “remains committed to a robust defense of national security as well as ensuring the viability of our economy and preserving individual rights and data.” 
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The social media platform Instagram has permanently removed the account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for posting false information regarding vaccines and COVID-19.
 
In a statement Wednesday, Facebook, which owns Instagram, said, “We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”
 
Kennedy’s Facebook page, which has carried some of same information and has over 300,000 followers, remains active. 
Kennedy is the son of the former senator and U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and worked for decades as an environmental lawyer. In recent years, he is better known as an anti-vaccine crusader.
 
He chairs a nonprofit organization, Children’s Health Defense, which is skeptical about the health benefits of vaccines. Kennedy has lobbied Congress to give parents exemptions from state vaccine requirements for children.
 
Kennedy has said he is not opposed to vaccines, as long as they are safe, and says he has vaccinated all of his children. Yet, he regularly endorses discredited links between vaccines and autism and has argued that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to be inoculated against it.
 
Members of Kennedy’s famous political family have spoken out against his views.
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India has warned social media giants to comply with local laws or face action amid an escalating dispute with Twitter over the government’s demand that hundreds of accounts be blocked.
 
Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told parliament Thursday that “if social media is misused to spread fake news and misinformation, then action will be taken.”  
 
Naming Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube and LinkedIn, he said that they were free to do business in India but would have to “follow the Indian constitution.”
 
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on Twitter to take down hundreds of accounts and posts for allegedly using provocative hashtags and spreading misinformation about a massive farmers’ protest that erupted in violence on January 26.
 
India has reacted angrily to Twitter’s failure to comply fully with its directive — while the social media company has acted on some of these accounts, it has not taken down all of them.   
 
Following a virtual call with Twitter’s executives, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that it had “expressed deep disappointment” over the manner in which the company had “unwillingly, grudgingly and with great delay” complied with only parts of its orders. “Lawfully passed orders are binding on any business entity and must be obeyed immediately,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.FILE – A man reads tweets by Indian celebrities on his mobile phone in New Delhi, India, Feb. 4, 2021.Twitter had earlier said, “In keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians.”
 
India also called out Twitter for “differential treatment,” citing its crackdown on accounts following last month’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington.
 
“During Capitol Hill, social media platforms stand with the police action and in violence at Red Fort, you take a different stand,” Minister Prasad said in parliament, referring to the storming of a historic building in New Delhi by thousands of farmers during a rally. “We won’t allow these double standards.”
 
Critics have voiced concern about the government’s intolerance of dissenting voices and accuse it of cracking down on free speech.    
 
Digital rights activists say there is no way to ascertain whether the government’s request to act against hundreds of accounts is legal because the orders “lack transparency.”
 
“Apart from Twitter which has seen these orders, no one can comment on whether these orders are justified,” according to Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a mobile and digital news portal. “But on the face of it some of these demands appear to be a disproportionate act of censorship,” he said.
 
Pahwa cites the example of a news magazine, The Caravan, whose account was restored after being briefly blocked. “The Caravan is an award-winning, legitimate news organization and was not even given an opportunity of a hearing.”
 
