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Tag: Social Media

Social Media

  • Has Facebook become a “beast” really?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

  • Tweetdecking: Twitter suspends several accounts

    Tweetdecking: Twitter suspends several accounts

    Continuing its tirade against the “tweetdeckers”, Twitter has suspended several popular accounts known for stealing tweets or mass-retweeting tweets into manufactured virality.

    According to Buzzfeed, accounts, including @Dory, @GirlPosts, @SoDamnTrue, Girl Code/@reiatabie, Common White Girl/@commonwhitegiri, @teenagernotes, @finah, @holyfag, and @memeprovider were among the handles that were swept in the purge.

    Several of these accounts were very popular with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers.

    In addition to stealing people’s tweets without credit, some of these accounts are known as “tweetdeckers” due to their practice of teaming up in exclusive Tweetdeck groups and mass-retweeting one another’s – and paying customers’ – tweets into forced virality, the report said.

    Tweetdecking is an explicit violation of Twitter’s spam policy, which does not allow users to “sell, purchase, or attempt to artificially inflate account interactions”.

    According to Twitter’s rules, violating this policy is grounds for permanent suspension; as is creating a new account to evade a permanent suspension.

     

  • Incoming German Minister to open talks with Google, Facebook

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

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

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

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

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

     

  • Social media doorway to opportunities – SMW participants

    Positive social media presence is a doorway to existing opportunities and creation of more, social media week participants said on Wednesday in Lagos.

    The participants discussed the topic: ”Being a Creative in Tech and Starting a Startup”, at the ongoing 2018 Social Media Week (SMW) Lagos.

    They discussants said that creatives, people who are able to create ideas and express their individuality, could effectively build digital brands on social media.

    SMW Lagos began on Monday with the theme ‘Close’.

    The weeklong event is featuring discussions on a wide range of issues including the future of media, governance, gender inclusion, travel and entertainment.

    One of the discussants, Mrs Yoanna Chikezie, Executive Director of the Assembly, said that social media would help creatives to reach target audience effectively.

    “Social media will help you to learn and establish new ways of thinking and branding your contents,” Chikezie said.

    The executive director, however, said that creatives must be consistent to be able to reach the target audience.

    “Getting a large audience to view your page and patronise your brand is a gradual process.

    “Keep supplying interesting and educative contents on your page for people to develop interest in you,” she said.

    A visual storyteller, and tech video producer, Mr Fisayo Fosudo, described social media as a powerful tool for digital branding.

    Fosudo urged that social media should be used appropriately.

    “Social media platforms are only beneficial to creatives who understand the contents that sells.

    “Creatives who understand the kind of target audience they want to view their contents are likely to boost their brand using social media, ” Fosudo said.

     

  • Tips for a strong hotel social media page

    While your hotel’s website is your best sales representative, your hotel’s social media page namely Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are your best Public Relations representative.

    Therefore, it is essential to arm your hotel social media platforms with the proper tools to engage your social media fans. Jumia Travel, the leading online travel agency shares tips to turn your social media page into a successful PR machine.

    Designing the page differentiates from competition

    The most visible characteristic of a hotel social media page is the logo. Display your logo in an unexpected way. Provide a strong hotel overview page that’s both informational and fun. When creating your new hotel social media page ensure that it reflects the hotel’s colours, textures and the experiences that the property offers but also matches with facebook’s style.

    The Hotel menu item engage users

    Having an easy-to-use and user-friendly navigation on your hotel social media pages is an essential factor for how engaged your visitors are going to be. Bad navigation and usability can lead to visitors abandoning your page. Keep it simple. Don’t try to overwhelm people with lots of options: 3 or 4 menu items are enough.

    Create special social media promos

    Creating special offers or promotion on your pages will guarantee a loyal following. This is because if your fans know they will win something on your pages, they will always want to come back.

    Always tag photos

    Images play a great role in influencing the choice of hotels prospective guest decide to stay in. With today’s technology, taking a good picture is easier than ever. Facebook and Instagram are great for sharing pictures and engaging users. So, for your social media photos to get more engagement, always tag people to see it.

     

  • Moving to Snapchat: Why younger social media users are dumping Facebook

    Wanting to avoid prying eyes of parents and grandparents, younger generation of social media users are now dumping Facebook and moving to not-too-friendly-to-older-age-groups Snapchat.

    According to eMarketer’s latest forecast on social network usage, Facebook is losing younger users at an even faster pace than previously expected, and while the social media platform was able to count on Instagram to retain that younger audience in the past, Snapchat may now be siphoning away more users.

