Month: March 2017

(credit: Rego Korosi)

YouTube and Google have some explaining to do to the government of the United Kingdom. According to a report by UK publication The Times, government-funded advertising has appeared in front of extremist videos on YouTube. The UK government has summoned Google to explain why taxpayer funded-advertising was allowed to roll on videos by "rape apologists, anti-Semites, and banned hate preachers."

The Times found that these advertisements resulted in payouts for extremist YouTube creators, including American white nationalist David Duke and Holocaust-denying fundamentalist pastor Steven Anderson, who praised the killing of 49 people in the Pulse nightclub terror attack. The Times' investigation revealed videos from these and other extremist creators included ads from the Home Office, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, Transport for London, and the BBC.

The UK's Cabinet Office now has a temporary restriction on YouTube advertising until it's reassured that those messages can be "delivered in a safe and appropriate way." According to the BBC, The Guardian, Channel 4, and the BBC itself have also pulled advertising from YouTube. This comes after the UK government decided to move away from TV advertising and focus more funding on digital advertising on outlets like YouTube, with the Cabinet Office saying these outlets are a "cost-effective" way of reaching mass audiences.

Electric GT

Its cars are blindingly fast, but as a company, Tesla appears to be utterly indifferent to racing. This is perhaps understandable; Tesla is up to its eyeballs in orders for cars and is hard at work on developing the Model 3, as well as the Nevada "Gigafactory." After all, why bother spending money on a side activity when you can sell every vehicle you can build? But that hasn't stopped people wanting to take Teslas racing. We've seen a privateer Model S run at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and with any luck an all-Tesla racing series—called Electric GT—will field a grid of 20 Tesla Model S P100Ds later this year.

I've been keeping a watchful eye on the Electric GT series for a while now, but over at Motor Sport, Jack Phillips has an interesting piece on the series, including an interview with racing drivers Karun Chandok and Alice Powell, who have actually driven one of the cars.

Enlarge (credit: Athif Khan/Contributor via Getty Images)

Fraud, scams, and "unfair" terms and conditions all need to be cleaned up on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, the European Commission has said—warning the US firms that any failure to comply with the order will lead to sanctions.

It comes after the trio of free content ad networks were put on notice in November last year, when Brussels' officials asked the companies to address two areas of concern.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google—all of which are routinely blasted by regulators and lawmakers in Europe—have one month to submit proposals for how they plan to comply with the EU's demands. If their offers come up short against the bloc's regulatory framework, then consumer authorities could threaten to take enforcement action, the commission said.