Heena Sharma Blog

  A Facebook internal study has found that a small group of users is actually sowing major doubts about the Covid-19 vaccines , discouraging people from taking the vital jab. The findings showed that just 10 out of the 638 population segments contained 50 per cent of all vaccine hesitancy content on the platform. In the population segment with the most vaccine hesitancy, just 111 users contributed half of all vaccine hesitant content, according to a report in The Washington Post. The Facebook study has also found a QAnon connection behind the campaign to malign the use of coronavirus vaccines and spreading "vaccine hesitancy". QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory group in the US. The research is a large-scale attempt to understand the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy, "or the act of delaying or refusing a vaccination despite its availability, on social media -- a primary source of health information for millions of people," the repor...

  Twitter is planning a new tool to let users automatically block and mute abusive accounts. With the new safety mode, the micro-blogging platform will automatically detect accounts that "might be acting abusive or spammy." The company will limit how those accounts can engage with your content for seven days. During its virtual Analyst Day on Thursday, the company showed a presentation where a slide revealed that the feature will be a toggle in the new safety mode. "Automatically block accounts that appear to break the Twitter Rules, and mute accounts that might be using insults, name-calling, strong language, or hateful remarks," the description read. Currently, not many Twitter users in India are aware of how to report abuse or harassment they face on the open communication platform, opting for the wrong way of posting an abusive photo or tweet and then requesting us to take action. Read More

  Facebook has removed 26.9 million pieces of hate speech content in the fourth quarter of 2020 -- up from 22.1 million in Q3 and the company gives credit to improvements in its automated systems that catch and purge such comments. The social network also blocked 6.4 million pieces of organised hate content in the October-December period from its main platform, up from 4 million in Q3. Instagram also saw significant jumps in hate speech, bullying and self-harm removals, according to the company's 'Community Standards Enforcement Report'. Facebook took down 6.3 million pieces of bullying and harassment content from its platform in the fourth quarter of 2020 -- up from 3.5 million in Q3. "Last quarter, we shared the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook for the first time to show the percentage of times people see this type of content on our platform. This quarter, hate speech prevalence dropped, seven to eight views of hate speech for every 10,000 views of con...

  Wikipedia has introduced a first-of-its-kind Universal Code of Conduct that expands on the project's existing policies to create a global set of community standards for addressing negative behaviour and harassment on the site. Launched by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that administers Wikipedia, the code's standards include clearly defining acceptable behaviour; delinating harassment on and off the projects for all Wikipedia participants; preventing the abuse of power and influence to intimidate others; and combating deliberate introduction of false or inaccurate content. "Our work is built around a radical premise that everyone should be able to participate in knowledge," said Katherine Maher, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. "Our new universal code of conduct creates binding standards to elevate conduct on the Wikimedia projects, and empower our communities to address harassment and negative behaviour across the Wikimedia movement," she...

  In its bid to fight the spread of Covid-19 related misinformation on its platform, Facebook will now send notifications directly to users who like, share, or comment on such posts. According to a report from Fast Company, the social network is changing how it reaches people who have encountered misinformation on its platform.   "The company will now send notifications to anyone who has liked, commented, or shared a piece of Covid-19 misinformation that's been taken down for violating the platform's terms of service," the report said on Tuesday. The notification will read: "We removed a post you liked that had false, potentially harmful information about Covid-19." The company will then connect users with trustworthy sources in effort to correct the record. Read More  

  Amid growing misinformation on social media, Facebook plans to remove posts with what they consider to be false information or conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines . The company said in a statement on Thursday, in coming weeks they will start removing false claims about vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts. "Given the recent news that COVID-19 vaccines will soon be rolling out around the world, over the coming weeks we will start removing false claims about these vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts on Facebook and Instagram," the release said. "For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn't on the official vaccine ingredient list," the release added. Read More  

  Twitter on Tuesday announced it is set to show a warning notification when the users try to like a labeled tweet. The micro-blogging platform began showing a warning before the 2020 US presidential election when the users tried to retweet a flagged tweet. Now, the company has expanded the warning functionality which is rolling out on the Web and iOS first and will come to Android devices in the coming weeks. "Giving context on why a labeled Tweet is misleading under our election, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media rules is vital," Twitter said. "These prompts helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29 per cent so we're expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet," the company said in a tweet. Read More      

