TheNewsGuru

Tag: Social Media

Social Media

  • Breaking: Cambridge Analytica’s graphic video used to influence Nigeria’s election emerges

    Breaking: Cambridge Analytica’s graphic video used to influence Nigeria’s election emerges

    Whistle-blower and former employee of Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie, has finally released the particular graphic video used to influence Nigeria’s election in 2015.

    Wylie handed the material to MPs, and giving testimony last week, he said: “Cambridge Analytica sent AggregateIQ the video after they [CA] got banned from several online ad networks because the graphic nature of the content violated the terms of service.

    “AIQ was quite freaked out about it. It’s a very disturbing video. They told Cambridge Analytica that. They called it ‘the murder video’.”

    The whistleblower told MPs: “[The video was distributed] in Nigeria with the sole intent of intimidating voters. It included content where people were being dismembered, where people were having their throats cut and bled to death in a ditch.

    “They were being burned alive. There was incredibly anti-Islamic, threatening messages portraying Muslims as violent.”

    Cambridge Analytica was hired by an unnamed Nigerian billionaire to run a campaign in support of Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, and the video was targeted at his Muslim opponent, Muhammadu Buhari, who went on to win the election.

    There is no suggestion that Jonathan was aware of the campaign.

    Click here to read more and watch the full video. Click here to read more about the Cambridge Analytica revelations.

     

  • US to require social media identities of American visa applicants

    The US State Department has said that it plans to require all American visa applicants to submit their social media information.

    Applicants for immigrant and non-immigrant visas, under the proposal, would be required to provide “identifiers” they have used on various social media platforms in the previous five years, in addition to old email addresses and phone numbers, Xinhua news agency quoted the State Department as saying on Thursday.

    According to documents to be published in the Federal Register, the Department said it is seeking public comment on the proposed measures within the next 60 days.

    Previously, social media, email and phone number histories were only required from applicants singled out for extra scrutiny. An estimated 65,000 people a year fall into that category.

    The changes would impact all applicants for immigrant and non-immigrant visas.

    The department estimated that 710,000 immigrant visa applicants and 14 million non-immigrant visa applicants would be affected.

    Only applicants for certain diplomatic and official visa types may be exempted from the requirements, the documents said.

    The changes will need to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.

     

  • Data scandal: Buhari must act on Cambridge Analytica revelations

    After revelations emerged of data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, meddling with Nigeria’s teething democracy; that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is silent about the issues raised, is alarming.

    SCL Elections, parent company of Cambridge Analytica confirmed the data analytics firm was hired to play a role in the 2015 General Elections that brought the Buhari government to power with the company saying it was hired to provide advertising and marketing services only.

    However, several confessional statements made by employees of the firm, seven of them, with close knowledge of the 2015 election campaigns, showed that Cambridge Analytica did more than just providing advertising and marketing services.

    Employees of Cambridge Analytica, according to a report by the Guardian UK, actually worked effortlessly and ruthlessly to sway the 2015 general election votes in favour of a particular candidate.

    Describing how Cambridge Analytica worked with people they believed were Israeli computer hackers, they said the hackers offered Cambridge Analytica access to Buhari’s financial and medical records, and that they had accessed the private emails of two politicians who are now heads of state in the country.

    Also, Cambridge Analytica was reported to have used an astonishing and disturbing video to push the campaign, a malicious one, against Buhari.

    “Coming to Nigeria on February 15th, 2015. Dark. Scary. And very uncertain. Sharia for all. What would Nigeria look like if Sharia were imposed by Buhari?,” the Guardian UK report quotes the voiceover on the campaign video.

    “Its answer to that question is certainly dark. And scary. It’s also graphically, brutally, violent. One minute and 19 seconds of archive news footage from Nigeria’s troubled past set to a horror movie soundtrack. There are scenes of people being macheted to death. Their legs hacked off. Their skulls caved in,” the report stated of the campaign video.

