TheNewsGuru

Tag: Facebook

  • Thief takes over lady’s Facebook after snatching her phone at gunpoint

    Thief takes over lady’s Facebook after snatching her phone at gunpoint

    A thief in Port Harcourt is rousing up controversy on social media by mocking his victim on Facebook after robbing her of her phone at gunpoint.

    The thief uploaded his photo on the victim’s Facebook account, (Gabrilla Uchechi Eberechukwu) on Thursday, February 9, 2016.

    The victim who is a student of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University recounted the experience to a friend of hers.

    The suspect who is yet to be identified went as far as changing the victim’s profile picture to one of his and shared an update.

    Writing on the victim’s Facebook wall, the suspect said, “I mind you,” garnering a barrage of insults for his daring.

    One of the victim’s friends, Ifunanya Joy, commented on the picture, “You stole my friend’s phone. You are a big thief,” to which the suspect replied with a laughing emoji.

    Joy explained that her friend had told her of how the man had taken control of her Facebook account, presumably through the phone.

    “She doesn’t even know what is going on with her Facebook now,” Joy said.

    A photo of the suspect along with messages imploring for help in locating the suspect has been circulating the internet.

     

  • Zuckerberg lambasts Trump over plans to deport 3million immigrants from US

    Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has knocked President Donald Trump over his intention to deport over 3 million immigrants from the United States.

    In his reaction, Zuckerberg noted that his great grandparents where from Germany, Austria and Poland. While his wife Priscilla’s parents were refugee from China and Vietnam.

    The Facebook founder wrote on his page: “My great grandparents came from Germany, Austria and Poland. Priscilla’s parents were refugees from China and Vietnam. The United States is a nation of immigrants, and we should be proud of that.

    “Like many of you, I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump.

    “We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat.

    “Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented folks who don’t pose a threat will live in fear of deportation.

    “We should also keep our doors open to refugees and those who need help. That’s who we are. Had we turned away refugees a few decades ago, Priscilla’s family wouldn’t be here today.

    “That said, I was glad to hear President Trump say he’s going to “work something out” for Dreamers — immigrants who were brought to this country at a young age by their parents.

    “Right now, 750,000 Dreamers benefit from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that allows them to live and work legally in the US.

    “I hope the President and his team keep these protections in place, and over the next few weeks I’ll be working with our team at FWD.us to find ways we can help.

    “I’m also glad the President believes our country should continue to benefit from “people of great talent coming into the country.”

    “These issues are personal for me even beyond my family. A few years ago, I taught a class at a local middle school where some of my best students were undocumented. They are our future too.

    “We are a nation of immigrants, and we all benefit when the best and brightest from around the world can live, work and contribute here.

    “I hope we find the courage and compassion to bring people together and make this world a better place for everyone,” he added.

    TheNewsGuru.com recalls that President Donald Trump had clearly stated in one of his speeches to deport over 3 million immigrants and had also ban the entry of nationals of crisis engulfed countries like Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, from entering the United States.

     

  • Facebook acknowledges, fixes apps battery draining issue

    ImageFile: Facebook acknowledges, fixes apps battery draining issueFacebook has acknowledged that it’s main and messenger apps drain battery unusually on both iOS and Android devices, and had said the issue has been fixed.

    David Marcus, Head of Messenger at Facebook, replying to a Twitter user’s query claimed that the “issue was isolated and fixed server side,” adding that users experiencing battery drain issue can restart the respective apps and the issue is solved.

    “If you restart Messenger the problem should be gone now,” Marcus said with a tweet.

    Some of the users of the Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps on Twitter claimed that the Facebook app consumed over 1 percent battery every minute when it was in use. Users also lodged complaints that the Facebook Messenger app consumes battery juice abnormally.

    One user, whose tweet is captured below, particularly tweeted @davidmarcus lodging his own complaint.

    https://twitter.com/alxpap/status/818852606114234368

    While it is not clear whether the issue has been fixed or not but some Twitter users complaining about the battery drain issue did confirm that the restart fixed the issue.

    One of the users shared screenshot from battery setting showing that Facebook and Messenger apps were not draining the smartphone battery.

