TheNewsGuru

Tag: Facebook

  • Facebook bans Britain First page for inciting hatred

    Facebook on Wednesday said it banned Britain First from its platform for breaking rules against inciting hatred.

    The social media platform took down Britain First’s Facebook page and those of its leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, for repeatedly violating rules designed to stop the incitement of hatred against minority groups.

    British First shot to the fore last November when Trump sparked outrage in Britain and a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Theresa May for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos.

    The removal of the Britain First pages comes as Facebook and other Internet firms like Twitter and Google are under growing pressure to police their networks, refereeing content to prevent extremist groups spreading their messages and recruiting online.

    May has joined forces with the leaders of France and Italy to urge social media companies to do more to remove extremist content.

    She said on Wednesday that she welcomed the announcement by Facebook.

    “I hope other companies will follow,” she told British lawmakers.

    Facebook said it was careful not to remove posts or pages just because they were controversial and some people didn’t like them, but said that Britain First had gone further and broken its anti-hatred rules with its anti-Islam posts.

    “We do not do this lightly, but they have repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups, which disqualifies the pages from our service,” Facebook said in a blog post.

     

  • Has Facebook become a “beast” really?

    On Monday two United Nations (UN) officials tasked with looking into abuses in Myanmar took shots at Facebook as part of a UN Human Rights Council hearing; with one of the officials referring to the social media platform as a “beast”.

    When asked whether the platform was good or bad for the emerging democracy, UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee told reporters it was both but had incited “a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya or other ethnic minorities”.

    “And I am afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast than what it was originally intended to be used in other parts of the world too,” she added.

    In a written statement of his remarks, Chairman of a UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar, Marzuki Darusman, told the UN rights council that “hate speech and incitement to violence on social media is rampant, particularly on Facebook”.

    Facebook has faced mounting pressure to snuff out inflammatory posts aimed at the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority that the UN says are victims of army-led ethnic cleansing.

    While the military campaign launched last August has been castigated abroad, it enjoys broad domestic support in a mainly Buddhist country where Islamophobia has been stewing for years.

    A representation of the social media platform on Tuesday said Facebook is “seriously” fighting hate speech in Myanmar, following the blistering criticism from the UN officials.

    “We take this incredibly seriously and have worked with experts in Myanmar for several years to develop safety resources and counter-speech campaigns.

    “Of course, there is always more we can do and we will continue to work with local experts to help keep our community safe,” said the representative.

    Meanwhile, Myanmar’s government has also accused Rohingya activists of spreading misinformation about the conflict online to garner global sympathy for their plight.

    In late January Facebook removed the page of popular anti-Rohingya monk Wirathu, and last year it regulated the use of the word “kalar” which is considered derogatory against Muslims.

    Facebook has seen a meteoric rise in Myanmar, a fledgeling democracy shaking off 50 years of brutal junta rule.

    But it has drawn criticism for a take-off that has coincided with a rise in ethnically-charged hate speech and violence, particularly in Rakhine state.

    Calls for action have grown louder since the Rohingya crisis erupted last year, sending some 700,000 of the minority fleeing across the border since August.

     

  • Incoming German Minister to open talks with Google, Facebook

    Dorothee Baer, Germany’s incoming minister with responsibility for digital policy says she will push social media giants to make users’ information feeds more diverse and timely to avoid creating “echo chambers” for the like-minded.

    Companies such as Facebook have come under pressure from regulators around the world as evidence has emerged of how the recirculation of a particular selection of news and views on their platforms can narrow perceptions of the world and voters behaviour.

    The minister said she would open talks with Facebook and Google on the way that posts on social media platforms were sequenced.

    “At the moment, the algorithms sort according to relevance or popularity. That pushes to the top old posts that often have little to do with the truth.

    “I want to see real-time timelines again that confront people not with what they want to know, but what they need to know, what is happening at this moment,” she told the newspaper Die Welt in an interview.

     

  • Patent infringement: BlackBerry files lawsuit against Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram

    Patent infringement: BlackBerry files lawsuit against Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram

    BlackBerry on Tuesday filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram apps, arguing that they copied technology and features from BlackBerry Messenger.

    “Defendants created mobile messaging applications that co-opt BlackBerry’s innovations, using a number of the innovative security, user interface, and functionality enhancing features,” Canada-based BlackBerry said in a filing with a Los Angeles federal court.

    The lawsuit followed years of negotiation and BlackBerry has an obligation to shareholders to pursue appropriate legal remedies, BlackBerry spokeswoman Sarah McKinney said.

    Facebook Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal said in a statement that the company intended to fight the lawsuit.

    “Blackberry’s suit sadly reflects the current state of its messaging business. Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, Blackberry is now looking to tax the innovation of others,” Grewal said.

