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Spotify Technology SA said on Friday it would pause selling political advertisements on its music streaming platform in early 2020.The world's most popular paid music streaming service, with nearly 141 million users tuning into its ad-supported platform in October, said the pause would extend to Spotify original and exclusive podcasts as well.The move, which was first reported by Ad Age, comes as campaigns for the U.S. presidential election in November 2020 heat up.Online platforms including Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google are under growing pressure to police misinformation on their platforms and stop carrying political ads that contain false or misleading claims.Twitter Inc banned political ads in October and, last month, Google said it would stop giving advertisers the ability to target election ads using data such as public voter…

A recent trade fair in Tokyo showcased the robots of 2019.  Engineers created some that play games and others that could save lives.  As VOA's Arash Arabasadi reports, these robots exist to make the world a little better. ...

A Moroccan YouTuber was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for "insulting the king" in a video broadcast on social networks, his lawyer said.In a separate case, a Moroccan journalist and activist was charged and detained over a tweet that had criticized a court decision, his defense council told AFP.The cases come after the Moroccan Human Rights Association had deplored in July an "escalation of violations of human rights and public and individual freedoms" in Morocco.The YouTuber Mohamed Sekkaki, known as "Moul Kaskita", was sentenced by a court in the western city of Settat to four years in prison, his lawyer Mohamed Ziane told AFP.Sekkaki, whose videos usually exceed 100,000 views, was arrested in early December after posting a video in which he insulted Moroccans as "donkeys" and criticized…

The era of Silicon Valley operating largely free from government regulation may be coming to an end.In 2019, lawmakers grilled tech executives at multiple hearings in Washington and federal regulators slapped record fines on tech firms. They promise action in the coming year on a host of issues: competition, online privacy, encryption and bias.U.S. tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon are girding themselves for more federal scrutiny.“As the internet companies matured without a lot of regulation, some issues have emerged where attention is needed,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat representing Silicon Valley since 1994 and who has introduced a national online privacy bill.“I think it’s fair enough to examine what kind of rules should be set in certain elements of the tech economy,” she said.FILE -…

One California-based rocket company is 3D-printing engines that can be quickly made in high volumes. Rocket Lab says these high-performing rockets are reliable and are regularly used to launch satellites to low-Earth orbit each month. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details from Huntington Beach, California  ...

The Church of England has launched a study into an existential question: do its investments in big-tech giants contradict the Christian faith?The Church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) will determine whether some of the new technologies undermine "the very idea of God", a spokesman for the Church told AFP on Monday.The year-long review was first reported by The Daily Telegraph newspaper.EIAG was set up in the early 1990s to help make sure that more than £12 billion ($15.5 billion, 14 billion Euros) in assets held by the Church's various institutions are put to ethical use."Artificial intelligence [AI] is an important element of this review," the spokesman said.The EIAG is in talks with technology experts as well as politicians and theologians "to try to make sense of the issues", the spokesman…

Boeing Co's Starliner astronaut spacecraft landed in the New Mexico desert on Sunday, the company said, after faulty software forced officials to cut short an unmanned mission aimed at taking it to the International Space Station.The landing at 7:58 a.m. ET (1258 GMT) in the White Sands desert capped a turbulent 48 hours for Boeing's botched milestone test of an astronaut capsule that is designed to help NASA regain its human spaceflight capabilities. "We hit the bull's-eye," a Boeing spokesman said on a livestream of the landing. The landing will yield the mission's most valuable test data after failing to meet its core objective of docking to the space station. After Starliner's touchdown, teams of engineers in trucks raced to inspect the vehicle, whose six airbags cushioned its impact on…

Facebook Inc has taken down a well-financed campaign that used dozens of artificially generated faces to spread pro-Trump and anti-Chinese government messages, the company and outside researchers said on Friday.Researchers from New York-based Graphika and the Digitial Forensics Research Lab, an arm of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said it was the first time they had seen the large-scale use of computer-generated faces to spread disinformation on social media.Tell-tale signsThe researchers said in a report that while tell-tale signs such as misshapen ears and distorted backgrounds had helped them identify the fakes, "this technology is rapidly evolving toward generating more believable pictures."Facebook said 610 Facebook accounts, 89 Pages, 156 Groups and 72 Instagram accounts were involved in the network.The social media giant said those behind the operation had spent upward of $9…

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is holding talks with General Motors Co. on the automaker's petition to deploy a limited number of self-driving vehicles on American roads without  steering wheels or other human controls, the head of the agency  said Friday. Acting NHTSA Administrator James Owens said his agency aims to decide soon on GM's January 2018 petition as well as on a request by Nuro, a driverless delivery startup backed by Softbank Corp., to deploy a limited number of low-speed, highly automated delivery vehicles without human occupants. The agency's review comes at a time of heightened concerns  about the safety of automated piloting systems in vehicles and  aircraft, a potential revolution in ground and air transportation. "I expect we're going to be able to move forward with these  petitions soon — as soon as we can," Owens told Reuters, adding  action "definitely" would come next year. "This…

Twitter says it has removed nearly 6,000 accounts it has deemed tied to a state-backed information operation in Saudi Arabia.Twitter says the accounts violated its "platform manipulation policies" and targeted discussions related to Saudi Arabia and advancing its geopolitical interests.The 5,929 accounts removed are part of a larger group of 88,000 accounts engaged in "spammy behavior" across a wide range of topics. But Twitter isn't disclosing all of them because some might be compromised accounts.Twitter began archiving Tweets and media it deems to be associated with known state-backed information operations in 2018. It shut 200,000 Chinese accounts that targeted Hong Kong protests in August.Social media companies have been trying to tackle misinformation on their services, especially ahead of next year's U.S. presidential elections. The efforts followed revelations that Russians bankrolled…