French protests

A 25-year-old Frenchman accused of killing two police employees outside Paris Monday night reportedly broadcast the attack on Facebook Live, according to reports in French media. The suspect, identified as Larossi Abballa, stabbed a police commander to death in front of his home Monday evening, before taking his partner and three-year-old son hostage. Security forces later stormed the home and killed the attacker. The son was rescued, but his mother, also a police employee, was found dead. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, which French President François Hollande described as "unquestionably a terrorist act." The slain police commander has been identified as Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42. Au début de son Facebook live, le tueur de #Magnanville commence par prêter allégeance à Abu Bakr al Bagdadi pic.twitter.com/HGRa946gpz — David Thomson (@_DavidThomson) June 14, 2016 David Thomson, a Paris-based journalist who specializes in … [Read more...] about French terror suspect reportedly streamed attack on Facebook Live

Facebook has been ordered to stop tracking non-Facebook users in France, or else it could be fined by the country's privacy watchdog. The Mark Zuckerberg-run company has been given three months to comply with the order, which comes a week after a deadline for the US and EU to agree to a replacement to the "invalid" Safe Harbour pact lapsed, and a "political deal" was fudged by officials who were keen to buy more time for their negotiations to continue before regulators swooped. French data regulator CNIL (the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés) said in a statement on Monday that it had it issued its formal notice against Facebook, demanding that the multinational changes it practices in light of "several failures" to comply with France's Data Protection Act. Facebook needs to stop some of its transfers to the US, the watchdog added, by noting that the European Court of Justice had ripped up the Safe Harbour agreement in October last year. … [Read more...] about Clock ticking for Facebook to stop tracking French netizens

People, including my editors, keep asking me who “won the day.” I have been thinking about other things, like whether the marble behind the Honorable Stephen Wilson is an actual slab, or just a veneer over particle board, and whether I will get kicked out of the courtroom if I go check it out before court is in session. But mostly, I have been thinking about insults. The main point of contention has been whether “pedo guy” qualifies as an insult or a statement of fact. As Ken White, the lawyer and pundit, points out, insults — like hyperbole, shit-talking, and “other expressions not reasonably taken literally as assertions of fact” — are not defamation, which is why John Oliver can perform the song at the end of this Last Week Tonight segment with confidence. In White’s view, Elon Musk has a defensible case, though this is not the same thing as a winning case. Insults are the kind of thing one might want to call a linguist to … [Read more...] about Caver Unsworth testifies he felt ‘dirtied’ by Musk’s ‘pedo guy’ tweet

It’s best to think of YouTube as a series of independent communities living on the same platform — what’s popular to one group might not even be on another community’s radar. There are a few rare exceptions, and the beauty world’s drama is one of them. YouTube’s top trending list (which is different from most viewed videos or most viewed creators) this year is pretty diverse, but one of the constant trends is drama and the beauty community. The top trending video of 2019 was beauty guru James Charles’ 40-minute response to one of the year’s biggest controversies; the third most popular video was a 90-minute video from Shane Dawson that focused on conspiracy theories and the story of what happened to his ex-girlfriend and YouTuber, Lisa Schwartz. But it’s the seventh most popular video — Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson trying Kylie Jenner’s makeup line and dunking on it — that sums up this year best. Popular … [Read more...] about Beauty, drama, and Shane Dawson dominated YouTube’s Trending page in 2019

This story is part of The 2010s: A Decade in Review, a series on the memes, people, products, movies and so much more that have influenced the 2010s. In the last decade, apps (and by association, phones) have become an essential part of our lives. Since the iOS App Store and Google Play launched in 2008 with what seemed like mostly novelty titles, they've grown to include millions of apps that help us communicate, meet new people, listen to music and kill pigs with birds. Sure, we still use our phones to make calls sometimes, but apps are so popular there are now apps that tell you how much time you spend using apps on your phone. CNET's Decade in Review here are our picks for the impactful apps of the 2010s. I crowdsourced this list -- some of the apps on it didn't even exist as the decade began, a few did though -- from every CNET editor and then curated it further from there. The result is the list below in no particular order. Instagram What is it? Instagram … [Read more...] about From Tinder to Fortnite, these are the 25 most important apps of the decade