    BlackBerry is trying to persuade other companies to pay licencing royalties to use its trove of more than 40,000 global patents on technology including operating systems, networking infrastructure, acoustics, messaging, automotive subsystems, cyber-security and wireless communications. BlackBerry is also selling cyber-security software for self-driving cars.

    BlackBerry sued Nokia Corp in February 2017, alleging infringement of patents relating to 3G and 4G wireless communications technology. That case is still pending in federal court in Delaware.

    Last year Qualcomm Inc agreed to pay BlackBerry $940 million to resolve arbitration over royalty payments.

    In October 2017 BlackBerry announced a confidential settlement with Blu Products, a Florida-based maker of low-cost mobile devices it had also sued for patent infringement.

     

  • WeChat officially crosses one billion monthly active users

    WeChat officially crosses one billion monthly active users

    Chief Executive Offer (CEO) Pony Ma of Tencent, parent company of WeChat on Monday has said accounts on the all-in-one WeChat app have crossed the one billion mark.

    Pony Ma revealed the figure on the sidelines of China’s parliamentary session underway in Beijing enthusing “WeChat’s worldwide monthly active users have surpassed the critical one billion mark”.

    The all-in-one app is a daily necessity for most users, bringing together messaging, social media, mobile payment, games, news and other services.

    “In the future we hope to use technological innovation to push forward the next developmental step of reform and opening,” Ma said.

    Although Ma said WeChat’s monthly active users had crossed the one billion thresholds, a company spokesman told AFP he was referring to its total number of accounts.

    Still, the one billion figure indicates the huge user base which Tencent has built up both inside and outside China for its all-in-one app.

    It compares with 2.1 billion monthly active users on Facebook and 1.5 billion on its messaging app WhatsApp.

    The popularity of WeChat, and profits from its addictive mobile games, have pushed Tencent’s earnings and share price sharply upwards.

    The company surpassed Facebook in market value last year and the 47-year-old Ma has rocketed to near the apex of China’s rich list.

     

  • Facebook expands jobs service to over 40 countries

    Facebook has announced that its year-old job-hunting service is expanding to dozens more countries, aiming to connect members with local work.

    Facebook vice president Alex Himel announced the move on Wednesday, describing it as a “new stage of the diversification of the social network”.

    Since adding a local jobs posting feature early last year in Canada and the US, Facebook has enhanced it to handle tasks such as managing applications, scheduling interviews, and getting alerts when desired types of positions are listed.

    “We do feel really good about how that’s worked out in the US, with room for improvement of course,” Himel said.

    Jobs can be listed, or applied for, at a “dashboard” devoted to the purpose in Facebook applications.

    Use of the basic service is free, but businesses can pay to “boost” posts and more strongly target candidates, according to the Silicon Valley-based social network.

    Job posts appear in several locations at the social network, including business pages, Marketplace, and in News Feed.

    With more than two billion users around the world, Facebook promises strong potential for connecting people seeking work with jobs in need of filling, especially medium- or low-skill jobs in local enterprises.

    “A lot of these businesses who aren’t able to fill their positions elsewhere, they’re seeing success on Facebook,” Himel said.

    However, the service is yet to expand to the shores of Nigeria.

     

  • News content: Australia regulator to conduct inquiry into Facebook, Google

    Australia’s consumer regulator has announced it will conduct a broad-ranging public inquiry into how digital platforms like Facebook and Google have impacted media organisations’ ability to fund and produce quality news and journalistic content.

    The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said on Monday it would examine the impact of such platforms, which have “up-ended advertising markets across the world.’’

    ACCC Chairman, Rod Sims, said: “digital platforms like Google and Facebook are part of the sweeping technological and cultural changes overhauling the media landscape in Australia and globally.

    “While these technological changes have brought many benefits for consumers, this inquiry will have a particular focus on examining whether the changes affect the quality and range of news supplied to Australian consumers.”

    The inquiry will also look into the extent to which consumers understand what data is being collected about them by the platforms, and how this information is used, as well as the use of algorithms affecting the presentation of news for digital platform users.

    The Silicon Valley giants have been criticised for benefiting from content made by traditional media companies, which have seen massively falling revenue in recent years.

    “Considering the longer term impacts of digital platforms and the ability of traditional media to remain financially viable will also be key to understanding the media and ad markets,” Sims said.

    The Australian government directed the commission to undertake the public inquiry in December.

    It will issue a preliminary report into its findings in December 2018.

     

  • INEC receives Facebook team ahead of 2019 general elections

    Ahead of 2019 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday received a Facebook team led by its Head Of Public Policy for Africa, Ebele Okobi at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.

    Facebook offered to explore avenues with the commission that could help expand voters’ education and engage citizens meaningfully to achieve peaceful general elections in 2019.

