Barbara Ortutay

Google is making it harder for political advertisers to target specific types of people. The company said that as of January, advertisers will only be able to target U.S. political ads based on broad categories such as gender, age and postal code. Currently, ads can be tailored for more specific groups — for instance, using information gleaned from public voter...

Facebook says it is deleting the name of the person who has been identified in conservative circles as the whistleblower who triggered a congressional impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s actions. The company said Friday that mention of the potential whistleblower’s name violates Facebook’s “coordinating harm policy,” which prohibits material that could identify a “witness, informant, or...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endured hours of prickly questioning from lawmakers Wednesday as he defended the company’s new globally ambitious project to create a digital currency while also dealing with widening scrutiny from U.S. regulators. Representatives also grilled Zuckerberg on Facebook’s track record on civil rights, hate speech, privacy and misinformation — not surprising given the litany of scandals Facebook...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took questions about the company’s Libra currency on Wednesday from the House Financial Services Committee.

Facebook is tackling a new frontier: love. Facebook Dating, a matchmaking service the company already offers in Brazil, Canada and 17 other countries , will arrive in the U.S. on Thursday. But after years of privacy missteps by the social network, will people trust it with their love lives? The mobile-only feature is part of Facebook’s ongoing attempt to reach...

Soon, you could get fewer familiar ads following you around the internet — or at least on Facebook. Facebook is launching a long-promised tool that lets you block the social network from gathering information about you on outside websites and apps.

The Federal Trade Commission announced a $5 billion settlement with Facebook on Wednesday to end an investigation into the company’s privacy practices. It’s a record penalty that shows the federal government taking a harder stance against tech firms, but one that may stop short of changing how Silicon Valley does business.

President Donald Trump’s next tweet might come with a warning label. Starting Thursday, tweets that Twitter deems to involve matters of public interest, but which violate the service’s rules, will be obscured by a warning explaining the violation and Twitter’s reasons for publishing it anyway. Users will have to tap through the warning to see the underlying message. Twitter said...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is evaluating how it should handle “deepfake” videos created with artificial intelligence and high-tech tools to yield false but realistic clips. In an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said it might make sense to treat such videos differently from other misinformation such as false news. Facebook has...

It took a while, but finally — and with the carefully curated help of Oprah, Big Bird and Goldman Sachs — Apple has at last unveiled a new streaming TV service, its own branded credit card and a news subscription product. The moves have been largely expected and so far don’t appear to drastically alter the competitive landscape the way...

German authorities ruled Thursday that Facebook should not be allowed to use customer data from other apps and websites to help target advertisements shown on their Facebook pages without their explicit consent, saying it was exploiting its dominant position in social media. The Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, said Facebook was guilty of “exploitative abuse” by forcing users to agree...

Facebook gave some companies such as Apple, Amazon and Yahoo more extensive access to users’ personal data, effectively exempting them from the company’s usual privacy rules, according to a New York Times report.

Keep your friends close … and your close friends closer? Instagram is adding a feature to make it easier to share photos and videos with fewer folks. Called Close Friends, the new feature lets users share Stories — photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours — with people they put on a special list. The idea is people may...

The head of Apple on Wednesday endorsed tough privacy laws for both Europe and the U.S. and renewed the technology giant’s commitment to protecting personal data, which he warned was being “weaponized” against users.

Teens and young adults say cyberbullying is a serious problem for people their age, but most don’t think they’ll be the ones targeted for digital abuse. That’s according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV, which also finds that about half of both young people and their parents view social media as...

Facebook is naming Adam Mosseri, a 10-year veteran at the company, as the head of Instagram. The appointment comes after the photo-sharing app’s co-founders resigned last week without giving a clear reason. Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s CEO, and Mike Krieger, its other co-founder, announced Mosseri’s appointment Monday on the company blog.

When Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger sold Instagram to Facebook in 2012, the photo-sharing startup’s fiercely loyal fans worried about what would happen to their beloved app under the social media giant’s wings. None of their worst fears materialized. But now that its founders have announced they are leaving in a swirl of well wishes and vague explanations, some of...

Facebook and Twitter executives assured Congress on Wednesday that they are aggressively working to root out foreign attempts to sow discord in America, and they pledged to better protect their social networks against manipulation during the 2018 midterm elections and beyond....
Facebook’s No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, and Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, testified before the Senate intelligence committee in the morning,...

Who knew connecting the world could get so complicated? Perhaps some of technology’s brightest minds should have seen that coming. Social media bans of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have thrust Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others into a role they never wanted — as gatekeepers of discourse on their platforms, deciding what should and shouldn’t be allowed and often angering almost...

With less than three months to go before the midterm elections, Facebook is enforcing strict new requirements on digital political ads. Among other things, they force political ad buyers to verify their identities by receiving mail at a known U.S. address. Facebook credits the system with catching at least one ad from a fake, and possibly Russia-connected, Facebook page that...