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Mountain View gripes over slow-moving regulators while Redmond rakes it in

Google is like a dog with a bone over Microsoft's cloud licensing policies, not letting Euro regulators forget about what it sees as anti-competitive practices that penalize those wanting to run Windows software on rival cloud platforms.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: Twenty-one years after Facebook's launch, Australia's top 25 news outlets now have a combined 27.6 million followers on the platform. They rely on Facebook's reach more than ever, posting far more stories there than in the past. With access to Meta's Content Library (Meta is the owner of Facebook), our big data study analysed more than three million posts from 25 Australian news publishers. We wanted to understand how content is distributed, how audiences engage with news topics, and the nature of misinformation spread. The study enabled us to track de-identified Facebook comments and take a closer look at examples of how misinformation spreads. These included cases about election integrity, the environment (floods) and health misinformation such as hydroxychloroquine promotion during the COVID pandemic. The data reveal misinformation's real-world impact: it isn't just a digital issue, it's linked to poor health outcomes, falling public trust, and significant societal harm. [...] Our study has lessons for public figures and institutions. They, especially politicians, must lead in curbing misinformation, as their misleading statements are quickly amplified by the public. Social media and mainstream media also play an important role in limiting the circulation of misinformation. As Australians increasingly rely on social media for news, mainstream media can provide credible information and counter misinformation through their online story posts. Digital platforms can also curb algorithmic spread and remove dangerous content that leads to real-world harms. The study offers evidence of a change over time in audiences' news consumption patterns. Whether this is due to news avoidance or changes in algorithmic promotion is unclear. But it is clear that from 2016 to 2024, online audiences increasingly engaged with arts, lifestyle and celebrity news over politics, leading media outlets to prioritize posting stories that entertain rather than inform. This shift may pose a challenge to mitigating misinformation with hard news facts. Finally, the study shows that fact-checking, while valuable, is not a silver bullet. Combating misinformation requires a multi-pronged approach, including counter-messaging by trusted civic leaders, media and digital literacy campaigns, and public restraint in sharing unverified content.

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Ballooning leverage and shaky customer funding could strain Big Red's balance sheet

Oracle has raised $18 billion in debt, which could help fund massive datacenter investments aimed at meeting surging demand from AI model builders and enterprise customers.…

The latest in a run of serious networking bugs gives attackers root if they have SNMP access

Cisco has confirmed a new IOS and IOS XE zero-day, the latest in a string of flaws that attackers have been quick to weaponize.…

Performance of new version mostly good, but future uncertain

The bcachefs file system, now "externally maintained" outside the Linux kernel codebase, offers packages of its first version to be loadable on the fly.…

Business Suite nostalgia unlikely to ease customers' public cloud journey

SAP experts are doubting the enterprise software giant's message that it is simplifying licensing after the changes were discussed at the German-speaking user group conference.…

Biometric Entry/Exit System phased in from October to 29 Schengen countries

Travelers including Britons and Americans visiting most European countries will have to register their fingerprints and faces under a system that goes live next month.…