by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology, World
Washington : There is an online propaganda “arms race” with Russia and the most important thing right now is to make sure no one interferes in the upcoming elections globally, vowed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the five-hour marathon session at the US Congress.
“The most important thing I care about right now is making sure no one interferes in the various 2018 elections around the world,” he testified before a 44-Senator panel.
“As long as there are people sitting in Russia whose job it is to try and interfere with elections around the world, this is going to be an ongoing conflict,” the 33-year-old billionaire said.
Facebook’s stock was up about two per cent even before Zuckerberg sat down. It moved even higher when he started addressing the questions from lawmakers and finished the day with a 4.5 per cent gain.
Zuckerberg accepted that the company did not do enough to prevent the platform from being used to harm others.
In his opening remarks, he said: Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all of the good that connecting people can do.
“But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used as harm as well.”
“That goes for fake news, for interference in elections and we didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a big mistake and it was my mistake and I’m sorry,” the Facebook CEO noted.
With 44 senators asking questions, and just five minutes of time allotted for each, there was limited potential for follow-up questions to and grilling of the CEO.
His apology came as Facebook faced a widening scandal where a British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica improperly gathered detailed information on 87 million of its users.
“It’s not enough to just connect people. We have to make sure those connections are positive. It’s not enough to give people a voice. We have to make sure people aren’t using it to harm people or spread disinformation,” Zuckerberg told senators.
Facebook was getting to the bottom of exactly what Cambridge Analytica did and telling everyone affected.
“What we know now is that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed information by buying it. When we first contacted Cambridge Analytica, they told us they had deleted the data,” Zuckerberg cleared.
He said that the company made big changes in the platform in 2014 that have prevented this specific situation with Cambridge Analytica from occurring again today.
Zuckerberg confirmed that his company is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
When asked by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy while he testified on Capitol Hill whether Facebook had been served subpoenas for the special counsel, Zuckerberg responded “yes,” but later clarified: “I am actually not aware of a subpoena. I’m aware that there may be, but we are working with them.”
When asked if his employees had been interviewed, he also responded yes, but added, “I have not”, reports CNN.
He continued: “I want to be careful here because our work with the special counsel is confidential and I want to make sure that in an open session I’m not revealing something that is confidential.”
Senator John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, asked Zuckerberg if he’s willing to make a commitment to protect political speech from “all different corners”.
Zuckerberg agreed and said: “If there’s an imminent threat of harm, we’re going to take a conservative position on that and make sure that we flag that and understand that more broadly,” he said.
“I don’t want anyone at our company to make any decisions based on the political ideology of the content,” he added.
On a question if Facebook has a political bias, he said that the platform’s goal was not to engage political speech.
Zuckerberg said he understands the concerns, especially because “Facebook and tech industry is located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place”.
But he said he tries to make sure Facebook does not have any bias in the work that it does.
Zuckerberg is scheduled to again testify, this time before a House panel, on Wednesday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Markets, Social Media, World
Mark Zuckerberg
San Francisco : Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hit back at Tim Cook saying that the recent criticism from his counterpart at Apple was unfounded, the media reported.
In an interview given to Vox on Monday, Zuckerberg defended his company’s business model by saying: “You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib. And not at all aligned with the truth.
“The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay.
“Having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service,” he was quoted as saying.
In a Recode and MSNBC interview last month, Cook had called for increased regulation of social media, and questioned the practice of monetising user data on free platforms by selling ads that allow advertisers to target specific groups.
The Apple CEO was asked how he would handle the crisis.
“I wouldn’t be in this situation,” he said.
“The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetised our customer… If our customer was our product… We’ve elected not to do that.”
Apple makes the vast majority of its money selling hardware, including iPhones, iPads and Macs.
Facebook, on the other hand, has built an entire business on selling ads that target users based on information they provide.
Apple executives have used privacy and transparency as a sales pitch, drawing a contrast with other companies especially Facebook.
Cook called privacy a “human right” and “a civil liberty”, reports CNN.
Zuckerberg told Vox that Facebook was dedicated “serving people”, despite its reliance on advertising.