    The social networking giant made this offer having noticed that topics Nigerians mostly shared on its platform bordered on elections and politics

    Facebook, which noted that it has a membership base of 2.1 billion worldwide and 80 million from Nigeria, discovered that “people care very deeply about how they are governed, about who governs them and other political issues”.

    “Knowing that people come to the platform to talk about what they care about, we have developed a politics and government programme essentially to understand how our platform is being used, not just during elections, but also to help governments engage with their citizens and also to see what the risks related to our platform in elections are and what opportunities and programmes can be put in place to address the risks,” Okobi told INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, and members of his commission.

    The Facebook Head disclosed that the company was open to ideas on how best it could improve its services and the electoral processes in Africa, particularly in Nigeria.

    Responding, the INEC boss, Yakubu told the team that organizing and conducting elections was a huge responsibility for the commission and comes with enormous risks.

    “A good election, I have always said, is a recipe for peace and a poorly conducted election could lead to violence and civil war. And part of it is the perception some people create on the social media,” he said.

    He acknowledged the large following the electoral body enjoy on Facebook, which he said is the largest among election management bodies in Africa, and underscored its potentials for engaging citizens, disseminating information and dispelling fake news for peaceful elections.

    While acknowledging that Facebook has become one of the veritable means of interacting with the public, Yakubu said, “I think more people now get their news from the social media than the traditional media”.

    The INEC chairman thanked Facebook for pulling down fake pages of the commission from its platform just as it commended, “the social media giant” for also putting mechanisms for checking hate speech and fake news in place.

    He said the commission looked forward to working with Facebook in ensuring that the voting population gets the best to help them make informed choices at the polls.

     

  • Amnesty International wants release of Chadian activist sentenced for Facebook post

    Global movement of more than 7 million people who take injustice personally, Amnesty International, has petitioned the government of Chad to release Tadjadine Mahamat Babouri, popularly known as Mahadine.

    TheNewsGuru reports Mahadine, an online activist and father of seven, was in September 2016 snatched from the street in broad daylight by a group of men believed to be intelligence officers for posting videos on Facebook.

    In the videos, Mahadine accused the Chadian government and people close to it of corruption and misusing public money. He also complained about the economic crisis gripping the oil-dependent nation which is suffering from falling oil prices worldwide.

    Making and posting the videos was a bold thing to do in Chad where speaking out like this carries serious consequences.

    Mahadine says he was beaten, electrocuted and chained up for weeks, and moved from one prison to another.

    His wife and children were told nothing of his whereabouts and had to track him down themselves.

    Mahadine now faces a life sentence, and faces charges including threatening national security.

    “He is gravely ill, having caught tuberculosis in prison. He needs urgent medical attention. He should not have to spend the rest of his life locked up for courageously expressing his opinion,” Amnesty International stated.

    “I call on you to release Tadjadine Mahamat Babouri, known as Mahadine, unconditionally and without delay. A father of seven, he was arrested, beaten up and jailed for peacefully critiquing the government on Facebook.

    “He now faces a life sentence, and is gravely ill, having caught tuberculosis in prison. Pending his release, please transfer him to Am Sinene prison so he can get the medical care he so urgently needs.

    “Mahadine should not lose his freedom simply for raising his voice and bravely exercising his right to freedom of expression,” the petition by Amnesty International read.

     

  • Cambodian PM calls rival ‘crazy, stupid’ over Facebook case

    Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called a rival “crazy and stupid” on Tuesday over his petition to try to get Facebook to release details of the way the Southeast Asian country’s ruler has used social media.

    Former opposition leader Sam Rainsy’s legal team filed the lawsuit in California on Friday, saying that Hun Sen was using the platform to commit human rights abuses and deceive the electorate.

    Among other allegations was that Hun Sen was paying for false Facebook “likes” to mislead voters about his support.

    “This person is crazy and stupid,” Hun Sen told thousands of university graduates in the capital Phnom Penh, saying Rainsy was just jealous because his official Facebook page had 9.4 million “likes” to only 4.5 million for Sam Rainsy‘s.

    Hun Sen said he had no idea who had liked his own page.

    The case has drawn attention to the central role of Facebook in political discussion in Cambodia, where the government has shut the main opposition party, arrested its leader and cracked down on media and civil rights groups over the past year.

    A 29-year-old man was ordered to pre-trial detention on Monday over comments posted on Facebook, which included calling the government “authoritarian.”

    He was arrested on Saturday on his wedding day.

    Sam Rainsy’s petition against Facebook said the platform had been used by the government to make death threats and alleged that state money had been spent in advertising on Facebook, where Hun Sen’s backers have built a strong presence.

    Facebook’s public relations department has not responded to Reuters requests for comment on the case.

    Sam Rainsy lives in France, where he fled in 2015 after a conviction for defamation that he says was politically motivated.

    He did not respond immediately to Hun Sen’s comments on Tuesday.

     

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