TheNewsGuru

Tag: Facebook

  • Paris Accord: US tech firms dare President Trump again, ‘go unusual’

    Paris Accord: US tech firms dare President Trump again, ‘go unusual’

    Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are among hundreds of US businesses joining an effort to support the Paris climate agreement as part of a public campaign announced Monday.

    Dubbed “We Are Still In,” the launch of the initiative comes just days after President Donald Trump said the United States would withdraw from the international accord, stunning much of the world and breaking with a broad host of industry executives who supported the deal.

    The campaign’s participants, who also include hundreds of investors, universities, local officials and state governments, have pledged to support the Paris accord and “pursue ambitious climate goals,” according to an open letter the campaign released.

    The group also took aim at Trump, saying his decision “damages the world’s ability to avoid the most dangerous and costly effects of climate change.” The business leaders and officials described Trump’s move as “out of step with what is happening in the United States.”

    The campaign on climate is the latest example of some of the biggest players in Silicon Valley opposing Trump’s key policies. The president’s travel ban and ongoing litigation surrounding his immigration orders have also sparked widespread condemnation from the tech industry.

    After the president revealed last week that he intends to exit the agreement, several high-profile business leaders said they would end their advisory roles with Trump, in protest. Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk and Disney chief executive Robert Iger said last week that they would no longer serve on the president’s economic advisory council. Executives from Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google also swiftly criticised Trump’s decision after his announcement.

    Dozens of states last week said they would forge ahead with their climate policies and their aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in response to the president’s move. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, D, also unveiled the largest renewable energy investment by any state, a $1.65 billion plan to support renewable energy and energy efficiency.

     

  • Australian PM calls on Facebook, Apple to help access encrypted chats

    Australian PM calls on Facebook, Apple to help access encrypted chats

    Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said social media companies are too tolerant of extremist material, and called on those companies to help bust the encryption used in user communications.

    “We need these global social media messaging companies to assist in providing access to encrypted communications, which are used by billions of people,” Turnbull said on Monday.

    “The security services need to get access to them.”

    The prime minister said the Five Eyes countries — the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — are working with social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to get extremist material taken down.

    Saying nations and their agencies need to be smarter, more agile, and more collaborative than those “who are seeking to do us harm”, Turnbull agreed with the thoughts espoused by British Prime Minister Teresa May over the weekend.

    May called for the introduction of rules to “deprive the extremists of their safe spaces online”, and also hit out at technology firms for not doing enough.

    “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet, that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide,” said May.

    May’s comments followed the UK suffering its third terrorist attack in four months.

    Last week, Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Andrew Colvin said tackling the online world is a “‘genuinely wicked problem” for police forces.

    “Technology presents challenges to governments like almost never before,” Colvin said. “It is a realm that we cannot simply legislate or regulate to control — we must work with the industry who have their hands on the levers, and invariably, they are in the private sector.”

    Colvin called for the use of traditional and non-traditional policing capabilities to ensure criminals cannot hide behind encryption to avoid the law.

    “Prolific growth in the use of encryption technology is an everyday reality for investigators, and we cannot afford for this to remain an obstacle.”

     

     

    ZDNet

     

  • London terror attack: Facebook wants ‘hostility’ against terrorists

    London terror attack: Facebook wants ‘hostility’ against terrorists

    Facebook says it wants to make its platform “hostile” to terrorists after an attack in London left at least seven people dead this weekend.

    Simon Milner, the company’s director of policy, issued a widely reported statement Sunday that said the social media platform works “aggressively” to remove terrorist content.

    “We want Facebook to be a hostile environment for terrorists,” he said.

    U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May had earlier called for closer regulation of the internet, saying Sunday that terrorists need to be denied the digital tools they use to communicate and plan attacks.

    “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said. “Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.”

    May also said that democratic governments must regulate cyberspace, adding that “we need to do everything we can at home to reduce the risks of extremism online.”

    Tech companies have increasingly come under pressure in Europe because of the way they handle threats and hate speech.

    And Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and many other services have created encrypted channels that may shield communications from law enforcement.

    Milner said Sunday that Facebook alerts authorities if it means preventing a terrorist attack from happening.

    “If we become aware of an emergency involving imminent harm to someone’s safety, we notify law enforcement,” he said in the statement.

    Nick Pickles, Twitter’s head of public policy in the U.K., also defended his company Sunday, telling CNNMoney in a statement that “terrorist content has no place on Twitter.”

    He added that the company will “never stop working” to prevent events like the London terror attack from happening again.