    According to one of the employees, now a former contractor of the firm, “It was voter suppression of the most crude and basic kind. It was targeted at Buhari voters in Buhari regions to basically scare the shit out of them and stop them from voting”.

    According to the Guardian UK, the employees confessed Cambridge Analytica was paid an estimate of N1 billion by an undisclosed Nigerian billionaire barely six weeks to the elections to sway the votes.

    There is, however, no suggestion former President Goodluck Jonathan, who lost to Buhari in the election, knew of the covert operation.

    While SCL Elections has denied the confessional statements, President Buhari was also fingered in the report.

    SCL said “During an election campaign, it is normal for SCL Elections to meet with vendors seeking to provide services as a subcontractor. SCL Elections did not take possession of or use any personal information from such individuals for any purposes. SCL Elections does not use ‘hacked’ or ‘stolen’ data.

    “Members of the SCL Elections team that worked on the Nigeria campaign remained in country throughout the original campaigning period, although the election was rescheduled and SCL was not retained for the entirety of the extended campaign period. Team members left in accordance with the company’s campaign plan”.

    And then according to the Guardian UK report that also fingered Buhari, in the whole development, his team was alleged to have hired AKPD, the firm of former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod, to push slick-social-media-heavy, Obama-esque message of hope in favour of Buhari.

    A Cambridge University professor named Aleksandr Kogan was reported as well to have harvested valuable information on the data of about 50 million Facebook users in the US to sway votes in favour of Donald Trump.

    Also, UK Channel released an expose on Monday which showed the managing director of Cambridge Analytica’s political division, Mark Turnbull, admitting to being responsible for every element of the highly contested campaigns of incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta during the 2013 and 2017 election cycles.

    In the video, Turnbull admitted to the channel’s undercover reporter that Cambridge Analytica had re-branded the Jubilee party by writing its manifesto and speeches, and conducting surveys, and the Kenyan government has shown a red eye to the firm.

    Sources said the same Israeli team that had worked on the Nigeria campaign obtained private information of the St Kitts and Nevis politician Timothy Harris at the time he was an opposition leader, and is now prime minister.

    Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix, who has since been fired, was reported to have given staff instructions to handle material provided by computer hackers in the election that took place in St Kitts and Nevis.

    German and Israeli governments and a host of others have since launched investigations into the data practices of Facebook even when its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has opened up to say they are doing all they can to address the situation.

    In the wake of these disturbing developments with governments around the world having to express concerns about their democracies to demand answers from Facebook, especially on how safe data of their citizens are, and with the 2019 general elections at the corner; is it not imperative the Nigerian government act?

     

  • Facebook outlines steps to prevent abuse of users’ data on platform

    Facebook has outlined steps it will take to prevent the abuse and misuse of users’ data on billions of accounts on the social media platform.

    This is coming on the heels of allegations against Cambridge Analytica of harvesting users’ data on about 50 million accounts on Facebook.

    Facebook founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, opening up on the Cambridge Analytica situation, revealed the steps saying he deeply regret the mistake that led to the data analytics firm gaining access to the users’ data.

    “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg said in a statement.

    “The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it,” he added.

    Expatiating on the timeline of the events that led to the Cambridge Analytica situation, Zuckerberg said it all started in 2013.

    –Timeline of events–

    In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends’ birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them.

    In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends’ data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends’ data.

    In 2014, to prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps could access. Most importantly, apps like Kogan’s could no longer ask for data about a person’s friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people. These actions would prevent any app like Kogan’s from being able to access so much data today.

    In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people’s consent, so we immediately banned Kogan’s app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications.

    Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this. We’re also working with regulators as they investigate what happened.

    This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.

    –Steps to prevent misuse, abuse of users’ data on Facebook–

    In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people’s information in this way. But there’s more we need to do and I’ll outline those steps here:

    First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.

    Second, we will restrict developers’ data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in — to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We’ll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we’ll have more changes to share in the next few days.

    Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you’ve allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you’ve used and an easy way to revoke those apps’ permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.

