TikTok hit by US lawsuits over child safety, security fears

WASHINGTON — TikTok was hit Wednesday with a pair of lawsuits from the US state of Indiana, which accused it of making false claims about the Chinese-owned app's safety for children.

The legal salvo came as problems are mounting for TikTok in the United States, with multiple accusations that the extremely popular app is a national security threat and a conduit for spying by China.

"The TikTok app is a malicious and menacing threat unleashed on unsuspecting Indiana consumers by a Chinese company that knows full well the harms it inflicts on users," said Attorney General Todd Rokita in a statement.

The lawsuit said TikTok algorithms served up "abundant content depicting alcohol, tobacco, and drugs; sexual content, nudity, and suggestive themes" to users as young as 13.

The state also sued TikTok for allegedly deceiving customers into believing that "reams of highly sensitive data and personal information" were protected from the Chinese government.

In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson did not comment specifically on the case but said "the safety, privacy and security of our community is our top priority."

"We build youth well-being into our policies, limit features by age, empower parents with tools and resources, and continue to invest in new ways to enjoy content based on age-appropriateness or family comfort," the company said.

TikTok is facing a growing front of opposition in the United States, with several states and the US military banning its use on government devices.

Texas on Wednesday became the latest state to do so, calling for "aggressive action" against TikTok.

The highly popular app is often singled out for its alleged connections to the Beijing government with fears that China is able to use TikTok's data to track and coerce users around the world.

TikTok is currently in negotiations with the US government to resolve national security concerns, hoping to maintain operations in one of its biggest markets.

TikTok said it was "confident that we're on a path...to fully satisfy all reasonable US national security concerns."

The spectacular success of TikTok has seen rival sites such as Meta-owned Instagram or Snapchat struggle to keep up, with once soaring ad revenues taking a hit.

But Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers last month that he is "extremely concerned" about security risks linked to TikTok.

Agence France-Presse 

Twitter defends anti-bot efforts, Musk replies with poo emoji

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Twitter's chief on Monday defended the messaging platform's battle against "bots" that aspiring buyer Elon Musk says vex the platform, only to have the billionaire respond with a poo emoji.

The exchange played out in tweets as Musk's $44 billion buy of Twitter remained "temporarily on hold," pending questions over the social media company's estimates of the number of fake accounts, or "bots."

"It appears the spam/bot issue is cascading and clearly making the Twitter deal a confusing one," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

"The bot issue at the end of the day was known by the New York City cab driver and feels more to us like the 'dog ate the homework' excuse to bail on the Twitter deal or talk down a lower price."

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal said the platform suspends more than a half-million seemingly bogus accounts daily, usually before they are even seen, and locks millions more weekly that fail checks to make sure they are controlled by humans and not by software.

Internal measures show that fewer than five percent of accounts active on any given day at Twitter are spam, but that analysis can't be replicated externally due to the need to keep user data private, Agrawal contended.

Musk, who has said bots plague Twitter and that he would make getting rid of them a priority if he owned the platform, responded to that tweet by Agrawal with a poo emoji.

"So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?" Musk tweeted in a subsequent response about the need to prove Twitter users are real people.

"This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter."

The process used to estimate how many accounts are bots has been shared with Musk, Agrawal said.

The chief of SpaceX as well as Tesla, Musk is currently listed by Forbes as the world's wealthiest person, with a fortune of some $230 billion, much of it in Tesla stock.

Seen by his champions as an iconoclastic genius and by his critics as an erratic megalomaniac, Musk surprised many investors in April with his pursuit of Twitter.

Musk has described his motivation as stemming from a desire to ensure freedom of speech on the platform and to boost monetization of an Internet site that is influential in media and political circles but has struggled to attain profitable growth.

Musk said he favored lifting the ban on Donald Trump, who was kicked off the platform in January 2021 shortly after the former US president's efforts to overturn his election defeat led to the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.

Agence France-Presse

Meta narrows guidance to prohibit calls for death of a head of state

Facebook owner Meta Platforms said on Sunday that it is further narrowing its content moderation policy for Ukraine to prohibit calls for the death of a head of state, according to an internal company post seen by Reuters.

The move came after Reuters reported last week that Meta was temporarily allowing some posts on Facebook and Instagram calling for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. 

After the Reuters report, Meta said on Friday that a temporary change in its content policy, only applicable for Ukraine, was needed to let users voice opposition to Russia's attack. On the same day, Russia opened a criminal case against the social media firm. 

"We are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general," Meta global affairs President Nick Clegg wrote in a post on the company's internal platform on Sunday that was seen by Reuters.

"We also do not permit calls to assassinate a head of state...So, in order to remove any ambiguity about our stance, we are further narrowing our guidance to make explicit that we are not allowing calls for the death of a head of state on our platforms," Clegg said.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment, outside regular business hours.

"These are difficult decisions. Circumstances in Ukraine are fast moving. We try to think through all the consequences, and we keep our guidance under constant review because the context is always evolving," Clegg said.

There would be no change to policies on hate speech as far as the Russian people are concerned, he said.

