by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Marketing Basics, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook has just announced a slew of measures to make fundraising on its platform easier including an initiative to allow brands and public figures to use their Facebook Pages to raise money for nonprofit causes.
“Brands and public figures use their Facebook Pages to connect with followers and fans, and now they can rally support around nonprofits as well,” Facebook said in a statement on Tuesday.
The social network now also allows people to invite friends to manage a fundraiser together, helping to expand their network of supporters.
“Just like you can add a co-admin or moderator to a Facebook Group or a co-host to your Facebook Event, you can now add up to three friends to be organisers of your fundraiser to help you manage it and rally more supporters to reach your fundraising goals,” Facebook said.
Nonprofits can now also start fundraisers on their Pages for their own causes, it said.
“Each of these new features is aimed to help nonprofits raise more from their supporters through Facebook Fundraisers, and we’ll continue to work on tools to make fundraisers even more meaningful,” the statement added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : After facing the flak from different quarters including governments around the world over the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now faced angry shareholders for unequal voting shares, the media reported.
At the company’s annual meeting on Thursday, activist investors had forced votes on six proposals to change the company’s governance or institute other reforms, the Guardian reported.
But thanks to the company’s unequal voting structure, Zuckerberg and his board of directors escaped the election unscathed.
The event, however, provided a platform for crticising the leadership of Zuckerberg and his board of directors.
One of the attendees in the meeting, Christine Jantz of Northstar Asset Management,
Advertisement talked in favour of a proposal to reform Facebook’s stockholder voting structure.
Under the company’s current structure, Zuckerberg controls the majority of voting shares despite not owning a majority of the company.
This is because his shares have 10 times the voting power of the shares available to regular investors.
Problems like the Cambridge Analytica scandal were the results of that structure, according to Jantz.
He called it an “egregious example of when a board is formed by a CEO to meet his needs” rather than those of investors.
James McRitchie, a shareholder activist, termed the current voting structure a “corporate dictatorship”.
“Mr Zuckerberg, take a page from history,” he was quoted as saying.
“Emulate George Washington, not Vladimir Putin,” he added.
The meeting also discussed the company’s various initiatives to increase advertising transparency, improve content moderation, and prevent interference in elections, the report said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Hitting out at Facebook once again, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has suggested the social networking giant to not only copy itss features but also its data protection policies.
During a ReCode conference in California on Tuesday, the Snapchat chief said Facebook has failed to sufficiently overhaul its user privacy protections.
“We would really appreciate it if they copied our data protection practices also,” Spiegel was quoted as saying during the event.
“Fundamentally, I think the changes have to go beyond window dressing to real changes to the ways that these platforms work,” he added.
Reacting to Spiegel, Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos tweeted on Wednesday, “Snapchat’s implicit promise that photos really disappear combined with poor API security has lead to serious mass leaks of revenge porn. So no, I don’t think copying Snapchat would be a smart move.”
The photo-sharing platform Snapchat today has 191 million users globally, including nearly 9 million in India.
Facebook has reportedly copied several Snapchat features, including the most notable one called “Stories”.
Snapchat on April Fools’ Day had trolled Facebook by introducing a filter that makes it appear as if a Russian bot has liked your post.
The filter targeted Facebook following reports that said more than 50,000 bots on Facebook, with links to the Russian government, were used to influence the 2016 US Presidential election.
While redesigning Snapchat in 2017, Spiegel took a dig at Facebook.
“The company is redesigning its app to separate media and social communications, making it easier to use and understand,” he said.
“We think this helps to guard against fake news and mindless scrambles for friends or unworthy distractions,” Spiegel said, taking a dig at Facebook and Twitter.
The design overhaul, however, didn’t go well with the Snapchat users and the company has reinstated most of the old design features.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Withing hours of the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect on Friday, technology giants Google and Facebook have been hit with privacy complaints that could carry fines of up to $9.3 billion in total, a media report said.
With regard to privacy, Google, Facebook and Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram are forcing people to adopt a “take it or leave it” approach which essentially amounts to demanding that users submit to intrusive terms of service, according to the the Austrian privacy-advocacy group Noyb.eu, CNET reported on Friday.
“Tonnes of ‘consent boxes’ popped up online or in applications, often combined with a threat, that the service can no longer be used if user (s) do not consent,” the group was quoted as saying in a statement.
The group is asking regulators in France, Belgium, Germany and Austria to fine the companies up to the maximum four per cent of their annual revenue that the GDPR legislation allows.
This could potentially add up to a $4.88 billion fine for Google parent company Alphabet and $1.63 billion for each of Facebook, and its Instagram and WhatsApp services, if European regulators agree with Noyb.eu and decide to fine the companies the full amount, the CNET report said.
GDPR, designed to designed to give individuals in the European Union (EU) more rights to control their personal information, came into effect on Friday.
Seen as a measure to by European leaders to control the powers of technology companies, GDPR violations can cost companies either 20 million Euros or four per cent of annual turnover.
As a result of the regulation, several US news outlets blocked Europeans on Friday, the report said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : In a fresh bid to prevent foreign interference into elections, Facebook has begun labelling all political and issue ads in the US — including a “Paid for by” disclosure from the advertiser at the top of the advertisement.
Advertisers wanting to run ads with political content in the US will also need to verify their identity and location, the social media giant said in a blog post late Thursday.
“When you click on the label, you’ll be taken to an archive with more information. For example, the campaign budget associated with an individual ad and how many people saw it – including their age, location and gender,” said Rob Leathern, Director of Product Management at Facebook.
The changes have currently been introduced in the US.
If people see an ad which they believe has political content and is not labelled, they can report back to Facebook.
To do so, just tap the three dots at the top right-hand corner of the ad, select “report”, and then “it refers to a political candidate or issue”.
“Facebook will review the ad, and if it falls under our Political Advertising policy, we’ll take it down and add it to the archive,” Leathern wrote.
The advertiser will then be banned from running ads with political content until they complete Facebook’s authorisation process.
“We won’t always get it right. We know we’ll miss some ads and in other cases we’ll identify some we shouldn’t. We’ll keep working on the process and improve as we go,” the company said.
The changes are aimed at preventing a situation like the 2016 US presidential election when Russian advertisers created fake posts and bought ads to interfere in the election process on both Facebook and its photo-sharing platform Instagram.
Facebook said it is working closely with its newly-formed Election Commission and other stakeholders to launch an API for the archive.
“We’re working closely with news partners and are committed to updating the archive to help differentiate between news and non-news content,” the post added.
—IANS
