TheNewsGuru

Tag: Facebook

  • Inventor of World Wide Web launches contract for better Internet

    Inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee has launched a campaign to persuade governments, companies and individuals to sign a Contract for the Web set of principles designed to defend a free and open Internet.

    Berners-Lee, who hatched the Web in 1989, said a sense of optimism about the Internet had been damaged by abuses of personal data, online hate speech, political manipulation and the centralization of power among a small group of major tech firms.

    He said he wanted to rebuild trust in the web and increase Internet access on fair and affordable terms by encouraging governments, companies and individuals to work together.

    “The web is at a crucial point… we need a new Contract for the Web, with clear and tough responsibilities for those who have the power to make it better,” Berners-Lee said in excerpts from his speech launching the project at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon on Monday.

    Berners-Lee said governments, companies and individual Internet users had a role to play.

    “Some policy things like net neutrality have to involve governments, some things clearly involve companies – big companies, small companies and start-ups.

    “If you’re an ISP (Internet service provider) you (commit to) deliver a neutral Internet. If you are a social networking company you make sure that (…) you allow people to control their data,” he said in an interview ahead of the launch.

    Individuals would pledge to “respect civil discourse and human dignity so that everyone feels safe and welcome online”, according to one of the core principles of the contract.

    However, it is not clear how such a principle could be enforced, given the inherent anonymity of the Internet.

    The contract’s starting principles have already received the endorsement of more than 50 organizations including the French government, Internet Sans Frontieres and companies including Google and Facebook.

    Berners-Lee said the full terms of the contract would be agreed in the coming months, with the objective to finalize it in May 2019 – the 50/50 moment when more than half of the world’s population will be online for the first time.

    People will be able to get involved by using the hashtag #ForTheWeb, he said.

     

  • Facebook removes fake accounts tied to Iran

    Facebook said on Friday it had deleted more accounts originating in Iran that attracted no fewer than one million U.S. and British followers.
    It said this was its latest effort to combat disinformation activity on its platform.
    The social media company removed 82 pages, groups and accounts on Facebook and Instagram that represented themselves as being from American or British citizens, then posted on “politically-charged’’ topics.
    Topics such as race relations, opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump and immigration, Facebook’s head of cyber-security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in a blog post.
    In total, the removed accounts attracted more than one million followers.
    “The Iran-linked posts were amplified through less than 100 dollars in advertising on Facebook and Instagram,’’ Facebook said.
    While the accounts originated in Iran, it was unclear if they were linked to the Tehran government, according to Facebook, which shared the information with researchers, other technology companies and the British and U.S. governments.
    The action follows takedowns of hundreds of accounts linked to Iranian propaganda efforts by Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet.
    Social media companies have increasingly targeted foreign interference on their platforms.
    This follows criticism that they did not do enough to detect, halt and disclose Russian efforts to use their platforms to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
    Iran and Russia have denied allegations that they have used social media platforms to launch disinformation campaigns.
     

  • How to find your first Facebook post [Video]


     