"Meta stands against Russophobia. We have no tolerance for calls for genocide, ethnic cleansing, or any kind of discrimination, harassment, or violence towards Russians on our platform," he added.

Clegg wrote that Meta plans to refer the way in which it adapted the guidance it provides to content moderators to the independent oversight board, which was set up to help the platform answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression.

Russia's communications regulator has imposed restrictions on Meta's Instagram, effective Monday. Meta had previously restricted access to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik on its platforms across the European Union.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in New Delhi and Maria Ponnezhath in BengaluruEditing by Shri Navaratnam)

-reuters

Snapchat parent shares soar on first quarterly profit

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Shares in Snap soared on Thursday after the firm behind image-centric, ephemeral messaging app Snapchat reported its first-ever quarter profit.

Shares that had been dragged down by worries about the broader market and concerns about tightened iPhone privacy making it tougher to target ads launched nearly 60 percent on earnings that beat expectations.

Snap ended last year with a loss trimmed to $488 million, and posted a net income of $22.5 million in the final three months of the year.

"2021 was an exciting year for Snap and we made significant progress growing our business and serving our global community," chief executive Evan Spiegel said in an earnings release.

He added that strength in Snap's core business has allowed it to invest in augmented reality, "transforming the way that the Snapchat community experiences the world through our camera."

Snapchat became a hit, particularly with young smartphone users, by letting people share moments in the form of photos or videos in messages that self-destruct after being viewed.

Popular features in the app included "lenses" that allow people to overlay special effects on pictures.

Snap has since redefined itself as a "camera company," launching Spectacles sunglasses that have built in cameras and synch to smartphones.

Snap revenue for the recently ended quarter was $1.3 billion, a 42 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

"Snapchat ended 2021 on a high note, exceeding our expectations for ad revenue," said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg.

"Snapchat is clearly not as prone to the 'TikTok effect' as Meta, with strong daily active user growth in all regions."

Competition from short-form video sharing sensation TikTok helped bruise Facebook-parent Meta, which saw its ranks of daily users shrink for the first time in the final three months of last year.

While Snap earnings felt the sting of supply chain woes and changes to iPhone operating software that make it tougher to target online ads, it was "buoyed by banner quarters" earlier quarters in the year, according to Enberg.

The California-based company says at its website that Snapchat is used daily by an average of 319 million people.

Snap revenue for 2021 was $4.1 billion, up 64 percent from the previous year, according to its earnings report.

Agence France-Presse

Instagram tests letting creators charge subscriptions

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Instagram will let some content creators in the United States charge subscriptions to fans, allowing popular users to dabble with a way to make steady money as the platform competes for online stars.

Social media users whose posts draw large audiences help platforms from Twitch and YouTube to TikTok and Instagram generate revenue, so social networks vie to be their preferred stages.

"Subscriptions are for creators," Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a video posted on Twitter.

"Creators do what they do to make a living and it's important that is predictable."

A small number of Instagram content creators in the United States will take part in a subscription test launching this week, Mosseri said.

The selected creators will be able to sell subscriptions for access to exclusive content, including live streams.

"Over time, we hope to expand these features because it's important that subscriptions are integrated throughout the entire Instagram experience," Mosseri said.

Meta-owned Instagram believes creators should "own their relationship with subscribers," so it is also working on ways for them to be able to take their lists of paying fans to apps built by other companies, Mosseri added.

Agence France-Presse

Instagram boss tells US lawmakers app ‘can help’ teens, citing own research

Instagram's boss on Wednesday pushed a rosy view of the photo-sharing app's impact on teens in testimony to US lawmakers that was at odds with damning news reports based on the firm's own research.

Adam Mosseri argued the service could help struggling young people, after documents leaked by a company insider raised worries of harms, including a 2019 study saying Instagram makes body image issues worse for one in 3 teenage girls. 

"Sometimes young people come to Instagram dealing with hard things in their lives. I believe Instagram can help many of them in those moments," Mosseri wrote.

"This is something that our research has suggested as well," he added in written testimony prepared for his appearance before a Senate commerce subcommittee.

His statement comes as the social media networks run by Facebook parent Meta battle a crisis fueled by the company's own research, and which has rekindled a years-old US push for regulation.

The documents leaked by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen also include a 2020 report stating that 32 percent of teenage girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made it worse.

Facebook has pushed back fiercely against a string of Wall Street Journal reports based on the findings, and a subsequent series for a US media consortium, arguing its research was mischaracterized.

Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn are leading the hearing, the latest in a series probing how social media could be making teens feel worse about themselves.

"These half-measures are not enough. Instagram must create tangible solutions to improve safety and data security," Blackburn tweeted ahead of the hearing.

- 'Never fully safe' -

Facebook has bounced back from other scandals such as the one involving Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to target political ads.

In that case, CEO Mark Zuckerberg went to Washington to apologize, and the company agreed to a $5 billion settlement with US regulators.

However, the leading social media network faces at least one investigation spurred by the latest crisis: a consortium of US states announced in November a probe of Meta's techniques for enticing young users and the potential resulting harms.