    –Moving forward–

    I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community.

    While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past.

    We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.

    I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together.

    I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we’d like, but I promise you we’ll work through this and build a better service over the long term, Zuckerberg wrote.

     

  • Facebook CEO opens up on Cambridge Analytica

    Facebook CEO opens up on Cambridge Analytica

    Facebook founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, has shared an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation in which the social media giant was unable to protect users’ data of about 50 million people on the platform.

    Facebook had placed a ban on Cambridge Analytica after allegations emerged that a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan harvested personal data of about 50 million Americans using personality quiz app, and improperly shared same with data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica.

    Privacy policy regulators have since begun probe into the data practices of Facebook that was implicated with Nigeria’s 2015 General Elections; with Zuckerberg expressing readiness to answer questions.

    In the update shared by the Facebook chief executive on the platform he built in 2007, he said the social media platform made a mistake and that it has done and is doing everything possible to arrest the situation.

    “The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.

    “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he wrote.

    Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has vividly explained steps Facebook have already taken years ago and more the social media platform will take to nip in the bud likely circumstances that led to the Cambridge Analytica situation.

    In her reaction after Zuckerberg made the update, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, immediately shared the Zuckerberg’s post with the following comment:

    “We know that this was a major violation of peoples’ trust, and I deeply regret that we didn’t do enough to deal with it.”

     

  • Facebook loses $40 billion market value

    Facebook loses $40 billion market value

    Facebook shares closed down nearly 7.0 per cent on Monday, wiping nearly $40 billion off its market value as investors worried that new legislation could damage the company’s advertising business.

    TheNewsGuru reports Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been under pressure after privacy regulators launched a probe into how the social media giant handles users’ data following reports that Facebook lost control of more than 50 million user profiles to Cambridge Analytica.

    The criticism of Cambridge Analytica presents a new threat to Facebook’s reputation, which is already under attack over Russia’s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway U.S. voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election.

    “The lid is being opened on the black box of Facebook data practices, and the picture is not pretty,” said Frank Pasquale, a University of Maryland law professor who has written about Silicon Valley’s use of data.

    On Monday, Facebook said it had hired forensic auditors from the firm Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytica still had the data in order to arrest further decline of its market value.

    “Auditors from Stroz Friedberg were on site at Cambridge Analytica’s London office this evening,” the company said in a statement late Monday.

    “At the request of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which has announced it is pursuing a warrant to conduct its own on-site investigation, the Stroz Friedberg auditors stood down,” Facebook said.

    However, the London-based Cambridge Analytica has denied the media claims, stressing it deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a third-party application in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules.

    However, further allegations about the firm’s tactics were reported late Monday by British broadcaster Channel 4 which said it secretly taped interviews with senior Cambridge Analytica executives in which they boasted of their ability to sway elections in countries around the world with digital manipulation and traditional political trickery.

    Cambridge Analytica rejected the allegations, saying in a statement that the Channel 4 report “is edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent the nature of those conversations and how the company conducts its business.”

     

  • Facebook’s Chief Information Security Officer departs

    Facebook’s Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos, is said to be leaving the social media company in August.

    A source revealed this on Monday, with a report citing internal disagreements over how the social network should deal with its role in spreading disinformation.

    The social media company has already taken away Stamos’ responsibilities to counter government-sponsored disinformation, the source said.

    Not denying his exit, Stamos tweeted that his role at the company did change, but he was still fully engaged with work at Facebook.

    https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975875310896914433

    The New York Times first reported the development, and said Facebook could not be immediately reached for comment.

    At Facebook, Stamos had been strongly advocating for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on the social media platform, often to the consternation of top executives, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, the newspaper said.

    Stamos’ responsibilities were reassigned in December after which Stamos said he would leave the company, the Times said.

    Stamos was persuaded to stay through August to oversee the transition of his duties because company executives thought his exit would look bad, it said, citing current and former employees.

    Facebook’s reputation is already under attack over Russia’s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway US voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election.