  • Married man posts lover’s nude photo on Facebook, bags 2-year jail term

    Married man posts lover’s nude photo on Facebook, bags 2-year jail term

    A married man, Ayan Olubunmi, was on Wednesday handed a two year jail term with a fine of N500,000 by a Federal High Court sitting in Ado Ekiti for posting nude pictures of his ex-lover, Arare Monica, on Facebook.
    Justice Taiwo Taiwo, who handed down the sentence, said he had been lenient with the convict.
    The suit marked FHC/AD/17c/2017 was between Attorney General of the Federation and Olubunmi.
    Counsel to the AGF, Mrs A.Oyewole told the court that Olubunmi had earlier threatened to post nude pictures of his ex- girlfriend, Monica, on the social media sometimes in 2017, when the lady told him she was no longer interested in their relationship.
    According to the counsel, Monica, a single lady, had pleaded with Olubunmi, who is married with children, not to carry out his threat, consequent upon which the convict requested that a sum of N200,000 be paid to him as inducement so as not to expose the nude pictures.
    She said in spite of that, Olubunmi went ahead post the pictures when it dawned on him that Monica could not pay the money in record time.
    Justice Taiwo while delivering his judgement, said Olubunmi was found guilty of committing the crime, after considering all evidences made available to the court.
    He said the evidences were weighty and incontrovertible enough to prove that the accused actually willfully and maliciously committed the crime.
    Describing the crime as “disgraceful, very despicable and barbaric”, Justice Taiwo said Olubunmi was guilty of violating Section 24 (1) of the Cyber Crime Act, 2015 and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.
    The judge therefore sentenced the culprit to two years imprisonment with a fine of N500,000, to be paid into the coffers of the Federal Government.
    He added that the jail term took immediate effect, stressing that the court was lenient in sentencing the culprit as the punishment for his crime attracts a fine of N7 million and three year jail term.
    This, the judge said was in recognition of the plea of the defense counsel that his client has a family to look after and a first offender.
    The judge however lamented that those who made the law attaching a punishment of N7 million and three year jail term to the persons guilty of such crimes did not make provisions for compensation for the victim.
    He therefore called for appropriate amendment to the law to make provisions for compensation to victims.
    “I find the act of the convict highly disgraceful, very despicable and barbaric to say the least, he has behaved true to the saying that hell knows no fury than a lover ‘s scorn
    “I must say that the defendant who already has a wife and children at home could find it easy to demean and embarrass another woman who was having an amorous affair with him,” the judge said.
     

  • Cambridge Analytica: Britain fines Facebook

    Britain’s data protection watchdog says it has fined Facebook 500,000 pounds (645,000 dollars) for “serious breaches of data protection law’’ in connection with the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
    The Information Commissioner’s Office said the fine followed an investigation that found Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly.
    “By also allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent,’’ the office.
    It said Facebook also “failed to keep the personal information secure,” leading to one developer harvesting data that was partially shared with firms, including SCL Group, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company.
    The watchdog said it applied the maximum fine possible “after considering representations” from Facebook.
     

  • Breaking: Facebook opens elections war room ahead of 2019

    Ahead of the 2019 general elections in Nigeria, social media giant, Facebook has announced opening its first physical elections war room in Menlo Park, California.
    TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Facebook’s goal is to get the right subject-matter experts from across the company in one place so they can address potential problems identified by its technology in real time and respond quickly.
    “The war room has over two dozen experts from across the company – including from our threat intelligence, data science, software engineering, research, community operations and legal teams. These employees represent and are supported by the more than 20,000 people working on safety and security across Facebook.
    “When everyone is in the same place, the teams can make decisions more quickly, reacting immediately to any threats identified by our systems, which can reduce the spread of potentially harmful content.
    “Our dashboards offer real-time monitoring on key elections issues, such as efforts to prevent people from voting, increases in spam, potential foreign interference, or reports of content that violates our policies.
    “The team also monitors news coverage and election-related activity across other social networks and traditional media. These efforts give us a collective view and help track what type of content may go viral.
    “To prepare, our team has also done extensive scenario-planning to game out potential threats – from harassment to voter suppression – and developed systems and procedures in advance to respond effectively,” Facebook said on Thursday.
    The social media giant in a statement by Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook Director of Product Management, Civic Engagement, said the preparations helped a lot during the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections.
    “The work we are doing in the war room builds on almost two years of hard work and significant investments, in both people and technology, to improve security on Facebook, including during elections.
    “Our machine learning and artificial intelligence technology is now able to block or disable fake accounts more effectively – the root cause of so many issues.
    “We’ve increased transparency and accountability in our advertising. And we continue to make progress in fighting false news and misinformation.
    “That said, security remains an arms race and staying ahead of these adversaries will take continued improvement over time. We’re committed to the challenge.” the Facebook Director stated.
    Speaking further on efforts to prevent people from misusing Facebook during elections, the social media platform said it has also broadened its policies against voter suppression, action that is designed to deter or prevent people from voting.
    “We already prohibit offers to buy or sell votes as well as misrepresentations about the dates, locations, times and qualifications for casting a ballot. We have been removing this type of content since 2016.
    “Last month, we extended this policy further and are expressly banning misrepresentations about how to vote, such as claims that you can vote using an online app, and statements about whether a vote will be counted (e.g. “If you voted in the primary, your vote in the general election won’t count.”).
    “We’ve also recently introduced a new reporting option on Facebook so that people can let us know if they see voting information that may be incorrect, and have set up dedicated reporting channels for state election authorities so that they can do the same,” said Jessica Leinwand, Facebook Public Policy Manager.
     

