by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, World
San Francisco : Technology giants Google, Facebook and Twitter — already facing flak for presence of false news on their platforms — failed miserably to stop publishing fake news related to Las Vegas massacre in which at least 59 people died and over 400 injured, media reported on Tuesday.
According to a report in technology website Siliconbeat, Google returned a search result from a shady online forum “4chan” that named the wrong man as killer.
“While Facebook’s ‘Safety Check’ feature confronted users with far-right blogs that spat out false information about victims and the shooter, Twitter displayed false rumours and information about ‘missing’ people who were not connected to the episode,” the report said.
In one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history, a gunman in a high-rise hotel in Las Vegas opened fire on a huge outdoor concert festival, sending thousands of terrified survivors fleeing for cover.
While authorities identified the gunman as 64-year-old Nevada resident Stephen Paddock, Google initially showed result from “4chan”, which identified the killer as Geary Danley, into its “Top Stories” section.
“4chan” is well-known as a haven for racists, misogynists and conspiracy theorists and was also the source of 2008 fake news that Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack — a falsity that nonetheless knocked $5 billion off of Apple’s stock value in a single morning, the report noted.
Google later acknowledged that it had been briefly surfacing an inaccurate ‘4chan’ website in its Search results for a small number of queries.
“The fake news was algorithmically replaced by relevant results within hours. This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future,” Google was quoted as saying in the report.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s “Security Check” page — that lets people involved with disasters and accidents post messages for friends and loved ones — published a blog post from “Alt-Right News” that said “the killer may have been a Trump-hating American television host Rachel Maddow fan” in an apparent reference to the misidentified Danley’s Facebook page.
“Alt-Right News” theorised that the actual shooter, Paddock, was probably a “left-wing nutjob” associated with a woman who “may or may not be a Muslim”, the report pointed out.
Facebook said its security staff saw the post and removed it. “However, its removal was delayed by a few minutes, allowing it to be screen captured and circulated online. We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused,” Fast Company quoted the social media giant as saying.
According to Buzzfeed, fake news regarding the incident may have its roots on Twitter, with false reports appearing within minutes of the shooting.
Several accounts pointed the finger at an “Islamic convert” who is actually a comedian beloved by the far right. Then the false reports of “missing” people started popping up, Buzzfeed reported.
Among those falsely stated to be missing in Las Vegas were a German pro-soccer player, a murder suspect from Mexico and a male porn star — whose pictures were taken from the Internet.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
Mumbai : With youth subscribing more digital content over television, the newly-launched Facebook and Twitter Over The Top (OTT) videos may affect the market of other OTT platforms since most people spend a huge time on social media, an sector stakeholder said on Saturday.
“… Considering the fact that more and more people spend a huge time on Facebook and Twitter… I think Facebook and Twitter videos are going to be game changer in coming two years,” said Spandan Mishra, creative communication head of OTT platform Hotstar at a panel discussion during the India Film Project – Season 7.
“They have no dearth of money, a huge audience is already there, so all they need is content. So yes, it will create a different to other OTT platform,” he added.
Asked about if TV and internet TV can co-exist, TV producer J.D. Majethia, founder of Hats Off Production LTD who had brought back one of his earlier productions “Sarabhai VS Sarabhai” from television to Hotstar, said the major shift is yet to happen.
Noting that it is “true that people have started subscribing a lot to a digital platform”, he noted that “we must not forget that did not majorly happen from TV to digital. In urban India, people have various avenues of recreations including shopping malls, live gigs, online entertainment etc. but the major Indian population, especially women who are housewives, prefer to watch TV”.
“However the choice of content has changed; and I agree that the choice of medium is also changing. But the complete shift is yet to happen.”
India Film Project Season 7 is a two-day extravaganza that conducts film screening, workshop panel discussion on cinema and digital content encouraging youngsters to create new content. It ends on Sunday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, World
San Francisco : As the probe into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election intensifies, Twitter announced that it has deleted over 200 fake Russian accounts and identified Russia Today of buying bought ads targeted at American users’ accounts.
In a closed-door meeting late Thursday, Colin Crowell, Twitter’s Vice President for Public Policy, met with staff from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the issue.
“This is an ongoing process and we will continue to collaborate with investigators. Twitter is in dialogue with congressional committees with respect to investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 US election,” the micro-blogging platform said in a blog post.
Twitter also shared with committee staff ads that three Russia Today (RT) accounts targeted to the US market in 2016.
“Based on our findings thus far, RT spent $274,100 in US ads in 2016. In that year, the three RT accounts promoted 1,823 tweets that definitely or potentially targeted the US market,” Twitter said.
These campaigns were directed at followers of mainstream media and primarily promoted RT Tweets regarding news stories.
