Facebook deletes 652 fake accounts and pages targeting world politics

According to Facebook, some of the fake Pages, groups and accounts originated in Iran and some in Russia.

International News: Facebook has removed 652 fake accounts for "coordinated inauthentic behavior" that originated in Iran and Russia and targeted people across multiple Internet services in the Middle East, Latin America, Britain and the US.

According to Facebook, some of the fake Pages, groups and accounts originated in Iran and some in Russia.

These sanctions allow companies to provide people Internet services for personal communications, including the government and its affiliates.

"But Facebook takes steps to prevent people in Iran and other sanctioned countries from using our ad tools," said Gleicher.

Also Read: Whatsapp Fake News Controversy

Facebook also removed Pages, groups and accounts that can be linked to sources the US government has previously identified as Russian military intelligence services.

"While these are some of the same bad actors we removed for cybersecurity attacks before the 2016 US election, this more recent activity focused on politics in Syria and Ukraine," Facebook said.

For example, these accounts are associated with Inside Syria Media Centre, which the Atlantic Council and other organisations have identified for covertly spreading pro-Russian and pro-Assad content.

Read Full Story → Facebook Deletes Fake Accounts

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News Source: BS

 

Facebook's biggest one-day stock wipe-out leaves Mark Zuckerberg $15 bn poorer

Of 47 analysts covering Facebook, 43 still rate the stock as "buy", two rate it "hold" and only two rate it "sell".

 

International News → Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's fortune took a more than $15 billion hit on Thursday, as the social media company suffered the biggest one-day wipeout in US stock market history a day after executives forecast years of lower profit margins.

At least 16 brokerages cut their price targets on Facebook after Chief Financial Officer David Wehner startled an otherwise routine call with analysts by saying the company faced a multi-year squeeze on its business margins.

That "bombshell," as one analyst termed it, played into concerns on Wall Street that Facebook's model could be under threat after a year dominated by efforts to head off concerns over privacy and its role in global news flow.

Shares closed down almost 19 per cent at $176.26, wiping more than $120 billion off the company's value or nearly four times the entire market capitalisation of Twitter Inc .

US Stock Market

Slowing revenue growth initially pulled the stock down nearly 9 in after-hours trading on Wednesday before losses picked up on the margin outlook.

"Over the next several years, we would anticipate that our operating margins will trend towards the mid-30s on a percentage basis," Wehner said on a conference call with analysts.

Facebook's margin fell to 44 per cent in the second quarter from 47 per cent a year ago as it spent heavily on security and initiatives to convince users the company was protecting their privacy.

The company also said revenue growth from emerging markets and the company's Instagram app, which has been less affected by privacy concerns, would not be enough to repair the damage.
The impact on the rest of the FAANG group of high-flying tech stocks was marginal.

Read Full Updates → Facebook Share Drop

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News Source : BS

It’s Facebook again: 3 million users data was exposed by myPersonality app

The social media giant on Monday said that is auditing each and every app that has access to the data of its users and has already suspended 200 apps which failed to comply with its policies.

International News : A data set of over 3 million Facebook users collected via a personality app was available to download freely for anyone for almost four years, New Scientist reported. The dataset was collected via the personality quiz app “myPersonality” by academics at the University of Cambridge.

“The data was highly sensitive, revealing personal details of Facebook users, such as the results of psychological tests. “It was meant to be stored and shared anonymously, however such poor precautions were taken that deanonymising would not be hard,” the report said.

The data sets were controlled by David Stillwell and Michal Kosinski at the University of Cambridge. “More than 6 million people completed the tests on the myPersonality app and nearly half agreed to share data from their Facebook profiles with the project,” said the report.

Alexandr Kogan, at the centre of the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica scandal, was previously part of the project. “Cambridge Analytica had approached the myPersonality app team in 2013 to get access to the data, but was turned down because of its political ambitions,” the report said.

Also Read: Facebook Suspends 200 Apps Over Data Misuse Investigation

Facebook last month suspended “myPersonality” from its platform, saying the app may have violated its policies. The social media giant said that is auditing each and every app that has access to the data of its users and has already suspended 200 apps which failed to comply with its policies.

