Earlier this month Germany’s Federal Court of Justice granted the parents of a deceased teenager full control of her Facebook account. The basic argument was that social media accounts should be inherited just as books and letters are. The fact that this teenager died in 2012 and the case took several years to resolve underscores the massive and uncertain role social media plays in modern life. Last week Abu Dhabi Public Prosecution ordered the arrest of three social media influencers after they used social media to post videos of themselves taking part in the “In my feelings challenge”. This is…
Author: Loknath Das
The U.K. government should increase oversight of social media like Facebook and election campaigns to protect democracy in the digital age, a parliamentary committee has recommended in a scathing report on fake news, data misuse and interference by Russia. The interim report by the House of Commons’ media committee to be released Sunday said democracy is facing a crisis because the combination of data analysis and social media allows campaigns to target voters with messages of hate without their consent. Tech giants like Facebook, which operate in a largely unregulated environment, are complicit because they haven’t done enough to protect…
Delhi Finance Secretary Renu Sharma has expressed concern over less than 10 per cent expenditure of the budget allotted to the public works department in executing various government’s projects in the first quarter. According to a PWD official, an explanation regarding the less expenditure will be sent to the government. The finance secretary held a review meeting of the expenditure on July 25, where project-wise status was discussed. Projects like remodelling of hospitals, construction of poly clinics, ITO Skywalk and strengthening of Ring Road from Ashram to AIIMS, among others, were taken up for discussion, drawing ire of the finance…
Opposition’s spokesman on finance Mark Golding can be easily numbered among the parliamentarians who take their jobs of representing inside Gordon House very seriously. So, it was no surprise that he grasped Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke’s invitation to attend last Thursday’s disclosure on proposals to transform the Bank of Jamaica (BoJ) into a modern central bank detached from the dictates of the finance minister, at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston. Golding’s questions included whether there would be opportunity for the issue to be discussed in Parliament prior to the tabling of the amending Bills and the accompanying…
Twitter posted record profit on Friday with second quarter revenue that beat financial analysts’ estimates and said penalising misbehaving users this year had paid off even though monthly usage had dropped. Twitter, like bigger rival Facebook, has been under pressure from regulators in several countries to weed out hate speech, abusive content and misinformation, better protect user data and boost transparency on political ad spending. The social media firm increased removals and suspensions of accounts in recent months, saying this was one reason the number of monthly users fell by 1 million to 335 million in the second quarter from the previous…
Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday said the government has issued notice to WhatsApp as social media companies are accountable for the misuse of their platforms. The government issued notice to WhatsApp as rumours in the social media application preceded most incidences of violence, Prasad said in the Rajya Sabha while participating in a discussion on the misuse of social media. In response, WhatsApp has placed a limit to forwarding of messages to five and identified all forwarded messages as such, he said. “Social media saying it is just a platform will not be acceptable. Just as a newspaper cannot say it’s not their responsibility…
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune took a more than $15 billion (roughly Rs. 1.03 lakh crores) 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…
How to improve your cyber security with security analytics Download this e-guide to read how many firms are looking to security analytics to keep abreast of the ever-evolving world of cyber threats. With traditional approaches to cyber security proving less effective against increasingly sophisticated and automated cyber-attacks, security analytics may well be your knight in shining armour. This figure drops to just 4% for internal penetration tests, according to the firm’s latest Under the hoodie report, based on 268 penetration tests over nine months to June 2018. The study was aimed at discovering the most common weaknesses in modern enterprises to identify the most…
When the commercial software market shifted to apps, it was obvious that the old way of developing software had to go. With regular security and capability upgrades now expected by consumers, Silicon Valley companies replaced the traditional lengthy software development processes with new, faster methods. The U.S. government has noticed this shift. The old way of developing software ― combined with the long, complex defense procurement process ― left our servicemembers in the field waiting months or years for the capabilities and software updates they needed right away. While the average consumer could expect weekly or even daily updates to…
After years of loyal service, Logitech Gaming is retiring its old driver software suite and replacing it with a new hub launching into beta today—called the Logitech G Hub—that doesn’t look like a holdover of the Windows Vista era. The best thing about Logitech’s new Hub software, other than the fact that it’s fast, clear, and easy to use, is that it doesn’t force you to create a profile and hand over your email just to use it. It’s a pointed difference from Razer’s Synapse and Nvidia’s GeForce Experience, and I’m very happy I can download and use G Hub without…