Facing pressure, the company announced in September a "pause" in developing a version of Instagram for kids under 13 as criticism built over the platform's impact on young people's mental health.

On the eve of Wednesday's hearing, Instagram announced new protections for young users like suggesting a break if they have been spending a lot of time on the platform.

The timing of the announcement drew a wary reception from lawmakers, who questioned whether it was an effort at distraction ahead of the hearing.

Stephen Balkam, founder and CEO of advocacy group Family Online Safety Institute, said pre-hearing announcements are a Washington tradition but noted they won't make the app's problems go away.

"Instagram is safer than it was. I think Instagram is less toxic for teens than it was. But it will never be perfect, it will never be fully safe. But then that's true of all social media," he told AFP.

 Agence France-Presse

YouTube hides ‘dislike’ counts to discourage attacks

YouTube announced Wednesday the tally of "dislike" clicks on videos will no longer be visible to the public to protect creators from harassment and targeted attacks.

A public count of likes -- or dislikes -- that social media posts rack up is regularly cited by critics as harmful to well-being, and Facebook as well as Instagram have allowed users to opt out.

Users on the Google-owned video sharing platform will still be able to click on the "dislike" button below a clip, but they will no longer see the negative review count.

"To ensure that YouTube promotes respectful interactions between viewers and creators... we experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks," YouTube said in a statement. 

"Our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior."

Content creators -- the social media stars who draw crowds online -- will be able to see the number of thumbs-down icons their clips elicit.

YouTube said smaller scale or new creators reported being unfairly targeted in attacks, where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on videos.

The changes at YouTube come as major social networks and video platforms are frequently accused by lawmakers, regulators and watchdogs of not doing enough to fight online harassment.

Facebook is battling one of its most serious reputational crises ever, driven by leaked internal documents showing executive knew of the potential harm of their platforms.

The revelations from the leaks by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen have put fresh impetus behind talk of regulating Big Tech companies.

Worry about Facebook's potential harm has spilled over to other platforms with TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube trying to convince US senators in a hearing last month that they were safe for their young users.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook rebrand reflects a dangerous trend in growing power of tech monopolies

Facebook’s rebranding as Meta has been seen by many as the company’s latest attempt at corporate crisis control. The social media giant has been publicly attacked for creating an environment that fosters far-right extremism and violating individuals’ data privacy.

Yet it also represents an attempt to rebrand the growing power of tech monopolies to shape all areas of our lives through social expansion. 

It points to a troubling new era of “metacapitalism” – or “capitalism on steroids” as Forbes called it in 2000. It reflects a disturbing trend of massively expanding tech conglomerates and the dangerous privatisation of technological knowledge.

Technology is rapidly transforming our world – from instantaneous digital communication to AI decision-making to virtual and augmented reality. 

The driving force behind these changes has been private technology firms, whether global start-ups or famous Silicon Valley conglomerates. But this combination of massive corporate profits and exciting technological innovation is the biggest myth of 21st-century progress.

The truth is much more complicated. Huge technology firms such as Google and Facebook are increasingly criticized for unethical data collection and the use of algorithms which encourage hateful beliefs and viral misinformation.

Their technology has also encouraged unjust labor practices including hi-tech digital surveillance to monitor workers, as happened in Amazon warehouses, and facilitated digital platforms such as Uber, which refuse to provide basic worker rights.

Longer term, the mining of rare earth metals and the massive amounts of energy required for data processing are major contributors to climate change.

These problems point to the threat of capitalist tech monopolies where, according to theorist Neil Postman, the culture “seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”. Microsoft and Google have already been accused of monopolistic practices.

These “bit tyrants” are troubling “technopolies” which actually use their power and influence to stifle innovation and competition using – ironically – traditional practices of the old economy.

Perhaps even more troubling is how these companies channel innovation away from its potential for social good. Beneath the myth of Silicon Valley prosperity are big tech’s seeming attempts to promote corporate oligarchies and even authoritarian regimes to extend their economic reach and political power.

The highly publicized renaming of these conglomerates is part of a wider rebranding of this technopoly. As one commentator recently observed, “Facebook’s new name is ‘Meta’, and its new mission is to invent a ‘metaverse’ that will make us all forget what it’s done to our existing reality.” It may be a different name, but it is the same economic, political and social corporate threat.

In his video announcement, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed this dawning of the metaverse as signalling a new technological age, providing viewers with a glimpse of it in a virtual world where people could use avatars to live out their wildest imagination in real-time with others around the world.

The backlash has ranged from moral outrage over Facebook itself, to ridiculing Zuckerberg’s new vision for technology. What is overlooked is how this represents the desire to create metacapitalism – which uses technology to shape, exploit and profit from human interaction. It is a completely marketised virtual reality world fuelled by the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, unjust global working conditions and the constant invasion of users’ data privacy for private financial gain.