The company CEO Mark Zuckerberg had promised a thorough investigation and audit into apps that had access to information before Facebook changed its platform policies in 2014 — significantly reducing the data apps could access.

“To date, thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended — pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data,” Facebook said.

If Facebook finds evidence that these or other apps did misuse data, it will ban them and notify users via Help Centre on its website. Appearing before the US Congress in April, Zuckerberg told lawmakers that his own personal data was part of 87 million Facebook users that was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Read More on → Facebook Users Data Leak

New update allows users to access Instagram and Facebook content within WhatsApp

In its latest update rolled out for select iOS users, WhatsApp support will allow users to play Instagram and Facebook videos within the app, without exiting the chat.

Technology News : In a bid to increase user engagement, popular instant messaging platform, WhatsApp, has rolled out an update by which users can view content from Facebook and Instagram within the app itself.

In the present day, a user who receives videos or images from Facebook, Instagram or any such app would be redirected to these apps to view the content. However, this is set to change with the new update, reports The Verge.

In its latest update rolled out for select iOS users, WhatsApp support will allow users to play Instagram and Facebook videos within the app, without exiting the chat.

Apart from this, the new update also introduces the ability to add and revoke admin privileges from users in a group chat and empowers admins to edit the subject, description and icon of a chat that is already underway.

In November last year, WhatsApp had announced an update through which one can view YouTube videos directly inside the messaging app, in picture-in-picture mode.

If a YouTube link has been sent on a conversation, then users can directly view the video through the link on WhatsApp itself, as it will no longer be redirected to YouTube. Instead, the YouTube clip will appear within a small floating window on your screen, thus implying that you can watch YouTube videos and message at the same time.

On a related note, the latest update is expected to be rolled out to Android users as well in the coming weeks.

Read More about the Latest → WhatsApp Update

Narendra Modi beats Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau to become the most liked world leader on Facebook

Interestingly, the five most liked pictures in 2017 were all posted by Modi with his photo at Odisha’s famous Lingaraj temple becoming the most popular.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the most liked world leader and far ahead of others, including US President Donald Trump, when it comes to popularity on Facebook, according to a study which said 43.2 million people follow the Indian premier on the social media platform.

Trump, who rules the other social media platform Twitter, is in second place with 23.1 million followers, according to the study “World Leaders on Facebook” released today by Burson Cohn & Wolfe.

The study analyses the activity of 650 Facebook pages of heads of state and government and foreign ministers from January 1, 2017 using aggregate data from Facebook’s Crowdtangle tool, it said in a statement.

Over the past 14 months, the Facebook page of Trump had by far the most interactions of any world leader on Facebook, with a total of 204.9 million interactions (defined as the total number of comments, likes and shares), almost twice as many as Modi with 113.6 million interactions, the study said.

Modi, 67, has always encouraged use of social media platforms to stay in touch with the public.

Interestingly, the five most liked pictures in 2017 were all posted by Modi with his photo at Odisha’s famous Lingaraj temple becoming the most popular. Along with the Lingaraj temple photo, Modi wrote- “Prayed at the Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar. The magnificence of the Temple and Temple Complex leaves a lasting impression on the mind.”

Among videos, the third most popular Facebook live video was one shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Modi’s visit to the Jewish state in July last.

Apart from Modi’s personal page, the official Facebook page of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) figures in the survey as it is fourth in overall list of most liked pages and 9th in the list of interaction rate as well as total number of interactions.

The survey said the PMO was also the fourth most checked-in destination, after the White House, the Ugandan Presidency and 10, Downing Street.

In the list of “Peer Connection of World Leaders”, which counts the pages of world leaders liked by their counterparts, Modi is 10th, the survey said.

Facebook to play matchmaker with new dating service

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg announced the world’s largest social network will soon include a new dating feature.

 

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg announced the world’s largest social network will soon include a new facebook dating feature — while vowing to make privacy protection its top priority in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Zuckerberg yesterday unveiled the plans as he addressed Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference in San Jose, California — emphasising that the focus would be on helping people find long-term partners.

