Martin Lewis is suing Facebook. The question is whether companies can be held responsible for the behaviour of their softwareMartin Lewis, the consumer advice and money-saving expert, is suing Facebook in a case that threatens the dominant business model of publishing on the internet. It raises in a very sharp form the question of responsibility for what appears on a user’s screen: is the owner of the site responsible for the content that appears there, even though no human eye may ever have seen it? Facebook and in fact all the ad-supported businesses on the internet maintain that they are platforms, not publishers. Their responsibility extends only to content they know about. Is this enough? Should they also be responsible for content they might reasonably anticipate?Facebook’s defence is that it has taken down individual adverts as they are reported; Lewis counter charges that they are soon, predictably, replaced with almost identical ones. It does appear odd that Facebook, which is extremely keen on facial recognition and can label the people in friends’ photograph feed with sometimes disconcerting accuracy, is apparently unable to recognise the face of a television personality made as recognisable as possible or to kill automatically any ad in which it appears. In a similar way, YouTube, owned by Google, is far more successful at keeping pornography off the site than it is at keeping off incitements to hatred or bullying. All that really frightens them is the thought... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2018-04-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with:
#facial recognition
Martin Lewis is suing Facebook. The question is whether companies can be held responsible for the behaviour of their softwareMartin Lewis, the consumer advice and money-saving expert, is suing Facebook in a case that threatens the dominant business model of publishing on the internet. It raises... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-04-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#facial recognition
The US experience of watching sport online should ring alarm bells for those who prize the Premier League’s ability to bring people togetherIn the late 1960s, the American author and tech seer Richard Brautigan wrote lyrically of “a cybernetic meadow / where mammals and computers / live together... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-12-02 18:49:42 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#american author
#prime service
#late 1960s
#premier league
Almost a third of school-age children are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. But they will still struggle to find characters who resemble themselvesBooks can show us the world both as it is, and as it could be – “mirrors and windows”, as the author Malorie Blackman notes. For... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-07-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#white boys
#bame protagonists
#titles featured
#bame characters
When is a book not a book? When it is performed by a starry cast of hundreds. Except it has always been more complicated than thatNews this week of a 17% hike in the UK’s audiobook sales might seem like a niche business story, but it raises an existential question. What exactly is an audiobook... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-10 17:25:03 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#audiobook
#harry potter
#jim dale
#stephen fry
#sit alongside
#jk rowling
#market dominance
#audiobook sales
Through his businesses, Rupert Murdoch pushed a world view with the pursuit of money at its heartThere are not many chairmanships of companies that would so fascinate writers, and television producers, that they would make four series about them. Rupert Murdoch’s long tenure at Fox and News Corp... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-09-22 17:40:41 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#news corp
#book publishing
#mark zuckerberg
#elon musk
#digital age
Alice Oseman’s tale of queer romance is a global success story built on fans who want to feel good about themselves in tough timesAfter boy met boy in a crowdfunded graphic novel set in a British grammar school in 2018, hearts began to flutter and tills started to ring around the world. This... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-08-03 17:41:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#graphic novel
#revealing light
#tv adaptation
#feel good
#alice oseman
The Harry Potter publisher ascribes its record profits to a hunger for affordable diversion. That’s the magic of booksIn the gloom of a UK economy teetering on the edge of recession, a glittering puff of smoke wafted up last week from the publisher that will for ever be associated with Harry... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-06-04 17:25:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#harry potter
#ebooks
#nigel newton
#boy wizard
#jk rowling
#guardian view
#cut back
#uk sales
#record profits
Censorship is surging thanks to an organised rightwing minority targeting books on LGBTQ and Black characters and issues“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door,” warns a character in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision of an America where books are considered so dangerous they... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-04-13 17:21:33 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#library association
#multiple titles
#ron desantis
#school boards
#school year
The failure of a recent bid to merge two large publishing companies shines a light on a central issue of cultural powerDespite a rise in self-publishing, commercial publishers are still the main gatekeepers of what arrives on our bookshelves. As such, they have great cultural and – if a book... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-04 18:25:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book publishing
