Tools

OHIO: Public databases that shine a light on online political ads - launched by Facebook and Google before Tuesday’s U.S. elections - offer the public the first broad view of how quickly the companies yank advertisements that break their rules. The databases also provided campaigns unprecedented insight into opponents’ online marketing, enabling them to capitalize on weaknesses, political strategists told Reuters. Facebook Inc and Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, introduced the databases this year to give details on some…

Twitter on Thursday made it easier for users to identify political campaign ads and know who paid for them, as social media platforms faced the threat of U.S. regulation over the lack of disclosure on such spending. The microblogging site launched ‘Ads Transparency Center’ to allow anyone to view ads that have been put on Twitter, with greater transparency about U.S. federal election campaign ads. The tool follows Twitter’s recently launched political campaign ads policy and a similar move by Facebook Inc, which…

SAN FRANCISCO: Past cyber attacks on scores of organizations around the world were conducted with top-secret hacking tools that were exposed recently by the Web publisher Wikileaks, the security researcher Symantec Corp said on Monday. That means the attacks were likely conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The files posted by WikiLeaks appear to show internal CIA discussions of various tools for hacking into phones, computers and other electronic gear, along with programming code for some of them, and multiple…

LONDON: Google, which has seen a slew of companies withdraw ads after they appeared alongside extremist content, said Tuesday it was introducing new tools to give firms greater control. "We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn't align with their values," Google's chief business officer Philipp Schindler said in a post on the internet giant's blog. "So starting today, we're taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content." The move came a day after an apology by a…

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled its "Teams" tool for workplace collaboration, taking on rising star Slack in a hot market. "Microsoft Teams is an entirely new experience that brings together people, conversations and content -- along with the tools that teams need -- so they can easily collaborate to achieve more," Microsoft Office team corporate vice president Kirk Koenigsbauer said in a blog post announcing the new product. Teams is built into Office 365, which includes popular applications such as…

FLORIDA: Researchers who dove hundreds of times into a sinkhole beneath the brown murky waters of Florida's Aucilla River have retrieved some of the oldest evidence of human presence in the Americas including stone tools apparently used to butcher a mastodon.

CALIFORNIA: Twitter Inc said in a blog it would provide its advertisers with custom data-driven reports to help them gauge the impact of their ad campaigns on their profits.

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter Inc on Wednesday gave $10 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for research that would explore how people use and achieve shared goals using social networks.