Corporate and social rebranding are fundamental to the spread of metacapitalism. Google’s 2015 name change to “Alphabet” reflected its desire to be more than just a search engine and expand into other areas such as driverless cars, medical devices, smart home appliances and drone delivery. Introducing the metaverse, Zuckerberg said:

Think about how many physical things you have today that could just be holograms in the future. Your TV, your perfect work set-up with multiple monitors, your board games and more – instead of physical things assembled in factories, they’ll be holograms designed by creators around the world.

He insisted, once again, that “we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services”.

These moves play into a broader strategy to socially rebrand metacapitalism positively. The introduction of the metaverse is part of a new trend of what business ethics academic Carl Rhodes has referred to it as “woke capitalism”, noting in a recent article that “progressive gestures from big business aren’t just useless – they’re dangerous”.

Whether it is the Gates Foundation initially opposing the spread of global vaccines in order to protect patent rights, or Elon Musk promising to create an “multi-planet civilization” – while avoiding paying much-needed taxes here on Earth – corporations are now increasingly using philanthropy and utopian visions to hide their present day misdeeds.

The irony is that technology could actually become a real force for radical social and economic transformation if it was freed from the narrow limits imposed on it by metacapitalism.

Digital platforms are already enabling greater cooperative ownership and direct democratic participation. Big data could be deployed to allow for efficient energy use through better tracking of energy consumption. It also allows for the community ownership of our information and the economy generally. 3D printers have the potential to revolutionise manufacturing so that we can easily and sustainably produce all that we require.

Crucially, open-source technologies which allow for their information to be freely available to use, modify and redistribute, could foster international collaboration and innovation on a scale previously unimaginable. They point to a realistic and utopian “post-capitalist” future that could transcend the need for exploitation based on principles of shared development and collective prosperity.

The rebranding of technology companies is not merely cosmetic, it represents a dangerous attempt to monopolize all forms of technology development linked to a metaverse and the spread of metacapitalism. What is needed instead is a real discussion about fostering open-source culture, data rights and ownership, and the use of technology for positive social transformation – not simply selling more products.

-reuters

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram suffer worldwide outage

Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were down across wide swathes of the world Monday. Facebook’s internal systems used by employees also went down.

The company said it was aware that “some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app” and it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, tweeted that it feels like a “snow day.”

The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:45 ET. It is normal for websites and apps to suffer outages, though one on a global scale is rare. Users reported being unable to access Facebook in California, New York and Europe.

Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc., said it appears that the routes Facebook advertises online that tell the entire internet how to reach its properties are not available.

Madory said it looks like the DNS routes that Facebook makes available to the networking world have been withdrawn. The Domain Name System is an integral element of how traffic on the internet is routed. DNS translates an address like “facebook.com” to an IP address like 123.45.67.890. If Facebook’s DNS records have disappeared, no one could find it.

Facebook is going through a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by of its products and decisions. Haugen went public on “60 Minutes” on Sunday.

Haugen also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging that Facebook’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation, leads to increased polarization and that Instagram, specifically, can harm teenage girls’ mental health.

The Journal’s stories, called “The Facebook Files,” painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. Facebook has tried to play down the research. Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that “social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.”

Twitter, meanwhile, chimed in from the company’s main Twitter account, posting “hello literally everyone” as jokes and memes about the Facebook outage flooded the platform.

-Associated Press

YouTube says it removed 1 million ‘dangerous’ videos on COVID-19

YouTube said Wednesday it has removed more than 1 million videos with "dangerous coronavirus misinformation" since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The statement by the Google-owned video platform comes as social media platforms are under fire from political leaders for failing to stem the spread of false and harmful misinformation and disinformation about the virus and other topics.

YouTube said in a blog post it relies on "expert consensus from health organizations," including the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, but noted that, in some cases, "misinformation is less clear-cut" as new facts emerge. 

"Our policies center on the removal of any videos that can directly lead to egregious real world harm," chief product officer Neal Mohan wrote. 

"Since February of 2020, we've removed over one million videos related to dangerous coronavirus information, like false cures or claims of a hoax," he said.

"In the midst of a global pandemic, everyone should be armed with absolutely the best information available to keep themselves and their families safe."

YouTube said it was working to accelerate the process for removing videos with misinformation while simultaneously delivering those from authoritative sources.

Mohan said the platform currently removes close to 10 million videos per quarter and that the majority of them have been watched less than 10 times.

"Speedy removals will always be important but we know they're not nearly enough... The most important thing we can do is increase the good and decrease the bad," he said. 

"When people now search for news or information, they get results optimized for quality, not for how sensational the content might be."

YouTube also said it removed "thousands" of videos for violating election misinformation policies since the US vote in November, with three-fourths removed before hitting 100 views. 

Agence France-Presse

Facebook shuts down anti-vaccine influencer campaign

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook on Tuesday said it shut down a disinformation operation which sought to spread Covid-19 vaccine hoaxes by duping social media influencers into backing false claims.

The leading social network labeled the operation a "disinformation laundromat" which sought to legitimize false claims by pushing them through people with clean reputations.

Influencers who caught onto the sham turned out to be the undoing of a deceitful influence campaign orchestrated by marketing firm Fazze in Russia, according to Facebook.

