Facebook takes action to flag fake news
Facebook Inc. is taking a more aggressive step to thwart the spread of fake news on its platform.
The company said it has created a software algorithm to flag stories that may be suspicious and send them to third-party fact checkers. If the fact checkers review the post and write a story debunking it or giving context, that post may appear below the original content on Facebook's news feed, according to a company blog post.
Facebook has been taking steps to make sure that new reports spreading on its social network are accurate -- without intervening in a biased way. The company has been working closely with fact checkers like Snopes and Politifact, experimenting earlier this year with tagging stories as "disputed by snopes.com," for example. The effort hasn't always worked, with the Guardian newspaper reporting that sometimes an authority figure telling people not to read certain stories has caused them to spread faster.
After President Donald Trump's election, Facebook was criticized for allowing misleading information to go viral, potentially resulting in misinformed voters.
-- Bloomberg News
Chinese firm settles fake-goods lawsuit
SHANGHAI -- Alibaba has been battling the perception that it is a marketplace for fakes for years. Late last week, it made some headway, resolving a dispute with the luxury goods giant Kering.
The companies said they had resolved their differences, and Kering, which owns brands including Gucci and Saint Laurent, said it would withdraw a 2015 lawsuit that complained that counterfeit goods had been sold from the Chinese e-commerce giant's website.
They said in a statement that they would establish a joint task force to share information and work with law enforcement to protect Kering's brands. The companies will also make use of Alibaba's technology to seek out fakes.
The resolution is a win for Alibaba, which has been on a charm offensive outside China. The company's founder, Jack Ma, hosted a conference in Detroit this year as part of efforts to enlist more American vendors for its platform. Ma has also met with President Donald Trump.
Alibaba has long faced accusations that its sales platforms harbor vendors selling fakes, and it has worked hard to push back against that image. The resolution of the suit with Kering is likely to be one part of a broader push for the company to get itself off a list of "notorious markets" for counterfeit goods compiled by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Unlike Amazon, much of Alibaba's e-commerce site is dominated by marketplaces run by third-party vendors. The company has argued that it can be tricky to perfectly police such a bewildering number of small online shops, selling all manner of goods. Its situation is also made difficult by the widespread prevalence of fake goods in China more generally.
-- The New York Times
Apple, Google act on Australian request
Apple Inc. and Google have removed more than 300 so-called binary trading applications from their online stores after intervention by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, according to a commission statement.
The country's securities regulator said it made the request to Apple and Google after numerous cases of fraud involving unlicensed operators of the apps, which encourage consumers to make bets on whether instruments, such as shares or currencies, will rise or fall. While some are legitimate operations, there has been an explosion in unlicensed products operating across borders and beyond the reach of regulators in recent years.
Some of the apps "make outrageous claims," said Greg Yanco, head of market integrity at the Australian securities commission. "There is an issue globally with these products."
An Australia-based spokesman for Apple pointed to its recently updated developer guidelines, which explicitly prohibit all new apps that facilitate binary options trading, but declined to comment further on its discussions with the Australian authorities.
Of the 330 apps that have now been removed, 80 percent had no warnings about the risks inherent in trading, the Australian commission said.
-- Bloomberg News
Under-25 crowd tops Instagram time use
Facebook Inc.'s Instagram is most popular for people younger than 25, who the company says spend an average of more than 32 minutes a day on the photo-sharing app.
For those 25 and older, usage is more than 24 minutes a day, the company said. Instagram is crediting much of the growth in engagement to its "Stories," which was launched a year ago as a copycat to Snapchat's feature with the same name. The function allows people to upload short videos of their day that disappear after 24 hours, and Instagram's version now has 250 million daily users.
The new statistics may be salt in the wound for Snapchat, which last reported 166 million users for its overall app, although it may outpace Instagram in terms of time spent. Snapchat users spent more than 30 minutes per day on the app in the first quarter, according to newly-public parent company Snap Inc.
Time spent is an important metric for advertisers, which like to hear that users are browsing an app beyond quick checks for updates, making them more likely to run into some marketing. Instagram last disclosed the number almost three years ago, in October 2014, when it announced people were spending 21 minutes per day overall.
-- Bloomberg News
IKEA to sell home solar-panel batteries
Home retailer IKEA of Sweden AB said it would start selling batteries for rooftop solar panels in the latest sign that once-costly storage technologies are becoming mainstream.
The Solar Battery Storage system was announced in partnership with U.K. panel provider Solar Century Holdings Ltd. last week providing potential savings on electricity bills by enabling users to use stored solar power when the sun is down and power-grid costs are high.
The news came after the U.K. government set out last month to help energy consumers and industries save as much as $52 billion on their electricity bills by opening the grid to battery storage devices. The cost of lithium-ion cells used in batteries have already fallen 73 percent since 2010, and more price declines are expected.
A solar panel and battery storage kit from IKEA would cost from $9,155, that would be returned over 12 years, according to the statement by IKEA on its website.
-- Bloomberg News
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