In an attempt to fix the problem of spreading of misinformation, WhatsApp on Tuesday said it is launching a new feature to limit frequently forwarded messages. Once a message has been previously forwarded five times, it can henceforth only be forwarded one chat at a time. The Facebook-owned messaging app, which has over 400 million users in India, also acknowledged reports that its latest beta release is working on a method to allow users to find out more information about messages that may be loaded with misinformation and which are likely being shared multiple times by users. "That idea involves displaying a magnifying glass icon next to these frequently forwarded messages, giving users the option to send that message to a web search where they can find news results or other sources of information. Double-checking these messages before forwarding may help reduce the spread of rumours," WhatsApp said in a statement. Read More

Expanding its fact-checking programme, Facebook has started allowing Instagram users to flag false content on the photo-and video-sharing platform. "I'm proud that, starting today, people can let us know if they see posts on Instagram they believe may be false. There's still more to do to stop the spread of misinformation, more to come," Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, said in a tweet on Thursday. According to a report in Poynter.org, while the roll out of the feature has started in the US, it should be available for all international users in about two weeks. Fact checkers will review the posts once users flag content as false. But even if fact checkers flag those content as false, the posts would not be deleted from the platform, said the report. Such posts will be downplayed on "explore" and "hashtag" pages, Stephanie Otway, an Instagram spokesperson, was quoted as saying. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

WhatsApp on Tuesday launched a service in India where over 200 million users in the country can tip off fake news , misinformation and rumours related to elections. Launched by PROTO, a media skilling start-up, the tipline will help create a database of rumours to study misinformation during elections for Checkpoint -- a research project commissioned by WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned company said in a statement. Dig Deeper Media and Meedan, who have previously worked on misinformation-related projects around the world, are helping PROTO to develop the verification and research frameworks for India. "The goal of this project is to study the misinformation phenomenon at scale -- natively in WhatsApp," said PROTO's founders Ritvvij Parrikh and Nasr ul Hadi. When a WhatsApp user shares a suspicious message with the tipline, PROTO's verification centre will seek to respond and inform the user if the claim made in the message shared is verified or not. The resp...

WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned instant messaging platform, on March 25 launched the second phase of its ‘Share Joy, Not Rumors’ campaign, encouraging its subscribers to use the platform with responsibility. This is one of the steps that the company has undertaken to control the spread of fake news before the Lok Sabha Elections 2019 . The campaign is available in the form of short online videos (available on YouTube) showing step-by-step tutorials on how to exit a group, block a contact and the significance of the forwarded label. “ Proactively working with the Election Committee and local partners for a safe election is our top priority. Expanding our education campaign to help people easily identify and stop malicious messages is another step towards improving the safety of our users,” said Abhijit Bose, Head of India, WhatsApp. WhatsApp bans accounts engaging in bulk messaging and automated behavior to stay ahead of highly-motivated abusers. Most recently, a partnership with...

Not just Facebook and Twitter, Google is also making an effort to ensure the authenticity of information on its advertisements and video platform as India heads towards General Elections in less than a month. On Thursday, the company said it is ensuring authoritative news content gets better play on YouTube, where videos have seen growth in watch time triple for content from authoritative sources in the last two years, said Tim Katz, the video platform’s director of news partnerships. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is ensuring there is news from credible sources that is put on the platform, with enough context. With elections less than a month away, the Indian government has been trying to address the issue of misinformation and fake news spreading through social media and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. Recently, the Parliamentary Committee on information technology met with senior executives of Facebook and Twitter and the Election Commission has also said soci...

Facebook Monday said it has expanded its third-party fact-checking programme in India, adding names like India Today Group, Factly and Fact Crescendo to the roster, as the social networking giant looks to combat the spread of " fake news " on its platform ahead of general elections this year. Apart from reviewing articles, the US-based company has also equipped checkers with tools to review photos and videos to "help identify and take action against more types of misinformation". "Starting today, India Today Group, Vishvas.news, Factly, Newsmobile, and Fact Crescendo, all of whom are certified through a non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network, will review news stories on Facebook for facts, and rate their accuracy..." Facebook said in a statement. It added that this will be done for content in languages including English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is removing at least two million accounts each month for bulk or automated behaviour and over 75 per cent of those without recent user reports. According to the company, these efforts are particularly important during elections where certain groups may attempt to send messages at scale. "While there are many actors trying to abuse the free service we provide, we are constantly advancing our anti-abuse operations to keep the platform safe," WhatsApp said in a statement on Thursday. WhatsApp is banning accounts that send a high volume of messages. "We're able to detect and ban many accounts before they register a" preventing them from sending a single message. Roughly 20 per cent of account bans happened at registration time," the company informed. WhatsApp which has over 200 million users in India aims to understand the behavioural cues indicating bulk registrations. "For example, our systems can detect if a s...