Pahwa welcomed Twitter’s move to not take down all the accounts as the government demanded. “I wish more platforms stood up for their users’ speech like this and push back against orders that are in their opinion not lawful,” he said.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned about an “explosion of risk” from digital markets, including the misuse of cryptocurrencies, but said new financial technologies could also help fight crime and reduce inequality.In remarks to a financial sector innovation roundtable, Yellen said such technologies could be used to stem the flow of dark money from organized crime and fight back against hackers, but also to reduce digital gaps in the United States.She said passage of the Anti-Money Laundering Act in December would allow the Treasury Department to rework a framework for combating illicit finance that has been largely unchanged since the 1970s.”The update couldn’t have come at a better time,” Yellen told policymakers, regulators and private sector experts. “We’re living amidst an explosion of risk related to fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing, and data privacy.”The COVID-19 pandemic had triggered more — and more sophisticated — cyberattacks aimed at hospitals, schools, banks, and the government itself, she said.Cryptocurrencies and virtual assets offered promise, but they had also been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers and to finance terrorism.Innovation in the sector could help address these problems while giving millions of people access to the financial system, she said.Yellen, who has promised to prioritize fighting inequality and disparities, said the pandemic had exposed huge problems, including the dearth of broadband access in many areas of the country.She said responsible and equitable innovation could make a big difference.”Innovation should not just be a shield to protect against bad actors. Innovation should also be a ladder to help more people climb to a higher quality of life,” she said.
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Twitter said Wednesday it had suspended some accounts in India after New Delhi served the social media giant several orders to block accounts amid civil unrest.  The announcement comes after months of unrest in India over changes to agriculture bills in the country. Protesting farmers have been met with internet cuts and social media blocks, which New Delhi has said are necessary for security. In a FILE – Security officers push back people shouting slogans during a protest held to show support to farmers who have been on a monthslong protest, in New Delhi, India, Feb. 3, 2021.Just last week, Twitter blocked hundreds of accounts in India — many of them belonging to news professionals and activists. Twitter said that two orders served by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) were “emergency orders,” and that while they were initially complied with, Twitter later restored the accounts, arguing that blocking them was against India’s own free speech laws. “After we communicated this to MeitY, we were served with a non-compliance notice,” the blog post said. Twitter relented, to some degree, after the order, as the company was told its local employees could face up to seven years in prison under an Indian information technology law. After more the two months of protests and campaigns against the new “farm bills,” which protesters say would leave them at the mercy of corporations, the demonstrations have experienced a resurgence and received international attention over the last week.
 
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Ugandan authorities restored access to the internet Wednesday, a month after blocking it ahead of the January 14 elections. The government said the disruption was needed for security, while critics say it was intended to cut off communication among opponents of President Yoweri Museveni. “Internet and social media services have been fully restored,” Ugandan Minister for Information and Communications Technology Peter Ogwang tweeted Wednesday, adding, “We apologize for the inconveniences caused, but it was for the security of our country.” A tweet by Peter Ogwang, Ugandan Minister for Information and Communications Technology, announces the restoration to access to social media websites. (Screenshot from Twitter)Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said the shutdown was a method of war against elements that were a threat to the credibility of the elections. Since those threats have been greatly neutralized, he said, the government has restored access to social media websites, with the exception of Facebook. “We have released elements of social media — Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp — because we think to a less extent, those are not as lethal as Facebook,” Opondo said. “So, we shall examine going forward, their posture on these other social media platforms that have been released. And that will inform how soon Facebook is restored.” Before the January 14 elections, Museveni ordered the blocking of Facebook following reports that the company had shut down 220 accounts linked to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. Facebook said the accounts were fakes or duplicates being used to make posts by Museveni and his son, Lieutenant General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, appear more popular than they were.  Some posts from the accounts also targeted the opposition National Unity Platform Party and its presidential candidate, Bobi Wine.  National Unity Platform Party spokesperson Joel Senyonyi says Facebook was right to shut down the accounts. “Government continues to have a grip on social media because they want to control free speech,” he said. “Because they know that Ugandans pretty much have social media as the avenue for their free expression. And that’s why Facebook did carry out its investigations, because there was a lot of propaganda churned out by those government-run social media accounts.” A message from service providers to consumers after the Ugandan government restored access to social media websites. (Screenshot)Michael Niyitegeka, an information technology expert, says the shutdown of Facebook is hurting many Ugandans’ livelihoods because they rely on the social media site for marketing.  “Because they don’t have the resources to go to radio, they don’t have the resources to go on TV. So, their business largely depends on the Facebook market,” he said. Dorothy Mukasa, chief executive officer of Unwanted Witness, a digital rights organization, is calling for lawmakers to establish rules on internet access.  “What we should be doing as Ugandans is to continue to put the government to account,” she said. “You know, why did they shut down the internet? And also, ask institutions like parliament or judiciary to put in place guidelines. Because this is bound to happen over and over. Can we have guidelines in place or even a law that really stipulates, when should the internet be disrupted?”In the meantime, Ugandans continue to use virtual private networks to access Facebook without paying a social media tax introduced by the government in July 2018. 
 
