The Week in Internet News: U.S. Census Seeks Help with Fake News from Tech Giants Thumbnail
Technology 1 April 2019

The Week in Internet News: U.S. Census Seeks Help with Fake News from Tech Giants

Grant Gross
By Grant GrossGuest AuthorTechnology Reporter

Fake news fears: The U.S. Census Bureau is seeking help from Google, Facebook, and Twitter to fight off fake news during its 2020 population count, Reuters reports. Some groups appear to be targeting the census as a way to redirect congressional representation and federal funding.

Broadband for all: The Vermont House has voted for a bill to add funding for broadband deployment, including community broadband projects, Vermont Public Radio reports. About 17,000 Vermont residents don’t have broadband available, and many others have slow Internet service.

Copyright rules divide: New copyright rules in the European Union may lead to a different Internet experience there, The Verge says. With the EU’s Copyright Directive, there’s now a European Internet that feels different that the U.S. Internet and the authoritarian Internet in some countries, the story says. Among other things, the new rules allow publishers to charge platforms like Google News for displaying snippets of stories.

Encryption rising: The use of encryption by large companies has hit an all-time high, Dark Reading notes. About 45 percent of enterprises have encryption plans in place.

Fake news fighters: Facebook has launched a fake-news fighting effort in India as the country heads toward elections, Time.com says. Among other things, Facebook has partnered with Indian media organizations to flag false stories in English, Hindi, and some regional languages.

Dr. AI: Sometimes the hype over Artificial Intelligence is ahead of the actual application, but the technology is getting really good at predicting premature death, The Week says. Researchers at the University of Nottingham have noticed that the most advanced AI model correctly identified the risk of early death for 76 percent of patients who indeed died prematurely. More traditional algorithms, however, identified only about 44 percent of patients who were at risk of early death.

Do not copy: Researchers at Rice University have developed a new Internet of Things security feature that looks promising, Digital Journal reports. The so-called “physically unclonable function” uses a series of sophisticated and unclonable encryption keys that could be used to protect IoT devices.

Community networks work! Join the movement and help close the digital divide.

Disclaimer: Viewpoints expressed in this post are those of the author and may or may not reflect official Internet Society positions.

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