    At least seven people were killed and 48 were wounded Saturday night in London when three men drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge. They then went on a stabbing spree at nearby bars and restaurants.

    The attack happened less than two weeks after 22 people were killed in another attack linked to terrorism at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.

     

     

    CNN

     

  • London terror attack: Internet must be regulated to stop terrorism – May

    London terror attack: Internet must be regulated to stop terrorism – May

    Prime Minister Theresa May has called for closer regulation of the internet following a deadly terror attack in London.

    At least seven people were killed in a short but violent assault that unfolded late Saturday night in the heart of the capital, the third such attack to hit Britain this year.

    May said on Sunday that a new approach to tackling extremism is required, including changes that would deny terrorists and extremist sympathizers digital tools used to communicate and plan attacks.

    “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said. “Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.”

    “We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning,” she continued. “We need to do everything we can at home to reduce the risks of extremism online.”

    May’s call for new internet regulations was part of a larger strategy to combat terror, including what she described as “far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.”

    The attack comes as tech giants come under increased pressure in Europe over their policing of violent and hate speech.

    Europe’s top regulator released data last week that showed that Twitter has failed to take down a majority of hate speech posts after they had been flagged. Facebook and YouTube fared better, removing 66% of reported hate speech.

    In the U.K., a parliamentary committee report published last month alleged that social media firms have prioritized profit over user safety by continuing to host unlawful content. The report also called for “meaningful fines” if the companies do not quickly improve.

    “The biggest and richest social media companies are shamefully far from taking sufficient action to tackle illegal and dangerous content,” the report said. “Given their immense size, resources and global reach, it is completely irresponsible of them to fail to abide by the law.”

    Forty-eight people were injured in Saturday’s attack on London Bridge and Borough Market. Police officers pursued and shot dead three attackers within eight minutes of the first emergency call, London police said.

     

     

    CNN

     

  • London Bridge Terror Attack: Facebook introduces “safety check”

    London Bridge Terror Attack: Facebook introduces “safety check”

    Facebook activated its “Safety Check” feature Saturday after reports of an attack aimed at civilians in London.

    The tool has been used in the past to inform friends and family about the welfare of individuals near a crisis.

    Metro UK reported that the tool has been used in the past during the Orlando attack and the attack at the Westminster Bridge.

    The Telegraph reported that it is the third time that the feature has been activated in the United Kingdom.

    The page is called, “The Attack in London, United Kingdom,” and individuals can check in as safe.

    Facebook first introduced the feature in 2011, and it was mainly used during natural disasters, like earthquakes. In 2015, it was used during the Paris attacks.

    Fox Business reported that the safety check has been activated more than 600 times in two years and was last used in the UK last March during the Westminster attack in London.

    According to Facebook, it is enacted after global crisis reporting agencies NC4 and iJET International alert the company about an incident.

    Facebook then begins to monitor for posts about the incident, in the area, and if a lot of people are talking about it, they may be prompted to check in and mark themselves safe and invite others to do the same.

     

  • Broadband: ICT stakeholders call for National Fibre provider

    Broadband: ICT stakeholders call for National Fibre provider

    Stakeholders in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector have called for a National Broadband Fibre provider to further deepen broadband penetration in the country.

    The stakeholders made the call at the Broadband Summit 2017 organized by BusinessDay Media Ltd in Lagos on Friday.

    The Chief Executive Officer of Spectranet, Mr David Venn said that there was the need for the National Broadband Fibre provider so that Nigerians would benefit from the broadband revolution.

    Venn said that voice calls through mobile phone had changed everything but the next phase was broadband.

    He said that broadband would have greater impact on the lives of Nigerians, hence the need to ensure it got to every part of the country.

    According to him, the challenges hindering broadband penetration should be addressed.

    “Nigeria needs a National Broadband Fibre provider. There is need for carriers to be able to get broadband to the hinterlands.

    “The cost of international bandwidth has changed demand for broadband in the last two years.

    “The Nigerian Communications Commission must sanitise the sector of anti-competitive issues,” he said.

    The Managing Director of Vodacom Business Nigeria, Mr Lanre Kolade said that the economy was biting hard on all the operators.

    Kolade said that the Tier II Telecommunications operators were struggling to survive.

    He said that there was need for a level playing field as such would stop anti-competition in the sector.

    According to him, the Tier I operators cannot be everywhere hence, the need for the smaller operators to go to the smaller areas and deploy business strategies that will work.

    “For this to happen, anti-competition should be addressed.

