Tag: Facebook

We are all victims of Facebook manipulation

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn internetLeave a comment

Facebook has taken a battering recently, and what many users have spotted is that there is a massive gap between how the company operates and the PR messages it sends to the world.

Look at some of the messages that Mark Zuckerberg sent out in 2012, the year it acquired Instagram and brought Sheryl Sandberg to its boardroom table:

“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.”

“I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.”

“At Facebook we believe that the need to open up and connect is what makes us human. It’s what brings us together. It’s what brings meaning to our lives.”

It all sounds very warm and worthy. Yet there were other things going on behind the scenes that were not so ethical, as revealed in a collection of internal Facebook emails published online by Damian Collins, a UK Member of Parliament. As Motherboard points out, the content includes exchanges between Zuckerberg and Sandberg discussing the company’s business model and how it leverages our data to make money.

Collins wrote in his summary of the documents, “Facebook knew that the changes to its policies on the Android mobile phone system, which enabled the Facebook app to collect a record of calls and texts sent by the user would be controversial,” adding, “To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard of possible for users to know that this was one of the underlying features of the upgrade of their app.”

He then tweeted: “I believe there is considerable public interest in releasing these documents. They raise important questions about how Facebook treats users data, their policies for working with app developers, and how they exercise their dominant position in the social media market.”

Essentially, the internal emails include details on the distribution of Facebook’s various apps. They reveal how the company worked very closely with some app developers to give them access to user data, and how the company specifically incentivizes sharing on the platform in order to feed that data back to advertisers. The emails also include information about how the company tried to hide and downplay the amount of data that it collected from the Android version of the Facebook app.

Needless to say, Facebook has responded by saying that the emails “are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context.”

Of course, we can’t blame Facebook for wanting to make a profit, but as Colin Horgan writes, “These emails, however, reveal a core dissonance between the idea Facebook sought to market to its billion-plus users for years, and how those users were leveraged in a business sense.”

Facebook users thought they were part of an idealistic project, when in fact they were being used for much darker purposes, as the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed. The fact that the UK’s parliament is exposing the media giant on its website indicates the extent of the distaste for how Facebook conducts its affairs.

One thing is for sure, as Facebook users we do not have an equal relationship with the company, as it has promoted; instead it is entirely based on inequality, because, ultimately, Facebook has benefited a lot more than its users have.

Every search you make…is being watched

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Digital InnovationLeave a comment

That moment when we all went out and bought smartphones was a game changer for our personal privacy as Tyler Elliott Bettilyon discusses on Medium.

We never imagined at the time how these expensive gadgets would impact on our lives; all we could see that they made our lives easier, but at what cost?

In China, surveillance apparatus is increasingly sophisticated. There is facial recognition technology connected to CCTV cameras and police officers will soon have cameras inside their sunglasses. There may also be drones disguised as birds. Worse still, Chinese citizens are being asked (demanded) to install software in their phones that tracks their downloads and if you’re Chinese and visit a site banned by the government, you lose points from your “social credit score.”

But that’s China, you’re probably thinking. This is a Communist regime that has always controlled how people act and think. It isn’t like that in more democratic countries. Unfortunately the response to that is, “Don’t be so sure.”

Take a look at the surveillance tools the USA has. The NSA’s PRISMprogramme collects masses of data about internet traffic — including yours! That’s why Edward Snowdon blew the whistle on it and revealed how the NSA might be breaking the rules of privacy.

And Europe is no more private. It also has an array of online surveillance tools that it uses in the name of ‘security’. And if you keep sending out the message that we are all in danger, then the citizens of Europe give governments a free pass to collect whatever data they want. They don’t consciously allow it; they passively accept it.

And, online censorship is on the rise as the world becomes more authoritarian. A 2017 report Freedom on the Net details how our freedoms are being curbed year after year. It says: “Nearly half of the 65 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2017 experienced declines during the coverage period, while just 13 made gains, most of them minor. Less than one-quarter of users reside in countries where the internet is designated Free, meaning there are no major obstacles to access, onerous restrictions on content, or serious violations of user rights in the form of unchecked surveillance or unjust repercussions for legitimate speech.”

But it isn’t just governments that are watching you; it’s Facebook, Google and the like who are analysing your every move in order to push adverts at you. The Cambridge Analytica scandal showed us how the data they collect can be ‘weaponised’ for political ends.