"The assumption was the influencers wouldn't do any of their own homework, but two did," Facebook global threat intelligence lead Ben Nimmo said while briefing journalists.

"It's really a warning -- be careful when someone is trying to spoon feed you a story. Do your own research."

Facebook said that in July it removed 65 accounts at the leading social network and 243 accounts at photo-centric Instagram that were linked to the campaign, and banned Fazze from its platform.

Fazze is a subsidiary of a AdNow, an advertising company registered in Britain, according to media reports.

The operation targeted primarily India and Latin America, but also took aim at the United States, as governments debated approving vaccines to fight the pandemic, according to Nimmo.

Late last year, the network of fake accounts tried to fuel a false meme that the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 would turn people into chimpanzees, Facebook reported.

After going quiet for five months, the organizers attacked the safety of the Pfizer vaccine and leaked what it billed as an AstraZeneca document stolen by hacking, Facebook said.

The campaign took advantage of online platforms including Reddit, Medium, Change.org, and Facebook, creating misleading articles and petitions then providing "influencers" with links, hashtags and more to spread vaccine misinformation, according to Nimmo.

"In effect, this campaign functioned as a cross-platform disinformation laundromat," Nimmo said.

CAMPAIGN FELL FLAT

The operation was exposed by influencers in France and Germany who questioned claims made in email pitches from Fazze, prompting journalists to dig into the matter, according to Facebook.

Facebook does not know who hired Fazze for the anti-vaccine campaign, but has shared its findings with regulators, police, and internet industry peers, according to head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher.

The campaign appeared to fall flat, with almost none of the Instagram posts receiving "likes," and English and Hindi language petitions at Change.org each getting fewer than 1,000 signatures, Facebook said.

The security team at the social network has seen a trend of deceptive influence operations targeting multiple social media platforms and trying to recruit established personalities with followings to spread false messages, according to Gleicher.

"When these operations turn to influencers, they often don't give them full context on who is behind it," Gleicher said during the briefing.

"And when influencers find out, they are eager to blow the whistle."

The news comes amid a spat between Facebook and the US administration over reining in virus misinformation, and government efforts to enlist popular social media characters to promote vaccinations.

Agence France-Presse 

Can Facebook's $1 billion gamble help it regain lost cool?

Like internet personalities the world over, Kenyan TikTok comedian Mark Mwas was intrigued when Facebook announced a $1 billion plan to pay content creators like him. 

But the 25-year-old, whose following surged past 160,000 as entertainment-starved Kenyans flocked to the app during the pandemic, is sceptical that fans would follow him to the older social network. 

"In our market, Facebook is kinda old-fashioned," said Mwas, who posts skits about campus life in a mixture of Swahili, English, and Sheng slang. 

"Like, Mom is on Facebook and doesn't know what TikTok is," he told AFP in an email. "My content is suited for the millennials, who prefer other platforms." 

Announced last week, Facebook's $1 billion will pay the creators of popular posts, from fashionistas to comedians and video gamers, through 2022.

It is the strongest signal yet that the US social media giant now recognises the strategic importance of the "creator economy". 

YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat have waged an increasingly fierce battle to attract figures with big followings that can in turn attract serious advertising revenues. 

Last November, photo and video app Snapchat began paying $1 million a day to top creators, although the payments have since tapered off. Popular YouTubers have been receiving a slice of the site's billions in ad revenues since 2007. 

Facebook has been comparatively slow on the uptake. While the site began paying popular video-makers in 2017, most vloggers have found YouTube to be far more lucrative. 

Facebook-owned Instagram has meanwhile launched the careers of many a food blogger and fashion influencer, but the app only began sharing its advertising income directly with them last year.

Traditionally, the bulk of Insta-celebrities' earnings has come through product endorsement deals negotiated directly with brands. 

- Late to the influencer party - 

Joe Gagliese, co-founder of international influencer agency Viral Nation, said it was not surprising that Facebook's efforts had lagged behind competitors'.

Founded in 2004, Facebook had already built a hugely lucrative advertising business by the time the phenomenon of full-time internet celebrities emerged at the end of the decade. Courting influencers wasn't crucial to its "primary business", Gagliese said. 

But as creators have headed elsewhere, their predominantly young followings have followed -- contributing to a sense that Facebook, in the eyes of Gen Z, has become an irredeemably uncool website where their parents hang out. 

Facebook's user base is indeed ageing. The proportion of over-65s has shot up roughly a quarter over the past year -- almost double the average, according to the Digital 2021 report from media companies We Are Social and Hootsuite. 

In the meantime, Chinese-owned TikTok was the world's most downloaded app in the first half of 2021.

It has largely replaced Facebook as the driver of international social media crazes -- not least during the pandemic, as bored millions have turned to its dance videos and cooking trends for light relief. 

In this context, Facebook's $1 billion gambit is being seen partly as an attempt to regain cultural relevance and stem the youth exodus. 

"The only way for these platforms to keep their relevance with younger generations is to understand what resonates with them and keep up with the pace of innovation," said Claudia Cameron, head of marketing and insights at Amsterdam-based influencer agency IMA.