    If you are experiencing battery drain then you can restart the Messenger or Facebook apps to see if the issue has been fixed.

    Facebook last month revamped its Messenger app’s design with more camera-focused and new features like 3D masks and text-based artwork suggestions. The company later also added the group video calls feature to the Messenger app.

  • WhatsApp, Gmail into tougher EU Privacy Proposal

    ImageFile: WhatsApp, Gmail into tougher EU Privacy ProposalOnline messaging and email services such as WhatsApp, iMessage and Gmail will face tough new rules on how they can track users under a proposal presented by the European Union executive on Tuesday.

    The web players will have to guarantee the confidentiality of their customers’ conversations and ask for their consent before tracking them online to serve them personalized ads.

    The proposal by the European Commission extends some rules that now only apply to telecom operators to web companies offering calls and messages using the Internet, known as “Over-The-Top” (OTT) services, seeking to close a perceived regulatory gap between the telecoms industry and mainly US Internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

    Tuesday’s proposal would allow telecom companies to use customer metadata – such as the duration and location of calls – to provide additional services and make more money, something they are barred from doing under the current rules.

    The review of the so-called e-privacy law will also force web browsers to have their default setting as not allowing personalized online advertising based on browsing habits. Instead, users will be asked to opt in to allow websites to place cookies on their browsers.

    “It’s up to our people to say yes or no,” said Andrus Ansip, Commission vice-president for the digital single market.

    Cookies are placed on web surfers’ computers and contain bits of information about the user, such as what other sites they have visited or where they are logging in from. They are widely used by companies to deliver targeted ads to users.
    Online adverstisers have warned that overly strict rules would undermine many websites’ ability to fund themselves and keep offering free services. They say the data they use can not identify the user and is therefore low risk, making asking for consent every time too onerous.

    The proposal scraps the obligation on websites to ask visitors for permission to place cookies on their browsers via a banner every time they land on it if the user has already consented through the privacy settings of the web browser.

    The “cookie banner” has been lambasted as ineffective because people tend to accept them without necessarily reading what that entails.

    Companies falling foul of the new law will face fines of up to 4 percent of their global turnover, in line with a separate data protection law set to enter into force in 2018.

    The proposal will need to be approved by the European Parliament and member states before becoming law.

  • Users send 63 billion messages globally on WhatsApp New Year’s Eve

    ImageFile: Users send 63 billion messages globally on WhatsApp New Year’s EveWhatsApp has revealed that users of the instant messaging platform sent a massive total of 63 billion messages on New Year’s Eve.

    As we reported last week, a very significant part of that massive number was generated by India – which saw 14 billion messages being sent on the day. Both numbers set new single-day records for the messaging app.

    Of the 63 billion messages sent, there were 7.9 billion images, and 2.4 billion videos, the Facebook-owned messaging firm revealed, in a statement to Venture Beat.

    As we mentioned, New Year’s Eve saw 14 billion WhatsApp messages sent in India. Of those, 32 percent were media messages – photos, GIF images, videos, and voice messages. A total of 3.1 billion images, 700 million GIF images, and 610 million videos were sent on WhatsApp in India on the day.

    Notably, WhatsApp only recently rolled out the ability to share animated GIF images on the platform. WhatsApp for iPhone got the feature back in November, while WhatsApp for Android got the feature in December. Android recently also got the ability to stream shared videos, letting users view videos before they were downloaded.

    WhatsApp stopped working on older versions of Android, iOS, and Windows Phone on December 31. Devices running on Android 2.2 or lower, iOS 6 or lower, and Windows Phone 7 are no longer supported by the app.

  • Facebook founder to visit every State in the US

    Facebook founder to visit every State in the US
    Mark Zuckerberg.

    Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Facebook, has revealed a personal challenge to travel across the United State (US) in 2017, and meet people in every State.

    The news was released in a Facebook post with Zuckerberg saying “My personal challenge for 2017 is to have visited and met people in every state in the US by the end of the year”.

    “I’ve spent significant time in many states already, so I’ll need to travel to about 30 states this year to complete this challenge.