WhatsApp will now globally limit message 'forwards' to five chats at a time, a practice it had introduced in India in July last year to crack down on the spread of rumours and fake news through its platform. In an update to its blog on Monday, WhatsApp said the move will help keep "WhatsApp focused on private messaging with close contacts". "WhatsApp carefully evaluated this test and listened to user feedback over a six-month period. The forward limit significantly reduced forwarded messages around the world," it said. It added that "starting today, all users on the latest versions of WhatsApp can now forward to only five chats at once..." The messaging platform -- which counts India, Brazil and Indonesia among its major markets -- said it will continue to listen to user feedback on their experience, and "over time, look for new ways of addressing viral content". Read More Business Standard

With great power comes great responsibility. The quote made popular by the iconic comic series 'Spider-Man' sums up the challenges that social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook are facing in India. They have been accused of being a carrier of hate messages and fake news that incited mob violence. And, now they stare at the prospects of stricter government rules, greater accountability and regulatory scrutiny. These platforms, for some of whom India is the biggest consumer base outside of their home country, can see very much clear the writing on the wall -- follow the rules of engagement if you want to be in the world's fastest growing economy. The year 2018 will go down in history as the one where social networking platforms not only made country-specific changes -- be it labelling forwarded messages, limiting the number of people a user can send a message to at one go and launching public awareness campaign against fake news. They also agreed...

Finding ways to hide information in text, unveiling state-sponsored trolls, a plane with no moving parts, wood as strong as titanium and even efforts to go beyond the corporeal to life beyond death... there was seemingly no end to tech innovations in 2018 . It was a year that saw technology take a quantum leap to touch virtually every aspect of our lives, and even beyond it maybe, from terrestrial to the skies above. In a first, a plane with no moving parts -- no turbines, propellers or even fans -- took flight in November. Developed by researchers at US' Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the small prototype was powered by "ionic wind" -- the flow of ions produced by the plane that generates enough thrust to push it through the air for a sustained, steady flight. This is the first-ever sustained flight of a plane with no moving parts in the propulsion system," Steven Barrett, associate professor at MIT, said in a statement. Anothe...

After radio, WhatsApp will now run a television ad campaign in India -- a global first for the Facebook-owned company -- as it looks to crackdown spread of fake news on its platform ahead of the general elections in the country next year. WhatsApp, in a statement, said it has conducted extensive research with users in India and then developed three ad films that are based on a real user's experience. "The three films will be available on TV, Facebook, and YouTube in nine languages and reach the diverse population that makes up WhatsApp users. The campaign is timed to start just prior to the elections in Rajasthan and Telangana and WhatsApp will build on this effort headed into the national election next year," the statement added. These languages include English, Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi and Malayalam. The latest campaign comprises three 60-second films that convey real scenarios about dangerous rumours that sprea...

Even as developers are still grappling with possible web tools to monitor and prevent fake news on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, Uttar Pradesh Police has raised a network of 200,000 'digital volunteers' to tackle the menace. UP Police, touted as the world’s largest single command police force with headcount of nearly half-million, wants the total strength of these volunteers to cross 365,000 in the state. In the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha poll , there is even greater urgency to weed out the spectre of fake news circulating on social media and rumours being spread by vested interests to disturb peace. All the 1,465 police stations in UP have so far networked over 200,000 digital volunteers drawn from the civil society and comprising teachers, journalists, village heads, doctors, corporators, lawyers, traders, members of civil defence, religious groups etc. Read Complete Article Business Standard

Facebook blocked the most (956 or 58%) of URLs, under section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, followed by Twitter (25%) and YouTube (9%) Current Affairs News : As many as 1,662 uniform resource locators (URLs) or posts on social media were blocked over 18 months ending June 2018, Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for electronics and information technology, told the Rajya Sabha (Parliament’s upper house) on August 3, 2018, as part of an explanation on combating fake news . “Recently, it has come to the attention of the government of India that a number of disturbing instances causing loss of innocent lives have taken place in various parts of the country,” RS Prasad said in his reply on the issue of misuse of social media and fake news. “These are deeply painful and regrettable, as well as a matter of deep concern for the government.” Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000 says websites/pages can be blocked in “defence of India”, its sovereignty, security and in...