"Creators are a very important part of this equation, as they set the tone for what's cool."

- A drop in the ocean? - 

While young users from Iran to Brazil have been flocking elsewhere, industry insiders say it is far too early to regard Facebook as doomed. 

"You can't underestimate them, because they are so powerful when it comes to the tech," said Gagliese. 

Facebook's vast income -- it raked in $84.2 billion in advertising revenues last year, more than the GDP of some countries -- gives it huge funds with which to innovate. 

It is also, despite its relative loss of street cred, still growing, with 2.8 billion monthly users worldwide. 

Gagliese suggested Facebook should be spending far more on its efforts to lure internet stars from other platforms. 

"Unless Facebook leans in really hard -- I'm talking, 'way more than a billion dollars' hard -- it's going to be very hard for them to attract all these new creators," he said. 

Facebook has yet to outline detailed plans for the $1 billion, but Cameron pointed out that a large chunk will likely be distributed via Instagram, which still enjoys a "cool" factor.

That would be good news for TikTok comedian Mwas, who also has a sizeable following there. 

"I'm taking a wait-and-see approach," he said.

Agence France-Presse

Social audio app Clubhouse is no longer invite-only

Live audio app Clubhouse has removed its invite system so that anyone can join the platform, it said on Wednesday.

The social app, which saw explosive early growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, previously required people to be invited by an existing user or request to join a waitlist. It said in a blog post that it had always planned to open up the app but that invites had been a way of tempering user numbers.

Clubhouse faces new competition from social media companies, including Facebook, Twitter, as well as streaming company Spotify, which have launched similar audio chat services.

"We know there will be many more ups and downs as we scale, and competition from the large networks will be fierce," the company wrote in its post.

Clubhouse said it had added 10 million people since launching on Android in May. Estimates from analytics firm Sensor Tower found the app had reached about 7.8 million global installs in June, up from 3.7 million the previous month.

The company, which said its team had expanded since January from 8 to 58 people, launched a direct messaging feature last week.

-reuters

Queen of Twitter: Dionne Warwick uses her voice on social media

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American singer Dionne Warwick, who has reigned as a diva for over six decades, is now using her voice as the ‘Queen of Twitter,’ spreading joy and poking fun in viral tweets to a new audience.

The pop legend, 80, regularly tweets her thoughts on life, career and fellow musicians, sometimes prompting responses that lead to heartwarming exchanges.

“If you are very obviously a rapper why did you put it in your stage name?” Warwick asked Chance the Rapper in a tweet. “I cannot stop thinking about this.”

“I will be whatever you wanna call me Ms Warwick,” Chance responded.

The five-time Grammy Award winner was surprised Chance even knew who she was.

It all started when Warwick saw her nieces and nephews having fun on Twitter and wanted to join in. Once she got the hang of it, Warwick decided how she would use her new platform.

“I’m going to do it when I have an urge to say something or feel that I need to say something and/or ask a question, somebody is going to answer it,” she recalled telling her niece who showed her the ropes.

Warwick, who is often referred to now as the ‘Queen of Twitter,’ relishes bringing positive energy to social media.

“That’s one of the things I’m enjoying more than anything else in the world, that everybody’s laughing with me, you know, and that I think is something that has been missing,” she said.

Warwick is also trailblazing with virtual concerts. Her first was held live from home on Easter Sunday.

“I had a little bit of anxiety, based on the fact that I had not sung in a complete year, and vocal cords are muscles and muscles had to be exercised, and I don’t do that,” she said.

“I wanted to do a disclaimer, you know, there might be a couple of squeaks, croaks,” she said with a laugh.

She will perform a second show on May 9, which is Mother’s Day in the United States.

This year Warwick was nominated for the first time to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a late recognition after nearly 60 hit songs including “Don’t Make Me Over,” “Walk on By,” and “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” and selling over 100 million records since the early 1960s.

Reporting by Alicia Powell; Writing by Richard Chang; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien

-reuters

Facebook in turmoil over refusal to police Trump's posts

The clash between Twitter and Donald Trump has thrust rival Facebook into turmoil, with employees rebelling against CEO Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to sanction false or inflammatory posts by the US president.

Some Facebook employees put out word of a "virtual walkout" to take place Monday to protest, according to tweeted messages.

"As allies we must stand in the way of danger, not behind. I will be participating in today's virtual walkout in solidarity with the black community," tweeted Sara Zhang, one of the Facebook employees in the action.

Nearly all Facebook employees are working remotely due to the pandemic.

"We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community," Facebook said in response to the AFP request for comment.

"We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership."

Facebook was aware some workers planned the virtual walkout and did not plan to dock their pay.

"Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind," Ryan Freitas, the design director of Facebook's News Feed, tweeted Sunday, adding that he was organizing about 50 other employees who share his view.


At the root of the discord is Twitter's unprecedented intervention last week when it tagged two Trump tweets about mail-in ballots with messages urging people to "get the facts."

Zuckerberg reacted by telling Fox News that private social media platforms "shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online." Trump retweeted the interview.