    “For decades, technology and globalization have made us more productive and connected. This has created many benefits, but for a lot of people it has also made life more challenging. This has contributed to a greater sense of division than I have felt in my lifetime. We need to find a way to change the game so it works for everyone,” Zuckerberg added.

    The journey, he said, will involve road trips with his wife, Priscilla Chan, meetings with scientists and teachers, visits to Facebook offices, and would also call into small towns and universities.

    It’s the latest move that reveal Zuckerberg’s future plans.

    In December 2016, court filings revealed that Zuckerberg and members of the Facebook board had discussed how he could remain in charge of Facebook, while pursuing a political career.

    A text message from investor Marc Andreessen, said that the “biggest issue” of the corporate proposal was “how to define the government service thing without freaking out shareholders that you are losing commitment.”

    Among other things, Zuckerberg has gone from bona fide atheist to finding religion, and has tried to stay politically neutral in recent times, despite an avalanche of criticism from both Republican and Democratic parties over Facebook’s influence and the publication of ‘fake news’ stories in the recent US Presidential election.

  • Bad weather postpones SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket launch

    Bad weather has postponed SpaceX’s plan to resume flights of its Falcon 9 rocket until at least January 14, the California-based private space firm said Sunday.

    SpaceX had planned a launch on Monday of 10 Iridium Next communications satellites from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

    “Launch moving due to high winds and rains at Vandenberg. Other range conflicts this week results in next available launch date being January 14th,” SpaceX said on Twitter.

    An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded September 1 in Cape Canaveral, destroying a satellite that Facebook planned to use to beam high-speed Internet to Africa.

    That marked a setback for the company and its founder Elon Musk, who wants to revolutionize the launch industry by making rocket components reusable.

    That accident, the second of its kind since SpaceX was founded in 2002, came just over a year after a Falcon 9 rocket failed after liftoff on June 28, 2015, destroying a Dragon cargo capsule bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

    Before that, SpaceX had logged 18 successful launches of the Falcon 9 including six of 12 planned supply missions to the ISS carried out as part of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.

    SpaceX had hoped to resume Falcon 9 flights as early as November, then in mid-December, before pushing the date to January.

  • Facebook hires former CNN anchor for news role

    ImageFile: Facebook hires former CNN anchor for news role
    Campbell Brown.

    Former CNN reporter, anchor and host, Campbell Brown, is joining Facebook Inc to lead its news partnerships team, an appointment aimed at repairing the online social media company’s troubled relationship with the traditional media.

    Brown announced the move in a post on her Facebook page on Friday.

    Facebook has come under scrutiny for its role in disseminating what became known as ‘fake news’ during last year’s US presidential election, which had a negative effect on the businesses of more legitimate media companies.

    In her new job, Brown will lead Facebook’s news partnerships unit, which works with media outlets which publish content on Facebook.

    The company faced criticism following the election of US Republican Donald Trump for not doing enough to stop misinformation and baseless news reports being circulated by users.

    With a growing number of readers getting information from social media rather than traditional media companies’ own web pages, Facebook is getting more attention for what it puts in users’ feeds.

    In recent months, Facebook has taken steps to combat misinformation, working with the Associated Press, PolitiFact and website Snopes to fact-check articles that appear in users’ news feeds.

    Campbell, with 15 years of experience at Time Warner Inc’s CNN and Comcast Corp’s NBC News unit, will be tasked with helping news organizations and reporters work more closely and more effectively with Facebook.

    Brown founded nonprofit, education-focused news site The 74 in 2015. She said she will step back from her editorial role there but remain on the board in a note on the company’s site on Friday.

    Facebook executives told the New York Times on Friday that Brown’s role would not be a de facto editor-in-chief, as she will not be involved in any content decisions – but more of a liaison to media companies. When asked to elaborate, a Facebook spokeswoman referred to Campbell’s post.

    “I will be working directly with our partners to help them understand how Facebook can expand the reach of their journalism, and contribute value to their businesses,” wrote Campbell.