Perhaps you are very security conscious about your personal data and take all the recommended steps (and more) to protect yourself. But, the web has many vulnerable points you may pass through without your knowledge and that leaves you exposed. These include your friends keeping texts from you, photos of you taken by friends stored on Facebook and Google keeping track of your search history. Yes, you can turn Google tracking off — if you can actually find where to do that. However, ultimately the only way to stay secure is never to send your data via the internet. Or, get yourself a Tor browser. This is a system that attempts to hide source and destination IP addresses by using several proxies. And even then there are still vulnerabilities.

Finally, personal actions to protect our personal data will never be enough: it will require collective action to overcome the Big Brother machinations of the large agencies like the NSA. Bringing the issues to the attention of more internet users is vital to achieve this, then perhaps we can start to solve the problem and pack up our paranoia.

Facebook asks banks for YOUR account details

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Big DataLeave a comment

Facebook has not had a good year. First there was the Cambridge Analytica scandal and then its share price fell like a stone from a skyscraper. And yet, just a few days ago The Wall Street Journal reported that the social media megalith is asking major US banks to share detailed financial information about how customers spend their money, apparently to increase user engagement. What could possibly go wrong, as we like to say when we can see all kinds of catastrophes likely to emerge from what is made to appear simple and innocuous?

Hand over your data!

The banks it has approached are well known to all, even if we don’t live in the United States. They are Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. Facebook has, according to the WSJ’s interview with banking insiders, asked them to hand over data, including “everything from customers’ account balances to their credit card transactions.”

What’s in it for the banks?

Why might the banks agree to collaborate? The answer lies in the mobile commerce where apps like PayPal and Venmo dominate the scene. The banks would like a slice of this action and Facebook could help them achieve it. The article reports that Facebook is offering the banks “a presence on its Messenger app”, which has around 1.3 billion users. Messenger users can send and receive money via the app, BUT, at the moment, if a user wants to connect the Messenger app with their bank account they have to ‘opt-in’ to do that. They can also use the app to get in direct contact with Facebook’s credit card partners. The suggestion is that Messenger could also offer the same kind of direct contact with the banks.

Trapped by Facebook’s Messenger app

It’s easy to see the benefit to the banks and to Facebook, which is hoping that such a service will mean users conduct all their financial transactions through Messenger. Apparently the fact that many users leave the app to go and check their account balances at their bank’s online service is annoying Zuckerberg & Co who would prefer its users never wander off. Facebook also promises that it would never use customers’ financial data to improve its ad targeting. There are probably a lot of people reading that and thinking, “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.”

So far, the banks have declined Facebook’s offer, citing customer privacy as a concern. And they are right to be concerned about it, because Facebook’s track record on use of customer data is covered in mud and it has stuck.

Knowing what you know about Facebook, how would you feel about your bank handing over your data to such a company?

Twitter, Facebook and Google under fire from Eurasia

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Blockchain, FintechLeave a comment

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The social media giants’ blanket ban on crypto and blockchain related advertising hasn’t gone down well in Russia, China and South Korea. According to a report in Cointelegraph the major blockchain associations of these countries are planning to file a joint lawsuit against Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yandex, says the news agency TASS.

Facebook started the ball rolling with this back in January, although after the emergence of its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Zuckerberg and Co. don’t have much moral high ground to stand on when it comes to “misleading or deceptive promotional practices,” which was its given reason for banning ICO adverts and anything related to crypto.

Google also announced a ban in March, which comes into effect in June, and Twitter confirmed its ban this week. Yet, Jack Dorsey has been talking up Bitcoin as the world’s future single currency. It’s undoubtedly confusing and smacks of something like hypocrisy.

The Eurasian organisations, which include the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RACIB), the Korea Venture Business Associations, and LCBT, a Chinese association of crypto investors, are not going to just sit back and let it happen though. The RACIB has already stated at a conference in Moscow, “the actions of these four tech companies have negatively affected the crypto market.”

Its President, said:

“We believe that this is a use of the monopoly position of these four companies, which have entered into a cartel agreement with each other in order to manipulate the market. The ban from these four organizations has led to a significant drop in the market in recent months.”

To fund the lawsuit, the organisations have created an umbrella Eurasian Association of Blockchain, and they have been asking anyone to “chip in” whatever they can.

Most significantly, Yury Pripachkin of RACIB, said the “claim will also be filed against the companies’ shareholders if they have crypto wallets.” The lawsuit will be filed in the USA, primarily because Pripachkin noted that it has states like Wyoming that are “loyal to cryptocurrency.”

This is a story to watch, because if the Eurasian Association of Blockchain is successful, and even if it isn’t, we will all have a clearer view of social media’s muddy waters around the cryptosphere.