Internet shutdowns aren’t limited to Africa, it’s a global problem

After protests broke out over a sharp fuel price hike this week, Zimbabwe’s government ordered a three-day internet shutdown — with police also firing tear gas at demonstrators from a helicopter and arresting dozens. According to NetBlocks, which estimates the cost of internet shutdowns worldwide, the three-day outage could cost the country’s already shaky economy …

Just like the US, Huawei and ZTE 5G banned from Japanese govt computers

Japan’s government has issued instructions Monday effectively banning China’s Huawei and ZTE from official contracts, while the country’s top three telecom operators plan to follow suit, Japanese media reported Monday.  As if 5G equipment bans from the United States, Australia, and New Zealand weren’t enough this year, Huawei will end 2018 on an even worse …

Facebook Glitch prevented users who posted a lot from deleting their accounts

Every few months, there’s a new Facebook scandal that results in a #deletefacebook campaign. According to a new report, there was a bug that inhibited users who had “a large number of posts” from deleting their Facebook accounts. However, after the publication reached out to the social network, an engineer resolved the issue, which was …

Benin joins Uganda and Zambia as the latest African nation taxing the internet

Benin has joined a fray and growing list of African states imposing spurious taxes on citizens for using the internet. The government passed a decree in late August taxing its citizens for accessing the internet and social-media apps. The directive, first proposed in July, institutes a fee (link in French) of 5 CFA francs ($0.008) per megabyte consumed …

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp hit by an outage

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp users were in a frenzy after many attempted to log in today only to find that the sites were down. The outage appeared to have affected users around the world, with thousands of reports within the first hour. According to Down Detector, the outages appear to have started around 4:48 p.m. …

Trump administration might explore regulating Google searches for bias

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it would explore regulating Google — an effort that would challenge protections around free speech online — in response to the president’s allegations that the tech giant manipulates its search results to prominently display negative stories about him and other Republicans. In the United States, regulating search results could …

Apple bans cryptocurrency mining on iPhone

Phone maker Apple has updated its developer guidelines to explicitly ban “mining” cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The new rules restrict apps that drain battery, generate excessive heat, or put unnecessary strain on device resources — all of which take place in bitcoin mining. “Apps, including any third party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated …

Facebook culled 583m fake accounts in first quarter 2018

Facebook took moderation action against almost 1.5bn accounts and posts which violated its community standards in the first three months of 2018, the company has revealed. In its first quarterly Community Standards Enforcement Report, Facebook said the overwhelming majority of moderation action was against spam posts and fake accounts: it took action on 837m pieces …