A broken man living on dreams pulls Japan into Islamic State hostage drama
When Haruna Yukawa was captured in Syria earlier this month, a video apparently released by his captors showed them pressing the Japanese man to answer questions friends say he had struggled with for years: Who are you? Why are you here? In fact, Yukawa, 42, ...
Facebook at least learned one thing from its secretive experiment to manipulate users' news feeds to find out how their moods changed. It produced a lot of negative emotions in response.
Tweets and online videos are emerging as weapons of war in the Islamic State's campaign to seize a swath of Iraq, with the al-Qaida offshoot's use of social media dwarfing efforts by other militant groups. Over the weekend, websites previously used by the group calling ...
'Unveiled' Iranian woman nets praise, slander in online push for change
When Masih Alinejad, 37, posted a picture of herself online jumping in the air in a sunny, tree-lined London street, the journalist was hoping to cheer up readers weary of her stories of grim human rights cases in her native Iran. She did not expect ...
Trying to be anonymous on the Internet can attract more attention
When searching for an adjective to describe our comprehensively surveilled networked world — the one bookmarked by the NSA at one end and by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Co. at the other — "Orwellian" is the word that people generally reach for. But "Kafkaesque" seems ...
Line built its empire with surprising speed
How do you create a ¥1.5 trillion company in an industry that gives its primary product away? Line Corp. did it by getting smartphone users to pay for teddy bear icons and games with cute cookies and wicked witches. The Tokyo-based messaging application has grown to ...
Good reasons to loathe Big Tech
Not only have Americans been reamed by Big Tech — they know they've been reamed. Which has set the stage for big-time resentment.
Should we be scared by the rise of Zuck?
On Tuesday, Facebook will turn 10 years old. It has 1.23 billion users. Ponder those two facts for a moment. A company that did not exist 10 years ago now has as many users as India has people. If you wanted a case study in ...
Can social media boast an antidote for bragging?
Social media has conquered the world, racking up more than a billion users and even helping to unseat governments. The one thing it can't topple, though, is human vanity. The world is awash with gripes and tales of the annoyances of what is shared on ...
Major U.S. tech companies call for strict limits on surveillance
Eight of America's largest technology companies have called on President Barack Obama and Congress to impose strict new curbs on surveillance that, if enacted, would dramatically reshape intelligence operations that U.S. officials have portrayed as integral to the war on terrorism. The uncommonly unified front ...
Teenagers deserting Facebook as mom and dad join social network
Facebook made a startling admission in its earnings announcement this month: it was seeing a "decrease in daily users, specifically among teens." In other words, teenagers are still on Facebook; they're just not using it as much as they did. It was a landmark ...
