Meta said it's banning Russia state media organization from its social media platforms, alleging that the outlets used deceptive tactics to amplify Moscow's propaganda. The announcement drew a rebuke from the Kremlin on Tuesday.
The company, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, said late Monday that it will roll out the ban over the next few days in an escalation of its efforts to counter Russia's covert influence operations.

A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk's social media platform X nationwide, according to the court's website.
The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian renegade who is intent on censoring political speech in Brazil.

Imagine a customer-service center that speaks your language, no matter what it is.
Alorica, a company in Irvine, California, that runs customer-service centers around the world, has introduced an artificial intelligence translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers who speak 200 different languages and 75 dialects.

French authorities handed preliminary charges to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation.
Both free-speech advocates and authoritarian governments have spoken in Durov's defense since his weekend arrest. The case has also called attention to the challenges of policing illegal activity online, and to the Russia-born Durov's own unusual biography and multiple passports.

Three times in the past four months, William Stein, a technology analyst at Truist Securities, has taken Elon Musk up on his invitation to try the latest versions of Tesla's vaunted "Full Self-Driving" system.
A Tesla equipped with the technology, the company says, can travel from point to point with little human intervention. Yet each time Stein drove one of the cars, he said, the vehicle made unsafe or illegal maneuvers. His most recent test-drive earlier this month, Stein said, left his 16-year-old son, who accompanied him, "terrified."

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says senior Biden administration officials pressured Facebook to "censor" some COVID-19 content during the pandemic and vowed that the social media giant would push back if it faced such demands again.
In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg alleges that the officials, including those from the White House, "repeatedly pressured" Facebook for months to take down "certain COVID-19 content including humor and satire."

French prosecutors are expected to charge or release the CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, after his police custody order expires on Wednesday.
Durov was detained Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a judicial inquiry opened last month involving 12 alleged criminal violations. They include allegations that his platform is being used for selling child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud, abetting organized crime transactions and Telegram's refusal to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, was arrested in Paris over the weekend over allegations that his platform is being used for illicit activity such as drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse images.
Durov, who was born in Russia, spent much of his childhood in Italy and is a citizen of France, Russia, the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis and the United Arab Emirates. He was taken into custody at Paris-Le Bourget Airport in France on Saturday after landing from Azerbaijan.

The boss of social media platform Telegram has been arrested in France, accused of allowing the sharing of illegal content.

If 2024 already looks like an annus horribilis for big tech in the EU, the months ahead could prove a winter of discontent as the bloc wields a fortified new legal armory to bring online titans to heel.