  • Gates, Zuckerberg partner to halt spread of infectious diseases

    The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has announced a partnership with the Gates Foundation to get an exciting new tool called IDseq, built by Biohub, into the hands of more people around the world in order to fight the spread of infectious diseases to a halt.
    TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Facebook founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg made this known on Tuesday, saying Biohub has been working assiduously to build the new tool for infectious disease sequencing.
    He stressed that the new tool will allow scientists and health workers anywhere in the world to detect emerging diseases quickly before they become outbreaks.
    “We are grateful for their partnership, and excited to work with them to continue building this tool,” said the Facebook exec.
    IDseq is an example of an approach called “hypothesis-free diagnostics”. That is, today when you go to a doctor, they first come up with a best guess at what disease you may have and then they test you for that specifically — whether that’s a specific blood test, a biopsy, or so on.
    With hypothesis-free diagnostics, the doctor doesn’t need to have an idea of what you might have first. They can simply draw a sample of blood, run a quick DNA sequence on it, upload the results to IDseq, and the IDseq software will determine what pathogens are present and prevalent that could cause the disease.
    “In addition to being more effective at diagnostics in some cases, this approach is helping us discover connections between different diseases and pathogens we didn’t previously know about,” Zuckerberg stated.
    To get this tool into the hands of more people around the world, the Gates Foundation is launching a new funding opportunity for global health scientists and doctors, TNG reports.
     

  • 2019: Facebook deletes Nigerian-owned Groups, Pages

    2019: Facebook deletes Nigerian-owned Groups, Pages

    Ahead of the 2019 general elections in the country, Facebook has deleted a number of Nigerian-owned Groups, including a network of accounts and Pages from its platform for inauthentic activities.
    TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Facebook had on Thursday said it purged more than 800 US publishers and accounts for flooding users with politically-oriented spam, reigniting accusations of political censorship and arbitrary decision-making.
    In doing so, Facebook demonstrated its increased willingness to wade into the thorny territory of policing domestic political activity.
    “One common type of spam has been posts that hawk fraudulent products like fake sunglasses or weight loss “remedies.” But a lot of the spam we see today is different.
    “The people behind it create networks of Pages using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names. They post clickbait posts on these Pages to drive people to websites that are entirely separate from Facebook and seem legitimate, but are actually ad farms.
    “The people behind the activity also post the same clickbait posts in dozens of Facebook Groups, often hundreds of times in a short period, to drum up traffic for their websites.
    “And they often use their fake accounts to generate fake likes and shares. This artificially inflates engagement for their inauthentic Pages and the posts they share, misleading people about their popularity and improving their ranking in News Feed.
    “This activity goes against what people expect on Facebook, and it violates our policies against spam. Topics like natural disasters or celebrity gossip have been popular ways to generate clickbait.
    “But today, these networks increasingly use sensational political content – regardless of its political slant – to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site.
    “And like the politically motivated activity we’ve seen, the “news” stories or opinions these accounts and Pages share are often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate.
    “This is why it’s so important we look at these actors’ behavior – such as whether they’re using fake accounts or repeatedly posting spam – rather than their content when deciding which of these accounts, Pages or Groups to remove,” Facebook narrated in a statement obtained by TNG.
    Some of the accounts deleted by Facebook had been in existence for years, had amassed millions of followers, and Facebook said it is shutting down the accounts for having “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior”.
    “People will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here,” the social media giant stated.
    While Facebook only named five of the hundreds of pages it removed, it also deleted a popular Edo Sons and Daughters Facebook Group from the platform.
    In its post, Facebook described the pages, with names like “Nation in Distress” and “Reverb Press,” as largely domestic actors using clickbait headlines and other spam tactics to drive users to websites where they could target them with ads.
    The company said it was not taking issue with the nature of the content posted by the pages, but with the behaviours of the accounts, which used inappropriate tactics to artificially inflate their influence.
    Facebook for years has tried to squeeze spam and clickbait from its platform because it can irritate users.
    But Facebook has usually applied a softer punishment, downranking the sites in its newsfeed so fewer people see them – but not shutting them down altogether.
    But ever since Russian operatives used Facebook to target American voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, the company has been on a crusade to demonstrate that its platform won’t be used to disrupt democratic process across the world.
    False information peddled by foreign actors was clear-cut manipulation. But the same content, when spread by domestic actors, could be considered free speech — and a crackdown on it would be contrary to a principle social media embraces.
    Facebook has long struggled with where to draw lines around domestic content. The challenge of policing domestic content is even trickier than going after foreign interference because many – including Facebook itself – question whether Facebook should be in the role of deciding what constitutes legitimate political expression to begin with.
    By removing the groups entirely, Facebook is eliminating any opportunity to redeem themselves.
     