    “To deepen broadband penetration, there should be data centres across the country so that the rate at which our traffic goes outside Nigeria will reduce,” he said.

    The Chief Transformation Officer of MTN Nigeria, Mr Bayo Adekanmbi, said that there was high demand of broadband by Nigerians; but no adequate infrastructure to deliver high speed internet to them.

    Adekanmbi said that the nature of broadband was holistically different as it was more of a long term project as the issue of cost was critical.

    He said that infrastructure to deliver broadband should not be taxed; to ensure delivery to last mile at an affordable cost.

    The Chief Executive Officer of Ntel, Mr Kamar Abass said that to deepen broadband penetration, the industry should consider infrastructure sharing as active engagement on it was still lacking.

    Abass said that there was the need for more spectrums to deliver broadband to Nigeria.

    The Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, Ms Funke Opeke said that broadband was an enabler of economic growth.

    Opeke however said that recession had changed the dynamics of the broadband industry.

    She said that the industry depended on importation of its infrastructure and there had been the challenge of foreign exchange.

    According to her, the country must pull itself out of oil dependency and broadband is the step toward economy recovery.

    “There is need to know we can create more power houses like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, among other to develop the economy,” she said.

     

  • Boy kills friend for liking girlfriend’s Facebook picture

    Boy kills friend for liking girlfriend’s Facebook picture

    The son of a mafia boss’ is facing life in jail for gunning down his best pal who simply ‘liked’ a Facebook picture of his girlfriend.

    Victim Francesco Prestia, 19, was left dead in an olive field in Mileto, Italy, with three bullets in his chest.

    His killer has been named in Italian media as 15-year-old Alex Pititto, the son of ‘Ndrangheta mafia boss Salvatore Pititto, known as ‘El Tio’, or the Uncle.

    Pititto saw the Facebook ‘like’ as a “lack of respect”, according to local media reports.

    He is reported to have turned himself into police and led them to the olive grove where he had left his friend’s body.

    Local media reports that the teenage mobster had long suspected his friend had feelings for his girlfriend.

    But when he saw that Francesco had ticked the ‘like’ button for a new picture on her Facebook profile he called his friend to a meeting in a remote field and gunned him down, reports said.

    Ironically, he had recently posted a picture of him and his friend online, captioned: “Friendship is something in the mouth of everybody, but in the heart of not too many people.”

    Victim Francesco’s family left a message on his Facebook page saying: “You were so perfect that angels wanted you with them. We miss you a lot. Travel well, prince.”

    Pititto’s family is one of the lynchpins of Italian organised crime.

    His father, Salvatore, 49, his mother, Maria Antonia Messiano, his brother and his cousin were arrested in January in a police anti-mafia operation called Stammer.

    Italian mafia experts say that a new, young, and deadly generation of teenage ‘baby bosses’ are making organised crime even more lethal.

    Mafia author Roberto Saviano said the new generation have no fear of being caught and are quicker to kill than the old crime clans.

    He said: “They are young and have their whole lives ahead of them. For them, it’s the same.”

     

  • Swiss court fines man $4,000 for ‘liking’ defamatory posts on Facebook

    Swiss court fines man $4,000 for ‘liking’ defamatory posts on Facebook

    Be very careful what you “like” on Facebook.

    A court in Switzerland has convicted a man on several counts of defamation after he “liked” libellous comments on the social media platform.

    The court in Zurich found that the man indirectly endorsed and further distributed the comments by using the ubiquitous Facebook “like” button.

    The man, who was not named in the court’s statement, “liked” several posts written by a third party that accused an animal rights activist of antisemitism, racism and fascism.

    In court, the man was not able to prove that the claims were accurate or could reasonably be held to be true.

    “The defendant clearly endorsed the unseemly content and made it his own,” a statement from the court said.

    The court fined the man a total of 4,000 Swiss francs ($4,100). He has the right to appeal his sentence.

    Facebook said the case had “no direct link” to the company, and a spokesperson declined to comment.

    The case is believed to be the first time a court has interpreted a “like” as an explicit endorsement of a post.

    The Zurich court said the “likes” in this case were made between July and September 2015, before Facebook broadened the range of emotions that users can deploy when responding to a post.

    Until February 2016, the “like” button was the only way to react to a post, and it had been used to show a range of emotions, including concern.

    Users can now trigger “Love,” “Haha,” “Wow,” “Sad,” and “Angry” buttons.

