With files from Jori Negin-Shecter
Report finds Facebook rampant with sex trafficking, an antitrust law that could reshape Big Tech, and Fastly releases a statement
It’s all the biz/tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Friday, June 11 and I’m your host Alex Coop.
Facebook is under fire after a report from The Human Trafficking Institute found that over half of all online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases last year occurred on their website. The report, which was contained within the group’s 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report, details that 59% of all cases occurred on Facebook alone, while 65% of all child sex trafficking victims recruited through social media were on Facebook. In a statement on the matter, Facebook responded strongly against the on-site exploitation, stating that tools were in place to help mitigate the “abhorrent” activities. Facebook also added that they were working with “safety groups, anti-trafficking organizations and other technology companies to address this”. [Reddit]
House Democrats are in discussions on a draft of antitrust bills that would significantly shake up the way that Big Tech companies such as Apple, Google, and Amazon operate. Amongst the impacts of the proposed bills would be a measure that prevented companies such as Apple and Amazon from selling their own products within their digital marketplaces. Other changes that could be coming include measures that make it harder to complete large mergers, as well as other anti-monopoly and antitrust reforms. It’s unclear at the moment whether Republicans on the other side of the aisle would support these bills, though several have been on record as aiming to reign in Big Tech according to the article from CNBC. [Reddit]
And finally, Content Delivery Network Fastly, the company behind Tuesday’s major internet outage, released a blog post explaining the cause behind the major outage that took out several major websites. Senior V.P. Engineering and Infrastructure Nick Rockwell detailed that the bug had laid dormant until a customer updated their settings, which in turn took down “85% of the company’s network”. Rockwell went on to write that the issue was detected almost immediately upon the error and that within 49 minutes 95% of Fastly’s network had returned to normal functionality. You can find a link to the full blog post detailing the issues in the show notes for this episode at ITWorldCanada.com
On June 8, we experienced a global service interruption. Here is what happened — and what happens next.https://t.co/gffDur5Moh
— Fastly (@fastly) June 9, 2021
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