Activists opposed to the newly introduced social media and mobile money tax have warned government to brace itself for an array of protest activities starting next week on Wednesday. While launching their protest campaign dubbed “This tax must go” following government’s failure to heed to an ultimatum issued by the same group early in the week, the activists from different professions urged Ugandans to dress in red on Wednesday, July 11 and hold peaceful demonstrations against the new taxes. On July 1, government introduced a one percent levy on every mobile money transaction and Shs 200 daily tax on usage…
Author: Loknath Das
Welcome to this week’s top social media stories. Instagram continues to innovate with even more new features and Facebook to add more transparency to Pages and Ads. And What about the comeback of Wandering Girl? Instagram is not only one of the top social media apps, it also is one of the fastest growing. This success is of course linked to the constant innovations the platform keeps on bringing. This week, Instagram introduced Music Stickers and started testing a new open-end question stickers to generate even more engagement on Stories. On the Facebook side, it still is all about transparency, privacy and playing…
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said it was “very sad” that five people lost their lives in Dhule district only because of rumours and sought stronger measures by social media platforms to check their spread. Modern means of communication, he said, are for sharing information and knowledge and should be used judiciously. In the wake of the lynching of five tribals in Dhule district, the state government initiated a campaign to sensitise people to check the spread of rumours on social media and to act responsibly, he said. On July 1, five nomadic tribals were lynched by a mob…
Those who can do; those who can’t spoof,” said an old colleague of mine back in the Eighties, but even she couldn’t have imagined just how much of an ironic world we would live in one day, some three decades later, a world diminished by memes, traduced by emojis. Just look at Instagram, a forum where irony and righteousness cohabit; or the microclimates of fashion, where irony has escalated so much that luxury brands now positively encourage the lampooning of their logos; or the art world, where imitation is no longer the sincerest form of flattery, but the most remunerative.…
Facebook has apologised after its content-filtering algorithms flagged the US Declaration of Independence as a hate speech. Parts of the document was flagged as “hate speech” by Facebook bots after a Liberty, Texas-based newspaper, the Liberty County Vindicator, posted on Facebook “small bites” from the Declaration in the lead up to the country’s Independence Day on July 4. Facebook later restored the post and tendered an apology to the newspaper, Liberty County Vindicator said in a report on Tuesday. The newspaper broke the Declaration down into 12 small bites and decided to post one each morning from June 24 to July…
In another move to put a stop to the circulation of spam on its platform, WhatsApp is working on a Suspicious Link Detection feature. The new feature, which is presently said to be under testing, helps users detect suspicious links available within their WhatsApp messages. It is a part of the WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.18.204 and later, though not available for the masses at the initial stage. The latest development hits amidst different measures by the Facebook-owned company to limit the circulation of spam and fake news through the instant messaging app that has over 1.5 billion monthly active users worldwide.…
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has overtaken Warren Buffett as the world’s third-richest person, further solidifying technology as the most robust creator of wealth. Zuckerberg, who trails only Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, eclipsed Buffett Friday as Facebook shares climbed 2.4 percent, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It’s the first time that the three wealthiest people on the ranking made their fortunes from technology. Zuckerberg, 34, is now worth $81.6 billion (approximately Rs. 5.61 lakh crores), about $373 million (roughly Rs. 2,565 crores) more than Buffett, 87, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Zuckerberg’s ascent has been driven by investors’ continued embrace of Facebook,…
At Nintendo’s E3 2018 presentation, one of the biggest reveals was that the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – releasing December 7, 2018 on the Nintendo Switch – would include every character from the Super Smash Bros. History, including those that were offered through downloadable content (DLC) in the past, alongside a couple of new ones in the Inklings from Splatoon and Ridely from the Metroid series. But that’s not the same for stages, the arenas you fight on. A recent press demo, covered by Japanese video game magazine Famitsu and translated by gaming website Source Gaming, revealed that not every stage from the Super…
Amazon on Wednesday said it would offer incentives to entice entrepreneurs to set up their own small package-delivery businesses as part of Amazon’s latest effort to solve the challenge of getting goods the last mile to customer doorsteps. At a press event in Seattle, Amazon unveiled one of the dark grey Prime-logoed vans that it wants to lease to delivery businesses on what it says are attractive terms. It also said it would provide uniforms, fueling plans and insurance programs for fleet operators and even offer classes on tax, payroll and other small-business challenges. The new program promises more competition for…
In a significant development, Facebook has abandoned its plan to develop high-flying solar-powered drones called Aquila that was aimed to deliver Internet to nearly four billion people in remote parts of the world. A high altitude platform station (HAPS) system, Aquila’s mission, according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was to connect the world and help people who do not have online access all the opportunities of the Internet. “We’ve decided not to design or build our own aircraft any longer, and to close our facility in Bridgwater in the UK,” Yael Maguire, a Director of Engineering at Facebook, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.…