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Russian Twitter Accounts Promoted Brexit Ahead Of EU Referendum: Times Newspaper

15Nov By reutersNo Comments

USA

Russian Twitter Accounts Promoted Brexit Ahead Of EU Referendum: Times Newspaper

Russian Twitter accounts posted almost 45,000 messages about Brexit in the 48 hours around last year’s referendum in an attempt to sow discord during the vote on whether to leave the European Union, the Times newspaper reported on Wednesday. The Times cited research from an upcoming paper by data scientists at Swansea University and the University of California, Berkeley, which it said showed accounts based in Russia had tweeted about Brexit in the days leading up to the June 23 vote. The Times said most of the tweets seen by the newspaper encouraged people to vote for Brexit, although a number advocated remaining in the EU. It quoted Tho Pham, one of the paper’s authors, as saying “the main conclusion is that bots were used on purpose and had influence”. The research tracked 156,...

India First To Partner With Facebook On Disaster Response

9Nov By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

News

India First To Partner With Facebook On Disaster Response

India is the first country to partner with social networking site Facebook on disaster response, Union minister Kiren Rijiju said today. He invited other technology companies to create tailored solutions for disaster-related challenges. Addressing an event on disaster management, Rijiju said technology can be leveraged in providing quick response and information to people in times of need. Rijiju said the world is moving towards partnerships, where people are proactively partnering with the government in responding to disasters. "This partnership is a benchmark and first of its kind. We are the first government to partner with Facebook on disaster response," he was quoted as saying in a press release issued by the Union home ministry. Rijiju, the Minister of State for Home Affairs...

Indonesia Drops Threat to Block WhatsApp Messenger: Official

7Nov By reutersNo Comments

News

Indonesia Drops Threat to Block WhatsApp Messenger: Official

Indonesia has dropped a threat to block Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp Messenger because the service had responded to concerns over obscene content, an official at the communications ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry vowed on Monday to block WhatsApp Messenger within 48 hours if the service did not ensure that obscene Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) images were removed. “We see now that they have done what we asked. Therefore, we won’t block them because they have responded to us,” said Semuel Pangerapan, a director general at Indonesia’s communication and informatics ministry. Indonesia said on Tuesday it will summon executives of messaging services and search engines, including Google, to demand they remove obscene content, but dropped a threat to block WhatsApp Messenger after “GIF” ...

Whatsapp Down: Users Report Outrages Worldwide

3Nov By RishabhNo Comments

News

Whatsapp Down: Users Report Outrages Worldwide

Whatsapp is down for a millions of users reported worldwide, with reports of increase in the number of people coming in from India, US, UK, Sri Lanka, Italy, Spain and Saudi Arabia. According to the resources, the problem came first in notice around 3:10 EDT in the morning and then grew over to hundreds of people reporting the issue. Predictably, people have taken to Twitter in panic to express their dismay over what will undoubtedly be a temporary outage. Switching between WiFi and 4G trying to get WhatsApp messages to send #whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/rGCaS0NdML — Kam (@Kamil_LFC94) November 3, 2017 Similar event occurred in early May, when it took hours rectify the problem and put it online back again. Also Read These Russian Ads Deceived Users on Facebook and Ins...

These Russian Ads Deceived Users on Facebook and Instagram- Leaked

2Nov By RishabhNo Comments

USA

These Russian Ads Deceived Users on Facebook and Instagram- Leaked

The Russian ads that influenced the Americans came under many disguised faces. They ran all across Facebook and Instagram attempting to influence the public's opinion through social media in a manner we hardly can imagine! The content that went along with it could hardly be traced now, but we managed to get some of the screenies of those social media ads. It's clear from the testimony of internet companies that these ads aimed at "election interference". Go through the examples in the below images of how they planned to discredit a candidate (Clinton being the reliable target), and foment division on existing issues. The Russian ads targeted the far left and the far right, seeking to manipulate black activists, Muslims, Christians, LGBTQ people, gun owners and even fans of Ivanka ...

App Developer Access To iPhone X Face Data Spooks Some Privacy Experts

2Nov By reutersNo Comments

News

App Developer Access To iPhone X Face Data Spooks Some Privacy Experts

Apple Inc won accolades from privacy experts in September for assuring that facial data used to unlock its new iPhone X would be securely stored on the phone itself. But Apple’s privacy promises do not extend to the thousands of app developers who will gain access to facial data in order to build entertainment features for iPhone X customers, such as pinning a three-dimensional mask to their face for a selfie or letting a video game character mirror the player’s real-world facial expressions. Apple allows developers to take certain facial data off the phone as long as they agree to seek customer permission and not sell the data to third parties, among other terms in a contract seen by Reuters. App makers who want to use the new camera on the iPhone X can capture a rough map of a u...

