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 | Markets, Social Media, Technology, World
Mark Zuckerberg
San Francisco : Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologised for the data debacle that has upended the social media giant and said he was ready to testify before Congress, a media report said.
“The short answer is I’m happy to if it’s the right thing to do,” Zuckerberg said in a CNN interview on Wednesday night.
“What we try to do is send the person at Facebook who will have the most knowledge.
“If that’s me, then I am happy to go,” he added.
Although Facebook employs a small army of lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, Zuckerberg himself has never testified before a congressional committee.
Politicians have called for Zuckerberg to testify before their legislative bodies in the five days since the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted.
The data firm, which has ties to President Donald Trump’s campaign, reportedly accessed information from about 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge, CNN reported.
Facebook has said that the data was initially collected by a professor for academic purposes in line with its rules. The information was later transferred to third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, in violation of Facebook’s policies.
Zuckerberg broke his silence on the issue earlier on Wednesday with a post on his personal Facebook page laying out a series of steps the company would take to better protect user data.
“I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation — including the steps we have already taken and our next steps to address this important issue. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the CEO wrote.
“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.
In the CNN interview, Zuckerberg suggested that the question was not whether Facebook should be regulated so much as how best to do it.
“I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated,” Zuckerberg said. “There are things like ad transparency regulation that I would love to see.”
Zuckerberg was criticised by some on social media for his post for stopping short of an outright apology. He rectified that in the CNN interview.
“This was a major breach of trust, and I’m really sorry that this happened… We have a basic responsibility to protect peoples’ data.”
The CEO was now pledging to further restrict developers’ access to user data. Facebook will also investigate all apps with access to large amounts of user data.
Zuckerberg also expressed regret for not doing more to take action against Cambridge Analytica when the issue came to the company’s attention in 2015.
“We need to make sure we don’t make that mistake ever again,” he told CNN.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
Mark Zuckerberg
San Francisco : After tweaking its News Feed to allow users to see more updates from family and friends than posts from businesses, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now announced to prioritise news that is trustworthy, informative and local.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, Zuckerberg said it’s important that News Feed promotes high-quality news that helps build a sense of common ground for its over two billion users.
Here’s how this new update, starting in the US from next week, will work.
“As part of our ongoing quality surveys, we will now ask people whether they’re familiar with a news source and, if so, whether they trust that source,” the Facebook CEO said.
The idea is that some news organisations are only trusted by their readers or watchers, and others are broadly trusted across society even by those who don’t follow them directly, he added.
“To make sure the news you see, while less overall, is high quality. I’ve asked our product teams to make sure we prioritise news that is trustworthy, informative, and local.
“And we’re starting next week with trusted sources,” Zuckerberg added.
According to him, the new update will not change the amount of news people see on Facebook. It will only shift the balance of news they see towards sources that are determined to be trusted by the community.
The earlier News Feed update to show more updates from family and friends will result in less public content, including news, video, and posts from brands in your News Feed, he noted.
“After this change, we expect news to make up roughly four per cent of News Feed — down from roughly five per cent today. This is a big change, but news will always be a critical way for people to start conversations on important topics,” the Facebook CEO said.
He said that Facebook has got a feedback from the community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.
The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors, including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it.
—IANS