“If you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford,” he said.
“I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm Syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you,” the Facebook CEO added.
Facebook is currently facing the heat over the leak of personal and other data of some 50 million users to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Zuckerberg admitted that the social media giant “made mistakes” over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and a “breach of trust” had occurred between it and its users.
He has apologised for the data debacle and said he was ready to testify before Congress.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : It was the perfect photo-op when Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a town-hall meeting at the social media giant’s sprawling headquarters at Menlo Park, California, in September 2015.
With Facebook now embroiled in a massive data breach controversy, the bonhomie appears to be over, with India warning Zuckerberg of “stringent action”, including summoning him over the “misuse” of data to allegedly influence the country’s electoral process.
Zuckerberg has recently said Facebook will ensure that its platform is not misused to influence elections in India and elsewhere, but after witnessing how social media platforms were infiltrated during the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK, nothing can be predicted at this point of time.
While governments the world over are fast formulating new laws that deal with users’ data security and privacy, and the spread of false news, India lags far behind on this front.
Is the country prepared in case a huge data security or privacy breach hits its people?
According to top cyber law experts, India as a nation has missed the broader point in the ever-changing tech landscape.
“The moot point here is: How do we regulate mobile app providers, social media players and intermediaries in terms of handling and processing the users’ data? We don’t have a data protection law in place. We neither have a national law on cyber security nor a national law on privacy,” Pavan Duggal, the nation’s leading cyber law expert, told IANS.
The absence of these critical laws has created a very fertile ground for the misuse and unauthorised access of users’ data by the service providers.
“On top of it, India has not revisited its stand on intermediaries’ liabilities since 2008. Also, the service providers have been given a great fillip by a judgement of the Supreme court, where the service providers are directed not to take any action till such time they get a court or a government agency order,” Duggal informed.
In such a scenario, service providers are using the “Indians’ data with impunity”.
“They are transferring them outside the territorial boundaries of the country because we as a nation are sleeping. Once the data goes outside the country, the government loses all control. This has a detrimental impact on the protection and preservation of people’s data privacy and personal privacy,” Duggal stressed.
India has to learn from the European Union (EU) when it comes to formulating a legal framework to secure data.
The EU has asked businesses and service providers globally to comply with its new privacy law — the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — that comes into force from May 25 this year.
The EU GDPR has been designed to harmonise data privacy laws across Europe — to protect and empower all EU citizens’ data privacy and to reshape the way organisations across the region approach data privacy.
After four years of debate, the GDPR was finally approved by the EU Parliament on April 14, 2016. Organisations that fail to comply with the new regulation will face hefty fines.
Although a white paper on data security has been published by the Indian government for all the stakeholders to deliberate upon, the country is still working on drafting a data protection bill.
“India is woefully under-prepared to address issues of data protection and cyber-security. We need a data protection law that protects citizens from misuse of data with strict liability and extremely high statutory damages that must be awarded within a strict period of time,” said Mishi Choudhary, President and Legal Director of New Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC.in), a not-for-profit organisation.
According to Duggal, also a noted Supreme Court lawyer, India should not cut-paste any other country’s law as it has to deal with a different set of problems.
“India’s social realities are entirely different. The country has to deal with the huge issue of Aadhaar which is reeling under variety of cyber attacks because we have failed to apply cyber security as an integral part of the Aadhaar architecture,” Duggal told IANS.
India’s approach has to be based from its soil and the country must strive for data localisation.
“India should not allow its data to be stored outside its boundaries. Service providers must (be made to pay) high penalty if they are found to be misusing the data of Indians irrespective of if they are physically located in the country or not,” Duggal said.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Sameer Dhanrajani,
The Facebook data breach raises urgent questions that need to be answered responsibly by our industry — given its terrifying scale and impact. In today’s world, data is a form of soft power, and it is essential for those who wield it, to use it responsibly so that consumer confidence isn’t compromised.
The challenge is that, at an idea-generation stage, it can be difficult to draw a clear, bright line between whether data is being used for optimisation or for manipulation.
