TheNewsGuru

Tag: Mark Zuckerberg

  • Facebook looking to open content moderation for external audit

    Facebook is working to enable external reviews on its content moderation systems, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a comment piece on the Financial Times on Monday.

    The tech giant has been criticised for being too slow to remove hate speech and terrorist propaganda from its platform, but has also been accused of suppressing right-wing voices.

    In the article, Zuckerberg repeated his appeal for government regulation on issues such as electoral advertising, harmful content and data portability.

    “Companies like mine need better oversight when we make decisions, which is why we’re creating an independent Oversight Board so people can appeal Facebook’s content decisions.

    “We’re also looking at opening up our content moderation systems for external audit,’’ he added.

    Facebook came in for intense criticism after the deadly attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 during which the attacker live-streamed the events on Facebook.

    The company has also been criticised for allowing Russian-backed trolls to post ads aimed at influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as over the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal.

    Zuckerberg said that his company was working with governments, inclusing New Zealand’s, “on what regulation could look like.”

    “I believe good regulation may hurt Facebook’s business in the near term but it will be better for everyone, including us, over the long term.

    “If we don’t create standards that people feel are legitimate, they won’t trust institutions or technology,’’ Zuckerberg added.

  • Zuckerberg ‘mocks’ Twitter in leaked internal Facebook meetings

    Zuckerberg ‘mocks’ Twitter in leaked internal Facebook meetings

    Founder Mark Zuckerberg in leaked internal meetings of Facebook laughed over the investment status of Twitter, stressing that the microblogging platform can’t put in investment as does his social media platform.

    TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Zuckerberg was addressing the issue of potential breakup of Facebook in one of the meetings when he said Facebook’s investment on safety is bigger than the whole revenue of Twitter, and then laughed.

    Parts of the leaked internal meetings read: “Well, I think you want to separate out a couple of things. I’m certainly more worried that someone is going to try to break up our company.

    “Now, there’s a separate question about, at the end of the day, there is the rule of law — which, for all of the concern about the direction the country is going in, as someone running a company that operates in a lot of different countries, I have to say one of the things that I love and appreciate about our country the most is that we have a really solid rule of law, which is very different from a lot of other places around the world.

    “So there might be a political movement where people are angry at the tech companies or are worried about concentration or worried about different issues and worried that they’re not being handled well.

    “That doesn’t mean that, even if there’s anger and that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies … I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge.

    “And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not the position that you want to be in when you’re, you know, I mean … it’s like, we care about our country and want to work with our government and do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.

    “And I just think the case is not particularly strong on this … It’s just that breaking up these companies, whether it’s Facebook or Google or Amazon, is not actually going to solve the issues. And, you know, it doesn’t make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can’t coordinate and work together.

    “It doesn’t make any of the hate speech or issues like that less likely. It makes it more likely because now … all the processes that we’re putting in place and investing in, now we’re more fragmented.

    “It’s why Twitter can’t do as good of a job as we can. I mean, they face, qualitatively, the same types of issues. But they can’t put in the investment. Our investment on safety is bigger than the whole revenue of their company. [laughter] And yeah, we’re operating on a bigger scale, but it’s not like they face qualitatively different questions. They have all the same types of issues that we do.

    “So yes, I think that the direction of the discussion is concerning. I at least believe, I think, there are real issues. I don’t think that the antitrust remedies are going to solve them. But I understand that if we don’t help address those issues and help put in place a regulatory framework where people feel like there’s real accountability, and the government can govern our sector, then yeah, people are just going to keep on getting angrier and angrier.

    “And they’re going to demand more extreme measures, and, eventually, people just say, “Screw it, take a hammer to the whole thing.” And that’s when the rule of law comes in, and I’m very grateful that we have it”.

  • Doctored videos: Instagram head addresses ‘menace’ of deepfakes

    Doctored videos: Instagram head addresses ‘menace’ of deepfakes

    Instagram is working on a policy to address doctored videos, also known as deepfakes, Adam Mosseri, Head of the popular social media site has said in an interview with CBS on Tuesday.

    TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports deepfakes use artificial intelligence technology to alter videos – and can go viral – of famous people so they appear as though they said something they did not.

    Recently, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a victim of a deepfake that was slowed down to make her appear drunk or impaired. The video went viral.

    Also, a deepfake video of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg altered to show him bragging about controlling billions of people’s “stolen” personal data emerged.

    In the Zuckerberg’s video, he was manipulated to have said, “Imagine this for a second: One man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures”.

    Mosseri said Instagram is working on a policy to address the menace, stressing “We are not going to make a one-off decision to take a piece of video down just because it’s of Mark and Mark happens to run this place. That would be really inappropriate and irresponsible”.

    He said, “We need to have defined principles and we need to be transparent about those principles. If a million people see a video like that in the first 24 hours or the first 48 hours, the damage is done.

    “The thing we are focused on right now, internally, is not if we take it down when we find it, but how do you find it more quickly. Once we can do that, then we can have the next debate about whether or not to take it down when we find it”.

    Mosseri said it’s an issue not only facing the company but something he struggles with on a personal level, too.

    “I don’t feel good about it,” he said.

  • Two chiefs quit as Facebook reorganizes

    Chris Cox, Facebook Chief Product Officer and Chris Daniels, Vice President for WhatsApp have both left the company.

    TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made this known as the company reorganizes to become privacy-focused.

    Zuckerberg said his social media platform is reorganizing to become more centered around making private messaging, stories and groups the foundation of the experience, including enabling encryption and interoperability across services.

    Expressed sadness Cox and Daniels left at this time, while also deeply grateful for their contribution to the firm.

    “While it is sad to lose such great people, this also creates opportunities for more great leaders who are energized about the path ahead to take on new and bigger roles,” Zuckerberg said.

    Will Cathcart will be taking over as the new head of WhatsApp and Zuckerberg has left Cox’s role vacant.

    “Instead, the leaders of Facebook (Fidji Simo), Instagram (Adam Mosseri), Messenger (Stan Chudnovsky), and WhatsApp (Will Cathcart) will report directly to me, and our Chief Marketing Officer (Antonio Lucio) will report directly to Sheryl,” the Facebook CEO stated.

  • Facebook broke rules, should be regulated, say UK lawmakers

    Facebook broke rules, should be regulated, say UK lawmakers

    Facebook intentionally breached data privacy and competition law and should, along with other big tech companies, be subjected to a new regulator to protect democracy and citizens’ rights, British lawmakers said on Monday.

    In a damning report that singled out Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for what it said was a failure of leadership and personal responsibility, the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said tech firms had proved ineffective in stopping harmful content on their platforms.

    This included disinformation, attempts by foreign countries to influence elections, and risks to personal data.

    “We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people,” Committee Chairman, Damian Collins, said.

    Collins said the age of inadequate self-regulation must end, following an 18-month investigation that concluded Facebook had “intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws.”

    “The rights of the citizen need to be established in statute, by requiring the tech companies to adhere to a code of conduct written into law by Parliament, and overseen by an independent regulator,” he said.

    Facebook rejected the suggestion it had breached data protection and competition laws, and said it shared the committee’s concerns about false news and election integrity.

    “We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee’s recommendation for electoral law reform,” Facebook’s UK public policy manager Karim Palant said.

    “We also support effective privacy legislation that holds companies to high standards in their use of data and transparency for users.”

    Lawmakers in Europe and the U.S. are scrambling to get to grips with the risks posed by big tech companies regulating the platforms used by billions of people.

    Germany has been at the forefront of the backlash against Facebook, fueled by last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal in which tens of millions of Facebook profiles were harvested without their users’ consent.

    Earlier this month, it ordered Facebook to curb its data collection practices in the country.

    U.S senator Marco Rubio introduced a bill last month aimed at giving Americans more control over data collected by online companies like Facebook and Alphabet’s Google.