    “This year, for the first time, less than half of US internet users ages 12 to 17 will use Facebook via any device at least once per month.

    “Facebook is still adding monthly users overall, but older age groups are mainly responsible for this. The number of total Facebook users in the US will reach 169.5 million this year, up just under 1% from 2017.

    “Meanwhile, Facebook’s proportion of social network users accessing the platform will continue to decline over the forecast period,” eMarketer report read.

    According to the report, the number of US Facebook users ages 11 and younger will decline by 9.3% in 2018.

    “Additionally, the number of users ages 12 to 17 and 18 to 24 will decrease by 5.6% and 5.8%, respectively.

    “Facebook will lose 2 million users ages 24 and younger this year, eMarketer estimates. But not all of those users are migrating to Instagram.

    “For example, eMarketer predicts Instagram will add 1.6 million users ages 24 and younger. Snapchat, meanwhile, will add 1.9 million users in that age group.

    “Snapchat will continue to have more users ages 12 to 24 compared with that of Instagram.

    “However, Instagram overall is still bigger in the US than Snapchat. The number of Instagram users will total 104.7 million in 2018, up 13.1% year over year. Snapchat, meanwhile, will see its user base increase by 9.3% to 86.5 million,” the report further read.

    Meanwhile, according to eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho, “Snapchat could eventually experience more growth in older age groups, since it’s redesigning its platform to be easier to use”.

    “The question will be whether younger users will still find Snapchat cool if more of their parents and grandparents are on it. That’s the predicament Facebook is in,” he added.

     

  • The social media and the flight of reason – Ohwahwa

    The social media and the flight of reason – Ohwahwa

    By Fred Ohwahwa
    Recently, a friend of mine who I otherwise hold in high regard, sent me a message on WhatsApp. After reading the first two sentences, I fired him a response: that the statement was wrongly credited to the so-called author; that there was no way she could have written that.He responded by saying that somebody had actually informed him that I was correct. Then, why post something you already knew is dubiously credited to someone else? His response? That some of the points contained in the piece are valid!
    I couldn’t just understand such logic. Now, how do you make a valid point in a fraudulent way? How do you give credit to someone for what he/she didn’t write, especially a piece that is dripping of mischief?
    These are the days when people sit in the comfort of their homes, cook up stories or opinions, ascribe it to someone else and push same into the wider world through the Internet. The sad part is that people rush to embrace such dubious messages and propagate same.The gullible come from all ages and all classes of people. You would ordinarily think that age and experience should make people to be cautious in embracing certain information. Sadly, that has not been the case.
    It is amazing how people display their ignorance on issues and yet are so eager to jump into the fray. And they do so with very strong opinions. People barely read messages before forwarding them to others. Not for them a time to digest the information therein and reflect on the implications.
    Many group platforms have become toxic sites primarily because of this. Many members simply forget why such forums were established in the first place, and then proceed to convert them to their pet campaign projects. And in such instances, they fail to take cognisance of the political, ethnic and religious sensibilities of others on such platforms.
    This is why on a platform meant for the welfare of an estate, for example, people will be spreading insidious sectarian messages, even when it is clear that membership of such platforms is composed of people with diverse ethnic, religious and political backgrounds.They spend a considerable amount of time ventilating their prejudices. They do not see the impropriety of running a campaign of calumny against people who may never see what they wrote about them, let alone be given the opportunity to put their own views across. It is even worse if the persons being discussed are from an opposing political camp or from “enemy” ethnic or religious groups. Our self-righteousness makes us incapable of understanding that we do not have a monopoly of good character and behaviour.
    This jaundiced outlook on life has also made it difficult for many of us to enlarge or increase our circles of relationships. You claim to be a Christian, yet you find it difficult to attend a wedding ceremony in another denomination. It is the full display of the silly notion of My God is holier than yours.
    Facebook in this part of world has become a platform for fighting all kinds of phantom and incendiary wars. Without thinking, people now gleefully sow divisions along political, ethnic, religious and even racial lines. Living harmoniously with neighbours has become an impossible proposition.Politics has become a hate-filled endeavour. People no longer disagree on issues based on principles and ideological disposition. Whatever you stand for is unacceptable. I will oppose you even before I understand what you are saying. It doesn’t matter even if what you are trying to accomplish is for the common good. I am duty bound to oppose it, just for opposition sake.
    The social media have also exposed the underbelly of gullibility of many of us. We are quick to believe most of the things sent to us, especially those things that portray us in bad light.It is a measure of how much we lack self esteem when we believe and spread derogatory messages about ourselves as a people. People run down our country and our race and we gleefully spread such messages.
    Which is not to say we cannot do better than where we are as a people. But many of the messages we share with friends and relations are actually designed to reinforce long-held prejudices and stereotypes by the authors.You look at a man who is hungry, and you conclude that he is lazy. You have not bothered to find out how he got to his present condition. Has he always been hungry? Did he lose all his money to robbers or fraudsters? Did he have the opportunity to be educated? Etc. Yet, we jump into conclusion.
    We desire that people should read. But what do we read? Do we read things that edify us or that cause acrimony? Do we invest our energies in building a better society or tearing down the fragile fabric that hold us together?The choice is for us to make: to nurture and grow a culture of understanding and reflection or live in our own familiar and comfort zones. These are zones in which our ignorance and prejudices are reinforced by equally ignorant fellow travelers.
    The new technologies of communication have become the chief culprits in the mental and intellectual laziness that predominate our thought processes. With so much information available like never before in human history, yet ignorance has taken centre-stage in the affairs of man. People have become more insular and ethnocentric in their dealings with their fellow men. The sovereignty of countries has become threatened by the sheer weight of ill-informed opinions and crass prejudice.
    Long ago, I read the book, “Straight and Crooked Thinking” by Robert H. Thouless. First published in 1930, the book is appropriate for all times. It describes, assesses and critically analyses flaws in reasoning and argument. The basic principles set forth in that book have guided my thought processes over the past decades.
    Many so-called populist movements in many climes have their foundations rooted in crooked thinking. It is the belief that there is an El Dorado by the corner when the people move in a certain direction. But the history of man is the history of struggle and incremental improvement in the quality of life. Communism and Capitalism did not change that. And it is not about to change.
    It is this flight of fancy (the abandonment of reasoning) that makes people to think that if they spend all their time praying without even venturing to do things, all will be well. That is why our country has since become a fertile ground for pastors, prophets and shamans of indeterminate pedigrees. We believe what they tell us, even when the evidence before us contradicts them.
    United States Senator John McCain surely had in mind the abandonment of reason in our generation when he said last July: “I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to co-operate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.”And in Nigeria, there are legions of people who make the incapacity of our governments their livelihood. It is time to withdraw the oxygen they rely on for their campaigns of mischief.
    Ohwahwa wrote from Lagos

