General Election

UK PM Boris Johnson’s Tories guilty of spamming voters

The governing party of the U.K. has been fined £10,000 by the national data protection watchdog for sending spam. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has sanctioned the Conservative Par

Daily Crunch: Amazon unveils its own game-streaming platform

Amazon announces a new game service and plenty of hardware upgrades, tech companies team up against app stores and United Airlines tests a program for rapid COVID-19 testing. This is your Daily Crunch

UK eyeing disclosure labels for online political campaigning

The U.K. government is considering changes to the law that would require online political campaign material to carry labels disclosing who is promoting and funding the messaging. The proposal, which i

UK gov’t asleep at the wheel on Russia cyber ops threat, report warns

The UK lacks a comprehensive and cohesive high level strategy to respond to the cyber threat posed by Russia and other hostile states using online disinformation and influence ops to target democratic

Russian cyberops are targeting COVID-19 vaccine R&D, intelligence agencies warn

Western intelligence agencies say they’ve found evidence that Russian cyber espionage is targeting efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine in a number of countries. In an advisory report, the U

Facebook has paused election reminders in Europe after data watchdog raises transparency concerns

Big tech’s lead privacy regulator in Europe has intervened to flag transparency concerns about a Facebook election reminder feature — asking the tech giant to provide it with information a

Reddit links UK-US trade talk leak to Russian influence campaign

Reddit has linked account activity involving the leak and amplification of sensitive UK-US trade talks on its platform during the ongoing UK election campaign to a suspected Russian political influenc

European parliament’s NationBuilder contract under investigation by data regulator

Europe’s lead data regulator has issued its first ever sanction of an EU institution — taking enforcement action against the European parliament over its use of US-based digital campaign c

Brexit ad blitz data firm paid by Vote Leave broke privacy laws, watchdogs find

A joint investigation by watchdogs in Canada and British Columbia has found that Cambridge Analytica-linked data firm, Aggregate IQ, broke privacy laws in Facebook ad-targeting work it undertook for

Brexit means clear your cookies for democracy

Brexit looks set to further sink the already battered reputation of tracking cookies after a Buzzfeed report yesterday revealed what appears to be a plan by the UK’s minority government to use o

UK watchdog eyeing PM Boris Johnson’s Facebook ads data grab

The online campaigning activities of the UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, have already caught the eye of the country’s data protection watchdog. Responding to concerns about the sco

Kargo is disrupting logistics in Myanmar, one of the world’s most challenging countries

Founders in Seattle recently bemoaned a lack of capital and support when compared to Silicon Valley — what about those building startups in more remote markets? Kargo, a company that takes the s

When it comes to elections, Facebook moves slow, may still break things

This week, Facebook invited a small group of journalists — which didn’t include TechCrunch — to look at the “war room” it has set up in Dublin, Ireland, to help monitor i

Facebook has quietly removed three bogus far-right networks in Spain ahead of Sunday’s elections

Facebook has quietly removed three far-right networks that were engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior intended to spread politically divisive content in Spain ahead of a general election in the

Singapore’s proposed ‘fake news’ law could stifle free speech

For many, Singapore is an idyllic and livable city in Asia. But there’s serious concern for the country and its five million population around a proposed law to curb ‘fake news’ on t

WhatsApp adds a tip-line for gathering fakes ahead of India’s elections

Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has launched a fact-checking tipline for users in India ahead of elections in the country.

Twitter names first international markets to get checks on political advertisers

Twitter has announced it’s expanding checks on political advertisers outside the U.S. to also cover Australia, India and all the member states of the European Union. This means anyone wanting to

Facebook is launching political ad checks in Nigeria, Ukraine, EU and India in coming months

Facebook is launching some of its self-styled ‘election security’ initiatives in more markets in the coming months, ahead of several major votes in countries around the world. In an interv

Campaign tool supplied to UK’s governing party by Trump-Pence app dev quietly taken out of service — thanks to GDPR

An app that the UK’s governing party launched last year — for Conservative Party activists to gamify, ‘socialize’ and co-ordinate their campaigning activity — has been

WhatsApp limits message forwarding in bid to reduce spam and misinformation

In a bid to cut down on the spread of false information and spam, WhatsApp recently added labels that indicate when a message has been forwarded. Now the company is sharpening that strategy by imposin
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