    The British committee does not propose legislation, but does have the power to summon witnesses for its investigations.

    Facebook became the focus of its inquiry after whistleblower Christopher Wylie alleged that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had obtained the data of millions of users of the social network.

    Zuckerberg apologised in 2018 for a “breach of trust” over the scandal.
    But he refused to appear three times before British lawmakers, a stance that showed “contempt” toward parliament and the members of nine legislatures from around the world, the committee said.

    “We believe that in its evidence to the committee Facebook has often deliberately sought to frustrate our work, by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions,” Collins said.

    “Mark Zuckerberg continually fails to show the levels of leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from someone, who sits at the top of one of the world’s biggest companies.”

    Facebook, however, said it had cooperated with the investigation by answering more than 700 questions and putting forward four senior executives to give evidence.

    It said it had made substantial changes, including the authorisation of every political advert, and it was investing heavily in identifying abusive content.

    “While we still have more to do, we are not the same company we were a year ago,” Palant said.

    The committee said it had identified major threats to society from the dominance of companies such as Facebook – which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram – Google and Twitter.

    Democracy was at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised adverts from unidentifiable sources, they said, and social media platforms were failing to act against harmful content and respect the privacy of users.

    Companies like Facebook were also using their size to bully smaller firms that relied on social media platforms to reach customers, it added.

     

  • Facebook ‘knowingly’ violated data privacy laws – British lawmakers

    Facebook ‘knowingly’ violated data privacy laws – British lawmakers

    British lawmakers on Monday accused Facebook of “intentionally and knowingly” violating data privacy and anti-competition laws as they called for social media companies to assume clear legal liabilities for content shared on their platforms.

    Facebook, Inc. is an American online social media and social networking service company.

    “Social media companies cannot hide behind the claim of being merely a platform.

    “It cannot maintain that they have no responsibility themselves in regulating the content of their sites,’’ a major report by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee released on Monday.

    The committee, which reviewed a trove of internal Facebook emails, accused the tech giant of being “willing to override its users’ privacy settings in order to transfer data to some app developers.’’

    The lawmakers also accused chief executive Mark Zuckerberg of showing “contempt” of the British parliament by choosing not to appear before the committee nor “respond personally to any of our invitations.”

    The committee called for the establishment of a compulsory code of ethics overseen by an independent regulator to draw a rulebook of acceptable and unacceptable behaviours on social media.

    “The process should establish clear, legal liability for tech companies to act against agreed harmful and illegal content on their platform,’’ the report said.

    The regulator should have the ability to launch legal proceedings “with the prospect of large fines being administered” for non-complying companies.

    The committee also called for electoral law to be changed “to reflect changes in campaigning techniques” and for “absolute transparency of online political campaigning.”

     

  • Facebook fighting hard to earn back trust

    Facebook fighting hard to earn back trust

    Facebook’s operations chief Sheryl Sandberg said on Wednesday that the world’s largest social network needed to win back public trust after facing scandals for violating its users’ privacy.

    The social media platform is investing billions of dollars a year to improve the security of its network, Sandberg said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

    “We did not anticipate all of the risks from connecting so many people,” Sandberg said.

    Sandberg added that the site had added features that give users greater control over their personal information.

    The 15-year-old technology company has been a darling of California’s Silicon Valley, making stars out of its founder, chief executive and chairman Mark Zuckerberg, and Sandberg, known for her feminist manifesto “Lean In”.

    But its shares have fallen roughly 33 per cent since July to 144 dollars due to concerns about user privacy.

    In 2018, the company was buffeted by revelations that UK consultancy Cambridge Analytica had improperly acquired data on millions of its U.S. users to target election advertising.

    “We need to earn back trust,” Sandberg said.

    Some of Facebook’s major shareholders have pushed for Zuckerberg, who has majority control of the company, to step down as chairman.

    Sandberg said he should remain both chair and CEO. She said that she also plans to remain at Facebook, where she has worked since 2008.

