by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : As the deadline for European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) inches closer, Twitter has updated its “Terms and Privacy Policy” to give its users more transparency over their data.
Twitter is also giving users more control over how it shares certain non-public data.
The updates will take effect on May 25, when the GDPR comes into force, and will apply globally.
“We’ve updated our Privacy Policy to make it visually clear and easy to use. You’ll see a download button at the top of the page that allows you to get a plain text version if you prefer. It’s optimised for both mobile and web,” Damien Kieran, Global Data Protection Officer at Twitter, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
“We believe you should know the types of data you share with us and how we use it. Most importantly, you should have meaningful control over both,” he added.
On May 25, people who live in the EU who log into their Twitter account will see a prompt that will explain that we’ve updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to reflect the EU’s GDPR.
“We’ll also show you a simple chart that categorizes the legal basis for the personal data we process. You’ll then be brought to your individual Settings and Privacy section, where we will ask you to review your key current settings.
“You can leave them all as they are, modify each, and learn more about any of the individual settings before making a change – the choice is entirely in your hands.
“Remember, everyone around the world can use the controls we highlight to limit the information we collect about you or how we use it, and change the settings at any time,” Kieran wrote.
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 may face hefty fines.
The EU data regulators are chiefly concerned over WhatsApp’s sharing of user data with parent company Facebook.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Investing, Large Enterprise, Marketing Basics, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has invested in a Delhi-based Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot “Visit” which is the brainchild of students from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani in Rajasthan.
Stared in 2016 by Anurag Prasad, Vaibhav Singh, Shashvat Tripathi and Chetan Anand, “Visit” is an AI-powered chatbot for health advice learning from, and assisting, existing doctors.
“People interact with the ‘Visit’ chatbot by sharing some symptoms. The bot follows up with relevant questions to collect more symptoms and risk factors (is the person hypertensive, diabetic, a smoker). This triaging is conversational and low stress,” Stone wrote in a blog post on Medium on Sunday.
“Visit” plans to democratise healthcare by shrinking the shortage of doctors using AI.
“In India, for every doctor there are 2,000 patients lined up in-clinics — waiting for hours.
“Accessibility to quality health advice is an overwhelming problem in a country with over 200 million people affected by lifestyle problems like stress, chronic conditions, obesity, skin conditions, and more. This is where the technology approach by aVisit’ comes in,” Stone informed.
“Visit” chats conclude with patients being more educated about possible conditions, symptoms, and treatments.
The chatbot is trained using over 20,000 probabilistic relationships between variables such as conditions, symptoms, risk factors, past history and more.
Once a probable medical condition is determined, “Visit” connects the patient to one of over 2,000 health specialists all across India via video, phone or chat so the right treatment can be put into place.
“But it doesn’t end there. People can stay in touch with their practitioner over chat for follow-up. The objective is not to replace the doctor but to help practitioners in an assistive way by regular patient check-ins and reminders related to their care plan,” Stone noted.
“Investing in Visit is my small way of contributing to a future where AI is seen as a positive enhancement of humanity that really does improve lives,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Marketing Basics, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
Moscow/New Delhi : Twitter has banned Russia-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab from advertising on its platform, stating that the company “operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices.”
In an open letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Kaspersky Lab’s Founder Eugene Kaspersky has termed the move as “potential political censorship”.
“At the end of January, Twitter unexpectedly informed us about an advertising ban on our official accounts where we announce new posts on our various blogs on cybersecurity (including, for example, Securelist and Kaspersky Daily) and inform users about new cyberthreats and what to do about them,” Eugene wrote on Friday.
“In a short letter from an unnamed Twitter employee, we were told that our company ‘operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices,'” he added.
Kaspersky Lab spent around $93,000 to promote its content on Twitter in 2017 and its India advertising share on Twitter was around $13,580.
“No matter how this situation develops, we won’t be doing any more advertising on Twitter this year.
“The whole of the planned Twitter advertising budget for 2018 will instead be donated to the @EFF. They do a lot to fight censorship online,” Eugene tweeted on Saturday.
According to a report in Cyberscoop, a Twitter spokesperson pointed towards the September 2017 decree from US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that ordered federal agencies to remove Kaspersky products from their networks.
“Kaspersky Lab may remain an organic user on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Register.
“Twitter is playing into the hands of cybercriminals when it hinders the delivery of important information on protection from cyberthreats,” Eugene said.
“The majority of our promoted content on Twitter has been about cybersafety and research and reports about the information security industry. We believe that this content brings value to a variety of Twitter users.”
“Twitter, if this is a matter of a decision being made in error, please openly admit this; people’d forgive you – everyone makes mistakes! I think that would be the only civilized way to quash any doubts about potential political censorship on Twitter,” Eugene said.
The Kaspersky Lab founder said that more than two months have passed and the only reply he received from Twitter was the copy of the same boilerplate text.
“Accordingly, I’m forced to rely on another (less subtle but nevertheless oft and loudly declared) principle of Twitter’s – speaking truth to power – to share details of the matter with interested users and to publicly ask that you, dear Twitter executives, kindly be specific as to the reasoning behind this ban,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : After Facebook and Google, Twitter was now likely to ban cryptocurrency, token sales and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) advertisements on its platform.
According to a Sky News report on Monday, the new Twitter policy will be implemented in two weeks.
“Twitter may also ban all ads for cryptocurrency exchanges, with some limited exceptions, when the policy is launched,” the report added.
Google last week announced that it will ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and other “speculative financial products” across its ad platforms.
The ban on such advertisements will come into force from June.
“We updated several policies to address ads in unregulated or speculative financial products like binary options, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange markets and contracts for difference (or CFDs),” Scott Spencer, Google’s Director of Sustainable Ads, said in a blog post.
“In June 2018, Google will update the financial services policy to restrict the advertisement of contracts for difference, rolling spot forex and financial spread betting,” Google said.
In 2017, Google took down more than 3.2 billion ads that violated its advertising policies.
Google also blocked 79 million ads in its network for attempting to send people to malware-laden sites and removed 400,000 of these unsafe sites last year.
In January, social media giant Facebook banned all ads promoting cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and ICOs.
The new policy prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, Facebook said in a statement.
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception.
“That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith,” said Rob Leathern, Product Management Director at Facebook.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, SMEs, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : In a bid to make customer experiences better on Twitter, the micro-blogging site has relaxed the rules for customer service Direct Messages (DMs) and introduced a new feature that makes sure businesses can always respond to the customers DMs.
“We have introduced features that allow people to more easily start a private conversation with businesses such as the Direct Message deep link and Direct Message Card. We have also made it easier for people to quickly engage with welcome messages and quick replies,” the company wrote in a blog post on Friday.
“We are excited to introduce adaptive rate limits, a new feature for developers sending Direct Messages through our API,” the company added.
Adaptive rate limits help to ensure that businesses can always respond to customers who privately message them, even when inbound volumes are high.
The change means that for every message you send to a company over DM, they can send you five responses within 24 hours.
If you send them another message, then that figure resets, meaning that you can theoretically chat forever, should you want to, according to the Engadget.
—IANS