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Many broadcasters are using a variety of digital radio for high quality transmissions reaching faraway lands.  Mike O’Sullivan reports on one format that is starting to play an important role in global communications.
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After a brief honeymoon, China appears to have blocked a popular, invite-only audio app called Clubhouse.
The iPhone-only app had seen a surge in users over the weekend as users were able to discuss taboo topics like reunification with Taiwan and the plight of the Muslim minority in Xinjiang province.
But on Monday, users began reporting difficulty connecting, fueling speculation the app had been blocked by the so-called Great Firewall.
According to Bloomberg, Clubhouse was a hot topic on Chinese social media, and some were even selling invitations to the app on Alibaba’s online retailer. Some of the invites were going for as much as $44.60, according to Bloomberg.
As with many banned apps, Chinese users can still access Clubhouse using a virtual private network (VPN), and CNN reported that many were doing so. One such user was Susan Liang, a 31-year-old from Shenzhen.
“It is too rare an opportunity. Everyone has lived under the Great Firewall for so long, but on this platform, we can talk about anything,” she told CNN. “It’s like someone drowning and can finally breathe in a large gulp of air.”
She said she feared a crackdown as VPNs not approved by the government are illegal.
Clubhouse has so far not responded to media inquiries, Reuters reported.
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Internet providers in Myanmar, including state-owned telecom MPT, were blocking access to Facebook Inc.-owned services in the country on Thursday, days after military leaders seized power in a coup.A letter posted online by the Ministry of Communications and Information overnight said Facebook would be blocked until February 7 for the sake of “stability.”Some users in Myanmar reported they were not able to access several Facebook services.Network monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed state-owned telecom MPT, which says it has 23 million users, had blocked Facebook as well as its Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp services.Norway’s Telenor Asa said it had just blocked Facebook to comply with the directive.Facebook spokesman Andy Stone acknowledged the disruption.”We urge authorities to restore connectivity so that people in Myanmar can communicate with their families and friends and access important information,” he said.Half of population affectedHalf of Myanmar’s 53 million people use Facebook, which for many is synonymous with the internet.”Currently, the people who are troubling the country’s stability … are spreading fake news and misinformation and causing misunderstanding among people by using Facebook,” the ministry letter said.Telenor expressed “grave concern” about the directive, which it said had been received by all mobile operators and internet service providers on Wednesday.It said in a statement it was directing users to a message saying Facebook websites cannot be reached because of a government order.”While the directive has legal basis in Myanmar law, Telenor does not believe that the request is based on necessity and proportionality, in accordance with international human rights law,” it said.On Tuesday, the military warned against the posting of what it said were rumors on social media that could incite rioting and cause instability.U.N. human rights investigators have previously said hate speech on Facebook had played a key role in fomenting violence in Myanmar. The company has said it was too slow to act in preventing misinformation and hate in the country.This week, Facebook said it was treating the situation in Myanmar as an emergency and taking temporary measures to protect against harm such as removing content that praises or supports the coup, according to a spokeswoman. 
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Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday said founder Jeff Bezos would step down as CEO and become executive chairman, as the company reported its third consecutive record profit and quarterly sales above $100 billion for the first time. The transition, slated for the third quarter, will make current cloud computing chief Andy Jassy Amazon’s next chief executive officer. Net sales rose to $125.56 billion as consumers turned to the world’s largest online retailer for holiday shopping, beating analyst estimates of $119.7 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. FILE – Andy Jassy, CEO Amazon Web Services, speaks at a conference in Laguna Beach, California, Oct. 25, 2016.Bezos, who started the company 27 years ago as an internet bookseller, said in a note to employees posted on Amazon’s website, “As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.” He added, “I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring.” Since the start of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, consumers have turned increasingly to Amazon for delivery of home staples and medical supplies. Brick-and-mortar shops closed their doors; Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, instead recruited over 400,000 more workers and posted consecutive record profits. With its warehouses open, Amazon had another record holiday, beating estimates for online store sales, subscription sales, third-party service sales such as warehousing, and other sales to merchants on its platform. Jassy’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), traditionally a bright spot, fell slightly short of expectations. While the cloud computing division announced deals in the quarter with ViacomCBS, the BMW Group and others, it posted revenue of $12.7 billion, short of the $12.8 billion analysts had estimated. A boost in revenue came from moving Amazon’s marketing event Prime Day — usually in July — to October, lengthening the holiday shopping season. 
 
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Social media company Reddit was experiencing problems on its website on Saturday, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector.com.
 