    Facebook spent more than a year preparing the “reactions”. They worked with sociologists, consulted focus groups and conducted surveys to determine which emotions would make the final cut.

    Critics say the range of reactions needs more work because it doesn’t include important emotions such as fear and disagreement.

     

     

    CNNtech

     

  • Social media firms have increased removal of Hate Speech, says EU

    Social media firms have increased removal of Hate Speech, says EU

    Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have stepped up both the speed and number of removals of hate speech on their platforms in response to pressure from the European Union to do more to tackle the issue, according to the results of an EU evaluation.

    Facebook won particular praise for reviewing most complaints within a 24-hour target timeframe set down in a code of conduct agreed in December by the European Commission, Facebook, Microsoft , Twitter and YouTube.

    Calling the results “encouraging” for the Commission’s push for self-regulation, Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said the proportion of offending items taken down had doubled and action was being taken more quickly than when the EU checked six months ago.

    “This … shows that a self-regulatory approach can work, if all actors do their part. At the same time, companies … need to make further progress to deliver on all the commitments,” Jourova said in a statement, adding that firms should provide more feedback to people who brought abuses to their attention.

    Facebook scored highly on this, Twitter and YouTube less so.

    The voluntary code of conduct obliges firms to take action in Europe within 24 hours, following rising concerns about the proliferation of racist and xenophobic content on social media triggered by the refugee crisis and attacks in Western Europe.

    This included removing or disabling access to the content if necessary, better cooperation with civil society organizations and the promotion of “counter-narratives” to hate speech.

    Facebook assessed notifications of hateful content in less than 24 hours in 58 percent of cases, up from 50 percent in December, according to the report.

    Twitter also sped up its dealing with notifications, reviewing 39 percent of them in less than 24 hours, as opposed to 23.5 percent in December, when the Commission first reviewed the companies’ progress and warned them they were being too slow.

    YouTube, on the other hand, slowed down, reviewing 42.6 percent of notifications in less than 24 hours, down from 60.8 percent in December, the results showed.

    “IT companies have all been improving time and response to notifications on manifest illegal hate speech,” Jourova said at a meeting of the EU High Level Group on combating racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance on Wednesday.

    “There are differences among the companies … but we can objectively say that all have improved.”

    All the companies significantly increased the number of removals. Overall, content was removed in 59.2 percent of cases, more than double the rate in December which was 28.2 percent.

    The proliferation of hate speech on social media has increased pressure on the companies to remove the content swiftly as they face the prospect of legislation at both EU and national level.

    Last week EU ministers approved plans to force social networks to take measures to block videos with hateful content while the German government approved a plan in April to fine companies up to EUR 50 million if they fail to remove hateful postings quickly.

    The most common ground of hate speech the Commission identified was xenophobia, including expressions of hatred against migrants and refugees, together with anti-Muslim hatred, followed by ethnic origin.

    The spread of fake news and racist content has taken on more urgency in Germany after the arrival of about a million migrants over the last two years.

  • Proposed ICT University will equip Nigerians with best skills – Shittu

    The Minister of Communications, Mr Adebayo Shittu, said on Thursday that the plan to establish a University of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Nigeria was aimed at equipping Nigerians with the best skills.

    Shittu told newsmen in Abuja that facilities at the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) would be utilised to achieve this objective.

    “We feel that we can ultimately utilise the facilities of NITDA by transforming it into an ICT University, which will be the first of its kind in Africa.

    “We are also engaging the private sector to collaborate with us in this venture; the Nigerian government is not going to spend huge amounts in running that place.

    “The ministry will be inviting companies like Motorola, Facebook and all the big companies to come and adopt campuses; by so doing, they will bring their money, technology and skills.

    “Nigerians will, therefore, be equipped with the best skills to look for jobs all over the world.’’

    Shittu said that the ministry decided to take this step in order to stop the trend of Nigerians having to travel to India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Western Europe to acquire high level ICT training.

    He added that if a country like South Korea which has expertise in e-governance could adopt a campus at the university, the capacity of Nigerians who would be trained there would be strengthened.

    “If we have Korean telecoms companies coming to adopt one of our campuses, that will strengthen us instead of going to South Korea.

    “We can have all the training and the number of people who will have the training locally will certainly be more than those who will have opportunities of going abroad to train.

    “So, we feel that the ICT University is one of the big legacies that this government wants to give to Nigerians by adding value to computer science education,” the minister said.

    He had said at a workshop organised for secondary school students in the FCT in 2016 that the establishment of the institution would bridge the ICT skill gap in the country.