Mike Isaac

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, has focused the world’s attention on the kingdom’s intimidation campaign against influential voices raising questions about the darker side of the crown prince. The young royal has tightened his grip on the kingdom while presenting himself in Western capitals as the man to reform the hidebound Saudi state. Saudi operatives have mobilized to harass critics on Twitter, a wildly popular platform for news in the kingdom since the Arab Spring uprisings began in 2010.

Facebook said that an attack on its computer network had exposed the personal information of nearly 50 million users. The company said it discovered the breach this week, finding that attackers had exploited a feature in Facebook’s code that allowed them to take over user accounts. The company said it fixed the vulnerability and notified law enforcement officials. “We’re taking it really seriously,” said Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive. “We have a major security effort at the company that hardens all of our surfaces.” He added: “I’m glad we found this.

Although it is not much to look at now, as of the week of Sept 24 the "War Room" will be Facebook’s headquarters for safeguarding elections.

Facebook has introduced sweeping changes to the kinds of posts, videos and photos that its more than two billion members will see most often, saying that it would prioritize what their friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands. The shift is the most significant overhaul in years to Facebook’s News Feed, the cascading screen of content that people see when they log into the social network. Over the next few weeks, users will begin seeing fewer viral videos and news articles shared by media companies.

Protests to preserve network neutrality, or rules that ensure equal access to the internet, migrated online on Dec 12, with numerous online companies posting calls on their sites for action to stop a vote later this week. Reddit, Etsy and Kickstarter were among the sites warning that the proposal at the Federal Communications Commission to roll back so-called net neutrality rules would fundamentally change the way the internet is experienced.

More than 1 billion people — mostly adults — use Facebook’s Messenger app to communicate every month. Now, the future of Messenger is set to become much younger. 

Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter appeared on Capitol Hill for the first time on Oct 31 to publicly acknowledge their role in Russia’s influence on the presidential campaign, but offered little more than promises to do better. Their reluctance frustrated lawmakers who sought stronger evidence that American elections will be protected from foreign powers. The hearing, the first of three in two days for company executives, served as an initial public reckoning for the internet giants.

A blindness to boundaries is not uncommon for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But in Travis Kalanick, that led to a pattern of repeatedly going too far at Uber, including the duplicity with Apple, sabotaging competitors and allowing the company to use a secret tool called Greyball to trick some law enforcement agencies. To develop its own business, Uber sidestepped the authorities. Some employees started using a tool called Greyball to deceive officials trying to shut down Uber’s service. The tool, developed to aid driver safety and to trick fraudsters, essentially showed a fake version of Uber’s app to some people to disguise the locations of cars and drivers. It soon became a way for Uber drivers to evade capture by law enforcement in places where the service was deemed illegal.

Uber engineers assigned a persistent identity to iPhones with a small piece of code, a practice called “fingerprinting.” Uber could then identify an iPhone and prevent itself from being fooled even after the device was erased of its contents. There was one problem: Fingerprinting iPhones broke Apple’s rules. Apple CEO Tim Cook believed that wiping an iPhone should ensure that no trace of the owner’s identity remained on the device. So Kalanick told his engineers to “geofence” Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino (CA) a way to digitally identify people reviewing Uber’s software in a specific location. Uber would then obfuscate its code for people within that geofenced area, essentially drawing a digital lasso around those it wanted to keep in the dark. Apple employees at its headquarters were unable to see Uber’s fingerprinting.

Uber has for years engaged in a worldwide program to deceive the authorities in markets where its low-cost ride-hailing service was being resisted by law enforcement or, in some instances, had been outright banned. The program, involving a tool called Greyball, uses data collected from the Uber app and other techniques to identify and circumvent officials. Uber used these methods to evade the authorities in cities such as Boston, Paris and Las Vegas, and in countries like Australia, China, Italy and South Korea. Greyball was part of a broader program called VTOS, short for “violation of terms of service,” which Uber created to root out people it thought were using or targeting its service improperly. The VTOS program, including the Greyball tool, began as early as 2014 and remains in use, predominantly outside the United States. Greyball was approved by Uber’s legal team.

Facebook is increasingly owning up to its role as one of the world’s largest distributors of information by taking more responsibility for the millions of stories that flow through its site. On Jan 11, the social network made its latest move to acknowledge that role by announcing the Facebook Journalism Project.

The effort calls for the company to forge deeper ties with publishers by collaborating on publishing tools and features before they are released. Facebook will also develop training programs and tools for journalists to teach them how to better search its site to report on news and events. And Facebook wants to help train members of the public to find news sources they trust, while fighting the spread of fake news across its site. The project will begin in coming weeks in partnership with publishers including The Washington Post and Vox.