Take, for instance, the Obama and Trump campaigns in the US. The former used the same digital platforms for optimising communication and ensuring voter confidence and dissemination of information. On the other hand, British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used the same platforms but with malafide intent — to manipulate the views and preferences of voters.
As investigations continue, it is increasingly clear that data was stolen, models used were unauthorised for the purpose they were being used, the messages (in many cases) were outright lies.
So the whole operation was questionable from the get-go. It is, therefore, extremely critical to demarcate this difference — are the final consumers of a data-driven model being actively manipulated or is data being used to merely optimise a communications strategy?
It is also essential to clearly define the parties involved in the data “lifecycle” and their roles and responsibilities, with regard to how data is being used. There are usually three parties in this lifecycle, each requiring a different kind of oversight and norms.
First are the data originators, those that capture and store the data. And I’m not only talking about Facebook and Google, but also a wide range of other originators — for e.g. Equifax (which holds extremely sensitive consumer credit information), banks (which store individual-centric financial information), telecom organisations (which hold a treasure trove of communications and browsing information), etc.
Two safeguards are critical here.
One, data security safeguards to ensure the privacy (external parties shouldn’t be able to see it) and integrity (external parties shouldn’t be able to change it) of the data. This can be improved by ring-fencing the data sources and ensuring advanced security measures.
And two, ensuring explicit consumer consent for sharing and using this data. This can be done by introducing easy-to-understand verbiage around fair-use — where their data could be used and for what purposes.
These two interventions — data security and informing users where data could be shared — are the key and will go a long way in winning back consumer trust in these platforms.
The second type of entity involved is the data processing companies which employ intelligent algorithms over the data to extract insights. This includes companies like Cambridge Analytica.
Given that data processing companies also have access to a large scale of data, entrusted by clients, it is imperative that their systems are subject to similar levels of security, compliance and governance norms.
This can be resolved through globally-agreed standards of security, enforced through regular third-party audits. We need to be held to the same standards as the data sources themselves when it comes to security of the data so that we aren’t the weak link in the event of a data leak.
There may also be value in exploring how we can expressly declare the nature of algorithms employed and the source of these algorithms (in cases where there is a patent to one), to an unaffiliated third-party regulator. This will ensure better transparency around what the data is being used for.
Finally, we have the third party in the data lifecycle: The buyers of the data — organisations that pay for the data and algorithm-driven insights around it. In this case, they are the political organisations that are beneficiaries of the analysis work by the processing companies.
Here, let’s go back to my earlier point of drawing the line between what is optimisation and manipulation.
Are the data buying organisations sponsoring an ad because they feel consumers genuinely stand to benefit from the content, or are they using the data to manipulate users into actions that are not in their best interest?
More importantly, does the ad-sponsoring organisation have the authority to display that ad, or are they a geo-political adversary? This can be cleared up by implementing fair-usage policies around what the extracted data is being used for, who is using it, and what are the implications of that data — all of which needs to be made more transparent and subject to governance norms in certain cases.
Obviously, the three parties interplay with each other. For instance, Facebook and Google are two of these parties — the source and the processor. Thus, it needs to be ensured that they be accountable to both sets of norms.
It is imperative that all parties in the data lifecycle take seriously the trust with which data is being shared with them by their users — for their own good. The way things stand right now, biting around the edges of this debate is not going to win back lost consumer confidence in our industry and we are all the losers in the long term.
(Sameer Dhanrajani is Chief Strategy Officer at analytics service provider Fractal Analytics. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at sameerdhanrajani@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, News, Politics, Social Media
Farhan Akhtar
Mumbai : Actor Farhan Akhtar has ‘permanently’ deleted his personal account on social networking website Facebook.
The 44-year-old has become the latest celebrity to quit the social network in the wake of the Facebook data breach row. However, he did not mention the exact reason for quitting the platform.
“Good morning. This is to inform you all that I have permanently deleted my personal Facebook account. However, the verified Farhan Akhtar Live page is still active,” Farhan tweeted on Tuesday morning.
Facebook is facing the heat after Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting company, was accused of harvesting data of up to 50 million Facebook users without permission and using the data to help politicians, including US President Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign.
—IANS
