Year: 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to meet with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other tech executives this month at a social media summit. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday that the administration hoped Facebook and Twitter would send representatives to the meeting. Kudlow added the event would most likely happen in mid-October, though no date has been set. Prominent conservatives, including the president, have accused Facebook, Google and Twitter of silencing right-leaning voices on their platforms, a suspected practice called "shadow banning." Kudlow had a meeting with Pichai last Friday, which he described as "great." Pichai drew flack from senators last month after failing to send an executive to a hearing, and he has agreed appear at another. ...

Heated streets will melt ice and snow on contact. Sensors will monitor traffic and protect pedestrians. Driverless shuttles will carry people to their doors. A unit of Google's parent company Alphabet is proposing to turn a rundown part of Toronto's waterfront into what may be the most wired community in history — to "fundamentally refine what urban life can be."   Sidewalk Labs has partnered with a government agency known as Waterfront Toronto with plans to erect mid-rise apartments, offices, shops and a school on a 12-acre (4.9-hectare) site — a first step toward what it hopes will eventually be a 800-acre (325-hectare) development.   High-level interest is clear: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alphabet's then-Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt appeared together to announce the plan in October.   But some Canadians are…

The EU's top data privacy enforcer expressed worry Tuesday that Facebook had lost control of data security after a vast privacy breach that she said affected five million Europeans. "It is a question for the management, if they have things under control,"  EU Justice and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Vera Jourova told AFP in Luxembourg. "The magnitude of the company ... makes it very difficult to manage, but they have to do that because they are harvesting the data and they are making incredible money on using our privacy as the commodity," she added. Jourova spoke just days after Facebook admitted that up to 50 million user accounts around the world had been breached by hackers, in yet another scandal for the beleaguered social platform. "I will know more ... in…

Imagine seeing an incredibly detailed map of your home city in three dimensions, with every citizen carrying a cell phone showing up as a dot on that map. Well, you can't because there are security issues galore when it comes to tracking people online. But you should know it's possible, at least in Singapore, where city planners are considering how the technology may help improve life. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Adam Mosseri, a veteran 10-year Facebook executive, will become the new head of Instagram, outgoing co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced Monday. "We are thrilled to hand over the reins to a product leader with a strong design background and a focus on craft and simplicity," Systrom and Krieger said in a press release.The pair announced their resignation last week without giving a clear explanation. Mosseri, 35, has been Instagram's head of product since May. He began as a designer at Facebook in 2008, and recently ran its News Feed. His appointment comes among fears that with the departure of Instagram's independent-minded founders, the app will become more like Facebook: Cluttered with features, and invasive of user's personal data. Instagram was founded in 2010 and bought by Facebook two…

Cellular companies such as Verizon are looking to challenge traditional cable companies with residential internet service that promises to be ultra-fast, affordable and wireless. Using an emerging wireless technology known as 5G, Verizon’s 5G Home service provides an alternative to cable for connecting laptops, phones, TVs and other devices over Wi-Fi. It launches in four U.S. cities on Monday. Verizon won’t be matching cable companies on packages that also come with TV channels and home phone service. But fewer people have been subscribing to such bundles anyway, as they embrace streaming services such as Netflix for video and cellphone services instead of landline. “That’s the trend that cable has been having problems with for several years, and a trend that phone companies can take advantage of,” Gartner analyst Bill Menzes…

California Gov. Jerry Brown has approved the nation's strongest net neutrality law, prompting an immediate lawsuit by the Trump administration and opening the next phase in the battle over regulating the internet. Advocates of net neutrality hope California's law, which Brown signed Sunday to stop internet providers from favoring certain content or websites, will push Congress to enact national rules or encourage other states to create their own. However, the U.S. Department of Justice quickly moved to halt the law from taking effect, arguing that it creates burdensome, anti-consumer requirements that go against the federal government's approach to deregulating the internet. "Once again the California Legislature has enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy," U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. The Federal…

According to the latest report by the Committee to Protect Journalists in Pakistan, fatal violence against journalists has declined, but fear and self-censorship have grown. In this era, five Pakistani American students at Harvard University have created a startup that challenges censorship using the latest block-chain technology. Their mission is "making journalism truly free." Saqib Ul Islam visited Harvard's innovation lab to bring us the story of a new company called "Inkrypt." ...

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai has agreed to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee later this year over Republican concerns that the company is biased against conservatives, a senior Republican said Friday. Republicans want to question Google, the search engine of Alphabet Inc, about whether its search algorithms are influenced by human bias. They also want to probe it on issues such as privacy, classification of news and opinion, and dealing with countries with human rights violations. Pichai met with senior Republicans on Friday to discuss their concerns, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said. McCarthy told reporters after the meeting that it was "very productive" and "frank." "I think we've really shown that there is bias, which is human nature, but you have to have transparency and fairness," McCarthy…

The security breach Facebook announced Friday that affected 50 million users was a setback for the social media giant, which has been working for months to regain customers' trust over how it handles their data. In addition to the 50 million users whose log-on information could have been accessed by hackers, the company required as a precaution another 40 million to log on to be able to get on their accounts. Facebook said it reported the breach of the company's code, which the firm said it fixed, to law enforcement. The social media company was not sure Friday whether any personal information had been gathered or misused, but it scrambled to address the issue, which was discovered earlier in the week. Facebook users may find they have to relink their…

VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren talks with Brad Smith, Microsoft's President and Chief Legal Officer about the tech giant's new Artificial Intelligence program. ...