On Friday, Twitter responded once again to a Trump tweet, this time after he used the platform to warn protesters outraged by the death at police hands of an unarmed black man that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Twitter covered up the tweet with a message warning it "violated Twitter Rules about glorifying violence." Viewers had to click on the message to see the underlying tweet.

The message also was posted on Facebook, but Zuckerberg decided to let it stand unchallenged.

"I've been struggling with how to respond to the President's tweets and posts all day," he wrote Friday in a post.

"Personally, I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric."

But, Zuckerberg went on to say that "our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies."

- Network in revolt -

Twitter and Facebook both have in place systems to combat disinformation and dangerous content -- appeals to hatred, harassment, incitement to violence and the like.

But Facebook exempts political personalities and candidates from these restrictions.

Zuckerberg's position has not gone down well with many of his employees.


"I don't know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable," Jason Stirman, a member of Facebook's research and development team, wrote on Twitter.

Other Facebook employees spoke out on Sunday.

David Gillis, a member of the design team who specializes in product safety and integrity, said he believed Trump's looting and shooting tweet "encourages extra-judicial violence and racism."

"While I understand why we chose to stay squarely within the four corners of our violence and incitement policy, I think it would have been right for us to make a 'spirit of the policy' exception that took more context into account," he wrote.

Nate Butler, a Facebook product designer, added: "I need to be clear – FB is on the wrong side of this and I can't support their stance. Doing nothing isn't Being Bold. Many of us feel this way."

- A presidential call -

To make matters worse, US media revealed Sunday that Zuckerberg and Trump spoke by telephone on Friday.

The conversation was "productive," unnamed sources told the Axios news outlet and CNBC. Facebook would neither confirm nor deny the reports.

The call "destroys" the idea that Facebook is a "neutral arbiter," said Evelyn Douek, a researcher at Harvard Law School.

Like other experts, she questioned whether Facebook's new oversight board, formed last month to render independent judgments on content, will have the clout to intervene.

On Saturday, the board offered assurances it was aware there were "many significant issues related to online content" that people want it to consider.

Facebook, meanwhile, is directly affected by Trump's counter-attack against Twitter.

The president signed a decree Thursday attacking one of the legal pillars of the US internet, Section 230, which shields digital platforms from lawsuits linked to content posted by third parties while giving them the freedom to intervene as they please to police the exchanges.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook exec says it helped put Trump in White House

LAS VEGAS, United States — A senior Facebook executive on Tuesday said the world's biggest social network unintentionally helped put Donald Trump in the White House but warned against dramatic rule changes.

The Trump campaign did effectively use Facebook to rally support for his presidential run, and the social network should be mindful of that without making moves that stifle free political discourse, Andrew Bosworth said in a lengthy post on his personal Facebook page triggered by The New York Times publishing an internal memo he wrote.

"So was Facebook responsible for Donald Trump getting elected?" Bosworth asked.

"I think the answer is yes, but not for the reasons anyone thinks."

Bosworth contended Trump was not elected because of Russia or misinformation or Cambridge Analytica, but rather because he ran "the single best digital ad campaign I've ever seen from any advertiser."

He went on to say that, since Facebook has the same ad policies in place now, the outcome of the 2020 election could be the same as it was four years ago.

"As tempting as it is to use the tools available to us to change the outcome, I am confident we must never do that or we will become that which we fear," Bosworth wrote.

That doesn't mean Facebook should not draw a line when it comes to how it is used, he reasoned. Clearly inciting violence, thwarting voting, and other blatant transgressions should be banned, but voters should be trusted to decide what kind of leaders they want to elect, according to Bosworth.

"If we don’t want hate-mongering politicians then we must not elect them," Bosworth wrote.

"If we change the outcomes without winning the minds of the people who will be ruled then we have a democracy in name only. If we limit what information people have access to and what they can say then we have no democracy at all."

source: philstar.com

Twitter halts plan to remove inactive accounts

MANILA, Philippines — Social media company Twitter has postponed its plan to remove inactive accounts pending the rollout of a system that would memorialize accounts of those already deceased.

The company apologized yesterday for creating confusion after it announced that it would deactivate inactive accounts as a way to free up usernames in the social media platform.

“We’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part. We will not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts,” the company tweeted.


It also clarified that the plan was originally intended to impact those in the European Union, noting the existing General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the region.

“We’ve always had an inactive account policy but we haven’t enforced it consistently. We’re starting with the EU in part due to local privacy regulations,” it added.


“Beyond complying with GDPR, we may broaden the enforcement of our inactivity policy in the future to comply with other regulations around the world and to ensure the integrity of the service,” said the social media company.

source: philstar.com

400 million Facebook users' phone numbers exposed in privacy lapse, reports say

WASHINGTON, United States — Phone numbers linked to more than 400 million Facebook accounts were listed online in the latest privacy lapse for the social media giant, US media reported Wednesday.

An exposed server stored 419 million records on users across several databases -- including 133 million US accounts, more than 50 million in Vietnam, and 18 million in Britain, according to technology news site TechCrunch.