Customers reported trouble logging in and sending messages on its website. The outage affected regions such as New York, Boston and Washington in United States and Toronto in Canada, according to an outage map on Downdetector’s website. 
 
It was not immediately known what caused the glitches. Reddit did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
 
Reddit has come into THE the forefront after a social media chatroom on its platform, “Wallstreetbets,” led to a so-called “Reddit rally,” which has helped attract a flood of retail cash into stocks such as GameStop Corp., burning hedge funds that had bet against the company and roiling the broader market. WallStreetBets has about 6 million members. 
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Facebook’s quasi-independent oversight board has ruled the social media company must restore four of five posts that it had taken down.The cases involved Facebook’s policy regarding adult nudity, hate speech and “dangerous individuals.”The oversight board ordered images of female nipples displayed by a Brazilian user on Instagram to raise awareness about breast cancer to be restored. The post had been removed for violating Facebook’s policy on adult nudity.In another post about Muslims by a user in Myanmar, which included photos of a dead Syrian toddler, the board said the post was offensive but was not hate speech.The board also ordered the restoration of a post with a quote falsely attributed to Nazi propaganda and Third Reich minister Joseph Goebbels because the intent was to make a political statement about former President Donald Trump.Finally, the board said a post in French about COVID-19 that had been taken down for misinformation should be restored because it did not cause imminent harm.The board agreed that Facebook was correct to remove a post that used a racial slur to describe Azerbaijanis.The decisions are final.The board will next decide whether Facebook was correct to remove Trump’s page for what the company said was his role in encouraging the violent rampage of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on January 6.The public can begin making comments on this case Friday.Facebook regularly removes content it says violates its terms of service. So far, about 150,000 cases have been brought to the oversight board.
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Facebook Inc’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday the company would no longer recommend civic and political groups to users of the platform.The social media company said in October that it was temporarily halting recommendations of political groups for U.S. users in the run-up to the presidential election. On Wednesday, Facebook said it would be making this permanent and would expand the policy globally.On Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Ed Markey wrote to Zuckerberg asking for an explanation of reports, including by news site The Markup, that Facebook had failed to stop recommending political groups on its platform after this move.He called Facebook’s groups “breeding groups for hate” and noted they had been venues of planning for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.Speaking on a conference call Wednesday with analysts about Facebook’s earnings, Zuckerberg said that the company was “continuing to fine-tune how this works.”Facebook groups are communities that form around shared interests. Public groups can be seen, searched and joined by anyone on Facebook.Several watchdog and advocacy groups have pushed for Facebook to limit algorithmic group recommendations. They have argued that some Facebook groups have been used as spaces to spread misinformation and organize extremist activity.Zuckerberg also said that Facebook was considering steps to reduce the amount of political content in users’ news feeds.
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Facebook’s profits surged in the final three months of last year as people enduring the holidays in a pandemic turned to the leading social network for work and pleasure, the company said Wednesday.Facebook reported a profit of $ 11.2 billion on revenue of $ 28 billion, increases of 53% and 33% when compared with the same period the prior year.“We had a strong end to the year as people and businesses continued to use our services during these challenging times,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said.Facebook said its core social network had 2.8 billion users at the end of December, while 3.3 billion people used at least one of its “family” of apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. 
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People from Boston to the Washington area were reporting internet outages or slow service Tuesday. According to Downdetector.com, which tracks outages, users reported problems with Verizon, Google, Zoom, YouTube, Slack and Amazon Web Services. Many of those services have become staples for millions of Americans working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Students attending school virtually also depend on the services. Verizon reported that a fiber cable in the city of New York borough of Brooklyn had been severed, but it was unclear if that was causing all the problems.  Downdetector also showed that Comcast users were reporting outages or slowdown. Comcast is a rival internet service provider. Amazon Web Services, which provides cloud services to many companies, also reported connectivity issues, according to The Washington Post. 
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The European Union (EU) Tuesday called upon the United States to join the alliance in creating a common rule book to rein in the power of internet companies like Facebook and Twitter to combat the spread of fake news as well as protect data.
In a wide-ranging virtual speech to the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen noted how much the world has changed by referencing last year’s EU concerns over the possibility of U.S. tariffs on European automobiles.
   