  • Facebook bans Neptune statue photo for being ‘explicitly sexual’

    Facebook bans Neptune statue photo for being ‘explicitly sexual’

    Facebook has come under fire for blocking a photograph of a bronze statue of Neptune in Italy.

    Designed by Jean Boulogne, better known as Giambologna, the mid-sixteenth century fountain of Neptune stands in the Piazza del Nettuno in Bologna.

    https://www.facebook.com/ElisaBarbari/photos/pcb.1224554254247824/1224553664247883/?type=3&theater

     

    Facebook appeared to have taken offense at the disrobed Roman god, asking Italian writer Elisa Barbari to remove it from her Facebook page, “Stories, curiosities and views of Bologna,” where she shares historical facts and oddities about the city.

    Barbari had tried to use a photo from her personal collection but upon upload faced what appeared to be an automatic prohibition, deeming the image “explicitly sexual”.

    Undeterred, Barbari challenged the decision and received another emailed statement seen by CNN in which Facebook defended its initial ban, citing a violation of advertising guidelines. “The use of images or video of nude bodies or plunging necklines is not allowed, even if the use is for artistic or educational reasons”.

    Barbari was floored by the social network’s decision to “censor” the Italian city’s beloved Renaissance treasure. “The statue is shown from behind, not even as a close up, it’s in the distance. It’s ridiculous,” Barbari tells CNN.

    “At first I was angry. Then I was surprised, I couldn’t understand why they don’t want to clarify. It’s absurd.

    “In the past, I have flagged inappropriate content to Facebook myself – fake news, violence on animals… Things that really need to be censured, not art. I don’t know what to think, it’s ridiculous.

    “I am guessing this hasn’t landed on Zuckerberg’s desk yet. There is nothing vulgar in a work of art,” she added.

    ImageFile: Facebook bans Neptune statue photo for being 'explicitly sexual'

    And while the conflict may not have gone that far internally, it appears the social network has had a change of heart.

    In a statement sent to CNN, a spokesperson for Facebook wrote: “Our team processes millions of advertising images each week, and in some instances we incorrectly prohibit ads. This image does not violate our ad policies. We apologize for the error and have let the advertiser know we are approving their ad”.

    Barbari said she has since received another email from Facebook but in relation to an account suspension rather than her challenged photograph. She had said that should Facebook u-turn on its decision then “it would be the happy ending”.

    Facebook has previously faced criticism for appearing to arbitrarily “censor” inoffensive images on the platform.

    Last September, the social media giant caused headlines after banning the iconic “Napalm girl” from the Vietnam War for a violation on images of naked children, but reversed its decision after public outcry over the image’s historical importance.

    The network also faced a firestorm last May after the “trending topics” box was found to be manually curated rather than supported by algorithms.

  • Governments are demanding more and more user data from Facebook

    Governments are demanding more and more data from Facebook about its users.

    On Wednesday, the social network said that government requests for user account data rose 27% in the first half of 2016 compared to the second half of last year.

    And that H2 2015 figure was already up 13% on the first half of 2015.

    In the most recent report, US law enforcement agencies topped the list as being most demanding.

    Globally, government requests for account data rose to 59,229 from 46,710 — and more than half contained a non-disclosure order that prohibited the social networking website from notifying users.

    However, requests for “content restriction,” when an item or post is restricted for violating local laws, decreased by 83 percent from the second half of 2015, Facebook. Why? Because the Paris terror attacks in November 2016 caused a sudden, abnormal spike, all centered around a single image from the attacks, Facebook deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby wrote in a blog post.

    For the first time, Facebook also provided information about government requests to preserve relevant user account information. The company received 38,675 preservation requests for 67,129 accounts, it said.

    “We apply a rigorous approach to every government request we receive to protect the information of the people who use our services. We scrutinize each request for legal sufficiency, no matter which country is making the request, and challenge those that are deficient or overly broad,” Sonderby wrote in the blog post.

    “We do not provide governments with ‘back doors’ or direct access to people’s information. We’ll also keep working with partners in industry and civil society to push governments around the world to reform surveillance in a way that protects their citizens’ safety and security while respecting their rights and freedoms”.