Facebook is hosting an online abuse summit with other tech leaders

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Desperate to show it takes thwarting misinformation, fraud and spam seriously, Facebook just revealed that it’s hosting a private “Fighting Abuse @Scale” invite-only conference in San Francisco on April 25th. Speakers from Facebook, Airbnb, Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn will discuss how to stop fake news, prevent counterfeit account creation, use honeypots to disrupt adversarial infrastructure and how machine learning can be employed to boost platform safety.

Facebook Event: fighting abuse Though never publicly announced, Facebook has already privately filled the event to capacity. The company’s PR says this isn’t a “last-minute” event as we originally described it, and initial invites went out February 6th. But the sudden move to invite journalists less than a month ahead seems timed to humanize Facebook’s efforts to combat its ongoing data abuse and election interference scandals.

Fighting Abuse @Scale will be held at the Bespoke Event Center within the Westfield Mall in SF. We can expect more technical details about the new proactive artificial intelligence tools Facebook announced today during a conference call about its plans to protect election integrity. The first session is titled “Combating misinformation at Facebook” and will feature an engineering director and data scientists from the company.

Facebook previously held “Fighting Spam @Scale” conferences in May 2015 and November 2016 just after the presidential election. But since then, public frustration has built up to a breaking point for the social network. Russian election interference, hoaxes reaching voters, violence on Facebook Live, the ever-present issue of cyberbullying and now the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal have created a convergence of backlash. With its share price plummeting, former executives speaking out against its impact on society and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a media apology tour, Facebook needs to show this isn’t just a PR problem. It needs users, potential government regulators, and its own existing and potential employees to see it’s willing to step up and take responsibility for fixing its platform.

tech crunch

China busts iPhone smugglers who used drones to get them into Shenzhen

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China customs officials have taken down smugglers who used drones to carry iPhones from Hong Kong into Shenzhen. They managed to transport 500 million yuan (about ₦28,728,000,000) worth of refurbished iPhones before the operation was busted, according to Reuters.

Under the cover of dark, the group of 26 used the unspecified drones to “fly two 200-meter (660-feet) cables between Hong Kong and the mainland.” From there, they loaded around 10 iPhones into small bags and sent each across the cable system. The smugglers could move up to 15,000 iPhones each night, so they managed to get things running pretty efficiently.

The local, state-owned Legal Daily reported this to be “the first case found in China that drones were being used in cross-border smuggling crimes.” As a result, Shenzhen customs plans to keep a close eye on this high-tech smuggling — perhaps using its own drones to help combat illegal cross-border activity.

Last year, China implemented a policy requiring owners of civilian drones over a given weight to register their flying gadgets using their real names. As is the case in the US and elsewhere, China has experienced its share of drone incidents, leading to delayed or disrupted flights. In the United States, drone owners must register any device over 0.55 pounds.

The Verge