“This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships, not just hookups,” Zuckerberg said in presenting the new feature, noting that one in three marriages in the US start online — and that some 200 million Facebook users identify as being single.

Under the new feature, users will be able to create a separate “dating” profile not visible to their network of friends, with potential matches recommended based on dating preferences, points in common and mutual acquaintances.

It will be free of charge, in line with Facebook’s core offering.The announcement sent shares in the online dating giant Match.com tumbling, finishing the formal trading day down 22 per cent. The 33-year-old CEO also said the dating offer was built from the ground up with privacy and safety in mind, as he underscored the firm’s commitment to boosting privacy protections.

Facebook’s closely-watched developer conference comes as the giant faces intense global scrutiny over the mass harvesting of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy that worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Facebook has admitted up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked in the scandal, which saw Zuckerberg grilled at length by the US Congress last month.

“We need to make sure that never happens again,” Zuckerberg told the audience, lightening the talk by sharing that friends made on online streaming video watch party at the social network of his hours testifying before Congress.

In a related move, Facebook announced an upcoming feature called “Facebook Clear History” that will allow users to see which apps and websites send the network information, delete the data from their account, and prevent Facebook from storing it. The social network has already moved to limit the amount of data it shares with third-party applications and plans further steps to prevent a repeat of the Cambridge Analytica debacle, Zuckerberg said.

Facebook is also reviewing applications overall as well as auditing those that accessed large amounts of data to make sure access isn’t abused, he said. “Security isn’t a problem than you ever fully solve,” Zuckerberg said, outlining the slew of efforts by Facebook to battle election interference, misinformation, spam among other challenges.

Why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is winning the US Senate hearings

The social-media giant’s economic model emerged unscathed despite hours of questions from senators.

International News : Mark Zuckerberg did just fine in his first turn in the Congressional hot seat. He was confident. He capably tackled many of the queries proposed last week by Bloomberg columnists. The 33-year-old billionaire appeared humble throughout much of the hearing, with only a few smug smiles.

The best news for Facebook Inc. the company was that Zuckerberg ably deflected any challenges to the beating heart of its economic model: its hungry data collection and the fine-tuned targeted advertising based on that data. Zuckerberg’s success is a win for anyone primarily concerned with the company’s market value. But it’s a loss for the rest of us.

Facebook will keep failing users’ trust as long as its business is based on unrestrained hoovering of as much user data as possible, and crafting ever-more innovative ways for advertisers to harness that information for commercial goals. It’s an arrangement to which Facebook’s users agree and can sidestep, technically, but it is hardly informed consent or a real option to avoid.

This inherent conflict was on display during two of Mark Zuckerberg‘s exchanges on Tuesday. The first was with Senator Roy Blunt, the Republican from Missouri. He asked Zuckerberg a series of questions about what information the company can collect on its 2 billion users and use for advertising, including whether the social network can pinpoint that a person who posts on Facebook from his work computer in the morning is the same person who uploads a photo to his Facebook smartphone app at night.

The answer, as Zuckerberg surely knows, is yes. Facebook brags to advertisers that it can provide “cross-device” targeting, as it is called. The company can also track people nearly everywhere they go online, and it can see what apps people have installed on their phones.

Facebook also collects information on “offline” activity, as Blunt also asked, which includes information on users’ location as they roam around the real world. Companies can also match their information on what your purchase in stores — that box of cereal at the supermarket, for example — and marry it with Facebook account information. Inexplicably, Zuckerberg tried to say he wasn’t completely sure about Facebook’s data collection policies, and one of his underlings could follow up later. The Facebook CEO knows what his company does, but perhaps he couldn’t acknowledge that his companies relies on assembling detailed dossiers on billions of people.

Read More on  → Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Facebook Scandal: It was my mistake and am sorry, Mark Zuckerberg tells US Senate

Zuckerberg traversed Capitol Hill on Monday surrounded by police and trailed by packs of reporters ahead of his scheduled appearance before three congressional committees.

International; News : Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg placed the blame for privacy and security lapses at the world’s largest social network squarely on himself as he girded on Monday (Apr 9) for appearances this week on Capitol Hill before angry lawmakers.