  • Facebook says attackers stole details from 29m users

    Facebook says attackers stole details from 29m users

    Facebook Inc said attackers in the mass security breach it announced late September accessed the accounts of about 30 million people in total and stole name and contact details for 29 million.
    Facebook found no theft of highly personal messages or financial data, and saw no use of Facebook logins to access other websites, all of which would have been cause for greater concern.
    Instead, stolen data on 14 million users included birth-dates, employers, education and lists of friends.
    All of those could help a fraudster pose as Facebook, the employer or a friend.
    They could then craft a more sophisticated email aimed at tricking users into providing login information on a fake page or into clicking on an attachment that would infect their computers.
    “We’re cooperating with the FBI, which is actively investigating and asked us not to discuss who may be behind this attack,” Facebook said on a blog post.
    The social network said in late September that hackers stole digital login codes allowing them to take over almost 50 million user accounts in its worst security breach ever.
    However, Facebook did not confirm if information had actually been stolen.
    Facebook’s latest vulnerability has existed since July 2017, but the company first identified it in mid-September after spotting a fairly large increase in use of its “view as” privacy feature.
    It determined that it was an attack on Sept. 25.
    “Within two days, we closed the vulnerability, stopped the attack, and secured people’s accounts by restoring the access tokens for people who were potentially exposed,” Facebook said.
    The “view as” feature allows users to check their privacy settings by giving them a glimpse of what their profile looks like to others.
    But a trio of errors in Facebook’s software enabled someone accessing the feature to post and browse from Facebook accounts of other users.
    Facebook shares fell 2.6 per cent after the breach was announced in September and they were down more than 1 per cent following the updated disclosures on Friday.
     

  • 2019: Facebook to work with Nigeria

    Social media giant, Facebook is set to partner with the Federal Government to check the menace of fake news as the 2019 general elections fast draw near.
    TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, made this known on Tuesday, saying that the National Campaign Against Fake News has received a boost by the development.
    He said the national campaign, which was launched on 11th July 2018, has succeeded in bringing the phenomenon to the front burner of national discourse.
    “We are not under any illusion that our campaign will immediately end the menace of fake news. But we know that by creating national awareness, we are putting the issue of fake news on the front burner.
    “Fake news is now a subject of national discourse, workshops and conferences. In the coming days, the social networking web platform, Facebook, will be meeting with us and other top policy makers across the country in the days ahead to see how to assist us in fighting fake news.
    “That, to us, is a major step forward, and we thank all our partners, and indeed all Nigerians, for this achievement,” Alhaji Mohammed said.
    The Minister, who described fake news as a global phenomenon, said different countries are adopting various measures to tackle the menace.
    He said Nigeria has decided to appeal to the sense of responsibility of media practitioners, bloggers and Social Media Influencers, instead of engaging in coercion or censorship.
    Mohammed said if left unchecked, fake news has the capacity to disrupt the peace and unity of the country and it’s also a clear and present danger to the nation’s democracy.
    “For example, the fake news phenomenon played out during the recent governorship elections in Osun State.
    “Whereas 16 PDP members were arrested for various offences, including impersonating observers and for violence during the rerun, the purveyors of fake news made it look as if the APC was the perpetrators of these crimes.
    He said the campaign against fake news could not have come at a better time, considering that the 2019 general elections are fast approaching and enemies of democracy will latch on to it to wreak havoc.