#publishing companies
#penguin random house
#2bn deal
#publishing market
#simon schuster
#planned merger
#book takes
The world’s richest man promises more than he has delivered. His social network purchase is likely to go the same wayElon Musk is a fan of the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. When his spacecraft company SpaceX successfully sent its Falcon Heavy rocket payload into orbit around the sun in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-01 18:50:19 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#science fiction
#human life
#foundation trilogy
#classic work
#digital copy
The social media platform is revolutionising bookshops and galvanising publishers. Enjoy it while it lastsThe bestselling book in the UK last week, and of the year so far, is an American novel that was published in 2016. If that sentence sounds implausible, the odds are you have not yet caught... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-09-04 17:25:02 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#bestselling book
#nielsen
#colleen hoover
#covid pandemic
#guardian view
The online virtual reality experience that almost every tech giant today wishes to commercially exploit may not catch onIn the 1992 sci-fi dystopia Snow Crash, the author Neal Stephenson imagined a bleak 21st century where the collapse of the global economy had seen governments fall and their... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-02-07 19:11:48 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#science fiction
#virtual worlds
#mark zuckerberg
#microsoft announced
#gig economy
#wireless internet
#global economy
A government proposal to ease restrictions on the sale of imported cultural works risks harming a world-class industryThe hoopla around the release of Sally Rooney’s new novel on Tuesday – with bookshops opening early, and queues of shoppers eager to lay their hands on Beautiful World, Where Are... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-09-07 18:00:33 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#publishing industry
#reduce prices
#limited exceptions
#bernardine evaristo
#kazuo ishiguro
People want stories and that means cultivating a publishing ecosystem where big and small can flourishThis week both the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and the Department of Justice in the US announced investigations into the planned $2.2bn acquisition of the publisher Simon &... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-03-28 17:25:47 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#bertelsmann
#bloomsbury
#pan macmillan
#harpercollins
#bookseller
#dragged back
#online shopping
#household names
#bookseller survey
Many publishers are enjoying record sales – but not all. We must take care that those with the biggest names and deepest pockets are not the only beneficiariesAs the weather turns and the days shorten, as trees bend low with fruit and blackberries darken the hedges, bookshops are bracing for a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-08-23 17:25:02 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#bookshop
#50% increase
#super thursday
#bumper crop
#biggest names
#guardian view
#trade books
It’s no surprise that people read a lot when stuck at home. But novels are more than a way to kill timeIt’s no surprise that keen readers have looked to books for historical analogues or literary insights into the coronavirus outbreak. Sales of the English translation of Albert Camus’s 1947... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-04-19 17:25:44 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#libraries
#lockdown began
#lucy hughes-hallett
#don delillo
#recent weeks
#albert camus
Everyone’s favourite stormtrooper will be developing new movies with Netflix – one of several creators who have turned to enabling the work of othersToni Morrison knew a thing or two about stories. In 1994 she saw the “political correctness debate” as being about “the power to be able to define.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-03-15 18:32:03 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#penguin random house
#literary agency
#under-represented communities
#record label
#recent announcement
#production company
#guardian view
This year’s Booker and Turner prizes tell us artists and even judges are repudiating the winner-takes-all award. It may be time to find new ways to celebrate the artsThe past year has been a curious one for cultural prizes. The Booker, when the judges failed to agree on a single winner, ended up... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-12-15 18:25:01 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#dating back
#put forward
#guardian view
Social media cannot ensure they only publish truths. But what about deliberate falsehoods designed to damage?Are social media companies responsible for the lies their users tell? Both the obvious answers, “yes” and “no”, are clearly wrong. Complete responsibility is a bad idea, and impossible in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-05-27 17:25:07 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#alex jones
#conspiracy theories
The social media advertising giants of the web have great power. When they admit this, they will come under pressureThe decision by Facebook to ban six prominent figures of the alt-right movement, along with Louis Farrakhan, from both Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram, is a significant... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-05-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#social networks
#held responsible
#traditional publishers
#significant development
#louis farrakhan