In prepared remarks released by a congressional panel, Zuckerberg admitted he was too idealistic and failed to grasp how the platform – used by 2 billion people – could be abused and manipulated.

The 33-year-old is to testify before senators on Tuesday and House lawmakers on Wednesday amid a firestorm over the hijacking of data on millions of Facebook users by the British firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked with Donald Trump’s campaign.

On Monday, Zuckerberg ditched his trademark T-shirt for a suit and tie as he made the rounds on Capitol Hill with his wife Priscilla for private meetings with lawmakers ahead of the hearings – a key test for the Facebook founder.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg said in his written testimony released by the House commerce committee.

“I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

In his written remarks, Mark Zuckerberg called Facebook “an idealistic and optimistic company” and said: “We focused on all the good that connecting people can bring.”

But he acknowledged that “it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.”

Zuckerberg said he has called for more investments in security that will “significantly impact our profitability going forward,” adding: “I want to be clear about what our priority is: protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profit.”

Facebook data breach giving you panic attacks? Here are some desi options

Amid data breach talks and the recent instance of Cambridge Analytica scandal, where unauthorised access to user data apparently caused election meddling, there have been calls to delete Facebook.

Business News : After the scandal broke, there has been a growing scepticism around safety of personal data on social media. There was a frenzy among netizens to delete their social media account in order to protect their personal information.

The safety of your personal information cannot be guaranteed, but if you are looking for some ‘desi’ alternatives to Facebook, here is a list:

Hike

Hike Messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging service that provides users with a platform for text messaging, sending each other graphical stickers, emoticons, images, videos, audios, documents, voice messages, contacts and users’ location. The app can also be used to book Ola vehicles directly and has also enabled Hike ID, through which users can chat with each other without sharing their mobile numbers.

Roposo

Roposo is an app that offers filters and editing tools, and an option for social media sharing that allows users to instantly publish pictures on other social media channels.

The camera in the app helps edit and stitch videos to perfection; reducing the editing time. And users get to edit the videos on their phone itself. With the introduction of augmented reality feature on the app, users can create better content and post it on the platform.

Sharechat

Backed by SAIF Partners and Xiaomi, Sharechat is a leading social networking platform in India which enables users to watch and share videos on other platforms as well. Available in 14 vernacular languages, Sharechat is meant for all the users who love to share videos and photos in their own regional language.

SyncYu

SyncYu is an Indian pro-social networking application which focuses on connecting with friends and family by providing a spam-free platform. It is advertisement-free and claims to show how its users truly are to the world. This app comes with a lot of features like messaging, games, shoutouts, wordsmash, news and much more.

Mooshak

An attempt to make Hindi and Devnagiri relevant for the Next Gen, this app enables users to post content in Hindi. For the users who are not quite good at writing in the language, the app helps to translate your content into Hindi. Simply upload images, videos and audios and share it with people around the globe.

For the unversed, Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm with ties to United States President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, is under fire for allegedly gaining access to private information of more than 50 million Facebook users, and influencing elections by using this stolen data.

Full Updates on  → Facebook Data Breach

Cambridge Analytica Scandal: How India can save democracy from Facebook

Hegemonic incumbents like Google and Facebook need to be tackled with regulation; govt should use procurement power to fund open source alternatives.

Cambridge Analytica Scandal : Those that celebrate the big data/artificial intelligence moment claim that traditional approaches to data protection are no longer relevant and therefore must be abandoned. The Cambridge Analytica episode, if anything, demonstrates how wrong they are. The principles of data protection need to be reinvented and weaponized, not discarded. In this article I shall discuss the reinvention of three such data protection principles. Apart from this I shall also briefly explore competition law solutions.

Collect data only if mandated by regulation

• One, data minimization is the principle that requires the data controller to collect data only if mandated to do so by regulation or because it is a prerequisite for providing a functionality. For example, Facebook’s messenger app on Android harvests call records and meta-data, without any consumer facing feature on the app that justifies such collection. Therefore, this is a clear violation of the data minimization principle. One of the ways to reinvent this principle is by borrowing from the best practices around warnings and labels on packaging introduced by the global anti-tobacco campaign. A permanent bar could be required in all apps, stating ‘Facebook holds W number of records across X databases over the time period Y, which totals Z Gb’. Each of these alphabets could be a hyperlink, allowing the user to easily drill down to the individual data record.