    “I think I have a job to do,” she said. “It’s a job I really want to do.”

    Sandberg said that if Facebook had to change its business model and charge users a subscription fee instead of collecting advertising revenue, far fewer people would be able to use it.

    “Fundamentally disallowing our business model would harm a lot of people all over the world.”

    She said her grassroots women’s movement, spurred by the publication of “Lean In”, was still going strong.

    But, asked if she was considering a run for U.S. president in the 2020 election, she replied: “It’s not on my agenda.”

     

  • Under fire Facebook COO says company firmly against hate

    Under fire from series of scandals and fiascos Facebook has found itself in, Chief Operating Officer (COO) at the social media company, Sheryl Sandberg, has said the firm stands firmly against hate.

    This is especially following accusations that Facebook played into an anti-Semitic narrative against Mr. George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist.

    “Being Jewish is a core part of who I am and our company stands firmly against hate. The idea that our work has been interpreted as anti-Semitic is abhorrent to me — and deeply personal,” Sandberg said on Wednesday.

    Facebook’s outgoing Head of Communications and Policy, Elliot Schrage, while sharing details about communications operations, said the social media giant hired Definers, a Washington DC PR firm, to do work on Mr. Soros.

    “In January 2018, investor and philanthropist George Soros attacked Facebook in a speech at Davos, calling us a “menace to society”. We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation. Definers researched this using public information.

    “Later, when the “Freedom from Facebook” campaign emerged as a so-called grassroots coalition, the team asked Definers to help understand the groups behind them. They learned that George Soros was funding several of the coalition members.

    “They prepared documents and distributed these to the press to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement,” Schrage narrated.

    He, however, stated that Facebook did not hire the Washington DC PR firm to create or distribute fake news, stressing that responsibility for decisions rests on him and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sandberg relied on him to manage the communications team without controversy.

    “I knew and approved of the decision to hire Definers and similar firms. I should have known of the decision to expand their mandate. Over the past decade, I built a management system that relies on the teams to escalate issues if they are uncomfortable about any project, the value it will provide or the risks that it creates. That system failed here and I’m sorry I let you all down. I regret my own failure here,” he said.

    However, Sandberg took full responsibility for the communications team and their work and for the PR firms that work with Facebook.

    “I truly believe we have a world class Comms team and I want to acknowledge the enormous pressure the team has faced over the past year. When I read the story in New York Times last week, I didn’t remember a firm called Definers.

    “I asked our team to look into the work Definers did for us and to double-check whether anything had crossed my desk. Some of their work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced.

    “I also want to emphasize that it was never anyone’s intention to play into an anti-Semitic narrative against Mr. Soros or anyone else,” the Facebook COO said.

     

  • Zuckerberg stands firm amid questions about Facebook leadership

    Zuckerberg stands firm amid questions about Facebook leadership

    Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he intends to remain head of the social media giant he founded in spite of calls for changes in management, local media reported on Wednesday.

    Zuckerberg resisted calls for changes in top management and criticism of how Facebook has handled Russian interference on its platform.

    He implied little is likely to change at the top of the company, answering “that’s not the plan” when asked whether he would consider stepping down.

    He also threw his support behind chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who has been criticised for her role in handling Facebook’s recent crises, including the hiring of a public relations firm accused of using smear tactics.

    Zuckerberg said he was proud of the work that he and Sandberg had done.

    “I hope that we work together for decades more to come,’’ he stressed.

    Zuckerberg’s defence of top managers at Facebook, which claims almost 1.5 billion daily active users worldwide, follows a New York Times investigation recently suggesting the company attempted to ignore and conceal Russian interference.

    “It is not clear to me at all that the report is right.

    “A lot of the things that were in that report, we talked to the reporters ahead of time.

    “We told them that from everything that we’d seen that wasn’t true and they chose to print it anyway,’’ he said.

    Facebook this year has struggled to put other crises, including the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and a massive security breach, behind it.

    Its stock price has plummeted 40 per cent since July.