    The company is under fresh scrutiny after media reports that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users in developing techniques to support President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

     

  • Bayero University admits 140 students for degree in social media

    The Faculty of Communication of the Bayero University Kano has admitted 140 Students for social media training in its newly introduced Department of Information and Media Studies (IMS) in the last two years.

    The Dean of the Faculty, Professor Mustapha Nasir Malam who made the disclosure at Guest Lecture Platform for the students of the department said that the courses in the new department were tailored to meet the demand of new technology in information management.

    “With the upgrade of the Department of Mass Communication to Full-fledged Faculty of Communication, we now have three departments, namely: Mass Communication, Theatre and Performing Arts; and Information and Media Studies while the fourth Department of Films Studies is in the pipeline.

    “The Department of Information and Media Studies is very unique because students are trained on the use of technology, especially the Social Media tools for information management,” PRNigeria quoted Prof. Malam as saying.

    Speaking on the courses, the Head of the Department of IMS, Dr. Nura Ibrahim disclosed that the programme will rely more on practical exposure of students to information technology in addition to theoretical components of media studies.

    “The programmes under the department of IMS include Computer-aided design, Basic Computer tools, Creativity and Innovation, Culture and critical thinking and Entrepreneurial Journalism.

    “Other courses in the department include Social media campaigns, Data-driven Journalism, Web-based technologies and multimedia; Website design and management and Programming languages.

    “To ensure that students are adequately educated on the new thinking in information management, the department will also rely on Guest Speakers who are practitioners and role models on specific fields to share their working experiences with the students,” Ibrahim stated.

    The guest lecturer at the occasion and the publisher of PRNigeria and Economic Confidential, Mr. Yushau Shuaib urged the students to be abreast of the dynamic and revolutionary changes in communication with the advent of information technology.

    Shuaib said: “The social media has taken over the way and manner we communicate. In today’s world, we should never ignore the potentials of the large population of social media users, the reliability of instant information, the accessibility to timely response to enquiries and the opportunity to share Data and Media Sharing Platforms.

    “The social media is not elitist. It has given power the poor and the voice to the voiceless through direct, affordable, fast, instant various channel of communication.”

     

  • Facebook bans Trump’s data analytics firm

    Facebook bans Trump’s data analytics firm

    Facebook announced decisions on Friday to suspend US President Donald Trump-affiliated data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica.

    This is coming after the social media giant learnt that the Trump campaign’s data analytic firm failed to delete vital data it had taken inappropriately from users of the social network.

    In a statement, Facebook said it was suspending the accounts of Strategic Communication Laboratories, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, as well as the accounts of a University of Cambridge psychologist, Aleksandr Kogan, and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.

    Cambridge Analytica, a firm specializing in using online data to create voter personality profiles in order to target them with political messages, ran data operations for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

    The company was funded by Trump supporter and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and former Trump senior adviser Stephen Bannon once sat on its board.

    The company, which began working for the Trump campaign in June 2016, promised that its so-called “psychographic” profiles could predict the personality and political leanings of every adult in the United States.

    The analytics firm was asked in December to turn over internal documents to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as part of the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

    Facebook said that Kogan had requested and gained access to information from 270,000 Facebook members who registered for Facebook ads course after they chose to download his app.

    The app, “thisisyourdigitallife”, offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists”.

    The Facebook members gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, the content they had liked, as well as some limited information about friend groups and contacts.

    Kogan then broke Facebook’s policies and passed the information to Cambridge and to Wylie.

    Facebook learned about Kogan’s activities in 2015.

    The company removed Kogan’s app at the time and demanded certifications from Kogan and Cambridge, and Wylie, that the information he had shared had been destroyed.

    Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to Facebook that they had done so.

    But Facebook said it received reports several days ago that the data was not deleted.

    “We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims,” the company said, adding: “If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made”.

    “We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information,” Facebook further stated.

    Cambridge Analytica did not respond to immediate requests for comment.

     

  • 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.