Consent must be explicit, informed and voluntary

• Two, the principle of consent requires that the data controller secure explicit, informed and voluntary consent from the data subject unless there are exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, consent has been reduced to a mockery today through obfuscation by lawyers in verbose “privacy notices” and “terms of services”. To reinvent consent we need to bring ‘Do Not Dial’ registries into the era of big data. A website maintained by the future Indian data protection regulator could allow individuals to check against their unique identifiers (email, phone number, Aadhaar). The website would provide a list of all data controllers that are holding personal information against a particular unique identifier. The data subject should then be able to revoke consent with one-click. Once consent is revoked, the data controller would have to delete all personal information that they hold, unless retention of such information is required under law (for example, in banking law). One-click revocation of consent will make data controllers like Facebook treat data subjects with greater respect.

→ Cambridge Analytica Row ←

Cambridge Analytica Row: Who used stolen data for polls – Congress or BJP?

Ravi Shankar Prasad said, ‘The Congress must explain if it has engaged in data trade with Cambridge Analytica’.

Latest News : The BJP and the Congress accused each other of using the services of embattled data consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) that along with Facebook is at the centre of a global row over the alleged unauthorized use of personal data from the social media giant.

As the firestorm over the issue hit India, the government warned Facebook, which is being probed by US and British lawmakers over a potential breach of user confidentiality, of stringent action if any attempt was made to influence the country’s electoral process through “undesirable means”.

However, the company’s India partner Oveleno Business Intelligence (OBI) lists the BJP, the Congress and the JD-U as its clients. The India partner is by Amrish Tyagi, son of senior JD-U leader K. C. Tyagi. In media interviews, the junior Tyagi admitted that the Youth Congress in Jharkhand, the BJP and the JD-U had used its services to conduct research.

BJP leader and Union Law and IT and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad cited media reports to allege that the Congress was using the services of the London-based political data analytics firm for the next Lok Sabha election and boost its president Rahul Gandhi’s social media profile and its outreach.

“The Congress must explain if it has engaged in data trade with Cambridge Analytica,” the minister said.

He said the number of Gandhi’s followers on Twitter had risen recently and wondered if the Congress had used the services of the Cambridge Analytica for this “fake popularity”.

“Will the Congress now depend on data manipulation and theft to woo voters,” Prasad asked.

“These days, there is a lot of news about CA and how it has been involved in data theft, psychometric analysis, data manipulation and subversion of democratic processes. Can the Congress deny that?” he asked.

→ Cambridge Analytica , Cambridge Analytica Row ←

Six ways to target your audience like a pro

Advertising on Facebook is growing and these six methods can come in handy

There is huge power in Facebook ads if you learn how to do targeting well. Here are six ways to target your audience & make your advertisements reach your most desired audience.

Method 1: Facebook life events targeting

This first method is to plan, create, and build your Facebook advertising strategy around the life events of your prospects. Facebook has a “Timeline feature” that allows Facebook users to document significant events. As a business, it is possible to make use of Facebook Insights to analyze the demographics of your Facebook page.......

Method 2: write to target emotions

In the digital world, true influence is not just about what you see or listen to. Rather, it can be defined by how you make people feel. If you apply this concept to digital marketing, true influence can then be defined as the identification of your clients’ pain points and then offering creative and effective solutions to solve them.......

Read Article Source>>>

Be Updated on Stock Market News  & LATEST BUSINESS NEWS| Business Standard

Facebook debuts 'Live Audio' on its platform, similar to podcast and radio

Android users will be able to continue listening to a Live Audio broadcast even if they leave Facebook app or lock their phones

 Breaking News - After successfully rolling out the facebook  live video feature, Facebook has now introduced "Live Audio" option — like traditional radio or podcasting — in your News Feed where users will be able to broadcast audio directly to the social network.