“Due to the nature of these inquiries, we may not always be able to publicly share what we discuss with investigators.
“We know there is a huge appetite for more transparency into how Twitter fights bots and manipulative networks,” the post said.
According to Twitter, Russia and other post-Soviet states have been a primary source of automated and spammy content on Twitter for many years.
“Content that violates our rules with respect to automated accounts and spam can have a highly negative effect on user experience, and we have long taken substantial action to stem that flow,” it added.
Facebook is also facing intense fake news scrutiny after disclosing the details about the presence of Russian political ads worth $100,000 on its platform during the presidential election.
After an extensive legal and policy review, the social media giant announced that it would share 3,000 Russian ads with Congressional investigators.
Facebook and Google have also been summoned to testify before the US Senate Intelligence Committee regarding Russia meddling into US election.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, News, Politics, Social Media, Technology
Washington/New Delhi : Between January and June, the Indian government made 261 account information requests — a 55 per cent increase from previous period — and asked for 102 accounts to be removed, Twitter’s 11th Transparency Report has revealed.
The micro-blogging platform, however, did not remove any account or withhold any tweet as requested by the Indian government or court order (there were two requests by the courts in the January-June period).
“India had a 55 per cent increase in total information requests (261 requests in this reporting period vs. 168 in the previous reporting period) that affected 57 per cent more accounts,” Twitter said in the report that was released late on Tuesday.
Twitter defines the government’s information requests as requests issued by law enforcement and other government agencies.
The company also revealed that it removed 299,649 terrorism-related accounts in the same period — a 20 per cent decline from the previous period.
“We have suspended a total of 935,897 accounts for the promotion of terrorism in the period of August 1, 2015, through June 30, 2017,” Twitter posted.
Globally, Twitter received six per cent more government information requests (emergency disclosure requests and non-emergency requests) that affected three per cent fewer accounts from January 1 through June 30 compared to the previous reporting period.
This included requests that originated from four new countries — Nepal, Paraguay, Panama and Uruguay.
“Since the inception of Twitter’s Transparency Report in 2012, we have received government information requests from 83 different countries,” the company said.
The total number of requests originating from the US decreased by eight per cent and affected 18 per cent fewer accounts.
Although the total amount of requests from the US has decreased from the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017, it remains the top requester, submitting 33 per cent of total government information requests.
“Consistent with the two previous reports, Japan holds its spot as the second most frequent requester, accounting for 21 per cent of total government information requests,” Twitter said.
In the reporting period, Twitter received five information requests for Vine data, affecting 54 Vine accounts and 25 information requests for Periscope account information, affecting 98 Periscope accounts.
For the cases in which Twitter disclosed some information, “we provided non-content information in 90 per cent of the cases and content information in 10 per cent of the cases”.
“We notify affected users of requests for their account information unless we’re prohibited or the request falls into one of the exceptions to our user notice policy (e.g., emergencies regarding imminent threat to life, child sexual exploitation, terrorism),” Twitter said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Marketing Basics, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : After a report revealing how Facebook allowed advertisers to reach “Jew haters” in its platform shook the conscience of a large number of its users, tech giants Google and Twitter have also been accused of letting advertisers use their platforms to reach racists.
Google, the world’s biggest advertising platform, allows advertisers to specifically target ads to people typing racist and bigoted terms into its search bar, BuzzFeed News reported on Friday.
Not only that, Google will suggest additional racist and bigoted terms once you type some into its ad-buying tool, it said.
“Type ‘Why do Jews ruin everything,’ and Google will suggest you run ads next to searches including ‘the evil jew’ and ‘jewish control of banks’, the report said.
Soon after, The Daily Beast reported that Twitter too lets advertisers target users interested in hateful words and phrases, including “wetback,” and “Nazi.”
These reports follow a ProPublica investigation that revealed this week how Facebook enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world”.
Buzzfeed also purchased ads and ran a live campaign before alerting Google, which promptly disabled a number of the keywords involved.
“Our goal is to prevent our keyword suggestions tool from making offensive suggestions, and to stop any offensive ads appearing,” The Verge quoted Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce, as saying.
“We have language that informs advertisers when their ads are offensive and therefore rejected. In this instance, ads didn’t run against the vast majority of these keywords, but we didn’t catch all these offensive suggestions. That’s not good enough and we’re not making excuses. We’ve already turned off these suggestions, and any ads that made it through, and will work harder to stop this from happening again,” Ramaswamy said.
Reacting to The Daily Beast report, Twitter said that it actively prohibits and prevents any offensive ads from appearing on our platform.
“We are committed to understanding why this happened and how to keep it from happening again,” Twitter told The Verge in a statement.
—IANS
