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Russia created a playbook for spreading disinformation on social media. Now the rest of the world is following it. Twitter said on Thursday that countries including Bangladesh and Venezuela had been using social media to disseminate government talking points, while Facebook detailed a broad Iranian disinformation campaign that touched on everything from the conflict in Syria to conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks. The campaigns tied to various governments — as well as privately held accounts in the United States — followed a pattern similar to Russian disinformation efforts before and after the 2016 presidential election. Millions of people were targeted by content designed to widen political and social divisions among Americans. The global spread of social media disinformation comes in a year when major elections are set to take place in countries including India and Ukraine. Last year, social media disinformation played a role in a number of campai...

SEATTLE — Amazon held off stiffer competition for online shoppers during the holiday season, once again increasing its sales. But the company said on Thursday that growth slowed from its usual breakneck pace — and it came at a cost, with the company spending far more on shipping to win customers. While strong, the latest quarterly results suggested that Amazon’s retail business not only faces more competition, it is also maturing. The company reported that its revenue from retail sales and services grew 17 percent to almost $65 billion globally, while its shipping costs rose 23 percent, to $9 billion, compared with the same quarter a year ago. The company is compensating for slowing growth in e-commerce by expanding its fast-moving, highly profitable cloud and advertising businesses. Over all, the company produced a profit of $3 billion in the quarter, up more than 60 percent from the same period a year earlier. Competition for shoppers over the holidays was ...

When news of natural disasters or man-made ones break in the U.S., Julie Bloom taps a variety of tools to communicate with reporters, edit stories and get them published. As a deputy editor on the national desk, you oversee a lot of breaking news. What tech tools do you use to help? Hurricanes. Shootings. Wildfires. Elections and earthquakes. I didn’t think anything could be as crazy as the fall of 2017 in this country, but 2018 came pretty close. I primarily oversee California and parts of the West, but also handle a lot of our coverage of major breaking news. With my colleagues on the desk and our boss, Marc Lacey, the national editor, we’ve developed a tool kit of sorts to handle these stories that are fast-moving and intense. I feel like each day is a little like being caught in a batter’s box without knowing when or where the balls are coming from, and that can be both exhilarating and exhausting. Technology certainly helps. My phone is pretty much everything. It’s k...

The transition to new fifth-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, will affect how you use smartphones and many other devices. Let’s talk about the essentials. In 2019, a big technology shift will finally begin. It’s a once-in-a-decade upgrade to our wireless systems that will start reaching mobile phone users in a matter of months. But this is not just about faster smartphones. The transition to new fifth-generation cellular networks — known as 5G for short — will also affect many other kinds of devices, including industrial robots, security cameras, drones and cars that send traffic data to one another. This new era will leap ahead of current wireless technology , known as 4G, by offering mobile internet speeds that will let people download entire movies within seconds and most likely bring big changes to video games, sports and shopping. Officials in the United States and China see 5G networks as a competitive edge. The faster networks could help spread the use of...