"We know that sometimes publishers want to tell a story on Facebook with words and not video. Our new 'Live Audio' option makes it easy to go live with audio only when that's the broadcaster's preferred format," said Shirley Ip, Product Specialist, and Bhavana Radhakrishnan, Software Engineer at Facebook in a blog post on Tuesday.

Facebook Introduces New Doodle Programme To Compete With Google

"One thing we've heard is that partners want new formats for going live. We announced Live 360 last week, and today we're excited to announce another way to go live on Facebook," they added.

Facebook has witnessed some Pages find creative ways to go live and reach audiences with audio only by using the Facebook Live API or by adding a still image to accompany their audio broadcast.

Read Article Source>>>

Be Updated on Stock Market News  & Latest Business News| Business Standard

फोर्ब्‍स : अमेरिका के 'युवा' अमीर उद्यमियों में दो भारतीय

फोर्ब्‍स पत्रिका की 40 साल से कम उम्र के अमीर उद्यमियों की दूसरी सलाना सूची में दो भारतीय मूल के लोगों को भी जगह मिली है। इस सूची में फेसबुक के संस्थापक मार्क जुकरबर्ग शीर्ष स्थान पर हैं। 'अमेरिका के 40 साल से कम उम्र के अमीर उद्यमी, 2016' की सूची में सफल बायोटेक उद्यमी विवेक रामास्वामी 24वें स्थान पर हैं। उनके पास 60 करोड़ डॉलर का नेटवर्थ है। वहीं अपूर्व मेहता 36 करोड़ डॉलर के नेटवर्थ के साथ 31वें स्थान पर हैं।

फोर्ब्‍स के अनुसार 31 साल के रामास्वामी हार्वर्ड यूनिवर्सिटी तथा एले स्कूल ऑफ मैनेजमेंट के छात्र रहे हैं। वह अपने सौदों तथा औषधि विकास योजनाओं के साथ जैव-प्रौद्योगिकी कारोबार में निरंतर आगे बढ़ रहे हैं। वह जैव-प्रौद्योगिकी होल्डिंग कंपनी रोवैन्ट साइंसेस का परिचालन कर रहे हैं। वह दवाओं के विकास के लिए अनूठी वित्तीय रणनीति अपनाते हैं। वह प्राय: ऐसी दवाओं को खरीदते हैं जिसे औषधि कंपनियों ने या तो भुला दिया है या छोड़ दिया है।

वहीं मेहता को फोर्ब्‍स ने सिलिकन वैली का सबसे युवा सफल प्रवासी उद्यमी बताया है। भारत में जन्मे मेहता और उनका परिवार वर्ष 2000 में कनाडा चला गया। वहां उन्होंने यूनिवर्सिटी ऑफ वाटरलू में इंजीनियरिंग की पढ़ाई की और उसके बाद ब्लैकबेरी, क्वालकॉम तथा एमेजॉन में नौकरी की। वर्ष 2012 में उन्होंने संयुक्त रूप से इंस्टाकार्ट की स्थापना की। यह किराना सामान उपलब्ध कराने की सेवा देती है और इसके लिए ऐसी दुकानों के साथ गठजोड़ किया हुआ है........ (अधिक पढ़ें)

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft to create shared database against terrorist content

Participating companies can add hashes of terrorist images or videos that are identified on one of our platforms to the database.

With an aim to limit online terrorist content, technology giants Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube said together they would build a shared database that will also help them to weed out content used to recruit people into terrorism.

According to a report on Tech Crunch, the companies said they will create a shared industry database that will be used to identify this content, including what they describe as the "most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos" that have been removed from their respective services.

The content will be hashed using unique digital fingerprints, which is how its identification and removal can be handled more easily and efficiently by the company's computer systems and algorithms.

"We commit to the creation of a shared industry database of hashes - unique digital 'fingerprints' - for violent terrorist imagery or terrorist recruitment videos or images that we have removed from our services," read a joint statement.

Read Source>>>

You can soon shop on Instagram

Instagram is now testing shopping products through its posts. Just like instant articles, where one can read news articles without leaving Facebook, users can buy products without leaving Instagram.