“Today, a year later, we are worrying about whether democracy itself might have been permanently damaged in the last four years,” said Von der Leyen. He also referenced the storming of the U.S. Capitol, calling it “beyond my imagination” and said it served as a reminder of the “dangers that social media poses to our democracy.”
The European Commission president called on U.S. President Joe Biden to join the 27-nation bloc’s efforts to better regulate tech platforms. She added there needs to be a “framework” for “far-reaching decisions” such as Twitter’s move to cut off former U.S. President Donald Trump’s account.
She said it needs to be clearly laid out how internet companies make decisions about disseminating, promoting or removing content.  
“No matter how tempting it may have been for Twitter to switch off President Trump’s account, such serious interference with freedom of expression should not be based on company rules alone,” said Von der Leyen. “There needs to be a framework of laws for such far-reaching decision.”
During Tuesday’s speech, Von der Leyen also urged pharmaceutical companies to “honor their obligations” on the supply of COVID-19 vaccines, saying the EU had invested billions in their development “for the common good.”
The bloc on Monday criticized pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, accusing it of failing to guarantee the delivery of coronavirus vaccines without a valid explanation.
The EU also expressed displeasure over vaccine delivery delays from Pfizer-BioNTech last week.
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Twitter on Monday unveiled a new tool it is piloting to combat misinformation. Called Birdwatch, the crowdsourcing tool aims to enlist other Twitter users to vet tweets they think contain misinformation.Instead of deleting an offending tweet or having Twitter attach a warning label, users will be able to add annotations to the tweet to “provide informative context,” according to a Twitter blog post.For now, the added notes will not be visible to all users, as the program is a pilot project with only a limited number of U.S. volunteers. The company would eventually like to have the notes visible to all.”We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding contact that people trust and find valuable,” Twitter wrote.The move comes as social media companies face increasing pressure from those who say their platforms spread misinformation, and those who say they are too censorious.Twitter’s approach differs from Facebook, which uses a team of third-party fact-checkers.“We know there are a number of challenges toward building a community-driven system like this — from making it resistant to manipulation attempts to ensuring it isn’t dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors. We’ll be focused on these things throughout the pilot,” Twitter said. 
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Twitter said Friday it has permanently banned an account that some in Iran believe is linked to the office of the country’s supreme leader after a posting that seemed to threaten former President Donald Trump.In the image posted by the suspect account late Thursday, Trump is shown playing golf in the shadow of a giant drone, with the caption “Revenge is certain” written in Farsi.In response to a request for comment from The Associated Press, a Twitter spokesperson said the account was fake and violated the company’s “manipulation and spam policy,” without elaborating how it came to that conclusion.The tweet of the photo violated the company’s “abusive behavior policy,” Twitter’s spokesperson added.In Iran, the suspect account — @khamenei_site — is believed to be linked to the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because its behavior mirrored that of other accounts identified in state-run media as tied to his office. It frequently posted excerpts from his speeches and other official content.In this case, the account carried the link to Khamenei’s website.Other accounts tied to Khamenei’s office that did not tweet the photo, including his main English language account, remained active. The photo had also been featured prominently on the supreme leader’s website and was retweeted by Khamenei’s main Farsi language account, @Khamenei-fa, which apparently deleted it after posting.Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter banned Trump from their platforms for allegedly inciting the assault on the U.S. Capitol, an unprecedented step that underscored the immense power of tech giants in regulating speech on their platforms. Activists soon urged the companies to apply their policies equally to other political figures worldwide, in order to combat hate speech and content that encourages violence.The warning in the caption referenced Khamenei’s remarks last month ahead of the first anniversary of the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. In his speech, Khamenei did not call out Trump by name, but reiterated a vow for vengeance against those who ordered and executed the attack on Soleimani.”Revenge will certainly happen at the right time,” Khamenei had declared.Iran blocks social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, and censors others. While top officials have unfettered access to social media, Iran’s youth and tech-savvy citizens use proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass the controls.Soon after Trump’s ban from Twitter ignited calls to target tweets from other political leaders, the company took down a post by a different Khamenei-linked account that pushed a COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theory.Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, had claimed that virus vaccines imported from the U.S. or Britain were “completely untrustworthy.”  
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