  • Jeopardy: Buratai warns personnel over use of social media

    The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, in Lagos on Thursday called for caution on the use of social media by personnel of the Nigerian Army.

    Buratai gave the caution at a three day workshop with the theme “Office Management and Document Security workshop 2018’’ held in Lagos.

    He said that the social media posed an additional challenge in information security.

    The COAS, who was represented by the Army Chief of Administration, Maj.-Gen. Idris AlkaliAlkali, said some misguided personnel had abused the use of social media contrary to the rules of the service.

    The workshop was a quarterly event organised to improve the capacity of clerks within the service.

    Buratai said:”The Nigerian Army has a policy on the use of social media. The use of social media to discuss or disclose service matter is absolutely wrong.

    “It is very unprofessional for personnel to resort to social media to disclose classified information or express grievances when the Nigerian Army has well established channels for addressing complaints.

    “It is equally saddening to find operational issues and utterances including some gory pictures involving our personnel and equipment being circulated on social media.’’

    He warned troops against the use of social media to the embarrassment of the service and affected families.

    “I want you to take particularly of the presentations as it will also highlight the inherent risk associated with the advent of social media and all the steps you must not take to compromise information as clerks,” he said.

    The COAS said that the army had initiated a process that would lead to the establishment of a directorate that would focus solely on the management of social media in the service.

    “This is part of my action plan to curtail the risk associated with the use of social media by personnel,’’ he said.

    Buratai noted that the workshop would draw the attention of clerks on the importance of securing service documents in a manner that would not jeopardise Nigerian Army operations and administration.

    “This workshop will help you towards playing your expected roles in actualising my vision which is to have a professionally responsive Nigerian Army in the discharge of its constitutional role.

    “I directed the holding of office management and document security workshop for clerks’ having known the important roles they play in handling and management of our documents.

    “Some of which are highly classified and their disclosures are dangerous to our national interest,” he stated.

    The Director of Manpower Planning, Maj.–Gen. Kay Isiyaku, at the workshop, said that the service was faced with the issue of leakages as documents that are supposed to be treated as confidential found their way into public domain.

    “Where documents are supposed to be put into use are leaked to people that are outside, it therefore compromises whatever we are supposed to do.