Each post by a brand has a picture of the product and also displays the price of the item on a single tap. The 'Tap to view' option which upon clicking shows you a bigger image of the product with description about it. Instagram showcases up to five products and can be purchased from the website by tapping the shop now icon.

Instagram said a survey found that vast majority of purchases take a day or longer, with only 21% of purchases made within a day. This means users take their time, compare it with other products and then take a call on the item.

Kate Spade from Instagram for Business on Vimeo.

If everything works for Instagram, with more than 500 million monthly active users, it can grab a significant digital ad revenue from big brands. Facebook's ad revenue stood at $5,201 in Q1.

Read Source

Watch out! Lenders are now tracking your social media profile

If you are involved in clandestine gambling activities or drunk driving, watch out – you might be hampering your chances of getting a loan from new-age online lenders like InstaPaisa, GoPaySense, Faircent, CashCare and Vote4Cash! Lenders have been using an algorithm to track your social media profile for assessing your creditworthiness.

A report in the Economic Times on Monday says: "Online credit marketplaces like CreditMantri and BankBazaar.com that have found a clientele in the 25-35 age group do their due diligence on borrowers using not just payslips and bank statements but also unorthodox metrics like phone location data, SMS alerts and social media behaviour.”

How does it work?
The social lenders run their algorithms through tonnes of data in just a few minutes to assign someone a personality score. This score determines the rate at which the person would get a loan. The rate so determined could range from, say, 9% to 30% -- against the standard industry norm of 13-17%.

Besides, mobile phone data also give lenders and other financial service providers useful information about potential borrowers. From someone’s smartphone usage – how much the person spends on airtime, how he or she uses mobile wallet, etc – algorithms can determine both creditworthiness and need for credit.

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Facebook makes Workplace app available for all

Buoyed by the positive response from over 1,000 companies that are currently using Workplace (formerly known as Facebook at Work) including in India, the company has announced it will make the app available to all.

This means you can chat with a colleague across the world in real time, host a virtual brainstorm in a Group or follow along with your CEO's presentation on Facebook Live.

"People have created nearly 100,000 groups and the top five countries using Workplace are India, the US, Norway, UK and France," Facebook said in a statement on Tuesday.

"We're announcing that Workplace will now be available to any company or organisation that wants to use it," it added.

Large multinational companies like Danone, Starbucks and Booking.com, international nonprofits such as Oxfam and regional leaders such as YES Bank in India and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore have all embraced Workplace.

"It's a whole new paradigm in employee engagement! L&T @Work is leading our thrust to digital.Technology is nothing without people and this platform reflects the perfect synergy of people driving technology," said SN Subrahmanyam, Deputy Managing Director and President, Larsen & Toubro.

Facebook also announced a competitive pricing model that is based on a monthly fee per active user.

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Flipkart grows user base to 100 million

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce marketplace, says it has expanded its consumer base by 33 per cent in the past six months to 100-million registered users, despite stiff competition by global rival Amazon, which has committed a massive $5 billion to capture the India market.

Flipkart says its 100-million registered user milestone represents 63 per cent of all broadband Internet subscribers in the country and that it is the first company to reach this milestone outside the US or China. It had announced breaching the 75-million user milestone in March this year. The figures exclude users of Myntra and Jabong, its fashion units that have a higher proportion of younger users.

In August last year, Alibaba-backed digital payments company Paytm had announced it had crossed the 100-million user mark.

“Since the time we sold the first book to our first customer in 2007 till today, our journey has always been about providing a superior shopping experience to our customers. This milestone has further energised us to ramp up our efforts and build a world-class shopping destination,” said Binny Bansal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Flipkart, in a statement.

This growth in users comes at a time of slower sales in India’s e-commerce market. It is estimated that online sales fell 19 per cent in the January-March 2016 quarter, while sales during the read full story

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THE 100-MILLION USER CLUB

Paytm: 125 million; crossed 100 million last August

Hike: 100 million

Facebook: 150 million; crossed 100 million in June 2015

Snapdeal: Has a current user base of 110-million plus, across Snapdeal and Freecharge platform