The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

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Submitted on November 25th 2016 by gladsdotter with 48 comments and with 5 Related Links:

1. The Kremlin’s comment trolls are real — as is the media’s amnesia about them. By Mark Ames Added by AdelleChattre on November 25th 2016.

2. War on the Rocks: “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy” (Nov. 6, 2016) Added by AdelleChattre on November 25th 2016.

3. “[A]nonymous source for blacklisting US journalists recently tweeted 1940s Ukrainian fascist ‘Heroiam Slava!’ salute” Added by AdelleChattre on November 26th 2016.

4. Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants Added by AdelleChattre on November 26th 2016.

5. Washington Post Peddles Tarring of Ron Paul Institute as Russian Propaganda Added by AdelleChattre on November 26th 2016.

For the past 11 years, an eternity in internet time, Reddit has touted itself—repeatedly, and loudly—as the place to have “authentic conversations” online. For a variety of reasons, that sentiment has always rang hollow. Now, Reddit, in its goal to be a laissez-faire haven of (relatively) free expression, has been overrun by nationalist trolls. Its staff of volunteer moderators is losing hope in the site’s future. Gizmodo spoke with five high-ranking volunteer moderators of some of Reddit’s biggest communities, as well as a Reddit spokesperson.

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Submitted on November 29th 2016 by sauce with 8 comments

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has confessed to modifying the posts of some users on the most visible...

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Submitted on November 23rd 2016 by ChrisTyler with 8 comments and with 4 Related Links:

1. CEO of Reddit confessed to modifying posts Added by sashinator on November 24th 2016.

2. Did The CEO Of Reddit Pierce Section 230 Added by geoleo on November 24th 2016.

3. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Admits Editing Trump Supporters' Posts That Insulted And Criticized Him Added by ChrisTyler on November 24th 2016.

4. The CEO of Reddit confessed to modifying posts from Trump supporters after they wouldn't stop sending him expletives Added by ChrisTyler on November 24th 2016.

Facebook has long drawn ire over its tendency to censor users’ posts based on its opaque standards. But under leaked proposals from a controversial European trade deal, the social network and other online services could be granted legal immunity when censoring any content, as long as it’s deemed “harmful or objectionable.” The measure is one of several internet-related proposals being advanced by the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), according to a leaked section of the agreement published by Greenpeace and the German digital rights blog Netzpolitik.

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Submitted on November 28th 2016 by ppp

Internet pioneer Bruce Schneier issued a dire proclamation in front of the House of Representatives’ Energy & Commerce Committee Wednesday: “It might be that the internet era of fun and games is over, because the internet is now dangerous.” The meeting, which focused on the security vulnerabilities created by smart devices, came in the wake of the Oct. 21 cyberattack on Dyn that knocked Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and other major web services offline.

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Submitted on November 24th 2016 by rhingo

Organisations including the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see UK citizens’ entire internet browsing history within weeks. The Investigatory Powers Bill, which was all but passed into law this week, forces internet providers to keep a full list of internet connection records (ICRs) for a year and to make them available to the Government if asked. Those ICRs in effect serve as a full list of every website that people have visited, rather than collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done on them.

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Submitted on November 25th 2016 by zritic

The owner of the house on Glenelia Ave., which was the scene of a shooting in March, pleads guilty to a zoning violation.

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Submitted on November 24th 2016 by canuck

The last frontier for digital ads? Inside your text messages. And one company hopes that if they offer you cute branded emoji you'll do the advertising yourself.

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Submitted on November 26th 2016 by collude with 1 comments

The American military’s increasing use of drone strikes is a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. What are we risking?

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Submitted on November 27th 2016 by collude

Robertson Stephens & Co. co-founder Robert Colman accused Theranos Inc. in a lawsuit filed Monday of making false and misleading claims about its operations and technology while soliciting money from investors.

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Submitted on November 28th 2016 by ckshenn

None of this would've happened had Jennifer Thompson not gone thriftin'. This was in April 2013, and she was browsing clothes and $1 DVDs at the Steele Creek Goodwill in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, when she noticed it behind the glass counter. The video game title sparked a memory, a Yahoo article about the rarest games in the world. Jennifer carefully drove her '99 Honda Accord across the street to McDonald's, just to use the restaurant's Wi-Fi to make sure she hadn't been wrong.

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Submitted on November 29th 2016 by yuriburi

We can think of ourselves as an animal’s peer—or its protector. What will robots decide about us? Harambe, a gorilla, was described as “smart,” “curious,” “courageous,” “magnificent.” But it wasn’t until last spring that Harambe became famous, too. On May 28th, a human boy, also curious and courageous, slipped through a fence at the Cincinnati Zoo and landed in the moat along the habitat that Harambe shared with two other gorillas.

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Submitted on November 27th 2016 by sauce

If you're Samsung and you want to wring additional cash out of your television business, what do you do? Add annoying advertisements to TVs that people already have in their homes, apparently.

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Submitted on November 23rd 2016 by Gozzin

Fake news is the easiest of the problems to fix.

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Submitted on November 28th 2016 by gladsdotter with 4 comments

San Francisco Municipal Railway riders got an unexpected surprise this weekend after the system’s computerized fare systems were apparently hacked. According to the San Francisco Examiner, the MUNI system had been attacked on Friday afternoon. MUNI riders were greeted with printed "Out of Service" and "Metro Free" signs on ticket machines on late on Friday and Saturday. MUNI first became aware of the intrusion on Friday, according to the Examiner.

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Submitted on November 28th 2016 by ilyas

Picture this: You're at a park, on a walk, with a baby. A friendly middle-aged man approaches you and tells you your stroller could be really dangerous. You might think this man is crazy. But maybe not if you knew he's the nation's product safety chief. "I couldn't live with myself if I walked away and it turned out that that child was harmed when I could've just said something," Elliot Kaye says. His voice is soft-spoken and his worldview seems to fluctuate between pride in saving lives and the unease of someone who has seen many things go wrong in unexpected ways. "You can't help it; you just automatically see the hazards."

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Submitted on November 28th 2016 by doodlegirl

Silicon Valley fails to take into account the human consequences of its technological wizardry. By Om Malik.

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Submitted on November 29th 2016 by gladsdotter with 1 comments

Organisations including the PSNI, Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see UK citizens' entire internet browsing history in weeks.

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Submitted on November 24th 2016 by Appaloosa

Automated yet distracting. Boastful yet mediocre. Confident yet wrong.

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Submitted on November 24th 2016 by sjvn

Digital systems are only getting smarter to the point where a modern AI could fight a traffic ticket in court or invest your money.

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Submitted on November 28th 2016 by geoleo