    “This of course is detrimental to the effective and efficient workings of any organisation.

    “We have had cases of people transmitting classified document particularly through the social media and that doesn’t go down well with the authorities,’’ he said.

    The General Officer Commanding (GOC), 81 Division, Maj.-Gen. Enobong Udoh, urged the participants to discipline themselves by seizing the opportunity to improve themselves in the discharge of their duties.

     

  • Facebook says it can’t guarantee social media is good for democracy

    Facebook says it can’t guarantee social media is good for democracy

    Facebook Inc warned on Monday that it could offer no assurance that social media was on balance good for democracy.

    The company, however, said it was trying what it could to stop alleged meddling in elections by Russia or anyone else.

    The sharing of false or misleading headlines on social media has become a global issue, after accusations that Russia tried to influence votes in the United States, Britain and France.

    Moscow denies the allegations.

    Facebook, the largest social network with more than two billion users, addressed social media’s role in democracy in blog posts from a Harvard University professor, Cass Sunstein, and from an employee working on the subject.

    “I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can‘t,” Samidh Chakrabarti, a Facebook product manager, wrote in his post.

    Facebook, he added, has a “moral duty to understand how these technologies are being used and what can be done to make communities like Facebook as representative, civil and trustworthy as possible.”

    Contrite Facebook executives were already fanning out across Europe this week to address the company’s slow response to abuses on its platform, such as hate speech and foreign influence campaigns.

    U.S. lawmakers have held hearings on the role of social media in elections, and this month Facebook widened an investigation into the run-up to Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership.

    Chakrabarti expressed Facebook’s regrets about the 2016 U.S. elections, when according to the company Russian agents created 80,000 posts that reached around 126 million people over two years.

    The company should have done better, he wrote, and he said Facebook was making up for lost time by disabling suspect accounts, making election ads visible beyond the targeted audience and requiring those running election ads to confirm their identities.

    Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google and YouTube have announced similar attempts at self-regulation.

    Chakrabarti said Facebook had helped democracy in ways, such as getting more Americans to register to vote.

    Sunstein, a law professor and Facebook consultant who also worked in the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama, said in a blog post that social media was a work in progress and that companies would need to experiment with changes to improve.

    Another test of social media’s role in elections lies ahead in March, when Italy votes in a national election already marked by claims of fake news spreading on Facebook.

     

  • Revealed! Trust, familiarity indices to determine news ranking on Facebook

    In order to make Facebook more fun and less frustrating, the social media giant has announced it will use the indices of users who trust a news source against those who are familiar with it, to determine news ranking on the platform.

    This is contained in separate releases published Facebook Head of News Feed, Adam Mosseri, and Facebook founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Zuckerberg, in efforts to make sure the time people spend on Facebook is time well spent.

    In what seems to be Facebook’s manifesto for 2018, Zuckerberg had said the topnotch social media firm “has a lot of work to do” in the New Year, and that Facebook plans major changes to news feed from media and businesses to focus on personal interactions.

    “Last week I announced a major change to encourage meaningful social interactions with family and friends over passive consumption.

    “Today I’m sharing our second major update this year: to make sure the news you see, while less overall, is high quality.

    “I’ve asked our product teams to make sure we prioritize news that is trustworthy, informative, and local. And we’re starting next week with trusted sources.

    “We decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted would be most objective.

    “We will now ask people whether they’re familiar with a news source and, if so, whether they trust that source.

    “We eliminate from the sample those who aren’t familiar with a source, so the output is a ratio of those who trust the source to those who are familiar with it,” Zuckerberg said.

    Mosseri in a blog post said, “In 2018, we will prioritize: news from publications that the community rates as trustworthy, news that people find informative and news that is relevant to people’s local community”.

    Facebook users have complained that the platform is becoming less fun and more frustrating.

    “I just wish Facebook would work like it used to. I frequently cannot see things I have posted. I do not get current post from friends. I will check something out and when I go back, I am receiving notifications from days or even weeks earlier.

    “I get ads from places I have absolutely no interest in. I have reset my preferences regularly and it does not help. I have other family members and friends who are having the same issues. Facebook has stopped being fun and is now frustrating,” one Facebook user lamented.

    Zuckerberg has said all of these, and others would change.

    “There’s too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today. Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don’t specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them,” he expressly stated.

    “This update will not change the amount of news you see on Facebook. It will only shift the balance of news you see towards sources that are determined to be trusted by the community.

    “My hope is that this update about trusted news and last week’s update about meaningful interactions will help make time on Facebook time well spent,” he further stated.