The databases listed Facebook user IDs -- unique digits attached to each account -- the profiles' phone numbers, as well as the gender listed by some accounts and their geographical locations, technology website TechCrunch reported.


The server was not password protected, meaning anyone could access the databases, and remained online until late Wednesday when TechCrunch contacted the site's host.

Facebook confirmed parts of the report but downplayed the extent of the exposure, saying that the number of accounts so far confirmed was around half of the reported 419 million.

It added that many of the entries were duplicates and that the data was old.

"The dataset has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised," a Facebook spokesperson told AFP.

Following the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when a firm used Facebook's lax privacy settings to access millions of users' personal details, the company disabled a feature that allowed users to search the platform by phone numbers.

The exposure of a user's phone number leaves them vulnerable to spam calls, SIM-swapping -- as recently happened to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey -- with hackers able to force-reset the passwords of the compromised accounts.

source: philstar.com

Twitter CEO account hacked, offensive tweets posted

SAN FRANCISCO, United States—Twitter said Friday the account of chief executive Jack Dorsey had been "compromised" after a series of erratic and offensive messages were posted.

The tweets containing racial slurs and suggestions about a bomb showed up around 2000 GMT on the @jack account of the founder of the short messaging service before being deleted.

Some of the tweets contained the hashtag #ChucklingSquad, which was believed to indicate the identity of the hacker group. The same calling card was left behind during recent hacks of other high-profile social media personalities.

The messages contained racial epithets, and included a retweet of a message supporting Nazi Germany.

Twitter said that the phone number associated with Dorsey's account was "compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider," allowing a hacker to posts tweets to @jack by sending text messages.

Dorsey's account has been secured and there was "no indication that Twitter's systems have been compromised," according to the San Francisco-based internet firm.

It appeared that tweets posted on Dorsey's account by the hacker were up for about a half-hour before they were removed.

Pinned atop Dorsey's account was a tweet from early last year saying: "We're committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress."

A barrage of comments fired off on the platform questioned why the Twitter co-founder didn't secure his account better, and how disturbing a sign it was that the service couldn't keep its own chief safe on the platform.

"If you can't protect Jack, you can't protect... jack," one Twitter user quipped.

The news comes with Dorsey and Twitter moving aggressively to clean up offensive and inappropriate content as part of a focus on "safety."

"This might be the only way to get rid of racist tweets on this platform," a Twitter user commented.

What happened? 

British-based security consultant Graham Cluley said the incident highlighted the importance of two-factor authentication, where a user must confirm the account via an external service.

Cluley advised people to make sure they use two-factor authentication and check which applications are linked to their accounts.

"While it looks bad, it's important to remember this is not some state-grade hack," said R. David Edelman, director of technology, economy, and national security project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It's fundamentally an act of petty vandalism; the equivalent of spray painting a billboard above Twitter HQ."

Cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont said the account appeared to have been hijacked "via a third party called Cloudhopper, which Twitter acquired about 10 years ago and had access to his account."

Cloudhopper enables users to send tweets on their phones via SMS.

"While it's tempting to laugh at the irony of it, the real-world consequences don't make it funny," University of Hartford communications professor Adam Chiara said of Dorsey's account being hacked.

"Twitter can tell us that they are becoming more diligent with our privacy and security, but actions speak louder than words."

The incident raised fresh concerns about how social media users -- even prominent ones -- can have their accounts compromised and used for misinformation, a point highlighted by Canadian member of parliament Michelle Rempel Garner.

"Between bots, trolls and abuse, I’ve been skeptical about @Twitter as a viable platform for some time now," Rempel Garner wrote.

"But the fact it took the platform’s owner (@jack) about 30 min to get his hacked account under control is deeply problematic, and makes me worry as an elected official."

source: philstar.com

Facebook services back online after worldwide outage

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Facebook said it was "back at 100 percent" Wednesday evening after an outage on all of its services affected users in various parts of the world.

Online monitoring service DownDetector reported earlier the outage began around 1200 GMT and affected Facebook as well as its Instagram and WhatsApp services.

"The issue has since been resolved and we should be back at 100% for everyone," the company tweeted at 0006 GMT Thursday, adding they were sorry for "any inconvenience."


A Facebook spokesperson, also speaking on behalf of Instagram and WhatsApp, explained that a "routine maintenance operation" accidentally triggered a bug that made it difficult for users to upload or send photos and videos, US media reported.

#Facebookdown and #instagramdown were trending on Twitter as users around the world reported these apps were not functioning.

According to DownDetector, thousands of users around the world were reporting outages, with Europe and North America most impacted. Both individual users as well as businesses and organizations were affected.

"Yes, we are affected by #instagramdown, too," the CIA tweeted during the outage.

"No, we didn't cause it. No, we can't fix yours. Did you try turning it off and back on again?"

Earlier this year, an outage lasting as long as 24 hours that hit Facebook services was blamed on a "server configuration change."

The March 13 outage was believed to be the worst ever for the internet giant, which reaches an estimated 2.7 billion people with its core social network, Instagram and messaging applications.

The company did not immediately respond to an AFP query on Wednesday's outage.

source: philstar.com