U.S. Senators Hammer Facebook For Power Over Elections

1Nov By reutersNo Comments

USA

U.S. Senators Hammer Facebook For Power Over Elections

U.S. senators on Tuesday pressed Facebook Inc’s chief lawyer on why the company did not catch 2016 election ads bought using Russian rubles, why its investigation of them took so long and how much it knows about its 5 million advertisers. Democrats and Republicans at the Senate crime subcommittee hearing fired questions for much of two hours at Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, who said that in retrospect the company should have done more. “In hindsight, we should have had a broader lens. There are signals we missed,” Stretch said under questioning from Democratic Senator Al Franken about how the company missed political ads bought with Russian money. Stretch called the Russia-based ads “reprehensible” for their political divisiveness. The hearing marked the first time tech exec...

Russian Groups Made 43 Hrs Of YouTube Video During U.S. Elections

31Oct By RishabhNo Comments

USA

Russian Groups Made 43 Hrs Of YouTube Video During U.S. Elections

Google has recently revealed reports about Kremlin-linked groups spending around $4,700 on advertising platforms, during the 2016 U.S. elections. These ads were although not targeted to any specific group of users or no evidence of targeting by geography were found. It was also revealed by Google, that its YouTube, which strictly prohibit things like hate speech, violent or graphic content; found 18 channels closely associated with this campaign that made videos, which were in English-language, public, with the political content in them. There were 1,108 such videos uploaded, representing- 43 hours of content and totaling 309,000 U.S. views from June 2015 to November 2016. The report also said that these “videos were not targeted to the U.S.” and th...

Facebook Says 126M Americans May Have Seen Russia-Linked Political Posts

31Oct By reutersNo Comments

USA

Facebook Says 126M Americans May Have Seen Russia-Linked Political Posts

Facebook Inc said on Monday that Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time. Facebook’s latest data on the Russia-linked posts - possibly reaching around half of the U.S. population of voting age - far exceeds the company’s previous disclosures. It was included in written testimony provided to U.S. lawmakers, and seen by Reuters, ahead of key hearings with social media and technology companies about Russian meddling in elections on Capitol Hill this week. Twitter Inc separately has found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian operatives, a source familiar with the company’s written testimony said. That estimate is up from a ...

Tech Firms Must Do More On Extremism: World Economic Forum

30Oct By reutersNo Comments

News

Tech Firms Must Do More On Extremism: World Economic Forum

U.S. tech firms such as Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc should be more aggressive in tackling extremism and political misinformation if they want to avoid government action, a report from the World Economic Forum said on Monday. The study from the Swiss nonprofit organization adds to a chorus of calls for Silicon Valley to stem the spread of violent material from Islamic State militants and the use of their services by alleged Russian propagandists. Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google will go under the microscope of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday and Wednesday when their general counsels will testify before three U.S. congressional committees on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The report from the World Economic Forum’s human rights council warn...

Twitter Overstated Its Monthly Users Figures For 3 Years

27Oct By PriyankaNo Comments

USA

Twitter Overstated Its Monthly Users Figures For 3 Years

Twitter said on Thursday that it overstated its monthly user numbers since 2014 after accidentally including third-party application's data in its count. The revelation came when the company reported that its net loss had slowed in the third quarter and that the number of daily active users had risen by 14 per cent. The disclosure, however, could further damage Twitter's reputation as the company criticizes Russia's role in its efforts to interfere in the presidential election and complains about what critics have called scattershot efforts to prevent abuse and harassment on its platform, and skepticism among some investors, who are concerned that global growth in users is falling. At least initially investors were not particularly worried about the excessive number of users. Twit...

25Oct By reutersNo Comments

USA

Twitter To Label Election Ads After U.S. Regulatory Threat

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would add labels to election-related advertisements and say who is behind each of them, after a threat of regulation from the United States over the lack of disclosure for political spending on social media. Twitter, acting a month after Facebook Inc launched a similar overhaul of political ads, said in a blog post it would start a website so people could see identities of buyers, targeting demographics and total ad spend by election advertisers. Silicon Valley social media firms and the political ads that run on their websites have generally been free of the disclaimers and other regulatory demands that U.S. authorities impose on television, radio and satellite services. Calls for that to change have grown, however, after Twitter, Facebook and Alpha...